On communication

I don't know from framing. Until the current to-do started up, I had merely heard the term used in the context of Lakoff, whose book I tried once to read but got too annoyed and moved on. But one thing I do think I know a bit about, based on experience in public relations, publishing, journalism (a miniscule and amateur bit, to be sure) and public debates, is communication. It's a pity I can't do it as well as I ought.

But here are some thoughts about the difference between communication and "spin". Others can tell if I am dealing with framing or not.

For a start, communication involves a medium, and each medium has its limitations, particularly mass media. A book is something that can be read when nothing else is happening, in small or large bits, and mulled over. It is also easy to re-read. A newspaper article is something more ephemeral. A radio report is gone almost as soon as you hear it.

So the amount of actual content - I hesitate to say "information", because informing people is not always what mass media does - is limited by the rate at which the content can be absorbed, and how much needs to be taken in at once. I would think it very unlikely any mass medium could teach one how to do, say, differential calculus on its own (open university experiments act solely as one-time lectures do, and I don't happen to think lectures are all that good at imparting content either).

So, suppose you have a complex topic - let's suppose it's about some aspect of research in biology - that you want to impart. What can you get across? You necessarily have to tailor the message to the audience, and with mass media, that means the lowest, or median, common denominator. If you announce that you have identified the active caspases in the signaling of apoptosis cascades, not too many will understand what you are saying. But announcing that (1) healthy cells sometimes die when "told" to, and (2) you've figured out what tells them to, imparts information. You also have to explain why it matters (the usual rhetorical trick is to imply that it will aid in the treatment of cancer). Now you have a message.

Messages compete in a noisy environment. They have differing functions, too. Some are about telling people what has been done with their taxes. Some are about getting more money. Some are just about prestige - notifying lay politicos so they will make you Australian of the Year or a KCMG. I think of these mass publications (to make public is to publish) as being somewhat like bird calls: some mark territory (my resources), some beckon mates (come reproduce results with me), and some indicate changes in the environment (look out! dangerous budget cuts in the vicinity!). But all messages have to be identifiable, noteworthy, and comprehensible to the audience.

Science cannot be easily reduced down to short trills and caws, though. Like a decent birdsong, it takes a long time to learn the meaning and execution of the song. What role do we want the media to play with respect to science anyway? At present the media present science as a series of dramatic episodes, when in reality most science is boringly long term and mostly incremental. If it's just to feather the bed politically, I say employ PR consultants and leave scientists alone. But if it is to ensure that you have a relatively informed populace that is competent to at least understand what the issues are when science is important in an issue, and to build trust of the competence of the scientists themselves, I think the media is at best only a small part of the solution.

The media carries too little content. What carries the content is education, and not the kind of science education that most of us underwent either. Not the fact absorbing, test passing, kind. But hands-on, dirty and occasionally hazardous science of the kind that kids in the immediate postwar era could do. Mixing chemicals, growing plants, building rockets. The education one finds in the marvellous book Uncle Tungsten, by Oliver Sachs. Without that personal experience of science, too few individuals will trust it, and if too few individuals trust science, then the culture as a whole is vulnerable to subversion by woo claims and faux science.

We need to understand that the high period of science literacy was brought about by the continued success of science in society, and a desire to use it as a means to rise socially. Workingmen's Halls dot the Australian landscape - a relic of places where workers could go to find out about technology and science without needing to go to an expensive school or university, and a good many people got a start in a scientific career that way. In Britain, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace among others including H. G. Wells would go to teach and lecture at these places. Their lectures were subsequently published and still read well today.

So, can we and ought we use the mass media for promoting scientific messages? Yes, of course, and when we do this, for political or education purposes we must tailor our message for the audience. But can we expect much of this? I am not so sure. I have real doubts that the media is a way to impart messages of any complexity or sophistication. Instead, in virtue of the nature of the beast, it invites "gee-whiz" presentations that amaze but do not inform, nor bring much in the way of understanding.

What he have to do is build up education again. We need an informed populace, with sufficient critical skills to detect bullshit, whether it is excreted by a Presidential Advisor, or by a scientist, or by a religious leader, or just bad journalism. And if we frame anything we must frame that, or our society will end up in a new dark ages. Which is, I suspect, what a number of those who oppose science would prefer. Ignorant people are easier to manipulate. Creationists know that if they can meliorate the science in schools, they have a better chance of converting the "graduates" later on. Anti-GMO opponents know they can make people fear what they do not understand. Climate "skeptics" know that doubt is a powerful weapon when used on the masses who have no way to assess the messages of science.

So I say to the combatants in the framing debate, cast your communications appropriately, but always remember that education is the only way to impart science once you have inspired people to take an interest.

I will now bend over, and await the responses...