In a position of scientific leadership, there may come a time when you are asked to provide a comment for the media. You’ll be asked to condense your trusted expertise into an intelligible soundbite. An issue of the day needs translated using your skills developed over a professional lifetime.

Media training is a worthwhile string to add to your bow.

Some such opportunities are more difficult to digest than others.

What should you do, for example, when a journalist asks you to comment on a clearly bipartisan issue?

How can you provide understandable balance when the lines of the sand are drawn with scrapes of the sword?

One important to consideration is to understand that you are right. And so is the other person on the other side. You’re both right because everyone is always right…in their world view. Your life experience has tweaked the software in your brain to interpret the inputs of the world out there differently to how the other person has themselves been set by the initial conditions of their life experience up till now.

Be able to fight for and against the side you favour. Steal-man your argument, and straw-man it with equal ease.

How can you rise to a journalistic opportunity without being dragged down by your own biases?

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