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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?
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.
Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah!
No.
>> 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.
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.
Science should not be trying to suck up to the stupidest among us.
Unless those stupid people are Federal and/or State legislators.
A podcast would be nice:
Indeed we need to get the politics out of science, and science in politics.
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.
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Why not focus on bringing up the scientific ability of the "the public" instead of dumbing down scientists?
We need to get Politics out of Politics. Just saying much our problems are self inflicted when we expect others to solve our own problems of our own making.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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!
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.