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Do Scientists Understand the Public?
Mab_Mass writes "The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has an interesting article on the relationship between scientists and the public. [Here's the paper itself, as a PDF.] Rather than point the finger at an 'ignorant' public, this article chastises the scientists for a poor understanding of how to communicate with non-technical people. With a look at the issues of climate change, nuclear waste disposal, genetics, and the future of the Internet, the article provides examples of how the experts in these fields are failing to present their message in a way that encourages public discussion and support."
to find out if its true.
Scientists are well aware that the U.S.A public
knows that humans cohabited Earth with dinosaurs.
I rest my case, your honor, against the stupid U.S.A
public.
Yours In Chelnyabinsk,
Kilgore Trout.
That would not end well for the scientists.... Their brains would explode from having to dumb everything down for "public consumption."
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While it would certainly be nice if scientists, as a class, were better at public communication, I think that this consideration misses an important point:
If somebody happens to be the best available information source on a given issue, failure to communicate with them is a major failing on your part.
All men may be created equal; but only some of them are worth consulting for advice.
Seriously, it might do the general public some good to further their knowledge on these and many other topics.
The Media already has a monopoly on informing the public, scientific discoveries included.
Scientists strive to be factual and complete. Media strives to be sensational and give people what they expect, or want, to hear.
Some of the most exciting discoveries are those that indicate existing beliefs are incorrect. That doesn't jive with...well, you can see where I'm going with this: insert faith here.
People with technical or scientific training are always told they have to learn how to communicate with people without that training. This is bullshit.
How about the mouth-breathers actually use the muscle between their ears during high school math and science classes so that they are better equiped to understand what scientists are trying to tell them later in life? Truly, you do not need to be a scientist to understand articles written for general consumption. A basic understanding of high school science (biology, physics, chemistry) and math (algebra and statistics) will get you there. While we are at it, I distinctly recall the steps of the scientific method explained in detail (several times in middle and high school), as were the definitions of "theory", "law", and "hypothesis". Jesus Christ people, use your brains.
Does the public understand science? That doesn't take a scientist to answer.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
the experts in these fields are failing to present their message in a way that encourages public discussion and support
Isn't that what Slashdot is for?
Scientists understand the public, although they don't always do as much as they could with communication....too bad so many people (even if they are just vocal minorities) think that the scientists are in a big ol' conspiracy to be evil or something, and therefore knowledge and expertise are seen as negatives, and not to be trusted.
and what's with this metric system. Why can't scientists use standard measurements like football fields, ping-pong balls, "around the Earth," and "to the moon and back," like our brilliant news media?
Many scientists need to realize that their goals, ideals, and ethical standards may not be universal.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Cue the standard slashdot response of, "If they're too fucking stupid to understand it, that's not my problem," in 3... 2... 1...
Proposal for a New Form of Government
After watching a disaster after a disaster that is taking place in this human world for the past three decades, I decided that it is time to put forward a proposal for a new form of government that may help to reduce the number of politically caused problems for nations.
Disclaimer: I am not political scientist, the following is an idea not a full recipe.
The entire framework will be based upon 2 seemingly simple laws, here they are:
1. Government must not attempt to control economic outcomes.
2. Government must construct laws only based on scientific evidence.
The first principle is important so that the new form of government would not find itself corrupted by the financial interests.
The second principle is important to attempt and avoid meaningless policies that are created for any wrong reasons, be it political expedience, some fight over power, attempt at imposing any sort of personal moral ideas upon the population, etc.
--
This is relevant to the article, for the general public to accept science, science must be closer to home, if policies are based upon science then general acceptance of science would be increased (just like the status quo of the current political system is basically accepted.)
Without a change in politics there would be no resolve to the problem raised in TFA.
You can't handle the truth.
If science journalism is no good, then we will have trouble communicating with the public.it's a pity that many major publications have fired their dedicated science journalists.
They understand that they're generally chuckle-fucks who couldn't follow a logical train of thought to save their lives.
If the public can't understand then we should point the finger to our schooling system and revisit our educational priorities and engagements.
Seriously, if one can't understand the gist of a scientific dilemma or endeavor, then that person will tend to err against said issue. This is plenty evident in the US with global warming for example. Ask yourself why the public tends to side against GW? They can't comprehend the facts and evidence provided to them so they throw it out the window. A problem that has plagued humanity for like ever, the fear of the unknown and incomprehensible.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
... was an entire book about this topic. It suggested that science education should also include subjects on communication.
Maybe, maybe not.
Personally I'd rather see scientists do science and instead have other people who understand the topics well enough to communicate them. Perhaps we could call these people "science journalists," and they could work for media outlets who understand that the value of the work they do.
I became good at math and physics because I was bad with people.
If we understood people, we wouldn't have become scientists.
Ob. xkcd : http://xkcd.com/55/
Best way is probably to get a politician or diplomat to mediate and translate. Scientists don't like to lie or avoid topics or spin shortcomings; all things that are necessary to control the course of public discourse, which can easily be led astray. The public wants a clear, definitive message from a leader-type. The job of scientists and engineers is to make sure all of the little details and minor considerations are in line and questioned.
People would be much more interested in science if science had marketing degrees.
Science just isn't interesting enough to most people, so most people are utterly clueless about it. I mean, who cares how microwave ovens work as long as they cook your food and do a decent job at doing it? Most people do not need to think about science at all in their lives. The closest they come to chemical reactions is knowing not to mix bleach with ammonia and that baking a cake is a one way process.
Just like math. How many people need to use functions above add/subtract/multiply/divide in their daily lives? I've never once had to use anything but those unless it was school related. Actually I take that back, when I was a teenager I remember showing some people the magic of sin/tan/cos when my dad took me to his construction job once. They were awestruck that they didn't have to look in a big manual for a list of values and could just keep a calculator with them.
To be honest, I'm glad it's that way. Could you imagine having to work complex equations to do something in everyday life? It would be exhausting, even if it weren't calculus.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
It's not really that simple. They construct models of the public, which can be disproven by counter-example, but never proven.
This approach is being questioned, however, as the scientific community is growing increasingly discontent with not getting laid.
Some scientists are great at communicating with intelligent interested people.
Some scientists are great at communicating with intelligent people.
Some scientists are great at communicating with simpletons.
Who do you want? Richard Feynman? Ira Flato? Sanjay Gupta? Xeni Jardin? Who you want depends on what you want.
At the end of the day, I think most people ignore and deny even the simplest science, and they aren't interested in listening or thinking, so it doesn't matter how good your are at communicating.
Science had a *huge* positive mind-share during the 20th Century, and the participants basically didn't have much problem with trickle-down to an eager public.
What has changed is that religions out of synch with reality and corporations that don't want to spend the money it takes to deal with reality have been running huge propaganda campaigns to cast doubt on many of the major findings of science, if not on the potential of science itself.
What scientists have to realize is that the nest of little chicks with hungry mouths turned up has been partly replaced with a nest of well-funded vipers.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I heard Paul Newman did some research in this area back in the 1960s.
