Slashdot Mirror
Towards Public-Friendly Open Science: YouTube Alongside Journal Articles?
Jace Harker writes: The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society. One of the reasons for this is that scientists do not spend enough time communicating their findings outside their own scientific community," writes Authorea Chief Scientist Matteo Cantiello. "It's ironic and somewhat frightening that the discoveries and recommendations for which society invests substantial economic and human capital, are not directly disseminated by the people who really understand them." Cantiello goes on to propose a "Public-Friendly Open Science bundle": scientists who publish a paper should also draft and publish a press release, layperson's summary, and/or YouTube video. Should scientists be more responsible for communicating their results directly to the public? Or should this role be left to science journalists?
Too often the subject will be at such a low level that it's unrealistic to try to explain it to someone of an average intelligence and background.
Why? What is the point?
Half of them don't understand or believe in science anyway.
Why the fuck try to make it accessible to a bunch of drooling morons who think the world is 6,000 years old and that fossils are a lie?
Science should not be trying to suck up to the stupidest among us.
The Science News Cycle:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...
Funny (and sad) because it's accurate.
This needs fixing and this proposal might be a very good way to do it. In the same way as social media bypasses the MSM, perhaps this proposal can bypass the above players.
Science is hard too. I would argue that most scientists don't have both skills. Some do, like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but I don't believe most do. I know on my development team there's about two of six people who can clearly communicate their ideas to the outside world. And one of those I wouldn't trust to tell someone who didn't have some knowledge of code.
I trust the good people of Elsevier to control all access to scientific journals. This so-called "open science" sounds too much like Communism for my liking.
Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah!
No.
I am often in awe of how badly most technical people communicate.
My whole tech career is based off the fact that I can communicate with people.
The proposal is an invitation for bad science to get publicized before it is refuted.
>> Should scientists be more responsible for communicating their results directly to the public? Or should this role be left to science journalists?
At major research universities dependent on grants this role is often part of the public relations arm of the funding coordinators (or university itself). The reason is simple and profit-motivated: the more that constituents and politicians know and hear about scientists' findings and discoveries, the more likely future grants are.
Most good journals already publish a lay summary, and often a description of significance aimed at a wider audience. Sometimes even a video. That leaves us with the recommendation to either force the scientist to draft a press release OR let science journalists communicate the discovery. This is not helpful.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
You know, many things are approachable by someone of "average" intelligence and background if you try hard enough.
The problem becomes that so much of the populace is outright anti-science, that who are you targeting?
Honestly, it's not the average person to worry about ... it's the people who outright reject that any of this stuff is real and think that "just a theory" means their opinion is just as valid.
The YouTube-ification of science would be quite sad, and probably counter productive as people try to get edgy and appeal to a youth audience .... yo yo yo boi, MC Flava Physix in da house to explain quantum entanglement might be funny once, but we don't need it to be a recurring thing.
These people aren't writing papers for the drooling masses. They're writing them for other people educated in the field.
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Are you anything like this guy?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Most science articles are due to press agents at a lab or University or a journal or working for conference organizer either putting together and sending out press releases or contacting reporters they know (or both), and that is always done in collaboration with the scientists issuing the results. Scientists who have access to such resources should certainly use them. Scientists who don't are at an disadvantage (IMHO) and should spend some time figuring out how this is done. Technical people tend to underrate the difficulty of good public communication; it is not trivial to do it well.
For me, this is in part comes down to whether scientists are public figures. Does accepting public funds require that our faces be associated with the research in a very public way? I struggle with this a bit, particularly when, as just one example, animal research is involved. You would not believe (well, maybe you would if you have ever read Youtube comments sections before) the abuse that comes with publishing a story with any general/mainstream media interest and that involves research animals in any capacity. I agree that a publication's authors may well be the best ones to explain the relevance and impact of a study. I agree that scientists have an obligation to make good use of the resources given to them. But, I wonder if everyone should be subjected to the type of scrutiny that might come with this well-meaning endeavor. Remember the physicist that wore that shirt during the interviews about the comet landing?
A podcast would be nice:
The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society....
Maybe if "the public" spent half as much time learning about basic science in school as they do watching youtube, "the public" might be better equipped to understand science.
.
Why not focus on bringing up the scientific ability of the "the public" instead of dumbing down scientists?
I can see the value in this sort of work, especially in informative videos that most people can understand. That's how many people absorb information these days, since it's usually quicker and more convenient than reading the same information. But they need to have the explaining done by people who are really good at public speaking and connecting with the audience.
I don't think anything too fancy is needed, but whether they'd go with print or video, it needs to be done right and with as little bias as possible. I realize that some topics are so complicated and heavy in terminology that would also need further explanation, so there is a limited to what would fit into a smaller summary or video. But this could be a valuable resource, along side the content that currently exists to help explain science research and findings, except it would tied directly to the research instead of hoping a youtube channel or science blogger covers it.
