What's next? Once we felt we had passed the Plain Language baton from FDA Headquarters to the Centers as far as regulations, guidances, and information for the public was concerned, we decided to take on a new challenge - scientists. Think about some of the science articles you may have read over the years - or some of the journals you might have thumbed thru. For those of you who are not experts in a particular scientific discipline, how many of these articles looked intriguing enough to read? Probably not a lot. We know that scientists want to be respected by their peers and that is most often their target audience. In fact, I heard that a scientist once bragged, "There's not more than a dozen people in the world who can understand this article I just had published." …and he was proud of this!

But we believe scientists, especially those funded by the government, have an obligation to broaden their audience and -- at a minimum - be sure that scientists in other disciplines, and policymakers who control their funding, understand the work being done.

We have begun to work with scientists and science writers internally and externally. We began by encouraging better science posters, rather than science articles.

Judging of poster - criteria for a winner

First and foremost, a good poster must be clear, concise, important, relevant, and eye-catching