While I was on vacation, science journalist Chris Mooney and social scientist Matthew Nisbet came out with a short commentary in Science. Their thesis was that scientists should pay attention to how they frame their public communication, so as to most effectively reach their target audience.
To me this is obvious to the point of banality. Nonetheless, it sparked a enormous blog storm. Nisbet rounds most of the reactions up here. The paper got lots of support, but also lots of the predictable harumphing from scientists who insist that framing amounts to spin and theater -- which is, of course, beneath them. Sigh.
On the basic issue, I don't have much to add beyond what I wrote here. But in the spirit of offering something semi-original to the debate, let me toss out the following notion:
Everybody involved vastly overstates the importance of getting more scientific information into the heads of the public.
Consider climate change. What does a concerned citizen need to know about "the science of climate change"? I'd say:
- The atmosphere is warming rapidly, which will produce overwhelmingly negative consequences within the century: drought, flood, disease, sea-level rise, etc.
- Warming is driven by accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
- We increase atmospheric GHG levels when we a) burn fossil fuels, and b) destroy carbon sinks.
- A certain amount of warming over the next century is already locked in; we can prevent the worst of what's beyond that.
That's pretty rudimentary. You don't need to be a scientist to explain it or to understand it. You don't need to know anything about forcings, or aerosols, or Milankovitch cycles, or urban heat island effects, or any of the rest of it.
There's nothing wrong with learning about that stuff, just as there's nothing wrong with learning more about marine biology, or astrophysics, or any other area of science. Intellectual curiosity is an admirable thing. But no further scientific knowledge about the physics of climate change is necessary to act effectively as an engaged citizen. (If anything, knowledge about the range and efficacy of policy responses is much more important -- and that's an area where the public is, if anything, more ignorant.)
The entire debate over the Mooney/Nisbet article seems premised on figuring out the best way to cajole the public to learn more science. But the public doesn't necessarily need more science, and the level of scientific information it does need can be explained by any educated layman. So whatever role scientists play in the public sphere, it is not as expert science educators.
I realize that's somewhat counter-intuitive. If scientists don't enter the public sphere to educate the public about science, what good are they? Why shouldn't they just stay in the lab and write peer-reviewed papers?
The answer is simple, and sociological: our culture imbues scientists with an enormous amount of authority. They are our modern day priests and shamans. They are viewed (justifiably, I think) as emissaries of a discipline that has unique insight on Truth.
The question for scientists in the public sphere is: to what end do they want to use that authority? This is getting long, so I'll end there. More in a later post.
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Comments
View as Flat
Sam Wells Posted 8:59 am
12 Apr 2007
Good call
As a geographer, one of those "soft sciences," I spend about half my time explaining complex science to policy managers and the public. The engineers and academic scientists talk a different lingo which does not translate well. That doesn't lessen the need for more scientists, but it does mean we need more translators, too.
For example, scientists and engineers like to use technical writing, which usually means it is incomprehensible and shot full of acronyms. One document I read repeatedly mentioned the "POS," which any redneck knows means "piece of sh*t."
Interestingly enough, the EPA has tried to implement clear, plain English into their rulemaking and briefings, using section headers such as "What does that mean to me?" This is applied science, which is not so concerned with communicating only with their academic peers. Pure science, they still write like heck. Honest, most would fail a standard writing class - and please don't ask them to speak in public, as most simply can't.
I'm waiting for a scientific article that says FUBAR can replace the nuclear reactor!
sammie
Onward through the fog
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step back Posted 6:09 pm
12 Apr 2007
Framing is Boxed-In Thinking
As long as a majority of scientists believe (with great faith and religiousity) that they get a free "pass" on having to learn about things outside of their area of unique specialization (i.e., chemistry, physics, computer science) they will continue to be the same ostrich heads as the uneducated sheeple they make fun of.
Mother Nature does not divide herself into specialities.
Therfore it is incumbent upon every scientist to learn how the human brain works. What makes the everyday person tick? What moves the mob? What goes on in their heads? How do you communicate effectively with them, even if it is to shift their paradigm by a paltry millimeter per year?
Scientists need to become acutely aware of how the Madison Avenue tricksters and the K Street lobbyists lobb their mixed messages into the hearts and minds of the people. Until scientists do, they will continue to be the loser nerds who hang onto the wrong end of the schoolyard debate rope and who fall every time the masters of bullyhood let go.
The joke is on us folks. And it's Mother Nature who is getting the last laugh. Right. We're all smart because each of us is a "specialist", because each of us is a hairless ape with a PhD in "science". When do we wake up and see the zoo bars? We're all in the same cage together. We all have emotion-driven primate parts. It's who we are. It's who "they" are.
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sensato Posted 8:09 pm
12 Apr 2007
Framing
Your four "need to know" points would be sufficient if deniers in public policy forums didn't resort to scientific esoterica in their arguments. Unless counter-arguments are made at the same level, by those with adequate scientific knowledge and expressive skills, general readers are left with the impression of validity of those esoteric arguments.
