"Science editors have a growing and important role to play as translators," says Hayes. But many don't have a very good background in science, he adds, and the sections of newspapers or magazines they write for are often subject to the whims of advertisers.

One such "translator," Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times science reporter Natalie K. Angier, says that a fallacy of science writing is that reporters "take what scientists give them and write."

"Often, scientists are not good at explaining what they are doing," says Angier. "I do a lot more than just translate. I have to gather information and use my own mind to put the pieces together."

Angier agrees with Hayes that scientific jargon has an appeal to researchers, who often need to find new words to describe a small part of a larger problem.

But she calls certain science papers "ridiculous," and jargon can also make her job--that of convincing her readers and editors that a given story is relevant to them--more difficult.

"It's hard to animate something that's basically invisible," she says of her writing of molecular biology. "What I try to do is go beyond saying the obvious, like this `could have importance,' and try to make what I'm writing about an interesting fictional character."

In addition to creating a "story from every story," Angier says the reader can often be convinced of the necessity for basic research when it makes advances possible in a specific area of science currently in the public eye.

AIDS research is a perfect example. Scientists isolated the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), relatively quickly, but only because there was 40 years of basic virology research preceding it.

"You keep trying to seduce and invite the reader," she says. "Any writer is an entertainer. How are you going to get people to read it?"

But being an entertainer in such a complex field is a difficult task, "an ongoing battle with scientists" who always assume the worst--that an ignorant reporter will get a detail wrong and destroy the story. Angier says scientists' mistrust of writers is unwarranted. "By and large, I find my colleagues to be incredibly well-trained and sophisticated about science," she says.

From the scientist's point of view, being a popularizer of science trying to "get the word out" can be frustrating, both because it takes away from valuable time at the bench or at the field station, or because writing for "the public" can incur the scorn of peers who claim a "sell-out."

But some world-class scientists can overcome this cyncical view, and take the time to infuse a love of science into the non-scientist. Baird Professor of Science E. O. Wilson, who has written a number of bestselling books on biology, most recently The Diversity of Life (1992), says his secret involves two methods of presentation.

First, he says, "take it from the top down." Ask the big, interesting questions first. For instance, "Where did life come from?" or "What is the significance of sexual reproduction?"

"I work through those [questions] first, then down through levels of explanation--anatomical, physiological, and genetic, and sometimes even molecular," says the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.

This method helps students to see the meaning of the technical skills they need to master, Wilson says, in contrast to the effect of books that reduce their readers' motivation to learn by presenting them with lists of dry facts.