Unless they're anthropologists, or involved in some related field, they shouldn't be concerned with the public. They should focus on their field of expertise. When they deviate from this they're out of their element, thus just another laymen.
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
That said, I'm having a hard time figuring out how one would explain Special Relativity - or, in my case, SVD-decompositions and unsupervised machine learning - to a six-year old.
Of course, that could simply mean I don't, in fact, understand either one.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics
-extremely- simplified versions of most current issues ARE available to anyone who looks for them. The public, however, doesn't look. So the problem isn't a lack of communication, but rather a lack of pandering and sensationalism.
You can only dumb shit down so far. I'm sorry, if the public doesn't have the equivalent of a high school level understanding of science than it IS their own fault. Not that of scientists. Assuming they live in a country with a public education system that supplies it. Here in the US, public education in science is shit. But it's still enough to get a basic understanding of scientific methodology and literacy. In the same way that it's someone's own damn fault if they can't do basic arithmetic after graduation.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I don't know.. let's kill some rats to find out.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
That's why there's a career called "Science Writer." That's so scientists don't have to worry about how to communicate with the public. There's someone else to do that for them.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Thank you very much. Science is hard. If you're not willing to work at it, you won't understand it. If you're not willing to work at it, you won't. That's not the scientist's fault.
That's true if you're going to study it but to read about the concepts and have an appreciation of what's being done isn't hard. I don't need to understand molecular biology to appreciate the discoveries of the human genome, for example. I think that's what the GP was referring to.
The public is scientifically illiterate. If the public had a better basic scientific understanding, then they would appreciate and would be able to follow what scientists are explaining. Many scientist write for Discover and Scientific American and do a wonderful job. I've never studied quantum mechanics, but those folks make it understandable.
I could say the exact same things about economics and our political system.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
From the article, "Republicans who are college graduates are considerably less likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than those who have received less education."
All I can say is, "Dang."
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Ah, the Chris Mooney article. Already torn apart on several science blogs.
The main point being: Chris Mooney is a science journalist. (And a weirdo xtian one sponsored by the even weirder Templeton Foundation.)
The job of a science journalist is to communicate science to the public.
If the public don't understand the science being presented to them, whose fault is it ?
The fault lies with the science journalist. Not the scientists, and to a point, not with the public (yes, some of the public are 'dumb' but there are many fields of science and no-one can be even a well read generalist in all of them).
While not very harmful, this isn't exactly new ground, with the most recent flare-up being centered on "Don't Be Such a Scientist" from last year.
And, like its predecessors, it oversimplifies things and insults most the people who deserve it least. In these sorts of articles, it's usually just The Scientists and The Public. The first are portrayed as total idiots at communication, and the other are portrayed as herd animals with no responsibility or agency. But there's something horribly important lacking from this picture of why science is occasionally poorly-understood: the large numbers of people who WANT the science to be poorly understood. It's like the authors of these articles were writing about the Vietnam war and forgot to mention the Chinese! Creationists, greenpeace, big business, the media itself, there are tons of people whose living or self-worth depends on the science sometimes being distorted or buried. If you want to improve public understanding of controversial issues, any plan of action that ignores the elephant in the room will fail, and in fact will be a sort of the very anti-science it's trying to fight.
On why she didn't want to excel too much in med school: "The straight-A students end up in research. The B and C students are the ones that work with patients."
Today, she has a very successful private medical practice.
Well, let's take a look at climate change:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8NFoaClXH0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svsSon9_zL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYvbibO-SlI
Well, no wonder why they aren't reaching people really - It's mostly bullshit science.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The article (the study, actually) doesn't go far enough. It only considers scientists not knowing how to communicate with the public as the source of conflict between science and the general public.
OK, that may be part of the problem, but a much, much bigger problem with science these days is that it is infiltrated with political and corporate agendas.
It's not just failure to communicate effectively that negatively affects the relationship between science and the general public.
Give all the scientists breast implants. The public will have no choice but to love them.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The job of science is to seek, explore, and prove truths. It's not their job to be spin-doctors and make it palatable to hicks, politicians, corporations, and Bible-thumpers.
We don't need scientists to become more PR savvy, what we need is less sensationalist journalism, less politicizing of science, and less junk science originating from entities (corporate, political, social, or religious) invested in getting certain results that are all result in a woefully misinformed public, often stirred into a frenzy, with a mixture of half-truths or outright lies.
Maybe the scientists could promote ideas better with more social skill, and maybe the public could understand the science better with more science education, but none of that matters when there's a machine in the middle drowning out the communication with it's own noise.
The public also understands that scientist will say or do anything to exploit the truth for "$$funding$$".
Got Code?
...I tend to have with Scientists relates to how I would view the difference between Scientists and Engineers:
Scientists are visionary thinkers is that tend to get too caught up with their grand sweeping ideas for changing the world which wouldn't by itself wouldn't be so bad, except that Engineers (and by Engineers I mean me ;) are usually the ones that get stuck trying to ground them in the here and now reality of the projects we're working on.
Between that difference and the fact that we Engineers also have to waste a bunch of time trying to be tactful to the Scientists by not overemphasizing the fact that we view the majority of their ideas to have way too many impracticalities associated with them to ever be effectively implemented in real life so we do find ourselves puzzled why Scientists have to go on and on about them in Thursday afternoon meetings that seem to last forever, when some of us actually have real work to do, but at least with the advent of smart phone use in meetings you can pretend you're doing something useful!
Admittedly, I should add that most Engineers that I know (including myself for that matter) tend to view tact as huge waste of time as in general...
I'm honest enough to admit I lie to myself.
What I find alarming is that tasks are becoming much more automated and the gap between technical people and common people growing. This is great for efficiency and workflow, but soon we'll end up with a population of 99.9% people who "know how to push a button" and .1% of which "know how" that "button" works.
For example, it's very easy to create a webpage: find a template, type some info into a CMS and upload a picture or two. Nevermind learning xHtml or CSS.
Have you seen the movie Idiocracy?
It's basically the same situation that arises when a developer tries to talk to the business. Many developers just don't know how to speak in plain english (or language of choice) when it comes to describing technology. As a result, developers don't seem to "get the business" and the business doesn't seem to "get technology". Enter the business analyst: the BA is the interface that has the ability to speak both technology and business.
In the case of the media, they seem to lack really gifted technologists who can also convey the *meaning* of the science without losing their audience. Let's face it: most information consumers want the basic facts as well as the bit of novel "shiny" associated with the science. Sometimes the journalist has to understand the science *and* it's place so that they can come up with the novel bits for the audience. It takes a gifted journalist to do that, and many, obviously, fall short.
Most people are horrible at communication, but I don't think that's the problem.
The problem is when those who are good at communication miscommunicate to turn people against scientists, usually for personal gain.
It's not ""because you don't understand my field of expertise, you must be an idiot."
It's "Because you reject my expertise and science in general that you must be an idiot." Which, let's face it, is pretty fair.
If *real* lawyers came on here and started laying the smack down we might think it rude. But we wouldn't reject their input.