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mihan Posted 11:46 pm
12 Apr 2007
Jargon, acronyms
While non-scientists like to think that their scholarly work is written in "English" while scientists write in some strange language, that's not really true. I can pick up a scholarly piece in English or Geography or History and understand what each individual word means but have no idea what the person is saying. Even when that person is trying to write for a general audience, it doesn't necessarily work (ahem, Mike Davis).
If it takes years of graduate school to be able to write the stuff you're writing, it means that people who haven't had that education won't understand it. When scientists do write for a general audience, it is often very successful.
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Mmimika Posted 12:56 am
13 Apr 2007
hmmm...
What was that scene in Cat's Cradle?
Secretary: "I take dictation from Dr. Horvath and it's just like a foreign language. I don't think I'd understand it--even if I was to go to college."
Scientist: "If there's something you don't understand, ask Dr. Horvath to explain it. He's very good at explaining. Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan."
Secretary: ``Then I'm dumber than an eight-year old. I don't even know what a charlatan is!''
In a way, this is a debate between democracy and republicanism.
But given that we have a representative democracy, and thats not likely to change, then I say that what we've been seeing for the past few years is a failure on the part of politicians, and possibly - the American educational system overall, not of scientists.
I think that scientists have a special responsibility as citizens to voice their opinions in policy matters to elected representatives. I think every computer scientist in Alaska should have been on the phone to their Senator the day after he attempted to explain net neutrality by announcing that "the internet is a series of tubes."
But I think that its the politicians who then have the responsibility to translate the esoterica into policy and then present it to the public. They've just been doing a really bad job lately. Its kind of sad.
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Sam Wells Posted 1:32 am
13 Apr 2007
Great Thread
I don't like to group scientists and non-scientists into a dichotomy at all, since that would an egregious error, but I think we're getting somewhere.
Let us consider the IPCC conclusion thich can be roughly stated as "at a 95% confidence level, it is likely that man-made gases have impacted the global climate."
At a very fundamental level, this can be misinterpreted by laymen as meaning that the scientists are correct 95% of the time in any given place or time. Then all the opposition has to do is say "hey look, it's getting colder at the South Pole!"
So the explainer attempts to explain that statistically this means that their claim was valid in terms that there is no non-random or systemic invalidation of their hypothesis. The level of uncertainty can be quite high, as much as plus or minus 20 percent. People shake their heads in disbelief. "I thought you said 95%."
It's that bad, folks.
smammie
Onward through the fog
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Mmimika Posted 2:41 am
13 Apr 2007
Sam...
It's that bad, folks.
You mean the explainers are that bad, for using phrases like 'systemic invalidation'?
Or do you mean that our democracy is that bad, because of the vast number of laymen out there that don't understand confidence intervals?
I'm confused...
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Sam Wells Posted 3:15 am
13 Apr 2007
Lighten Up
Lighten up, it's Friday and your rather forced confusion, bringing in "democracy" to a debate that never was or should have been included, is not very helpful.
Onward through the fog
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gmunger Posted 5:03 am
13 Apr 2007
You mean, for a Friday the 13th?
Seemed like a reasonable question to me, regardless of the day of the week. No need to be snippy.
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Sam Wells Posted 6:35 am
13 Apr 2007
I guess the explainers ...
Sorry to be cranky, I suppose that it is the media that "explains" the science to the public is not doing such a hot job because they don't include a frank and honest discussion of the uncertainties.
If I can say something positive, Grist is really good at explaining things, much better than the national media outlets. Kudos to Grist and you all, and thanks for letting me speak.
Let me give an example. We have a pretty good idea there could be a sea level rise because of melting ice, due to Global Warming. As mentioned by IPCC this rate of sea level rise was uncertain, depending on things that could not be modeled such as Arctic sea ice.
So along comes this professor-cum-consultant with a Geographic Information System that shows our area of Texas ... well underwater, of course. So I asked the question about the scenario he was modeling, like rate for subsidence, sea level rise, tide trends, and storm surge. His response was basically "I modeled an 8-foot rise over datum and I don't care why."
Umm, OK. So there were no impacts from rivers, channels, irrigation districts, large bodies of water, or nothing. Just 8-foot over existing datum. And you know, in spite of my penetrating questions, he scared to poop out of all the locals, who went back to their offices to see if they could hire the poor scientist. Sorry if I felt betrayed. /sammie
Onward through the fog
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Mmimika Posted 7:05 am
13 Apr 2007
oh jeez,
it is Friday the 13th. Scary.
Thats a bummer Sam, theres nothing worse than feeling like your contributions are being valued on something other than merit.
Re: the democracy thing, I'm in the social sciences so this discussion has 'political science' written all over it. I don't especially mind grumpy though, I'm scrappy.
As for the topic at hand: I think the probability and stats underlying hypothesis testing and all that are actually very difficult to explain, because they are completely abstract.
Probably the best that I've heard is that Rumsfeld quote... "theres the things we know, the things we know we don't know, and the things we don't know we don't know." And he got hammered for speaking jibberish.
But I suppose we'll figure it out someday. Have a good weekend,
- Mmi
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