Yet scientists receive very little visualization training. Visualization of those data - to understand as well as to share them - is more important than ever. The problem has become more acute with the ever-increasing amount and complexity of scientific data. And with more and more scientific images making their way into the news and onto social media - illustrating everything from climate change to disease outbreaks - the potential is high for bad visuals to impair public understanding of science. Deficient data visuals can reduce the quality and impede the progress of scientific research. Living World Life’s a blur - but we don’t see it that wayĪs a result, science is littered with poor data visualizations that confound readers and can even mislead the scientists who make them. “Visualization is seen as really just kind of an icing on the cake.” The graphs and diagrams that accompany most scientific publications tend to be the last things researchers do, says data visualization scientist Seán O’Donoghue.
“Plotting the data allows us to see the underlying structure of the data that you wouldn’t otherwise see if you’re looking at a table.”Īnd yet few scientists take the same amount of care with visuals as they do with generating data or writing about it. Visualizations can reveal patterns, trends and connections in data that are difficult or impossible to find any other way, says Bang Wong, creative director of MIT’s Broad Institute. Scientific visuals can be essential for analyzing data, communicating experimental results and even for making surprising discoveries. Images are effective for all kinds of storytelling, especially when the story is complicated, as it so often is with science. People absorb information in graphic form that would elude them in words. That’s because humans are visual creatures by nature.
The science would be a lot harder to understand. No charts, no graphs, no illustrations or diagrams with arrows and labels. Imagine a science textbook without images.
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