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23.
CHOOSING JOY.
BEING ON HOW TO INTERPRET SCIENCE LANGUAGE
hen the customer says ‘No!’ the sale begins.
WThat’s a mantra of sales people, and it’s a
daunting challenge to be creative about a
critical situation. So: When the science writer
says ‘No, I don’t understand this material at
all,’ the science writing begins. A problem is
not a problem, it’s an opportunity. It’s all in the attitude. Strange
as it may seem, but a science writer can learn from a salesman
about being creative. In fact, this is a 30-year-old idea; Elmer Leterman wrote his
seminal book The Sale Begins When The Customer Says ‘No’ in 1977 (amazon.com).
The lesson here? One never stops learning.
Let me illustrate. Note that the two quoted paragraphs that follow (in italics) both come from the Executive Summary
of ‘ICRISAT’S Vision and Strategy to 2015’ (icrisat.org). (I chose the material from the International Crops Research
Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics since I’m studying this institute because it’s a model science agency in modern
times; it’s an award-winning institute many times over; I like to give credit to whom credit is due; at the same time
I’m enjoying trying to learn how can it relate to the poor farmers in the drylands of the tropics armed only with her
5 mandate crops: sorghum, pearl millet, pigeonpea, chickpea, groundnut. And what have I found so far? ICRISAT
relates to the farmers by relating to everyone: farmers, entrepreneurs, academe, local government, advocates,
funding agencies, not to mention the media who must understand and interpret what the institute is doing. I am
media, and my name is legion.)