Photo Credit: Mike Strawn, courtesy of Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Holden Thorp, PhD, gives the commencement address at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine 2025 commencement ceremony.

Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief of the most esteemed scientific journal Science, had this message for scientists—storytelling is as essential as data in restoring trust. It lands right at the heart of what I teach every day. Science is not suffering from a lack of rigor or discovery; it is suffering from a lack of story.

I urge you to read his commentary published by the Association of American Medical Colleges here.

When scientists or technical leaders in any field, lead with numbers, charts, and probabilities, they assume the audience will make the leap from data to meaning. But people don’t think in datasets—they think in stories. A single anecdote, whether true or twisted, can move millions more effectively than a thousand peer-reviewed findings. That’s not because people are irrational; it’s because humans are wired to make sense of the world through narrative. Our human operating system is wired for story, not excel sheets and 3 bullets.

Thorp is right: credibility doesn’t flow from expertise alone anymore. It comes from relatability, humility, and transparency. Saying “I was wrong, here’s how we corrected it” doesn’t diminish trust—it strengthens it, because it shows the public that science is a process, not a pronouncement.

Science doesn’t need fewer stories; it needs better ones. Ones that honor the data but put people at the center. Ones that are courageous enough to admit imperfection. Ones that treat listeners not as skeptics to be managed, but as partners in the search for truth.

When I work with scientists: data, IT, physicists, biologists, or fractographers, to bridge the gap between science and society, we use our own storytelling tools to make stories stick and spread. I advise you to try to:

  • Use empathy mapping to understand our audiences—their fears, motivations, curiosities, and desires. If we know what keeps people excited or up at night, we can frame our research as an answer to their story, not just ours.
  • Incorporate emotion into the scientific narrative. Facts inform, but feelings inspire action. When a physician shares not just the mechanism of a drug, but the relief of watching a child breathe easier, the science comes alive.
  • Deploy memory devices—analogies, metaphors, and sticky story structures—that make science easy to remember and easy to retell. A story that spreads is far more powerful than one that merely lands in the moment.

If science can embrace storytelling—not as an afterthought, but as a core competency, with empathy, emotion, and memory at its heart—it won’t just defend itself from attack. It will win hearts, change minds, and rebuild the very foundation of trust it depends on.

As a technical innovator, what’s the story you want the public to remember about your work?