It was another full day at the BCCE, starting with an excellent plenary address by Peter Atkins (who wrote my p-chem text, plus dozens of other books) and David Harpp (of the Office of Science and Society). Each of them spoke about the best ways to talk about science with people who are not scientists, science teachers, or science students. Some highlights after the jump.
Category Archives: Scientist/layperson relations
Things non-scientists can do to improve communication with scientists.
One of the things that happens when I lay out a problem (say, the difficulties for scientists in communicating with non-scientists about scientific matters) is that my excellent commenters remind me not to stop there. They press me for a solution.
I started, in my earlier post, to gesture toward an answer to the question of how to improve communication between scientists and non-scientists:
… because non-scientists count on scientists as a source of reliable knowledge on a whole range of issues, non-scientists have a stake in improving communication with scientists. This means part of the burden of improving this communication falls on the non-scientists. They have to listen to what the scientists are trying to explain. They have to ask questions when things aren’t clear. Perhaps, they even have to try asking questions of the sort science can answer, rather than the broad questions to which science can hardly ever provide a simple answer.
There’s still a lot of work for the scientists to do here. But the non-scientists have to start being active participants engaged in a dialogue rather than a passive “audience” waiting to have the relevant facts poured into their skulls.
But vague gesturing isn’t enough. So VisualFX presses me:
As an individual non-scientist, what can I do? What would you, as a scientist, like to see someone like me do?
Who am I? I am a non-scientist who has a keen interest in the scientific world. I am a computer graphics artist/3D animator/video editor/DVD author. I can do a lot with moving images using computer graphics technology. I have a keen interest in science and technology ever since I was a kid. I feel I have a decent understanding of science in general as a layperson. But, I am completely out of my league when it comes to actually being able to understand the vast majority of the scientific literature. I do read a lot of stuff in popular publications such as Scientific American and popular books such as by Brian Green and Richard Dawkins but, that is where it ends for me.
I may be pretty easy compared to the large majority of the population here in the US. I feel I do have a basic, albeit, incomplete understanding of how science works, what scientists do, what constitutes a scientific theory, etc (thanks in no small part to Sb btw). However, what about my mother-in-law, the woo-woo queen of all time? What about my sister-in-law, the “There is no objective reality” liberal arts graduate? What about my father, the conservative, Catholic, retired from the business world philanthropist who feels there it not enough God in the classroom? — All of who have almost no concept of what science is or how it works beyond what they see in the movies and on TV. How do you reach them? What would you like to see them do to participate?
These are really good questions. So, I’m going to try to give some answers.
Boredom, sensationalism, and toxic idiocy: Is there any good way to talk about science with non-scientists?
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon put up a post about gender essentialism that starts by citing this post at Mixing Memory on how people’s representations of homosexuality affect their attitudes toward homosexuality. Because Chris’s post cited my two posts (initially sparked by Jessica’s post at Feministing), I came in for some criticism from Greensmile in this comment at Pandagon. As I believed these criticisms to be based on a misunderstanding of my position, I responded. Greensmile then was kind enough to read my posts and to respond that we seem to be having “the most violent agreement”, given that Greensmile has also mused on the the science on sexual orientation (in two thoughtful and detailed posts that you really should read) and has come to substantially the same conclusion I have, that “how we treat gays should not depend on what science eventually understands about that collection of behavior paterns”.
Can I tell you, before we go any further, that I really like how these new technologies make it possible for us to track down what other people are actually saying in order that we may discover where we are in agreement? When people gnash their teeth and say that cyberspace is hosting the world’s largest shouting match, this is just the sort of counter-example I like to have handy.
Anyhow, I do think there is one smallish point of disagreement between me and Greensmile that ought to be noted. But then, I want to turn my attention to a larger issue Greensmile raises in another comment at Pandagon:
Research is not conducted in public. And in fact, publicly funded research can be jeopardized by dimwitted popular misconceptions about the subject of the research…ultimately to the disservice of all. So discussion of research in public may be a matter where discretion is advised. Chris commented that to do otherwise is naive. That may be so. But as this little tempest of unrecognized agreeing has demonstrated, discussion travels far and fast nowdays. So I stick by my guns: scientists and people who follow and defend that way of knowing the world are going to have to deal with toxic idiocy anyway, lets just get good at it as well as, or instead of, trying to avoid it. As I commented back to Chris:
“naive”: Thats me all right. But I do not go back and forth much: dissemination of ideas is virtually impossible to control in this day and age…unless you can make it sound boring [which was Jessica Vallenti’s original faux pas: she sensationalized a routine scientific paper] If senationalism and instant dissemination are here to stay, then we just have to keep learning and calmly explaining what we have learned…and calmly refuting from our facts the distortions others reach from their assumptions and fears.
To boil down the larger issue to a question: What is the best way for scientists (and others) to talk about scientific ideas and findings with non-scientists?
The “magical thinking” brain parade.
