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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."
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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.
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.
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?
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?
my father (who is a scientist) subscribed to Science; the AAAS journal among others. Weekly in my youth I was required to read the Abstract on every article. "I do not care if you understand it, just read it." was his instructions. One thing I learned was: Command of a discipline was seldom accompanied by a ability to communicate it in simple English sentences. The reason Sagan and people like him were popular was that they had such an ability. It is so rare among scientists that having it becomes noteworthy.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Absolutely right.
Form a hypotenuse and experiment the danged thing.
What's all this subjective shit?
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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
The public doesn't necessarily have to understand science. It's not their job.
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.
Science is one of the most basic and important mental tools for forming opinions based upon reason instead of irrational methods. Everyone should understand science, as well as some other, basic, tools for reasoning such as mathematics, logic, and critical evaluation. These should be core elements of every education.
"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
Perhaps after you construct a right-angled triangle you might want to form a hypothesis.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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
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!
Oh, you mean Occam's Razor? It won't complicate things too much if I agree with your philosophy that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, will it?
See, the problem is that 'people' want a quick answer. What causes global warming? Well, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation (aka heat) that is produced when visible light hits the earth and transfers that energy into the matter it hits.
Got that out in a single sentence but I lost everyone at carbon dioxide. All it would take to throw me off is some git saying CO2 is the breath of life or that it snowed last winter.
So, yeah, we understand 'people' and we fucking hate them. They're perfectly fine eating our GM crops, using the internet to communicate near instantly across the planet, taking our drugs and undergoing procedures to save their lives, and living in buildings that are safer and more comfortable than anything built before it. But to try to comprehend the efforts behind it? To show the slightest fucking bit of intellectual curiosity in how things work?
SCIENCE IS COMPLICATED. THE WORLD IS COMPLICATED. We can't help you understand if you don't have the patience. I don't think any scientist would have a problem working backwards from any topic, breaking down all the concepts involved, to help someone with an honest interest in the subject. But who has time for that when Real Housewives is on?!
More like the dumbed down version of science is generally wrong and easy to attack. Consider the theory of evolution -- the dumbed down version says that humans are the descendants of monkeys (the theory actually says that we share a common ancestor with monkeys), and creationists love to play up that imprecision in order to confuse people and weaken the position of scientists. The dumbed down version does not include details about the genetic evidence, and so we see creationists pointing to the fact that humans and other primates have different numbers of chromosomes (now we suddenly have to explain translocation to the public). The dumbed down version focuses on appearances, which are by no means the only thing that evolve, and I have seen creationists attack that (i.e. pointing to cro-magnon and saying, "looks human, so why do they call it a different species?").
Dumbing down science is not the solution. The solution is improving elementary education, so that people can read and understand what scientists publish, as well as making scientific journals available to the masses and encouraging people to read them...oh, sorry, I wandered into fantasy land there, where we are not driving everything by greed.
Palm trees and 8
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.
The 'hurricanes increase with more patches of warmer water where they form' theory is pretty good, and likely true, but it's a sort of separate rider on the main hypothesis. Specific damage estimates aren't even that, because all the climatology can be right, but there can be flaws in the economic side that make the conclusion off by orders of magnitude. There - that's what's so difficult - you set out to explain the main theory, got sidetracked swiftly into possible tangentals, and by not 'admitting' that you were adding in additional assumptions, look at least a little shady. Of course, you aren't trying to gloss over sources of inaccuracy, you're just trying to sum up without it getting too complex, but some of these people are already thinking you are speaking for the very father of lies, so maybe it makes sense to phrase everything like the person you are addressing is trying extra hard to spot any lies you might tell. As simple as possible, but no simpler.
Let me give you a similar scientific/public situation. There are a lot of not real scientifically educated people who think the Paleontologists actually always do whole reconstructions from a single bone. (Loren Eisley used to complain that he got that question every single press conference "Say Doc, is it true you fellas always work from just a single bone?"). So, it's important for anyone talking to the public about something such as dinosaurs to stress what the raw evidence they have is, as in "We have found the sixth complete fossil of a T-Rex, and we have 35 more partials. With six, we have enough examples to be sure this one was a mature female. So far, the females seem to average a bit bigger than the males, but we'd like to find a few more good specimens to check that".
Really ignorant people won't believe we can tell which specimens were male and which female until they first understand we have more than a single foot bone or something to go on, and less ignorant people will spot a veracity problem if the scientist claims to be as highly confident of how sexually dimorphic the species was, as whether we can tell them apart at all. I've long wished for a child's book on dinosaurs that says "We have over 500 complete specimens of this one, including old ones, adolescents, and infants just hatching." and where needed, "our best fossil for this one is only a front half. Because it seems most closely related to this other one, we are pretty confident it looked mostly like this.". A little honesty openly displayed to the next generation would go a long way in getting people to trust the method itself, and maybe its practitioners.
Who is John Cabal?
FTFY.
Scientist: "we should study this to find out if its true."
Public: "Absolutely right. Form a hypotenuse and experiment the danged thing. What's all this subjective shit?"
Scientist: "Perhaps after you construct a right-angled triangle you might want to form a hypothesis."
Public: "Whooosh!"
Scientist: "I believe that was the joke ;)"
Public: "Doh!"
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.
That was bit mean.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."