It's not the intellience, its not having specific background. If they're talking about a specific permutation of string theory, I'd be lost in a paragraph, even dumbed down. I don't have the math. Same for high level chemistry. Same for a lot of science. Explaining phd level science to a layperson isn't always possible or desirable.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Should scientists be more responsible for communicating their results directly to the public? No Or should this role be left to science journalists? No
its not having specific background.
The thing is, a lot of the background can be made approachable to typical interested person, often avoiding math with a few things skimmed over (I know from experience doing public outreach on the side of physics research). However, the problem is that a lot of that background becomes voluminous and redundant, applicable to a lot of research projects. Will it be each researcher's responsibility to spend 90% of their time covering basic background that is already covered in other popsci articles, books, and websites, especially when those other sources get ignored by a lot of people? I've seen enough arguments on places like Wikipedia about a page not having enough background because people are too lazy to read, sometimes quite excellent, linked to pages that do cover the background topics. Even on Slashdot, you get posters upset for linking to or mentioning that a topic is well written about in many places, and expect you to re-write an explanation from scratch.
From a system point of view, this seems like the opposite of what we should actually want. Journal articles exist to communicate the findings of an experiment, they actually have nearly no relevance to the public, nor should they. The results of a single article should not be trusted. It's a finding and it needs to be studied and replicated before it should be communicated to the public. So, I don't think we would ever want to force every scientist who is trying to get an article published to also draft a press release trumpeting the results of their study. Even honest scientists would constantly be tempted to embellish the significance of the results.
It seems to me, that we should actually want an independent science body who's sole job is to replicate significant experiments and confirm that the results are both legitimate and significant. Taking the advertising out of the hands of the original scientist should dramatically reduce the incentive to exaggerate findings and hopefully requiring the result to be verified first would deter all but the least reliable science journalists from writing wild articles based on never repeated experiments.
There would still be major problems, this organization would have to establish themselves as the trust authority for science questions. That would be no easy task. Additionally, there is the question of who would fund this organization. It should not be a single government, nor a single corporation, or even a single industry because of the potential for political interference.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I'm torn here.
I'm a grad student in a science field (medical physics) working on a pretty nitty-gritty project, and most people glaze over when I start talking about what I do. That's rather disheartening, but it may not necessarily be their fault: perhaps I'm not great at communicating exactly what it is I'm talking about, or I'm so used to discussing it with people of a similar background that I fail to see what is and isn't actually obvious.
This type of exercise could encourage developing skills to discuss your project with someone unfamiliar, like perhaps an investor, a bright-eyed bushy-tailed kid interested in science, friends and family who are not scientifically inclined but still care about what you do, etc. I think most of us in science could spare an hour or two of our lives to put together something explaining what we do to the general public.
Counterpoint to what I've just said above is that because research is so incremental these days, the subtlety of how one group's work is distinct from another may get lost in a five minute youtube video or two paragraph layperson summary. I'd hate for someone to fancy themselves an expert based off of the press releases (politicians: I'm looking at you) and not the actual paper. I don't think we'd see a youtube-ification of science though (maybe the comments) but the videos would most likely be pretty professional since they represent a research groups work over months if not years. People are already explaining science on youtube and I've really enjoyed what I've seen for the most part ( https://www.youtube.com/user/b... , https://www.youtube.com/user/m..., etc.).
All in all though I think this is a good idea so long as people are being rational about how much we can realistically expect to convey. Obviously the inner workings of abstract algebra are not going to make sense to an 8 year-old, but maybe a college student with one or two math classes under their belt would be a good target; I don't think that's too unreasonable.
I'm always in favor of trying to better expose science to the masses. Even if that means a little more work for me!
"God particle"
"The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society"
What, you mean those dimwitted philistines don't understand or appreciate
Romantic Comedies Encourage Unrealistic Expectations: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2...
Study Shows Rich People Cheat and Lie: http://www.phillymag.com/news/...
Interacting with women generally makes men stupid: https://www.psychologytoday.co...
Cats Usually Do Land On Their Feet: http://www.improbable.com/airc...
Literacy Improves Your Chances at a Happy and Successful Life: http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...
Horses prefer bananas over carrots: https://www.smartpakequine.com...
Not to mention how many times we've been told things like 'eggs are bad for you' 'eggs are good for you' and reversed. ...yeah, I'm astonished people don't always take "science" seriously.
-Styopa
Well, There is a portion of the population against science, totally.
Same for religion, wall street, and such.
The main problem is that the anti-anything people sway the public funding
and the scientists aren't allowed to use their lasers/proton beams/canned-lightning
to defend themselves. It won't take more than 500 generations or so for the anti-vaccine
people to weed themselves out.... now for the rest... there is always the
method of separation.