We wouldn't say, "Go away, we don't want to believe you." "We don't trust you." Or "Go away strange law geek and stop asking me to think."
Scientists could be better at communicating but it's not better "teaching" that most adults are looking for. It's coddling.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Each group fails to understand the other at their own peril. For scientists this means they get less funding, for non-scientists this means no saving the world.
When the bar you aim at is the lowest common denominator, the idiots will just continue to lower the bar. Sometimes complex abstract ideas cannot be fully expressed in 15-second videos or clip-art crafted for the uneducated. There is no point trying to discuss calculus with a 7yo who still hasn't learned multiplication. Just like there's no point trying to discuss a global economics with a politician. All they really want to know is whether they have to beg, borrow, steal, or lie to get your money and control over a populace. Obama is a political genius because he figured out he could just get them to print money for him.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn't the first. Ben Franklin, another political genius, also figured it out. Ben, however, was also smart enough to understand the natural consequences.....
“When the people find they can vote themselves money; that will herald the end of the republic.”
The article doesn't cite any evidence that "scientist don't understand the public." It is filled with pure speculation as to what they believe scientist understand and don't understand. Since I am both a scientist and a member of the public I am certain that I almost always understand myself and therefore understand at least one member of the general public. I believe that I am not unique in that respect. Besides how can you explain things to people without using large words. Those words were created for a purpose, mainly to convey specific meanings of what scientist say. Without large words science would be meaningless.
As a card-carrying RightwingNutjob, I find anything written by Chris Mooney to be suspect to begin with. That said, I'll take a look at the paper, but with a big fat cube of NaCl sitting right next to my monitor.
How can you expect people to understand science when a good percentage still read horoscopes? Believe in creationism? Use homeopathic remedies? Is scared by chemtrails?
I think that scientists, engineers, and researchers do incredibly valuable work and should be supported within reasonable ethical boundaries. But I think it's a mistake to take the current theories of the day as "The Truth" (they're so often over turned by later research), or believe that scientists are going to be immune from the influences of emotions, personal beliefs, ambitions, and their peers.
If the sorts of issues that scientists get called upon to talk about could be explained in simple terms - one's that don't require long words, and can be completed before the interviewer interrupts again, they would be simple enough to not be issues that scientists were needed to solve.
While scientists probably don't understand the public, that lack of understanding is a failure to comprehend just how dumb the average TV gawper actually is. However, the bigger misunderstanding is between the media and the science. They presume that just because Hollywood can brush off a major scientific incident or discovery in the time it takes Bruce Willis to kill half a dozen baddies, that real-life must be the same. Further, TV is very bad at handling abstract thought. They can't visualise it (obviously) and are not willing to spend time having "talking heads" discuss it's finer points. Just because politicians can get through an interview with platitudes and sound-bites, doesn't mean that a scientist would be equally dismissive and insincere.
If you want to hold them to account for their work, you need to give them the time to make sure you understand it. That takes years, not seconds in front of a camera.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The study of social psychology is 100% about understanding why crowds/the public/etc behave the way they do. It surprises me how frequently people attempt to reinvent social psychology via hearsay, recycled folklore or off-the-cuff guessing when there is a 50 year old field of rigorous experimental science and theory devoted to all this.
What's so damn special about a scientist that they've absolved from any social interaction with the public? Are they elite minds of an ivory temple never to be questioned or expect a layman answer from? While there is no rule that states scientist should try and understand the public, there isn't a rule stating they shouldn't either. What ever happened to the concept of contributing to society through teaching those that don't know?
worth asking? every 6-10 months slashdot features a new study revealing such horrors as "average person doesnt know how many revolutions around the sun earth makes in a year" and "average person does not know if difference between color absorbency and reflection." its not like these studies come out of nowhere, its a flagrant red alert that for some reason our country has not kept pace with science.
if the only science americans are exposed to is the "what if we all left the planet tomorrow?" and "lets blow shit up" sensationalisms of a neutered scientific method then all we can assume is the next scientist to come out and publicly release findings on global warming, climate change, carbon emissions, or the next major oil slick will be met with furrowed brows and balks of disregard and disbelief...but its not all their fault!
science fed to the public by corporations has historically been intentionally if not flagrantly inaccurate in some cases and by and large gets away with massive deception. Kellogs has been caught twice this year with bogus studies and statistics insisting their cereal boosts immunity, deepwater rig science speculation was effectively accepted without premise or any proof, tobacco corporations insisted the science behind cigarettes is safe and major petroleum corporations are now force-feeding anti climate change rhetoric to americans on a monthly basis and applied as needed to reduce flairups in dissenting opinion. reform is going to be needed before anyone, american or otherwise, can begin to give back trust to science. Trust is essential to a drive for understanding as without trust, no attempt is made to follow what is widely perceived to be shenanigans and tomfoolery.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I think the scientist that bothers giving the time of day to anybody in the English-speaking public is wasting his or her more valuable time. People who work and study improve themselves, thus they ARE better people than the mindless slugs who do not. Anybody who complains that science is hard to understand because the words used to explain it are too big doesn't give a shit what science had to say in the first place. The position of "climate change" as the number one item on the agenda is telling. So now Republicans are using the defense, "Science wrong because me too stupid."? Thanks, we kinda figured that.
For a site that calls itself "News for nerds" it sure is amazing how much hate-mail to nerds you publish here under the guise of "news." I expect when the American version of Pol Pot shows up to round up the intellectuals to be shot, he'll get Slashdot's newfeed for his first soapbox. Or has he already?
I think the key here is that people want a translation of the science into terms they understand.
Exactly! When explaining science to the public my aim is not so much to "dumb it down" as to not use technical jargon and to avoid worrying about unnecessary details. A large fraction of the public can generally understand the basic concepts once they are explained without the technical vocabulary and without all the unnecessary details.
The big problem with talking to the public is that we scientists have developed highly technical vocabularies with precise meanings in order to be able to communicate complex concepts very precisely to each other. Even if we remember not to use this vocabulary there is the strong urge to fill in all the details which less precise, "everyday" vocabulary does not specify.
"Explain why. Explain how. Spell it out for me in great detail, this X and Y business."
How is this bad?
The only other viable alternative so far has been, "X is affected by Y? I'll take that as absolute truth!" That might be great for arrogant scientists, but science isn't the only thing in the world, and that sort of thinking leads to horrible deeds done in the name of Sky Wizards.
The bulk of our citizens do not communicate. They eat and breed. Communication involves knowledge, thought and understanding. Americans long ago abandoned those abilities as a rule. There is a reason that television shot for a third grade level audience before free TV collapsed.
To start, I /am/ a scientist (PhD, molecular biology), and I've also taught. At the moment, I'm pure research, so I've been on multiple sides of this issue.
To really address the suggestion that I as a scientist isn't doing enough to educate the public is just an outright oversimplification of the issues involved.
