I often listen to my hometown NPR station's online audio stream in the morning. It fuels a constant low-level nostalgia for my childhood, and gives me a heads up on the ice storm or traffic jam that my mom will likely be calling me about later in the day.
This Tuesday's NPR Morning Edition featured an interesting case study in science communication that got me thinking about how much the impact of my scientific research depends on the time and energy that I'm willing to spend communicating it to others.
The NPR piece profiled some recent work by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, and others that looks at how parents process medical information on the safety of vaccinations. They found that parents who were originally least likely to vaccinate their kids will think that the vaccine is safer after being given correct medical information, but will then report being even less likely to vaccinate their kids. The basic scenario that Nyhan seems to be proposing is this:
Step 1: Person is confronted with information that runs counter to what they've previously thought
Step 2: Person contemplates the possibility that the new information might be true
Step 3: Person's sense of identity and intelligence is threatened by the new information
Step 4: Person tries to find ways to prove new information wrong in order to preserve their ego
Step 5: Person consequently does the exact opposite of what you were hoping for when you gave them the new information
Not encouraging!
Even though the piece was about public health, it gets to the heart of a question that I struggle with constantly as a climate scientist: What is my responsibility to communicate my work outside of the scientific community, and how do I do that effectively?
Climate scientists especially run the risk of telling people things that they don't want to hear, and Nyhan's work suggests that this can end up doing more harm than good, if you're not careful. Is the solution, then, not to communicate at all? But isn't that even less helpful and maybe even negligent?
Luckily, Wednesday afternoon gave me another chance to contemplate the issue. Three leading Princeton thinkers, Michael Oppenheimer, Melissa Lane, and Robert Keohane, were giving a lunchtime seminar on the Ethics of Scientific Communication. If there's one thing that graduate students universally love, it's a free lunch, so I was looking forward to both the intellectual and the physical nourishment.
Some of what O, L, and K said seemed like common sense (you can find a reference to the paper they've written on the topic here, as well as info on their research program on communicating uncertainty in climate science), but one aspect in particular stood out for me. Melissa Lane pointed out something that I suppose marriage counselors have known for ages: communication is a two way street--it's about the person communicating the information, but it's also about the person receiving it. In their talk, this came up mostly in terms of the communicator's responsibility to know her audience. But this raises an important question--What is the audience's responsibility in scientific communication?
If communication is a two way street, and the communicator has certain responsibilities to uphold, does the receiver have responsibilities as well? O, L, and K suggested five core principles that scientific communicators need to take into account in order to responsibly communicate their work: honesty, precision, audience relevance, process transparency, and specification of uncertainty. But what about the audience? Do they have a responsibility to make a good faith effort to put their prejudices aside when evaluating new scientific information? Does the burden of solving the problem that Brendan Nyhan raised lie with the communicator or with the receiver? What about society as a whole? Does society have a responsibility to prepare its citizens with a minimum level of scientific literacy, so that they can make use of important scientific findings?
I certainly think that scientists can do much, much more to train themselves to communicate effectively, but maybe there's some way to meet in the middle.
I suppose I'm left with more questions than answers. Though, half of being a graduate student is figuring out what questions to ask, so maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing (more on that next week). In the meantime, I should call my mom.
This Tuesday's NPR Morning Edition featured an interesting case study in science communication that got me thinking about how much the impact of my scientific research depends on the time and energy that I'm willing to spend communicating it to others.
The NPR piece profiled some recent work by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, and others that looks at how parents process medical information on the safety of vaccinations. They found that parents who were originally least likely to vaccinate their kids will think that the vaccine is safer after being given correct medical information, but will then report being even less likely to vaccinate their kids. The basic scenario that Nyhan seems to be proposing is this:
Step 1: Person is confronted with information that runs counter to what they've previously thought
Step 2: Person contemplates the possibility that the new information might be true
Step 3: Person's sense of identity and intelligence is threatened by the new information
Step 4: Person tries to find ways to prove new information wrong in order to preserve their ego
Step 5: Person consequently does the exact opposite of what you were hoping for when you gave them the new information
Not encouraging!
