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How To Communicate Science to a Polarized US Audience
Prescott writes "Given the divisions in the US around subjects like evolution and climate change, scientists face challenges in how to communicate good science to a polarized US public. Speakers at the recent AAAS meeting talked about how scientific information is delivered to and understood by a public that interprets it via personal beliefs, religious and otherwise. 'The talks were organized by Matthew Nisbet, a professor of communications who is a proponent of the framing of science, in which communications techniques borrowed from the political realm are applied to promote scientific understanding. As such, a number of speakers advocated specific frames for publicly controversial scientific issues. Unfortunately, the use of those frames appears likely to generate controversy within the scientific community, and several speakers noted that science faces challenges that go well beyond communicating knowledge to the public. There were some hints of a way forward that might work for both the scientific community and the public, but the challenges appear significant.'"
Science needs to talk about science and not political agendas.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Use small words.
If we could have more realistic science fiction television and films (what happened to that planned movie of KSR's Red Mars ), then people might learn science principles through osmosis. Too bad now it's all sounds in space and warp speeds. People get a large part of their exposure to science the future of technology through what is essentially fantasy.
When communicating with a highly polarized audience, I harken back to my days studying freshman chemistry and the old saying that "like dissolves like".
Therefore, communicating with a highly polar audience requires a highly polar solvent. I find that ethanol works wonders in that regard.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Why would it be in the interest of science to point out possible conflicts with non-scientific views? As far as I can tell, this would only benefit the religious as a marker for what they don't have to believe in or allow taught.
Turn it around the other way -- would the religious people allow a marker to be put on all their religious texts where it potentially disagreed with science? No?
Regards,
--
*Art
When discussing evolution, natural selection, abiogenesis, cosmology, climatology etc. just don't be jerks. Speak with a level head and a personable tone. Speak to what you can prove scientifcally, and don't make things personal by introducing subjectivity. Keep in mind who you are speaking to.
Also, avoid divisive figures. It's possible to talk about climatology without bringing up Al Gore, in fact we'd all probably be a little better off if we didn't. No disrespect to the man's scientific endeavors, but it's probably best to leave Richard Dawkins out of your discourse as well. Figures like Dawkins and Gore only add political, religious, and whatever other fires to already testy subjects. You have to stress the point that science isn't based on emotion and feeling. In short, keep it academic and logical. Don't use ad hominems or appeals to emotion.
I got a catholic block.
scientists face challenges in how to communicate good science to a polarized US public.
I consider this a non-issue. How do you explain science that may conflict with personal beliefs? "Welcome to wrongville, population: You. I'll give you a free bus ticket out, but if you don't want to ride, please feel free to go to the edge of a cliff and disbelieve in gravity".
Less irreverently... You can't argue facts with people who base their stance on dogma. They have no factual basis to disprove, and no matter how convincing or simple your argument, they can always respond "god did it".
You would think that after our history teaches about what most American's relatives did in Europe that we would have learned the same lessons that EU did; Namely separate religion from science. It is one thing to be fighting over GW (with all the fud put out by oil companies, etc, it is no wonder that Americans and others have issues understanding the situation), but the idea that Americans believe in ID is downright scary. There are ppl that actually believe that the earth is less than 5000 YO. Hell, I had a lengthy discussions with one of my ADULT students in 99, and he was telling me that Carbon dating does not work. They tested it on a knife blade. When I pointed out that one of the fundamentals requirements of this, is that it had been living material, he said that Dobson said that it was not a requirement of the test (I was teaching at HP in C. Springs; this man belonged to FOTF group). The test was worthless and yet, this guy (and almost certainly others) were SOLD on it. Roughly, it is coming down to ppl like FOTF, Moral Majority types bending intelligent ppls minds. It is religious groups that are killing America. Hopefully we bounce back from it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
from the viewpoint of a UK reader, the best way to promote science in the US seems to be to pass it off as a wonderful invention of God.
/. will be as sympathetic an audience as I can find.
I mean come on, intelligent design? evolution as a theory? velociraptors and children playing happily together? That sort of muddy clouded rubbish is surely out of date in todays world. Except in the US.