Social, genetic, informational, and educational separation. (Oxford comma...)
The result will be a possible species genetic split, if Tequila isn't allowed. LOL.
I've been trying to write a little piece about my research so that my friends and family (and anyone else who cares) have a better idea what I do (a subfield of solid-state physics). I don't think the concepts are that hard, and the subject is interesting to many people, but the real problem is providing the background.
This is more of a problem in some fields than others. For example, I met an ecologist who researches frogs -- including colorful ones you see in advertisements for Costa Rica. The creatures are eye catching, people know what frogs are, and you'd be sad if something that cool looking was going to be wiped out by an foreign disease. It's a subject people can relate to because almost everyone has some understanding about nature, frogs, and disease, and it's not too hard to fill in enough of the blanks to make a good, informative news article.
The same is not true for solid-state physics. Part of what I need to explain is why my research is new and novel, which is a tall order given people's lack of background. Heck, most people don't even know the difference between silicon and silicone, which are very, very different. It's hard to provide the background without boring everyone to death. I still hope to write my piece, but it sure as heck won't be a popular read.
It's not the intellience, its not having specific background.
True but that doesn't mean you cannot communicate the concept. E=MC^2 is well beyond most people's ability to derive but the concept that Energy = Matter isn't that hard to grasp. It's very possible to communicate difficult concepts to a lay-person. This requires a certain amount of skill. I would even go so far as to argue that if you cannot explain it to a reasonably intelligent lay-person chances may be that you don't understand the concept well enough yourself.
We tried to be accessible but not without a certain level of scientific rigour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I like to describe the Scholars Strategy Network as "PR firm for scholars," and is devoted to tackle just this issue.
I imagine there are other similar orgs.
http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/
Plenty of labs and universities issue press releases aimed at the general public for major results. Nobody wants a nontechnical explanation for every single paper - many papers would end up as things like "We looked for evidence to support a particular theory in this one small region of parameter space, and didn't find any".
At least for the field of Biology there are efforts in that direction. There is a good set of educational videos on:
http://www.ibiology.org
The videos are not covering individual publications, as publications most of the time cover a too specific sub question to be of general interest to the public.
Instead they cover different biological fields or techniques.
Not all journals do this. But I can usually understand about 80% of the news summaries, even ones outside my field, but only about 20% of the technical articles. Once in a while the news article might interview an author for additional perspective.
I think some of the newsfeeds with science sections (e.g. NY Times) then pick up some of the these new summaries.
You have to remember how rewards work in academia. We only get brownie points for two things, grants and publications in academic journals. I'm experiencing this now with a possible promotion. I've youtube videos, a blog, textbooks, educational software, technical reports to places like arxriv and biorxiv as well as the standard grants and academic journal publications. However of these I am told to play down the former material as it will 'confuse' the promotions committee. One of the arguments is if you spend time explaining science to the tax payers via videos etc you're using less time to apply for grants and write papers. Not only that, it is recommend not to do too well in your teaching as this also implies you're spending less time on grants and publications. I suspect most of the top universities work like this.
The problem lies in the way the grants system works. Roughly (depending on the university) 33% if every dollar obtained in grant money goes directly the university and is not used for research. If someone announces that they got a 6 million dollar grant to study let's say Ebola or new advanced computing architectures, 2 million goes to the university as slush money. They don't call it slush money of course but administrative costs, however one doesn't need 2 million to administer a grant.
The link to publications is that the more papers you have the more productive you are considered and the more grants you might get in the future. Somehow the link between grants and money for the institution has to be broken and the reward system changed.
That's why I said "average intelligence and background." Neither one is sufficient. If you dumb it down too far then there's no difference between your presentation and that of dozens of others working in your same field. If you don't dumb it down - and it's not groundbreaking results, and obviously so - then many, perhaps most, people will lose interest within a minute or so.
Frankly, what I was afraid of is that sponsors of research would start making such presentations a requirement of funding. I still am afraid of that, all the above comments notwithstanding.
btw: my BS was in astrophysics, and I'm working in the tech industry now. I'm not someone afraid of science.
"God particle"
Thank mainstream media for coining that phrase. Scientists just shrugged because it's easier to let the children be happy with a new shiney while the adults are doing important things.
I often read physics.org which includes news releases from all branches of science. Here is sample from today:
Bacteria use DNA replication to time key decision
Physicists propose new definition of time crystals—then prove such things don't exist
Tropical peatland carbon losses from oil palm plantations may be underestimated
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos
Too late - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvOtUh8Avi8
If this happens, then someday people will complain that the Internet is nothing but porn and Schrödinger's cat videos.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
From a system point of view, this seems like the opposite of what we should actually want. Journal articles exist to communicate the findings of an experiment, they actually have nearly no relevance to the public, nor should they.