As I see it, there are at least three major obstacles inherent in 'educating' the public about any particular scientific topic (molecular biology, computers, you name it)
1. Education: There's a lot of work involved in getting to know underlying concepts well enough to properly transfer ideas. I can talk about western blots, ELISAs, single-nucleotide polymorphisms and the effect of multiple genetic anomalies on various types of lung cancer as relates to smoking, but unless you understand why and how those things are important, any conclusions I give you, like 'an increase in these four or five SNPs statistically leads to a higher risk of lung cancer', you either have the choice of accepting what I say on faith, or ignoring it.
2. Apathy: If you don't know, do you want to learn? Most people who ask what I do want a nice easy answer, like "cancer research". They smile, say 'ooh, that must be hard' and go about their day. Any longer than a ten word answer, and I get the classic glazed-eyes look. You can't educate a populace that doesn't care.
3. Propaganda: This is related to 1 & 2, but is mostly a side-effect of 1. I recently got into a rather heated argument with someone over whether or not second-hand smoking is bad for you (yes, it is). Despite all the first-hand knowledge, research, and peer-reviewed data I could provide, the person in question chose to rely on biased politically-motivated think-tank reports and old, outdated, dis-proven studies funded by tobacco corporations instead of listening to my data and realistically weighing the available information. You can do all the outreach you want, but if the people don't want to pay attention, they won't.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
No, they don't want them to dumb things down. One problem that the RA mentions is the scientists treating the public as idiots which, on the whole, they're not.
The problem is not that lay readers are dumber. On the average they're not. The problem is that they don't have the specialized vocabulary and training of someone who made a career in the field.
So the trick to writing for lay readers is to keep the level high, explain the jargon and concepts as you go (but not TOO redundantly or to TOO basic a level), and be VERY CAREFUL to avoid "simplifying" a concept into something that's WRONG.
This is hard. And it takes more text to explain a given amount of science - while avoiding dragging it out into something so slooooooow that the readers get bored and give up. But people like Sagan and Asimov (and Clarke and and and ...) did just fine with it - and made careers doing so.
It's tempting to view failure to understand the specialist literature as a sign that the "failed" reader was dumb. If he had tried to build his own career in the field, been through decades of education on the specialized subject, and STILL didn't understand some dense clot of jargon, the view might be fair. But making a choice to apply his mind and education time to some OTHER field is NOT a sign of a lack of processing power - or wisdom.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Scientists use specific definitions and terms in order to be precise.
The public wants complex things summed up in a catch phrase the suits an ignorant or outdated view on the subject.
Hey, how many people can define Scientific Theory? Most people think it's just an idea somebody came up with.
The media incorrectly interprets the finds, boils the incorrect interpretation down to a catch phrase, then the public has incorrect information and then bitch at the scientist for not being clear.
If the media was more clear and responsible, this wouldn't be much of a problem.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is half no-brainer and half silliness. Any time there's a communication break-down*, you can blame it on the speaker or the audience. In some cases, it makes more sense to blame one or the other (eg, students come to class without having read the Shakespeare play under discussion or speaker so confused that the entire audience cannot follow), but in general, it's difficult to assign blame cleanly. It's easy to point the finger at one or the other, but that's probably not very accurate.
Are scientists generally not good at communicating ideas to the public? Yeah, it seems likely. But would it work better of the public were more science literate (and would it be a good idea in today's science-based world)? Yep, also almost certainly true.
I think the fundamental issue scientists fail to 'grok' is that non-scientists simply don't share their curiosity.
I completely disagree. Almost all the non-scientists I've talked to are very interested and curious in the basic things that particle physicists are curious about. The problem is that they are not at all interested in all the complex details involved in trying to find the answers.
For example if I talk to the public about trying to understand the Big Bang, what Dark Matter is, why particles have mass or why the Universe is made of matter and not anti-matter etc. etc. and they get very interested. If I talked to them about the ATLAS Event Filter Jet Algorithm, my python analysis code or how to calculate a cross section from a Feynman diagram then I'm sure their eyes would glaze over and they'd fall asleep!
Don't mistake lack of interest in the details with lack of interest in the overall issue the research is addressing!
How would slashdotters feel if *real* lawyers came here and started laying the smack down on some of the "IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot!" types here?
That would be AWESOME, how can we convince them to do it?
We already have a few. (New York Country Lawyer comes to mind.)
Interestingly, they seem to be more interested in educating the IANALs when they're in error than in smacking them down.
This seems appropriate: The law is SUPPOSED to be understandable to those who are required to obey it. B-) Also to those who serve on the juries that apply it.
Of course, with lawyers, being able to explain an issue of law convincingly - to clients, jurors, and judges - is part of the skill set. So perhaps they can be expected to have a higher than typical fraction of potential popularizers than most specialized professions.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There's an awful lot of absolute rubbish being passed off as science, by scientists. Having seen the bollocks that some people with more phD's than they deserve have come up with, it's hardly surprising people at large are noticing and calling foul.
That and all too much of what passes for science seems to be being done to make a fast megabuck or few, rather than being done for reasons like, "I wonder what would happen if..." or "I think this wee thingy works like this..." People quite rightly don't trust corporations, especially when their quarterly results or the chance to corner a market are concerned, so why would anyone trust corporate sponsored "science?"
Sure there is good science being done, but there's way too much dross out there, and people do notice.
Here's an idea. Go study some fucking climatology for yourself and figure out what's going on instead of sitting in an armchair bitching about "hiding the decline" and making slimy ad hominem attacks about grant dollars.
"The remark which I read somewhere, that science is all right as long as it doesn't attack religion, was the clue I needed to understand the problem. As long as it doesn't attack religion it need not be paid attention to and nobody has to learn anything. So it can be cut off from society except for its applications, and thus be isolated. And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit. So I suggest, maybe correctly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite." - Richard Feynmen
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I am not even a real scientists and I don't understand the public.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Too many members of the general public are ignorant of science, what its basic tenants are, how it works, why it has been so successful and therefore why it deserves everyone's respect and attention, especially when scientists warn us about things like tornados, the AIDS virus, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, lead based paint, and releasing too much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, teaching people the facts about the universe we live in is difficult and expensive. But when society fails to educate its members sufficiently about science, to teach them to think critically, then the purveyors of disinformation -- typically organized religions and corporate marketing departments -- are always there to enlighten them with their own versions of the truth.
What can we do about this? First, never cut back on education. An enlightened society is an educated one and maintaining it as such is a endless task. Second, make education accessible to everyone at no cost. Three, we have to be hard on ourselves to ensure that our teachers and educational institutions continue to live up to the highest standards. Four... spend money on marketing facts that are both generally accepted by the scientific community and important to society.
How do we pay for all that? Higher basic taxes, I guess (it will eventually pay for itself), but perhaps also by levying a tax on top of what those purveyors of disinformation spend on advertising.
Explaining science is hard too.
All the talking past each other that is going on in this thread.
On one hand we have the non-scientists, who are arguing that someone who has spent the last decade or so in science-related postgraduate work should also be perfectly capable of explaining that work to a layman.
On the other hand, we have the scientists assuming the high horse and arguing that "we don't have to explain it to you; if you can't understand it you should learn more science or just take our word for it."