Mod me to hell and back for all I care - thats what I think. Okay, my views may not be representative of society as a whole - but possibly
The mere fact that you can pack a room, for seven speakers on "Communicating Science in a Religious America." tell me that there is something wrong. These idiots want to have their cake and eat it - on one hand they want to rubbish scientific thinking and deny evolution on the other they want bluray discs, microwaves and nuclear tipped bombs. Get real.
From my viewpoint all religious fundamentalists are just as dangerous as each other - no matter what they preach, what religion they follow, what they wear or what country they come from. Sometimes the danger is more subtle then other times. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.
I'll exit my soapbox quietly and get my coat then.
Make it about the science only. Tell what you know and how you know it. Tell what makes you think that it is the way you think it is.
I think the real problem with, for example, talking about Global Climate Change, is that people don't discuss it as a scientific issue, but as a moral or political idea. If you're going to discuss science, discuss the science only, and then make sure everyone knows when you change the subject to politics or religion.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I hope the summary is wrong, cause it makes this guy sounds like an idiot. Communications techniques borrowed from the political realm will not help to promote scientific understanding, because those techniques were not designed to promote understanding.
Politicians don't want you to understand them. They want you to feel like they understand you. They want you to feel protected by them, or to feel afraid of the other guy. The last thing any politician wants is to promote understanding.
The feelings politicians target with their communications techniques have no place in science. If you feel the Earth is 6000 years old, science isn't going to try to make you feel understood, because science doesn't understand your feelings. If the science says our climate is warming, it doesn't matter if you're happy all those wacky liberals in California are facing 100 years of drought. Science doesn't care.
it's not like we're moving into an era dominated by superstition
What's it like in your world? And can you beam me up? Cause down here on Earth, we're not moving into an era dominated by superstition; we're already there.
Many viewpoints that are portrayed as anti-science are nothing of the sort.
Many people, for example, accept global warming while at the same time relying on economic estimates that say guarding against global warming would be more expensive than dealing with it. For rejecting a "Manhattan Project" sized government response they are dubbed "anti-science" even though they accept the science.
Likewise, people that are opposed to stem-cell research on ethical grounds are called "anti-science". These people, again, do not doubt that the science they oppose is sound. They have moral objections that should be easier to understand than the science, but evidently aren't.
This quote, about how science is actually done, is one I put on my quotable quotes page. It's worth reminding people that the "eureak" model of science is a little bit simplistic.
"The work of real science is hard and often for long intervals frustrating...
"Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost always wrong. Most flashes of insight lead nowhere; statistically, they have a half-life of hours or maybe days. Most experiments to follow up the surviving insights are tedious and consume large amounts of time, only to yield negative or (worse!) ambiguous results.""
-Edward O. Wilson
"Scientists, Scholars, Knaves, and Fools," in American Scientist 86 (1998)
But, as has been pointed out by Michael White, journalism is more about a "good story" than about accuracy about how science is done.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I don't think that the whole evolution versus creationism business is as big a deal as you think. It's more a result of a minority of vocal activists attempting to hijack the system to fit their agenda. It gets a lot of media play because they make a lot of noise, but it's hardly a widespread attack on America's school systems.
Besides, the system does tend to be self correcting - a little bit of embarrassment goes a long way.
They bring their political worldviews and bias to the research and interpretations just like the rest of us bring to our work. Science acknowledges this inherent bias with techniques like double blinding and control groups that seek to remove these biases.
Scientific consensus has a history of being wrong on many fronts at any given time. Given time, the scientific method gets it right, because it is constantly changing to fit new observations. But at times, people have had everything from bleedings to thyroid irradiation, to hysterectomies based on scientific consensus that is later proven incorrect.
The hot-button issues are hot buttons for a reason. I am an atheist and agree with Dawkins on the blind watchmakers and other facts of evolution point away from an intelligent creator, but I no longer believe science will ever prove atheists are correct. I now understand that spirituality is a response to a nihilistic, pointless existence. Some people will always fill that void with some form of religion no matter how much science may prove that point.
And the global warming crowd seems way too tied up in non-scientific anti-capitalism and irrational hydrocarbon and nuclear hatred. And too many of the supposed outcomes are projected towards total Armageddon and wrapped in Malthusian hysteria, and just reeks of religion.
