Science communication targets, outside the scientific community, the general public. These are the main goals:
- Improve the understanding of science, and thereby increase support by taxpayers;
- Make people aware of what scientists really do;
- Bring crucial scientific results into the realm of culture;
- Share with our fellow-citizens some of our intellectual tools;
- By writing essays on scientific topics, try to show science in action, i.e., demonstrate how conventional wisdom can fool most of the people most of the time.
In this talk, I share some of my experience as a science writer, for now more than ten years, and I address issues such as: can one make a living out of it? How does one get to be published? Can chemophobia be overcome? Does one have to forgo being a scientist? Who should think about espousing this profession? How does one pick a topic? How does one write about it? What are the joys? What are the sorrows?