Science storytelling isn’t just campfires—It’s mass media, ethics, and influence

The campfire anecdote beautifully illustrates why we enjoy stories, but it doesn’t explain whether we should tell science stories. The choice whether to use stories in science communication may depend more on weighing trade-offs and making compromises with mass media.

In short: storytelling in science communication makes science more engaging and memorable. Still, it can cost accuracy, so whether to use it depends on your audience and on what you compete with in mass media. Michael Dahlstrom’s 2014 review argues for using stories with care and suggests three questions to ask first: do you want to persuade or educate, how accurate does the story need to be, and should you use a story at all? The most common argument for using storytelling in science communication emphasizes humans’ inherent affinity for stories. One of the most shared examples portrays our ancestors sitting around campfires telling stories to spark creativity, connect, and build trust. These examples describe how we tend to gravitate toward stories as if the pull were genetically encoded.

The campfire scenario effectively illustrates how evolution has shaped humans to appreciate stories and story structures. It tells us why we attach such importance to them. But although they describe how and why we enjoy stories, they fail to address the main argument against storytelling in science.

Counterarguments against storytelling in science communication highlight how stories sacrifice accuracy and make science appear reductive or overly simplistic. The argument goes that a trade-off between engagement and accuracy can erode our audience’s scientific understanding over time.

Still, the tension between engagement and accuracy doesn’t have to result in a stalemate. There’s a way out of this dilemma, which considers the objectives of science communication and how they relate to other sources of information. And it’s all described in the science-storytelling Bible.

Dahlstrom’s case for science storytelling

That’s right. The science-storytelling supporters have a Bible, the main work that pushed storytelling into the spotlight—the words that started the hype. Just like religious bibles, few people—even practitioners—have read the science-storytelling Bible. Its timing and lasting arguments suggest that this text sparked the latest trend in science storytelling: Dr. Michael Dahlstrom’s “Using Narratives and Storytelling to Communicate Science with Nonexpert Audiences” from 2014.

(And just to be clear, the “Bible” label is purely tongue-in-cheek; Dahlstrom’s work is rooted in research and evidence, not dogma.)

In his foundational review, Dahlstrom, now director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, presents a case for using storytelling in communicating science.  

Stories (narratives or narrative formats) describe cause-and-effect events, structured around characters over time. It’s a format that fits almost any type of content, from blogs and podcasts to news stories and everyday conversations. Storytelling increases understanding, interest, and engagement in science-related topics.

But Dahlstrom doesn’t base his argument on our evolutionary attraction to stories when making a case for science storytelling. Instead, he acknowledges the limitations of stories but presents a nuanced and compromising case for their use.

The criticisms of science storytelling

One of the problems that makes stories in science communication less reliable is their emphasis and structure. As we’ve seen, stories “describe cause-and-effect events, structured around characters over time.” A storyteller begins with a specific character or event and uses it to generalize a concept or theme, a process also known as inductive reasoning or inductive structure.

For example, showcasing the daily struggles of an individual with Parkinson’s disease can effectively illustrate the advancements in therapies for the condition.

Although the strategy effectively improves understanding, it risks oversimplifying and overgeneralizing the science. As science communicators, we may recognize that specific cases, such as an individual with Parkinson’s disease, may not accurately represent the whole. Still, the audience might fail to understand the nuances.

Most of the scientific communication we find in academia relies on the opposite type of reasoning: deductive reasoning. The setup begins with a general background and theory, and then progresses to more specific methods and data. That’s the kind of content we find in the so-called IMRaD structure (introduction, methods, results, and discussion) of scientific articles.

A story format also depends on the context, or, in other words, the sequence of the story. It’s challenging to isolate and repurpose individual scientific details from a storytelling format without altering or losing their meaning.

By contrast, an IMRaD model allows us to extract individual parts and make sense of them separately, as the presented results are context-free (or modular).

While academic writing aims to maintain objective and neutral content, science stories give the writer the freedom to implement attention-grabbing tools, such as emotional or persuasive language. Because stories prioritize structure and style, they often rely on subjective language, sacrificing objectivity.

This emphasis on engaging and captivating content can misrepresent the real-world significance or relevance of cases by highlighting extreme events to illustrate scientific concepts. Since stories can seem realistic and consistent, they can persuade audiences to believe arguments even when they’re incorrect or oversimplified, a phenomenon known as verisimilitude.