Perhaps scientists need to spend more time looking in the mirror, and less time figuring out how to talk down to the proles.
The role of religious fundamentalism in the US is exaggerated by the media, and the presence of an evil crackpot in the White House doesn't help.
The main reason science doesn't get taught effectively in the US is plain old laziness, apathy, and stupidity.
If the same proportion of secular parents gave a shit about their child's education as the proportion of religious nuts homeschooling their kids about how their grampa warn't no monkey this problem would largely be solved.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
How to communicate science to a national audience
1. Show the evidence.
. . . That's pretty much it.
How NOT to commmunicate science to a national audience
1. Tell the theory.
2. If people think "theory" = "guess", call them stupid.
3. Force children to learn that their parents' beliefs are wrong.
(The last step is essential if your goal is to NOT communicate science.)
Many pundits made fun of his presentations but they worked because he didn't insult the audience.
I look at this issue this way.
1. Many of the people don't care, don't even try to inform them.
2. Don't insult the rest by assuming anything
3. Don't come at it from the angle that religious beliefs cloud their judgment, the approach I have seen from some anti-religious showed more ignorance than die-hard believers
The real questions, how to present this in school in an environment hostile to achievement? I think religions are the least of our problems with upcoming generations. The real problem is this idea that we cannot acknowledge the fact that some kids are genuinely better than others. Worse is getting past the idea that hard work really does pay off. I can't tell you how many kids won't put the effort forward because they are told it doesn't matter. Hell a school system which does not celebrate hard work is not going to do squat with science.
You were right in a way, keep the politicians away from science and the schools and the problem might solve itself. Politicians do as much if not more damage to the acceptance science than religious zealots... While one may not want it the other burdens it with too many requirements to overcome
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
-- Robert Heinlein
Have gnu, will travel.
My point is that science cannot be "communicated", it has to be taught. You cannot "communicate" the theory of evolution and expect people to believe in it. We are talking about studying the matter for a year just to scratch the surface. It gets worse. Some things are just unbelievable, regardless of how many times you studied them and seen them work: even relatively old ideas like the nature of light and the Euler's formula.
Your, or anyone else's uneducated belief in evolution because of the scientific consensus or whatever, without a proper understanding of the science behind it, is clearly just what the enlightened crowd calls "faith", and IMO just as good (or bad, depending on how you look at it).
"I for one am very impressed at how many scientific "facts" get shot down by new evidence every week, at least in the area of cosmology(is cosmology the right term?)."
Name some AC. I realize I'm responding to an AC, who is most likely AC because they believe in fairy tales but don't want to admit it so you post AC with an observation of how many "facts" get shot down every week.
So now that we all know what the real deal is, name some of those "facts" AC. You talk about the importance of discerning between facts and theories, but I bet most of those "facts" you think were "facts" were never presented to you as anything other than theories, ESPECIALLY if they're regarding "cosmology".
Are you sure you're not intentionally confusing them in a weak attempt to make scientists, and science in general, appear wishy washy and willing to jump to conclusions?
You can't take the sky from me...
If slashdot is any indication of the communication skills and social expectations of scientists then I think the scientists might be the ones that need to develop an understanding -- of people. People are not always logical. Even technical people are influenced by emotion. I offer as evidence OS preference flame wars -- if we were purely logical we would just share FACTS regarding each OS and not get into flame wars (but it's just the OTHER people being illogical, right?).
In the context of this article, what is the goal of communication? It it just to convey information or to convince people or to persuade them to take some action? Whatever the goal is you need to realize that some people won't listen/agree/act and that doesn't necessarily make them idiots. Try to see if from their point of view: you hear some guy claiming to be very qualified saying something you don't quite understand that possibly conflicts with your world view. What are you going to do? Get your own Ph.D. and do your own research so you can see if the guy really knows what he's talking about? No, you've got your own life to live so you've just got to decide at the time -- Is this something I need to care about? Is this guy really qualified? Is he biased AGAINST what I believe in a way that would influence his interpretation of the facts? Is he being paid to say this? I'm sure most of you ask yourself these questions when you hear about research "proving" something you don't agree with (or "disproving" something you did agree with).
