When called upon to share our scientific results with the world, scientists are faced with a challenge: we must select appropriate representations to express our results clearly and unambiguously. At one extreme, a primary researcher must make many decisions when creating a technical report: Will a line graph work better than a bar graph, pie chart, or table of numbers? Is color needed to distinguish different features? At the opposite extreme, scientific illustrators are often called upon to assemble a speculative picture that integrates what is known within the context of what is not. As you might imagine, this process involves considerable artistic license—the distortion of fact in service of a purpose—and the amount of license considered acceptable depends highly on both the subject and the audience.
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