Somewhere between working on my research project, panicking about deadlines and teaching undergraduate students, I took a graduate course in science communication at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The rationale behind it is that scientists must accept responsibility for communicating their results to a wide audience.

The course — held one evening a week this past autumn and taught by journalists, government administrators and scientists — covered many aspects of science journalism, ranging from ethics, graphics, broadcast and magazine reporting to the overall portrayal of science in the media.

As part of the course, I did a two-week internship at the Nature office in Washington DC with Naturejobs editor Paul Smaglik. He showed me how he runs his sections and let me help with some of the editing tasks. I discovered the difficulties in shortening and altering other people's work. I talked to some other Nature staff, and asked the manuscript editors about the editing and peer-review process.

I also found time for reflection. I learned to appreciate how significant communicating about science and medicine is to the education of the general public. Journalists are key players in this process, acting as interpreters between scientists and the public. During this interpretation, though, messages can become distorted and that can strongly influence public opinion. Perhaps we scientists are partly to blame: we spend years learning new laboratory techniques but spend far less time thinking about how best to deliver our newly found knowledge to the public.

More importantly, in a democratic society, controversial issues in research should be open and accessible to the public, which has a natural interest in knowing how taxpayers' money is spent. Scientists should play a key role in shining a light on these issues, and one way to do that is to engage with the media. It is also in the individual researcher's own interest to do this, to generate interest, gain recognition and explain the need for funding.

This course taught me that the public perception of science has become almost more important than the science itself. I hereby promise that in my career, I will keep a straight and honest relationship with medical journalists. If that turns out to be too difficult, well, then I might just have to become one myself.