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
The beating that NSF, NIST, and DOE Office of Science took in the FY08 budget should be evidence enough that we need to make a better case about the value of science. Despite the rhetoric and the America COMPETES act, science is not a budget priority. Washington listens to voters, and if the voters seem indifferent to science funding then congress is indifferent to science funding.
WTF? 90% of us are just fine. It's the 10% of idiots on either side of any issue who won't STFU that are "polarized."
What?
Let's not paint every American with the same brush - there's a hell of a lot of us whom are appalled at the state of things here...
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
They need to feel embraced by Nature and Nature's God. Randomness and chaos scares them.
We should point out that each and every random mutation obeys the Laws of Chemistry and the Laws of Physics and the Laws of Mathematics as far as we know.
That mutations happen in accordance with Natural Laws.
Are the Laws of Chemistry random? No, they derive from the Laws of Physics. Are the Laws of Physics random? We do not know, many physicists say they seem "dialed in," so this question is still in the province of metaphysics, and far removed from questions regarding biological evolution. This should be taught in a way that does not smell of a passed buck; students should be encouraged to explore these questions with faculty whose subjects are closer to physics and philosophy.
From mathematics, biology teachers should teach a proper understanding of the word "random." That random processes can at least be modeled with mathematics, and math is all about Laws and Proofs and other certainties which should appeal to the Lawful Good Authoritarian mindset. Get out the 2d6 and show how 7 is the peak of their Gaussian distribution! That "random" is not scary at all and obeys Mathematical Laws.
As an aside, usually the Republicans promote freer markets. If you can understand Adam Smith, you can understand biological evolution! Crappy companies go out of business, crappy species go extinct. Public tastes are often inexplicable and at least as random as any mutation (the solution space is larger, as a base pair can mutate to only one of three other pairs). Many ideas of trade and evolution are quite parallel, even running on the same conceptual engine, selfishness.
The selfishness of genes leads directly to Cain's Question and answers in the affirmative: from the gene's viewpoint we are certainly our brother's keeper.
Stipulating some game theoretic insights, many other Moral Laws can be derived - the Prisoner's Dilemma brings forth some reasons for cooperation.
And always, when a student's question is really beyond what the teacher and even science knows, the answer should be "I don't know" or "we don't know." Honesty and no buck passing! They may need a knowledge gap to house their God, and a militantly agnostic attitude should be taken by teachers when the students ask Those Big Questions. Did God "dial in" the physical constants? We do not know we are literally agnostic.
I wonder if there really is a drive against science in the United States or if it's just sensationalism on the part of the media. I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't believe in evolution, the fact that the Earth is billions of years old and that the earth orbits the sun and that neither are at the center of the universe. And they would think it's preposterous to think otherwise. And the beliefs same regardless of whether or not they're religious.
Perhaps I live in the wrong part of the country, but I still think there's a bit of sensationalism going on here. I've found people to be informed, to varying degrees of course, thanks to television and especially the internet. A quick search of the internet can uncover quite a bit of information, and disinformation as well, I'll admit.
What I've found interesting while living in Asia is how much more pervasive spirituality and religion is there. It's embedded in the culture. Astrology there is more complex and taken more seriously there. You can buy books on how to use spiritual guides to help win the lottery. They still believe in things like phrenology. I can't count the times I've heard people say that a taller forehead means you're more intelligent. In China a school recently stated that kids with flatter heads were more apt to do poorly in school. Pretty much any part of someone's body can supposedly signify something.
No one really seems to question it. They just see it as another way to view the world I guess. And these notions are prevalent everywhere in east Asia, even in Japan. I'm not passing judgment one way or another, but pointing out that this certainly isn't unique to the United States.
Although I admit recent efforts to force creationism into the science class is concerning, to say the least. And while I think something needs to be done to stop that sort of nonsense I don't think it's a major problem yet. I'm more concerned about influences from popular culture. Look at all the attention given to garbage like American Idol. I'm more concerned about celebrities and athletes get all the attention but we barely hear anything about science and technology. We don't hear anything in the popular media about all the scientific progress being made and the valuable role scientists play in our society.