“…narratives have no need to justify the accuracy of their claims; the story itself demonstrates the claim.”

Michael Dahlstrom

This persuasive power raises ethical concerns, as people are more likely to accept value judgments when embedded in stories than when presented through evidence-based arguments.

Why use storytelling in science communication?

It may seem awkward to promote a method that sacrifices the very pillars that make science reliable and trustworthy: objectivity, neutrality, and accuracy. Why do we need storytelling in science if it risks manipulating audiences and spreading inaccuracies?

As is so often the case, the audience dictates our approach to science communication, including whether to use storytelling to convey complex information.

Non-expert audiences need experts or skilled communicators to explain and simplify complex scientific information. Most non-experts rely on mass media, a system that has perfected the ability to captivate audiences, for science information. And storytelling is a critical engagement tool that mass media platforms use to keep audiences coming back.

Journalists don’t merely convey knowledge to their audiences; they package the information to fit their goals, including grabbing the audience’s attention. Writers and newsrooms understand that stories are accessible. Audiences tend to remember, understand, and process stories more effectively than they do traditional logical reasoning. They also read story narratives twice as fast as the more descriptive writing known as expository communication, giving stories a “privileged status” in human cognition. Stories enhance learning compared with descriptive content.

Why should science communicators avoid such a helpful approach? We already compete against a content format that is more attractive than descriptive or academic content formats. If we avoid using storytelling in science and stick to purely logical-scientific content, we risk losing audiences and handing the responsibility to inform about science to potentially less accurate platforms.

That’s a primary reason why we, as science communicators, should consider incorporating stories into our content creation for non-expert audiences. It’s a compromise that adapts to the current trends in news consumption. We don’t want to fight or debunk bad science with facts alone; instead, we replace it with new, better, and scientifically accurate narratives.

Which brings us to what responsible storytelling looks like in practice.

Responsible science stories

Stories can change audiences’ beliefs, for example, about vaccines, artificial intelligence, and environmental issues. Story narratives can persuade audiences sufficiently to make them less accepting of contradicting evidence, where the audience modifies opposing evidence to fit their narrative.

These features alone make storytelling tempting to use as a misinformation-countering tool to convince people about the scientific “truths”. But using storytelling to persuade audiences about controversial topics—especially when done covertly—raises several ethical issues.

Dahlstrom reviews three questions that science communicators should ask themselves before incorporating narratives into their science content, especially in social debates.

1.     Is our objective with the story format to persuade or educate?

Although Dahlstrom doesn’t provide a definitive answer to this question, he contrasts two models of science communication: the Public Understanding of Science model, which focuses on educating the public to reduce knowledge gaps, and the Public Engagement in Science and Technology model, which aims to engage a broader audience in scientific debates, even when controversial. Both can be ethical depending on the context, but communicators must be clear about their intent.

2.     What level of accuracy is required to maintain in storytelling?

Dahlstrom highlights that stories involve different types of accuracy. For example, external realism describes accuracy relative to the real world, whether the story’s science reflects what we see in nature. Representativeness refers to the extent to which a story example represents the real world. Stories may need to sacrifice strict accuracy to engage and simplify concepts, for instance, by personifying a scientific process. Still, the foundation of the scientific facts should remain accurate.

3.     Should we use the story format for science communication at all?

The ease with which we digest stories and their prevalence in the media lead Dahlstrom to advocate for the use of stories in science communication. But he warns that the storytelling format may not align with audiences’ expectations of how scientists should communicate. The answer to this question is the always-appreciated “it depends,” but the benefits of storytelling make the approach valuable for communicators.

Whether we should implement storytelling in science communication goes beyond our inherent joy for stories. Although audiences may enjoy such formats, scientific stories may come with nuanced and ethical baggage that can compromise their scientific accuracy.

We need to remain vigilant if we want the benefits to outweigh the risks. Does an average family that develops and sets up wind and solar power represent the realistic and sustainable measures that slow climate change? Does a sodium ion (Na⁺) capturing a chloride ion (Cl^–) with a lasso accurately describe the formation of table salt (NaCl), or does it oversimplify and distract from the actual ionic bonding process? Or let me ask you this: Does a single anecdote about a family suffering vaccine side effects hold weight against the overwhelming evidence of vaccine benefits?

Storytelling is a powerful tool, but its ethical use in science communication requires a careful balance, safeguarding that engagement never comes at the expense of truth.