Surprisingly enough, the best answer is (as usual) found somewhere in the middle ground.
There are some topics that can't be explained in simple terms and require a certain level of expertise to understand. For example, I wouldn't expect a scientist to be able to understand the intricate nature of 20th century literary criticism any more than I expect to be able to understand anything other than basic physics concepts.
(cue a reductive joke about Literature here - the best ones tend to come from computer science majors who think that literature is "easy" and their "Intro to poetry" class gave them all the knowledge they will ever need to understand deconstruction, allowing them to crack a joke that betrays the fact that they know absolutely nothing about it)
I know that was alot of words just to say "some people are better at certain things than others, and people who are experts at certain things often gain that expertise at the expense of other things." But looking at the comments section for this article honestly makes the article seem more accurate - there is quite a bit of self aggrandization going on here and not much actual communication.
The median US citizen goes to school for 12 years. During that time, they all have to take at least one course on science. If after spending an entire course studying science (and probably many more than one class) they don't have an understanding of what science is and how it works, then I'd say the average US citizen has failed in their duty to become a rational and thinking being.
I think there are a couple of major issues with science education in the US. It's taught as a bunch of "facts" for the most part, especially biology and chemistry. My recollection is that the scientific method is mentioned in some introductory science class, you get a quiz with multiple choice answers or three blank lines for: observe, hypothesize, and experiment and you're done. Now it's time to memorize what ever level of physics is "age appropriate": newtonian, relativistic or quantum. Of course most people never get past Newtonian physics, then they hear vaguely about Relativity and Quantum Physics and hey, what do you know, those crazy scientist don't really know anything. Toss in people screaming "correlation isn't causation" and what do you know, you can't "prove" anything so my long held misconceptions are just as good as any... Asimov write's about this in The Relativity of Wrong.
The other issue is that while we supposedly have a separation of church and state [1], we tap dance around evolution in public schools so we don't offend people. Suddenly people think that God in the Gaps is a valid scientific theory - though so far "God did it" is a bit difficult to test. I mention this because I think many American's glib "it's just a theory" response to any scientific theory they don't like is reinforced by all the tap dancing around evolution.
If I were King, then most science education would be about the process of science, the attempt to approach the truth to the best of our ability, and the drive to continue to question and test theories to improve or replace them. Memorizing the atomic number of Iridium is almost pointless for most students and adults. Learning about how the atomic model changed over time and how useful the "wrong" models were seems much more relevant in understanding science.
Unfortunately, US education is focused on the "three R's" [2] and thinking (reasoning?) is not one of them.
[1] Yes, I know the words "wall of separation" are not in the Constitution but in a letter from Thomas Jefferson.
[2] Reading, writing and arithmetic - go figure.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Is that much of the public believes more in religion than science. In fact, they think of science as another religion.
Many scientists need to realize that their goals, ideals, and ethical standards may not be universal.
To do a better job explaining science, or so they shut up? I'm not sure I get your point.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
At least with AGW, it is -- because there is no valid [hypothesis, to test, to theory] path, inasmuch as no AGW hypothesis can be described as any more than a projection into the future. Which is why it cannot be said that there is a valid AGW theory.
You can only establish a theory on the back of careful testing, falsification, etc. When the proposed result of a theory cannot be shown... there can be no theory.
It's also worth mentioning that the models for even parts of the concept are very poor performers. For instance, models that predict behavior at the equator inevitably fail to do so elsewhere.
And it certainly doesn't help to have all this shrill yelling about how we're surely going to "drown", or "die", etc.
Statistics, however, can be used to project trends almost any way one likes. This is the source of the scaled imprecation: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It is not only a problem of Scientists communicating with the general public. Most scientists have trouble communicating among themselves. Those of us in academia fall prey to the fact that, even between related subjects, our technical lingo is so, uhm, technical, that we cannot convey concepts to our peers. Not to mention that many scientists are horrible public speakers. This is doubly sad because scientific communication in the form of conferences is held with high regard; but when you go to one, even many keynote talks usually given by big names in a field are utterly made uninteresting by lack of rethorical skills. Scientists cannot be isolated in a concrete room and have PRs doing the contacts for them. It's not how it works, even inside the scientific community. But communication skills are hugely undertrained and thus we will never be able to avoid the 'social inept' tag in the near future.
Think of the stupidest person you know. Then add more stupid.
There are lots of reasons people have lost faith in science, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Challenger, Vioxx, WMDs, Cold Fusion, and the general lack of trust in authority that has grown since the 60s.
With the exception of Cold Fusion, these examples seem to be reasons to not trust corporations and political expediency - nothing to do with science. As for Cold Fusion, I guess some optimists have been saying it's "ten years away" for 25 years and some frauds have been perpetrated but I don't see how science as a whole is painted with that brush.
And really there is no reason to blindly believe scientists or anyone else: it's kind of health to ask for proof, as long as you don't keep denying once you receive it.
Sure, but I think evolution is on pretty solid ground which makes about 40% of US citizens deniers and another 20% uninformed at best.
Incidentally, you blame corporations, but a lot of the anti-science movement corresponds to the anti-corporation movement as well: the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO propaganda isn't coming from corporations any more than the anti-evolutionists.
There are crack pots on both sides of most issues, but I think a lot of the anti-corparate based hysteria is a reaction to the fact that they have a pretty bad record when it comes to "science" effecting public safety. I'm all for holding their feet to the fire. On a final note, I think any anti-evolutionists that say they are "questioning authority" are delusional since they are typically "answering to a higher authority."
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
very early in one's scientific career, perhaps by the 4th or 5th grade, perhaps as early as the age of 2, if the life of Karl Frederich Gauss is any guide. Knowledge is added incrementally and the ability to penetrate a thicket of technicality is attenuated by how much prior training and encouragement one receives going forward.
Personally, although I found myself loving mathematics in the 4th to about 7th grade, puberty interrupted and I discovered girls. Consequently, I went into a dark phase that really left me poorly prepared for calculus for physics, chem, and math majors at UCLA. This of course, led to a further digression and missed opportunities as I pursued a career in the biological sciences. Only in the latter days of completing my Ph.D. did I begin to rekindle my recognition of the essential character of mathematics for the understanding of all of science. Now at 59, I am only beginning to achieve the level of mathematical skills that I should have taken into my Ph.D. and subsequent research. My point is not to draw attention to any special story that I have but to personalize a point that was well made in a Science cover story many years ago about science education for minority students (I am not a minority, although there aren't many Venezuelan Bohemians I suspect), the but main point can be more broadly applied to all students of science: the science pipeline is a very leaky one. Other scientists I am sure could tell a far more fascinating and compelling story. Nonetheless, there is simply no way as an individual scientist no matter how large the ego or ambition to find the time or resources to make up for the leakage, which can occur in individual careers or the sense of a loss to society or to specific subpopulations of science students and disciplines.