But the result of this is that hundreds of thousands of smart people who might be interested in your research never hear about it. I didn't get exposed to academic journals until maybe my third year in college, and they were great, and why the hell aren't they part of life for everyone who's smart? There are bad ones too, of course... but surely you could take small steps, like requiring that every paper have three abstracts: one for the scientific community, one for college students, and one for high school students and the general public.
It's like panels of people discussing problems in society seriously. Why isn't that a part of our conversation as a society? Why do we have talking heads instead of real experts on the news and then at schools we don't require watching an hour-long panel of experts talking about global warming or human rights or new developments in battery design?
It already does not work very well with scientific journalists, whose jobs are to make scientific information available to the masses.
It is always strange to see how people view the production aspect of videos. Just because 20 seconds of cats frolicking is easy to make doesn't mean the same can be said to producing compelling content. Even writing copy is difficult. The money put into a popsci series like cosmos makes everything look simple. It is most definitely not. From another aspect, there is vested interest to not have easily readable papers for commercialisation reasons, which is why I am particularly appreciative of papers that are clear and with less jargonese.
"God particle"
Thank mainstream media for coining that phrase. Scientists just shrugged because it's easier to let the children be happy with a new shiney while the adults are doing important things.
Actually, you can thank Nobel laureate Leon Lederman. He wanted to call it The Goddamn Particle (because it was so hard to detect) but his publisher wouldn't let him.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's not the intellience, its not having specific background.
Uh, if it's neither of those, then what is it?
TFA argues that it's journalists and other "external agents" who are the problem.
This is silly. We (the scientists) are doing this. The introductions and conclusions of many papers and grants contain unsupported claims of practical applications and fantasies about the future directions of research. Science journalists aren't stupid, they read the papers and use those projections to write their articles.
Right now, we already write one thing for the scientific community, where it's understood that talk of future work is hopeful projection (at best), and something very different for the public. These contradictions are bad for science and create a well-earned lack of trust in scientists. Instead of encouraging more of this, we should try to be honest in all of our scientific writing.
Should [scientists][writers of FOSS] be more responsible for [communicating their results][providing useful documentation] directly to the public? Or should this role be left to [science journalists][random wiki editors]?
Seems like about the same question.
I want to say no, given how terrible most science journalism actually is, but we're already halfway there and as a result the headlines go to the most sensationalized press releases even if they have little to no scientific value, like the University of Reading researcher that put an RFID tag under his skin and declared himself the world's first cyborg. The more scientists do their own science advocacy, the worse this will get.
Physics, astronomy, and chemistry are some of my favorite subjects but my majors were in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. I think I understand all three subjects fairly well for a layperson. I also do not think of myself as particularly bright.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Maybe, and I do not know, it is YOU and not THEM? YOU are not explaining it in a way that they can grasp it? Maybe?
I had no trouble parsing your text. Perhaps you speak at a level that is higher than those around you? This does, unfortunately, make it a trouble with you if you can not explain it to an idiot. I suffer similar issues. Introspection has given me the chance to see that there are many times I should have explained myself more clearly and in a less long-winded way.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Since the purpose of review articles is more pedagogical than original research papers, it could make sense to accompany a review with some video lectures.
I work on a system that stores scientific data and its associated metadata to help meet public/open data requirements. It's hard enough to get a scientist to actually document their data with appropriate metadata so it can be understood by other scientists. Often you have to nag the principal investigator for months just to get some minimally descriptive metadata to meet the requirements. And now you're going to try to mandate a YouTube video?
You know, many things are approachable by someone of "average" intelligence and background if you try hard enough.
The problem becomes that so much of the populace is outright anti-science, that who are you targeting?
Honestly, it's not the average person to worry about ... it's the people who outright reject that any of this stuff is real and think that "just a theory" means their opinion is just as valid.
The YouTube-ification of science would be quite sad, and probably counter productive as people try to get edgy and appeal to a youth audience .... yo yo yo boi, MC Flava Physix in da house to explain quantum entanglement might be funny once, but we don't need it to be a recurring thing.
These people aren't writing papers for the drooling masses. They're writing them for other people educated in the field.
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos.
The science community is already down at that level. They give each other attaboys and discriminate against one another in precisely the same ways as the drooling masses. Scientists are deluded into thinking their knowledge-base is inherently meaningful. They give in to peer pressure from one another and homogenize their theories.
Knowledge is wasted unless you share it, and I have seen how scientists do an abysmal and abhorrent job in regards to reading and understanding one another's work.
Scientists,on average, are as stupid as anyone else. It would be good if they communicated their ideas better, and we would benefit as a species from the new ideas spawned from this.
Never watched Prof Spatule?
He's doing a great job...