Even though the piece was about public health, it gets to the heart of a question that I struggle with constantly as a climate scientist: What is my responsibility to communicate my work outside of the scientific community, and how do I do that effectively?
Climate scientists especially run the risk of telling people things that they don't want to hear, and Nyhan's work suggests that this can end up doing more harm than good, if you're not careful. Is the solution, then, not to communicate at all? But isn't that even less helpful and maybe even negligent?
Luckily, Wednesday afternoon gave me another chance to contemplate the issue. Three leading Princeton thinkers, Michael Oppenheimer, Melissa Lane, and Robert Keohane, were giving a lunchtime seminar on the Ethics of Scientific Communication. If there's one thing that graduate students universally love, it's a free lunch, so I was looking forward to both the intellectual and the physical nourishment.
Some of what O, L, and K said seemed like common sense (you can find a reference to the paper they've written on the topic here, as well as info on their research program on communicating uncertainty in climate science), but one aspect in particular stood out for me. Melissa Lane pointed out something that I suppose marriage counselors have known for ages: communication is a two way street--it's about the person communicating the information, but it's also about the person receiving it. In their talk, this came up mostly in terms of the communicator's responsibility to know her audience. But this raises an important question--What is the audience's responsibility in scientific communication?
If communication is a two way street, and the communicator has certain responsibilities to uphold, does the receiver have responsibilities as well? O, L, and K suggested five core principles that scientific communicators need to take into account in order to responsibly communicate their work: honesty, precision, audience relevance, process transparency, and specification of uncertainty. But what about the audience? Do they have a responsibility to make a good faith effort to put their prejudices aside when evaluating new scientific information? Does the burden of solving the problem that Brendan Nyhan raised lie with the communicator or with the receiver? What about society as a whole? Does society have a responsibility to prepare its citizens with a minimum level of scientific literacy, so that they can make use of important scientific findings?
I certainly think that scientists can do much, much more to train themselves to communicate effectively, but maybe there's some way to meet in the middle.
I suppose I'm left with more questions than answers. Though, half of being a graduate student is figuring out what questions to ask, so maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing (more on that next week). In the meantime, I should call my mom.
Hey! I'm friends with Catherine Fontana from undergrad, and I saw your post on facebook.
ReplyDeleteI think that your article actually dovetails really interestingly with the premiere of Cosmos. I know that this is "science for the masses" and doesn't seem to be your field, but I think it actually is grappling with the same issue at the heart--increasing awareness in many times unfavorable conditions about science in general and astronomy in particular. I actually thought it was really interesting to see how they handled the information that might be contradictory to some religious beliefs (creationism for instance). Not that this TV show has all the answers, but I do think it's one possible solution for the "how" of sharing science knowledge in a way that might make someone who originally says "I don't believe in evolution" to take a second look at the science that supports the age of the universe exceeding 6k years or so. :)
Also, I think this issue, like in a relationship, is tricky because while yes, the audience does have responsibility in the relationship of communication, we also have no control over another person's actions. And that's not to say that we should just throw our hands up and say "let the world burn," but that all we can ultimately be responsible for is showing up, being open, and communicating earnestly and with an open heart, whether we're talking about vaccinating our children or who is taking out the garbage.
So, no clear conclusions, but some connections that I made that I thought were relevant and wanted to share. :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bee!
DeleteI'm a huge Neil deGrasse Tyson fan (his interview on Fresh Air was one of the things that finally pushed me to start this blog), and Astrophysics was actually my first scientific love, so Cosmos is definitely up my alley. I'll look forward to catching up on the premiere with your observations in mind.
Your point, that scientists don't have control over the audience's actions in a communication relationship, is an excellent one. I do think it's worthwhile for the audience to hold a mirror up to itself as well, though, especially since so much of the current emphasis in scientific communication focuses solely on the communicator's responsibilities. We can always dream, right?
I saw this interview of David Fenton and it reminded me of your post: http://grist.org/climate-energy/want-everyone-else-to-buy-into-environmentalism-never-say-earth/
ReplyDeleteThe most striking part is when he explains that those who want to defend the environment shouldn't use the worlds "planet" or "environment" because people think that environmentalists don't care about people... I had never realized that could even be the problem in communicating about environmental issues, but it would explain quite a few things!