This bring me to my primary disagreement with the essay, in which one paragraph ends with the sentence "That base is young, optimistic, and stands ready to be mobilized.". Frankly, I am not convinced as I see many others like me suffer from the setbacks and the "leakage" at various stages of their training that are necessary to integrate the essential mathematical ideas with those required to unify the empirical science. Admittedly, when I was in school, even in the latter phases of my education computer and network technology was still in its infancy (I wrote my first computer program on punch cards). However, the dating of many of my skills is largely besides the point. There simply does not exist the capacity to meet the planetary challenges that the scientific community faces as it confronts them. The basic premise of the article is somewhat flawed because scientists, as good as many are, and there are many far greater in their contribution than I could aspire to, are not really all that much different from their much less scientifically trained counterparts in the public as a whole. There really aren't two different populations here, merely a spectrum of human understanding about what the essential scientific truths are. In this sense the essay, while drawing attention to many important issues, is conceptually flawed.
If the goals of broader science education, communication of science, and even the essential incorporation of science as a means by which we conduct civilized affairs from running governments to street cars, to day care are to be acheived, there has to be a much greater awareness of the need to create a much more capable scientific infrastructure to help plug all those "leaky pipes" in our own scientific training as well as those of our fellow scientists in virtually all subdisciplines of science (I never am really sure about those pure mathematicians as they are an inscrutable lot). Business certainly has an important role to play here as well, since our economies as well as our ecosystems are completely interwoven and it is a mistake to treat them as separate entities. Our present science infrastructure is too much like those not quite capable enough robots trying to plug the leak off the mouth of
Personally I see three debates where the scientific community has come under fire from a segment of the public.
In the first two cases, science is being pitted against deeply held personal beliefs (religion and politics FTW!). I can't neatly say what drives the anti-vaccine crowd, although it seems like a combination of powerful emotional appeal and the general tendency of people to be a bit wacky when it comes to health-related matters.
Is science in a broader sense doing so poorly?
The bored and ignorant better wake up soon to what the world of Science is telling them: humanity has little time left to solve the major ecological crises facing it.
Hopeful the one silver lining of the disaster in the Gulf is that folks might wake up, perhaps unplug their headphones and personal technofantasies to recognize the alarm bells are ringing!
Yoo hoo, iPhone users. Anyone there? The world as we know it is coming to an end. Might you be part of the solution or just another part of the cause? Please pass this message along with the hope that someone has an answer to this problem.
Just give me enough of them to dissect and I'll develop an understanding of how they work.
Have gnu, will travel.
I have encountered your attitude before. John Wooden the former UCLA coach had a saying that might be of help to you. "Its what you learn after you know it all that counts".
Actually, there are many scientists, like myself, who are now retired and get no further public funding for their science. We do it for the pure joy of bearing true, rather than false, witness to the beauty of nature and its mathematical representation. If you think working 80 hours a week, writing papers, doing research, teaching students, giving lectures, doing field work, etc. and trying to help fellow humans understand this immensely complicated universe we live in is done for money, I would suggest to you that this certainly show how remarkably uniformed and myopic your point of view actually is. Don't, of course let it bother you or take it personally. However, I would suggest to you that you are missing out on the very best things life has to offer and that no amount of money can buy.
Science is in some ways like religion because you get to talk to God directly. However, science has a distinct advantage over religion, God actually talks back to you and reveals the secrets of the universe, if you are willing to train yourself to be able to decipher the mathematics of his language and attentive enough to pay attention for his fondness for subtle nuance.
than you realize, but the important thing is having the wisdom to do something about it.
Its really a Darwinian race after all, between the consequences of ignorance and the promise of science, which will prevail will determine our fate.
HALF THE POPULACE IS BELOW AVERAGE!
I've seen plenty of good communicators go over the head of stupid people. Then you have IGNORANT people which increases with the level of depth in the subject you are getting into (and education of the audience.) Even more important is how interested or distracted the audience is! Half their mind even if they are smart and educated may not be enough. You have to scare people to get them to pay attention but then their mind doesn't function so well either...
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly:
The BIG PROBLEM with any science that messes with a PR firm is that the PR people are experts in misconception and the scientists are not. Truth and understanding are not goals for PR (aka propaganda.) Any debate is heavily stacked against science outside the academic arena. Every misconception, stereotype, intuition, logic error, emotion, and LIE can be employed - plus when the audience wants to believe the lies, they'll ignore the minor falsehoods and accept the others that get past; quite often the truth/reality is unpleasant; its no coincidence escapist industries do better during bad times.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Yes at some level there must certainly be neuronal diversity, yet the basic tracks are the same, at least around some mean. The observation is a good one, however, and from my perspective the environmental influences within the brain may be very much a function of the conditioned learning that has gone on previously. If certain key concepts are not well understood, it is essentially impossible to move understanding beyond a certain point. Nonetheless, progress in science and in civilization depend on some measure of communication of science. Its important to look for those means to enable learning so that at least a greater measure of scientific sophistication and appreciation of the value of science can be had across a broader spectrum of the public. It may not be so much a function of differences in thought processes as it is in conditioning, training and extension. Brain work is a little like physical exercise. You can't expect someone who can't lift a 50 lb weight to lift a 100 pound weight. The training needs to be in stages. My perspective (see elsewhere on this post) is that the problem science suffers is analogous to leaky pipes with understanding being lost at various stages of the learning process. In my post, I discuss this in the context of my own personal experiences, but I'm sure they are not particularly unique to me. Leakage can occur in both student and teacher, professional scientist and layman. Its how we plug the leaks that will be the critical endeavor going forward. I fear we may be running out of time.
Think hard to see what form is weirdest:
"In soviet Russia, does the public understand scientists?"
It's hard to decide.
Doesn't someone have a mod point for this post? The poster nails it in the first sentence.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
So..*with* global warming we get NYC and DC flooded into oblivion?
I am trying but cannot see any negatives here...why again are we trying to stop global warming?
From James "Wormrunner" McConnell through Brian Greene, whenever a scientist tries to talk normal human, they get chastised, criticized, all but blacklisted for their efforts. It's a fairly mystifying social response that has little to do with what's being said, or the qualifications of the speaker. Even Carl Sagan started to catch flack, but he escaped by dying at them. The problem is more scientists fearing for their professional future than anything else. The fact that many utterly suck at trying to explain what they do in common terms runs second to the fact that even more of them are afraid to even attempt it. Those who manage to do a decent job of science outreach and avoid this reaction are often scientists principle but not profession, such as Hugh Downs. Professional scientists are cowed into talking highly technical and specialized jargon, with enough prevarication to avoid being cornered into saying something someone could disagree with and therefore criticize them, a method of communication that the non-specialist listener quite rightly calls "gibberish".
Still, it's better than it used to be. When Hypatia tried to teach algebra and astronomy to the commoners of Alexandria, her skin was ripped off. Yeah, that was Christians, not scientists, but the reaction and a lot of the reasons are similar.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
it is the responsibility of each of us to expect to do our thinking for ourselves. Perhaps in time technology may change that but not yet.