There really is only one big thing lacking in the way science is communicated, honesty. How many 'science' articles have you read in mainstream media lately that actually presented the true scientific study, rather than extrapolation or analysis? Even here on Slashdot, a presumably more science savy site, the summary and headlines read like the recent 'room temperature superconductor' article. The actual science hadn't discovered anything of the sort, a better summary would've been another step closer to room temperature, but still a long ways to go.
Even laymen aren't as stupid as many in the science crowd might believe. After being told that fusion power, flying cars and fabulous discovery X are just 10 years away for multiple decades, some cynicism sets in. If articles could just present the honest progress and verified science that really has been done, everyone would be the better for it. People shouldn't be expected to have to go in and read the scientific journal for every new science article they read just understand what really has and has not been discovered.
Well, I've done some inspired coding with Bombay Sapphire. Tanqueray, not so much, and the ol' Knotty Head will have you debugging for a week after.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
What I'm getting at is that you can't communicate to some people, regardless of how good your data is, your evidence, or your argument.
That is not strictly true. You can't communicate with argument, true, but you can always communicate. When you meet a real hard case, then perhaps you can flatly say "Oh yeah." and smile mysteriously.
If a person flat out refuses to hear counter to their belief because of "faith", there is nothing you can do. Faith is, after all, accepting something as fact which observation and evidence prove to be false.
I know this is a common idea of faith. I can't disagree because language has a democratic quality to it. Nonetheless, I believe that the root of faith is about being strictly true to your own experience of things at a deep level. Since their is a painful quality to expressing arrogant behaviour, if one is strictly true to their experience, one will let go of arrogance of all kinds. That pretty much negates beliefs of all kinds, since it's impossible to "know" something. One can only have ideas about things.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
In keeping with the political notion, I think the biggest problem is that, like everything else in the US, there is no middle ground. We drive people to make uneducated choices simply so they can buy the t-shirt and blindly root for their 'team'.
We are constantly told that if we're not in favor of fighting overseas, then we're in favor of terrorism. If we believe in a god of some sort, then we have to be anti-science. That if we're not 'for the children' then we're automatically against them.
And how much have we actually proven, versus simply not being able to disprove? Does my belief that the theory of evolution is probably correct somehow prohibit me from seeking a spiritual understanding of the world around me?
One of the wondrous aspects of the human mind is the ability to operate equally well in the realm of concrete truths (fire is hot) and the the realm of imagination or unprovable concepts (is fire hot and why? What if it weren't?). And yet, we do all that we can to divorce ourselves from this in favor of being either-or.
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The scientific belief is that the universe is ordered according to principles and that those principles are knowable. Science tells us both how things work, and why we know. Science also has a lot to say about why things are the way they are.
For example:
We might be able to say why air has weight - but not at the ultimate level. Weight is associated with mass and gravity. The elementary particles of air have mass. Since the air particles are in a gravity field, they have "weight". But our "why" reasoning breaks down at fundamental levels, such as why things have mass altogether. At this point, we point to intrinsic properties, and how it is that we know them.
So science does goes a great distance with the "why". Ultimately this is the exploration of the natural world that kicks off when a child first starts to ask the question.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"If a person walks on water, they'll sink."
Really? Up in Canada we regularly walk on water, although usually only from November to March. Now if you remember Christ was around 2,000 years ago before all this global warming....
On a more serious note though it illustrates the point that, looked at in a different context, things are not always as impossible as they may at first seem.
Yes, writing can be overdone. Some writers overuse 25-cent words. But a larger part of the problem is that we demand that every idea be simplified to where anyone with a fifth-grade education can understand it in 20 seconds or less. Another problem is the willful arrogance of the ignorant. I know people who KNOW that they are ignorant about, say, evolution, yet they don't feel that this self-admitted ignorance lessens the value or insight of their own opinion. I'm not saying that they have failed to gain expertise--I'm saying that they can't even explain the basic tenets of evolutionary theory. They just don't care about what it IS, because they already know that it's wrong.
There is a bit more involved here than a scientists talking down to the rubes.