As it's President's Day and I plan on seizing the opportunity to get some writing done, I won't be blogging much. But I will leave you with something very worth of contemplation on the subject of how scientists can sucessfully combat attacks on their expertise and various assorted misinformation campaigns.
As it turns out, my friend and sometime co-author Matthew Nisbet just presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science about this. Read here for his full message, but let me list the take-home points in bullet form:
1. SCIENCE EDUCATION REMAINS CENTRALLY IMPORTANT.
2. BUT TO ACHIEVE POLICY OUTCOMES IN THE SHORT TERM, POLITICAL CAMPAIGN STYLE EFFORTS ARE NEEDED.
3. FRAMING IS THE KEY TOOL.
4. GOING ON THE OFFENSIVE IS GOOD.
5. CHANGE WILL OCCUR AT THE MARGINS.
6. BUT SCIENCE ADVOCATES NEED TO BALANCE PERSUASION WITH HONESTY. TRUST IS ON THE LINE.
7. A DIVISION OF LABOR IS NEEDED IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.
Many of of the suggestions that Matt makes are very consistent with the ones that I myself floated in my Seed article, "Learning to Speak Science." Now, if we could only get scientists (and a few pro-science sugar daddies) to start trying to implement them...
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I rather dislike the idea of "framing" "political campaign style" arguments and the concept of balancing honesty with persuasion. That all smells thoroughly dishonest to me.
Science is about data and logic, not rhetoric. It should not need to be "sold". If the issue is a general public that is not persuaded by data and logic, that's an entirely different problem and one that seems unlikely to be solved by adding smoke and mirrors to the public face of science.
I rather dislike the idea of "framing" "political campaign style" arguments and the concept of balancing honesty with persuasion. That all smells thoroughly dishonest to me.
I think if you approach it as teaching rather than PR, it makes more sense. For instance, if you throw reams of technical material at a first year biology student, they won't get it. You have to impart the information in a comprehensible way.
In the public space, scientific material (especially controversial scientific material) has to be presented in a way that helps the public understand the significance. You have to make the most of the news story. If a news story is blown on techy science speak, then an opportunity is lost. People won't get the significance.
I like this George Lakoff quote from an interview a few years ago:
You need ways to present things that are going to be comprehensible to the people "at the back of the class" so to speak. If you don't try to make things comprehensible, someone else will (and guess who?). This is not dishonest, it's just adding some discipline to your presentation, so that it's understood correctly.
Thanks Jon. It's remarkable how frequently people misunderstand and think we're trying to spin people, rather than to educate them. Sounds like Nisbet and I have a framing problem of our own!
I think it's not just a matter of explaining things to people in such a manner that they can understand them. Creationists and other wingnuts are getting their message across because they (generally) not only present material in an understandable way, but also because the material is what the audience wants to hear. And that's where science gets into trouble--what we say may be the opposite of what people want to hear.
Well, continuing with the teacher frame, it often takes creativity to teach a subject well. And part of that is being informed about your audience/students will respond to. Of course, things shouldn't devolve into "political campaign style arguments"--it would probably be counterproductive for scientists to sound like that. But there are effective and ineffective ways to present things. And you can get the facts to speak for themselves if you can present them the right way. If the facts are significant, and you can effectively present them as significant (mindful of the points that Lakoff makes) then your audience will treat them as significant, even if it's a message that they don't want to hear. And this would make the job of the think tank sophists and PR hacks a lot harder.