Yes it helps to have a teacher or someone to explain it to you, but ultimately this is useless unless you the recipient of the knowledge can assimilate the necessary and sufficient elements of consequence. Blaming the messenger, whether it be the audience, the lecturer, the journalist, or others in the room hardly enhances the learning experience or really has anything to do with the content of the science, assuming that is the gem one is after. Fame, publicity, etc. are really ancillary issues, at least with respect to the science. It is a lamentable fact that too few have the abilities to think these things through on their own, but most scientists can nonetheless see the advantages (and disadvantages) of involving the public in the discussion.
Science is hard, especially for scientists. Everyone needs a better infrastructure to support learning science, especially if we expect to survive as a species.
In neuro-linguistics we have a saying (don't know where this originated though) that goes: the meaning of the communication is the response you get back.
\rant (is this proper iTeX) I'll try not to be disgusted by the level of fucking elitism I'm witnessing here. That goes double for the apologists who make rhetorical arguments like, "Scientists know how hard it was to learn what they know, so they appreciate the trouble the public has." Bullshit. What a conveniently self-consistent embarrassingly romantic critically challenged thing to say. \unrant The reality is that three changes have destroyed the possibility of sharing in knowledge en masse. 1. We've gone from writing journals about experiences and lasting effects they have to writing journals about Britney Spears having an affair with Tiger Woods and getting married by Bat Boy. 2. Our textbooks never generate a sense of incompleteness. The next level of a subject is a complete surprise to the student because the textbook before did not suggest that more was to be learned. 3. We put knowledge into the hands of a class of people which suggests to people that the subject matter might explode if any unwashed layman queried it to satisfy their curiosity. No amount of skill can bridge the results of behaviors that can only be described as institutionalized idiocy and fear of ridicule.
The paper states: "Republicans who are college graduates are considerably less likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than those who have received less education. These better-educated Republicans could hardly be said to suffer a knowledge deficit". This assumes that being a graduate implies having knowledge about science and/or technology. However, having a degree in theology or politics or English literature is not incompatible with having a "knowledge deficit" in science. Much more useful would be to look at the differences between people who are educated in the basics of science and technology and those who are not. It seems to me that there is nowadays a cultural problem that goes right back to childhood experiences. I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, and my memory is of a time when there was tremendous excitement about science and technology. We would watch the US space programme on television: humans walking on the moon! The shelves in my local newsagent were full of Practical Wireless, Practical Electronics, Everyday Electronics, Amateur Radio, car maintenance magazines and manuals, etc. New Scientist and Scientific American were there on the shelf as well. I could go down to the high street and buy the components to build real, working electronic things, and by the age of 11, I had a basic understanding of what resistors, capacitors, transistors and diodes did. Here in the UK, we had programmes like "How?", "Tomorrow's World", and "Horizon" that were whown on prime-time TV and watched by millions. There are some such programmes now, like "Brainiac", but they wouldn't stand a chance of being in prime-time. All of this stuff seems to have gone now - it's almost as if the free availability of knowledge through the internet has killed off the thirst for knowledge. I also wonder about the tendency to refer to "Science", "Technology" and "Engineering" together as if they were one and the same. They are actually quite different things that may require quite different approaches. The issue of whether it is socially acceptable to site a wind farm in a particular location has virtually nothing to do with Science, and more to do with art. I happen to find wind farms quite beautiful things myself, but it seems many other people don't. I don't really know why this is, but in many cases, I think people like or dislike what they are told to like or dislike.
Why do Scientists need to present a message at all? The problem here is the marketing of Science, or Science by press-release, rather than the actual Science itself. As institutional funding is increasingly secured by political patronage, "post-modern" science is moving itself into the political arena. I'm not sure I need to point out the obvious problems concerning scientific integrity that this will (and has in some cases) inevitably lead to.
tl;dr
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
watch the news and you'll hear: "scientist have....or...scientist are....or....scientists are predicting"
First off, who are these scientist? are they respectable or creditable noble prize winners or some college intern doing a year in industry?
secondly what is there back-ground, I currently took over someones position for electronic engineer only to find my predecessors area was ASTRO PHYSICS
I was talking to a mate about how if your a good scientist/engineer/technicain/botanist, you can explain topics in your area in layman terms to the average Joe if they ask. If they can't understand layman terms, then its their fault...not yours.
We don't NEED to communicate with non-technical people. It has worked so far for well over 100 years of outstanding technological progress - why stop now? The drones can go on mopping floors, cleaning windows, and building buildings and we will go on doing our thing yeah? It's called specialization. Just like I don't expect my builder to understand or be interested in the carnitine shuffle, I have neither the time nor desire to get into the details of the local building code regarding a particular section of wall.
The author deserves an "F" for failing to understand that specialization is a good thing, and specialized fields REQUIRE their own efficient technical jargon. When two doctors speak "lingua medica" it's because it's faster, more convenient and more specific than common English. It's not to "say bad things about patients without them understanding". However why should any technical person lower themselves to the level of the common burger-flipper?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Instead of one or two more or less shallow introductions to biology or chemistry or whatever how about classes designed to teach the scientific method of approaching problems. How it works, what it has done for us and most importantly what is a theory and how much that means. (compared to "its just a theory"). For those kids who show interest and promise then start teaching specific disciplines... for those who are not interested at least they have heard about the foundations of scientific thought.
A more practical issue is the relationship of science to politics. The Great Unwashed will always blindly go along with whatever pablum the Party du Jour feeds them. Intelligent, reasonable change will occur only when scientists understand that good public relations has very little impact on actual policy. We won't even open the packet of freeze-dried preserved worms related to the capacity and willingness (or lack thereof) of power-mad professional liar class to understand and act wisely on what they're being told.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Being able to explain scientific concepts to non-scientists is not "lying" or "marketing", it's fucking called "teaching".
Wooosh.
I mean seriously.
Don't want to come down too hard on you - but consider this. Some people dedicate their lives to managing the perceptions of others. They are professional manipulators. These are the people who are responsible for one-word campaign slogans like "hope" and "nope".
As is empirically established, you cannot fit anything intelligent into this type of activity. It's about playing with peoples emotions and triggers. Marketroids are empirical snake-oil salesman. Their ethics book is "if we made money, we did good".
Scientists are completely out of their league here, because science doesn't fit between two commercials, and they are far more principled about the use and dissemination of knowledge.
So... how should scientists fit the AGW argument into a single word, in an effort to "teach" the public who are being manipulated by a vast well-oiled media machine that captures even very intelligent people?
The problem isn't with science, it is with the ethics of certain power-brokers in this world. We can only hope that they choke on their hubris.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Id say most scientists i have ever seen have been way to drawn back in their apperance. They talk to the press like they talk to their peers. When a reporter asks something that is 99% probable a scientist often seems vague and unsure, because that 1% chance is still there.
When your "oponents" draw their facts out of their arse (intelligent design, oil industry, global warming, food poisons, religion etc) you cant have a normal discussion. You need to pile their fantasies down with force, making them look like the complete tools they really are.