This is going to look like I’m tooting my own horn again, but actually I’m tooting for Concerned Scientist Daniel Rhoads on this one. Meme Therapy has another installment in their “brain parade” series. In this one, they ask:
We’re seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of scientitic research and conspiracy theories involving climatologists and Global Warming. At the same time supernatural thinking (new age, crystals, ID, deified interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis) are thriving. Should we be concerned by the level of magical thinking in our society? And if so what, if anything can be done about it?
In addition to answers from Daniel and yours truly, you’ll find answers from authors Tim Pratt, Sean Williams and Jason Stoddard.
The duties that come with knowledge and uncertainty.
While I hope this hurricane season is a lot less eventful than the last one, it’s always good to be ready. To that end, I’m brushing off (and bringing together here) two “classic” posts from the 2005 hurricane season.
As we look to the scientists to tell us what nature may have in store for us, we need to remember how scientists think about uncertainties — and especially, how important it is to a scientist to avoid going with predictions that have a decent chance of being false. Being wrong may seem almost as bad to the scientist as being under 10 feet of water.
Meanwhile, the scientists need to remember that non-scientists ask the scientists for predictions so they can act on these predictions to make prudent decisions. (Except, of course, in the cases where the people who control the resources find it convenient to ignore the relevant scientific information.)
Journalism, advocacy, and distrust of scientists.
The other day I was chatting with one of my contacts within the world of journalism, who told me about attending a conference aimed at getting reporters more access to scientists. The conference actually collected a good number of working scientists who came to speak with the reporters (not just to present them information, but to answer questions at length). And, the reporters got the opportunity to see research as it was being conducted (e.g., to be in the field with scientists to watch their data collection, rather than just to hear the conclusions drawn at the end of the process). It all sounded promising to me.
“But,” said my informant, “lots of the reporters who were there would listen to the scientists with this reflexive attitude of ‘You’re lying to us.’”
What’s going on here?
Most of the ethical questions raised by cloning were already with us.
The Ask a ScienceBlogger question of the week is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?
On the technical end of things, I suppose I’m a bit surprised at how challenging it has been to clone certain mammals successfully, but getting things to work in the lab is almost always harder than figuring out whether they’re possible in theory. I expected, of course, that some would want to try cloning humans and that others would declare that cloning of humans should be completely off limits.
But as far as the discussions of the ethics of cloning go, I expected that more people would recognize that many of the ethical worries that flow from cloning were already with us.
Biological knowledge and what humans value.
Following up from yesterday’s post about how knowledge about the biological basis for X doesn’t tell us whether X is to be valued or pathologized, I need to put a few more points (including some questions) on the table.
First, in the comments thread to the Feministing post that prompted my post, a common (and frustrating) misunderstanding of claims from evolutionary biology has reared its head:
I wouldn’t put the clitoris in the same catagory as the male nipple by any means. The clitoris is not a by-product, and by the way neither is sex. And “liking sex that does not result in reproduction” could be applied to heterosexuality as well. …
Why do most of you not assume that homosexuality is a product of evolution? A direct product (not a by-product) of being human? If it wasn’t a desirable trait in some way then it would have been eliminated through natural selection.
Why I have no interest in any possible biological bases for homosexuality.
Jessica at Feministing notices the BBC reporting on a study that conditions in utero may play a causal role in men’s sexual orientation. But, as the title of this post suggests, I do not care what the biological bases for sexual orientation might be, nor indeed whether there are biological bases for sexual orientation. Jessica makes a comment that starts to capture my own non-interest here:
… naturally the larger question with all these why-are-you-gay studies is why do we have to know? I’m terrified that once someone targets a “reason” they’re just going to try and find a way to do away with it.
We need more knowledge (and less spin).
It’s no surprise that the scientific and medical research in which the public tends to show the most interest is the research that is somehow connected to practical issues, like living longer and healthier lives. Scientists who depend on public monies to support their investigations have gotten pretty good at painting the “so what” for their findings.
The problem, of course, is that the “so what” painted for a non-scientific audience is frequently oversimplified, glossing over a lot of the complexities that the scientists deal with daily. It’s hard to cram complexities into a sound bite. As well, these sound bites telling us why a certain finding matters often play into the pre-existing biases and social expectations of the non-scientific audience at which they’re aimed. Unfortunately, this can persuade that audience that, with a particular finding, we know all that we need to — or, perhaps, that we at least know enough to justify particular ways of doing things (surprise!) toward which we were already inclined.
Consider, for example, a New York Times op-ed piece by Marianne Legato on gender and health. She writes:
What emerges when one studies male biology in a truly evenhanded way is the realization that from the moment of conception on, men are less likely to survive than women. It’s not just that men take on greater risks and pursue more hazardous vocations than women. There are poorly understood — and underappreciated — vulnerabilities inherent in men’s genetic and hormonal makeup. This Father’s Day, we need to rededicate ourselves to deepening our knowledge of male physiology.
On the surface, this sounds reasonable. But Echidne of the Snakes worries that it is not only vulnerable to being spun, but also engages in some oversimpliciation and spin itself:
I feel as angry about this reverse take on the relative health of the sexes, and the reason for my anger in both cases is the same one: Discussions like these may or may not be the springboard for better health research, but they certainly will be used to perpetuate the status quo of power imbalances between the sexes.