Trans medical science communication
An important part of any research and scientific output is the ability to affectively and effectively communicate those ideas. Most lay people outside a specific field of research have no particular interest in the ideas being developed through empirical research; indeed, unless you are a specialist in that field most of the output from the research will be a footnote and of cursory interest. Such is the way science has developed since the Enlightenment. Yet, with the adoption of mass communication technologies such as newspapers, journals, books, radio, television, and the internet science is communicated to us daily through journalism and social media. Most of us rely on those voices to breakdown complex ideas into digestible chunks, which in turn means we rely on those content creators to be at least neutral in their output. Trans healthcare is not immune to this, and most of what non-clinicians understand about trans healthcare flows from non-medical voices attempting to communicate complex medical ideas.
This phenomena is not unique to trans healthcare. Ask anyone about E=MC2 and you will get vague answers which bely the intricacies of what Einstein was conveying. How we communicate an idea is as important as to what that idea is because misinformation and misunderstanding compound over time. Some of this misinformation can be deliberate, oft times it is the original conveyer…
