Advocacy is not a dirty word: Communicating science to advocate for it.

Because of current attempts to discredit and dismiss science in the federal policy and decision-making process, advocating for science (i.e., demonstrating its importance and relevance for human well-being, the environment, the economy, etc.) has become a necessity (who would have thought??). While some say scientists should not be involved in advocacy, I would argue that we have always advocated for our work. We just need to learn what types of decisions will be made based on our scientific information, and tweak the delivery when we speak about our work (or science in general) for different (advocacy) purposes.