HTTP/1.1 400
Like McIntyre??? The NAS has said that the IPCC reports used *adequate* statistics, but if they'd had access to SPECIALISTS in statistics, they may have been able to use DIFFERENT statistical methods.
NOTHING about whether the different ones would have given a different answer.
And they specifically said that the analysis, even though done by non specialists, were sound.
Or do you know better than specialists in statistics?
The problem is a mixing science with politics. Most Americans don't want to be forced to do something. The problem lies with scientists that want to use politicians to force their view on others. It would be much wiser and more efficient to use voluntary means to educate people to change their own behavior. Take smoking for example. Instead of scientists pushing politicians to directly enforce smoking bans and taxes before people were willing to accept that it's dangerous they spend decades showing that it was dangerous until there was a majority of voters that wanted these bans enacted. It should have been the same way with these other subjects. And if the technical community is unable to convince the voting public than it shouldn't try to bypass them and have it enforced from on high.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
...is that we have well-financed and extremely organized groups deliberately spreading misinformation in order to promote a certain viewpoint that is inconvenienced by empirical evidence. Evolution, global warming, and the lack of a link between autism and vaccines is misunderstood by the public because groups are actively working to keep the public misinformed.
While scientists probably should do a better job of communicating with the public, it's awfully hard when the other side of the argument is using a multibillion dollar propaganda machine to pump out bad information and bad arguments at an incredible rate.
Their biggest challenge is remembering that no matter how well they communicate something, the ultimate power to act on science lies in the political process.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It wasn't incorrect or bad science because you don't know what the papers SAID, all you know is what the NEWSPAPERS said the science papers said.
The science reports said that sulphates were building up quickly, that they caused cooling and that CO2's warming effect may not be enough to counteract and ended saying "it's unlikely, but possible that we'll start a new ice age, but more time is needed to see which effect will dominate".
That isn't wrong, it isn't bad science and time passed as did a clean air act to remove sulphates.
What was wrong was the newspapers reporting and YOUR remembrance of the issue.
As a scientist, I am interested in what nobody yet knows. The stuff that is already "known" is no longer a subject of active research and not so interesting. When I talk to my non-scientist relatives, neighbors, etc about science, I find that they don't truly empathize with this concept. Instead, they have an outlook that scientists should just know how "things" work. This misunderstanding provides just as many difficulties for explaining recent research findings and causes just as many problems as does the use of jargon/technical language.
it is not that I'm stupid it is that your are not smart enough to communicate your brilliance to me. I'm not stupid you're stupid. Whew...for a second there I thought I'd be responsible for something.
The problem here is that the public also has to be willing to learn something about the subject. You can write a barely technical article about a science advance and have people claiming that they don't get it, while you can write an article about football that's packed with jargon and stats that only someone who's been following football for years would... Well, this bit of parodical writing makes the point.
HOST: In sports news, Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti today heavily criticised a controversial offside decision which denied Didier Drogba a late goal, leaving Chelsea with a 1-all draw against Sunderland.
INTERCOM: Wait. Hold it. What was all that sports jargon?
HOST: It's just what's in the script. All I did was read it - I've got no idea what it's really on about.
INTERCOM: Nobody without a PhD in football's going to understand that. Who wrote this crap? It's elitist rubbish, people will just turn off when they hear it. "Late equaliser"? "Offside"? We've got to get this rewritten so it's more accessible.
HOST: Let's try this again, then. In sports news, a London football referee has reinterpreted the rules of the game in a manner which is causing controversy among the footballing establishment.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
There in no differentiation between the "News Media" and the "Entertainment Media"... It's all for show. No one from the "Media" can be trusted to be presenting information in an objective manner. Throughout history the news "As presented by the media of the time" has been slanted by the views of the presenter. In ancient days in the western world, the news was presented by the story teller "bard" who told the tales he had heard to the gathered croud in a village. Then came the crier who read from the scroll provided him by the scribes. Move on the the pamphlet and print media and the newspapers. All skewed to the views of the publishers whim. It's no different today except that the ease of content creation and the transitory nature of the "News". This has created a world where the infomation provided is so abundant and at times contradictory that no one can determine the truth about anything...
The press release mistakenly uses "compliment" where it should use "complement".
One I just read is Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style by Randy Olson. It's not a great book but it sure covers the basic ideas. People go into discussions with preconceptions and prejudices. That's always the case. The question is how much they let those preconceptions steer their thinking. People who spend a lot of time on research are somewhat more likely to let go of their preconceptions because they're used to doing that, but most people aren't. In general people would rather believe something they want to be true, whether or not it IS, and it's easier to influence people if you say something interesting that's sort of factual, than if you say something boring that's 100% factual. People who spend a lot of time doing research find it much easier to be boring and 100% factual, and as a result, they do a poor job of convincing the rest of the world that what they're saying is relevant or worth thinking about.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Most research in the USA is funded by public money, various DOE, DARPA, NIH, etc grants. In addition, any useful outcome of the research, as in patents or other intellectual property is essentially given to the researcher. As a result, it seems like not only a responsibility, but good policy for the researcher to be able to explain what he is doing to the layman.
It is much easier to get funding dollars for something that the average person and politicians can understand vs. what they can't.
Example 1: among scientists, darwinian evolution is close to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and the socalled "competitors" such as intelligent design, are, in the oft quoted words of planck, so bad they aren't even wrong Yet many of hte public don't believe in evolution. Clearly, scientists suck at communication
The future of the Internet ... as brought to you by an organization with "Site best viewed on Internet Explorer 6.0." at the bottom of their webpages!
Good on you, American Academy of Arts and Sciences! I wholeheartedly agree! Save IE6!
Heh... what about people's responsibility? You can't explain something like nuclear physics without the data and the math. Thats like a consumer's attitude that their computer should "just work" while failing to understand how clicking on those popups downloads malware onto their computer, or trying to screw in a screw with a hammer.
Am I the only one finding it hard to read the PDF because of the font? The u has two different height sides to it. I would have actually preferred Comic Sans.
-nt
The real question, obviously is, how do you deal with the apes ? Yeah people are stupid.... nearly half don't believe in evolution, there is no stupid Republican lie that doesn't fool at least 20% of the public (birthers, death panels, Obama is a socialist...when everyone knows he's really a Vulcan...., etc.) Ok, I can answer this one. I'm a physician. I HAVE to deal with people who cannot reliably count to three. This is a huge problem facing health care: http://www.nerdpocalypse.net/limited%20health%20literacy.html You fit things into how their brains work. Paradigms. Paradigms that they know....(i.e., metaphor). Draw pictures to illustrate causality chains. (oh, by the way, the term nerdpocalypse.net means this sort of cognitive visual framework). And, if I'm trying to get YOU GUYS to start using primary source data, and multiple references and facility with enormous data sets....it's becomes the same problems I have with the low health literacy patients.
Hi,
There's an article in the latest edition of Lab Times http://www.lab-times.org/labtimes/issues/lt2010/lt04/lt_2010_04_60_61.pdf talking about a related issue of how scientists can engage and promote their science to the general public (and fellow researchers in the scientific community!) Food for thought.....