There have been some interesting posts about the relationship between scientists and the public.
Here's a little snap shot:
Jake at Pure Pedantry advocates that scientists should refrain from making subjective assessments of the general population's lifestyle based on their scientific findings. Scientists should stick to the facts and descriptions of the natural world.
Larry Moran discusses Bruce Alberts' commentary in a recent issue of Science Alberts' writes that the biggest challenge for science education is to teach citizens how to think scientifically.
Dan at BitesizeBio adds his two cents.
Indeed we should be following both Jake's suggestion and Alberts' suggestion at the same time - promoting inquiry and discussion of descriptive expertise by kinesthetic instruction of the scientific method. We must trust that understanding of the scientific method itself will unlock doors to greater rationality in the layperson's mind, which he or she will then choose to walk through on their own accord.
My take? I'll start off by saying that Jake's argument confuses several issues.
- Trust in experts
- Knowing who the experts are
- The relationship between the public and scientific ideas.
I don't have much time (I've got to prepare for a talk on April 1st), so I'll just type a couple of words on these subjects ...
Do my opinions creep into how I communicate with the lay person? Sure I have my outbursts (like on the Iraq war) but those posts contain my own opinions on subjects that I do not claim to be an expert at. In addition most of my rants are about the life of a scientist (something geared more towards other scientists). In general my blog tends to stay within the descriptive side of science - cell biology doesn't lend itself to preaching to the lay person about how they should live life.
How about other scientists? I think that a minority of scientists may preach some normative (or subjectively based) evaluation of peoples' lifestyles, but in my experience most scientists are pretty precocious. Most of my colleagues stick to the facts. Perhaps this is not the case with professionals who study medicine or public health, but if anyone should be accused of engaging in normative evaluations of the general public's lifestyle, it's the mass media (creating fear and paranoia and telling folks how they should live does sell ... but that's another story).
I do think that there is a problem in the relationship between scientific experts and society. But I don't think that the average people is hostile to science because scientists act like elitist snobs. Most people are aware of how much their daily lives rely on technology. They realize that science has extended their lives and increased their material wealth. However I get the impression that the average lay person is just afraid of science. People want the information, they want to understand, but there is a stereotype that it is just too hard. Sometimes this fear masquerades as anti-intellectualism. And the less you know the harder it is to place new information into context. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
The other problem I see is that most of the public doesn't know who to trust. (Come to think of it this has a lot to do with the media. The average citizen craves info and is in need of authoritative voices and is thus a captive audience for self-inflating media outlets -- okay lets not veer off topic). Most citizens who are anti-science are really just following another drummer. The anti-evolutionist is not anti-authoritarian, but uses the "anti-establishment" figure (like the Discovery Institute) as his expert.
How to solve these problems? It is sometimes confusing for the lay person who gets one message from the science class room and another message from the Sunday pulpit. Some religious organizations feel threatened by a rival expert/authority and thus feels it must fight science for adherents. Teaching people how to be skeptical would be a good start. Mix into that some instructions of how the scientific method works is another good suggestion.
But I think that the biggest goal is to counter the idea that science is hard. It realy isn't. Sure it is loaded with technobabble, but we just have to work extra hard at communicating the ideas and scientific principles in a way that could be understood by the average person. Make it exciting and insightful. It's a tough task. But not because science is hard or uninteresting, but because it is hard to breach that barrier. In some ways this idea is why I started my first blog in February '05. Since then I guess that I've failed. This blog is generally aimed at fellow scientists. (OK maybe I haven't totally failed...)
Update: som relevanmt discussion at Sciencebase.
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I don't think you've failed. In fact, I think ScienceBlogs on the whole has attracted scientists who are deft at expressing science in an easy to understand manner. That said, much of the public isn't interested in science, or art, or literature, or even technology except in terms of basic usage.
There is a segment of the non scientist public that is interested in science, though, people like myself, and it is important that we be able to find good science writing that we can understand and refer back to. If anyone is going to 'spread science knowledge' to the larger public, it is people like me, who can say with confidence that, for example, homeopathy does not work, or weather does not equal climate, and can say it to our co-workers, our neighbours, and the annoying relative who sends twenty stupid email forwards a week.
I am, however, speaking from Canada, and on the whole, my observation is that science and nature are neglected subjects in American elementary and highschool education. I have a slew of relatives in Florida, and am frequently appalled by their ignorance of basic biology and other sciences - yet they all have graduated from high school at least and were 'good' students. It must be hard to understand science if you haven't the most basic understanding of how the natural world works.