Communicating science has always been tricky, but has been a huge issue lately,
especially due to the problems with communicating climate science properly.
However, the problem is not of climate science only, and as Chris states,
journalists (or anyone for that matter) will grab what sound bite they want and
run with it. Personal values, societal and peer pressure, political
affiliations - all will influence what that sound bite will likely be. People
will read or watch media that aligns with their values, and that creates a
self-feeding cycle that is indeed hard to break, and when it involves
misinformation you can picture the results (think climate change again).
Incidentally, another thread here in ECOLOG ("Sarewitz on Systematic Error")
provided a good example of how separate things stated in an article can be put
together to create a conclusion that is not what the article intended at all,
and I quote:
> Hard to believe they let this statement make it into publication...
> "A biased scientific result is no different from a useless one.
> Neither can be turned into a real-world application."
>
> Especially after just a few lines earlier they state...
>
> "Bias is an inescapable element of research, especially in fields
> such as biomedicine that strive to isolate cause-effect relations
> in complex systems in which relevant variables and phenomena can
> never be fully identified or characterized. "
>
> In other words, the anti-research/anti-academic/anti-intellectual
> crowd can now grab these two sentences, misquote them and indicate
> that a paper in science just stated that RESEARCH IS A WASTE OF
> TIME BECAUSE IT NEVER HAS ANY REAL WORLD APPLICATION!!!!
And so it happens over and over... Lots of people are trying to figure out how
to communicate science. BTW, this event will have a webcast, if anyone is
interested in the issue of communicating science:
http://www.nasonline.org/programs/sackler-colloquia/upcoming-colloquia/agenda-science-communication.html
Astrid Caldas, Ph.D.
Climate Change and Wildlife Science Fellow
Defenders of Wildlife
1130 17th Street N.W. Washington D.C. 20036-4604
Tel: 202-772-0229 | Fax: 202-682-1331
acal...@defenders.org | www.defenders.org
http://experts.defendersblog.org/author/acaldas
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Christopher PT Peters
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 10:48 AM
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Lovelock retracts
"So I ask, should scientists start communicating more to the general
public; and would communicating more to
the general public be more of a benefit to our society than increasing our
publication record?"
Journalists grab their soundbite, run with it, and completely misrepresent
the science paper, (for which they may have only read the press release).
A good example of a breakdown in comms between the science and the media
was seen in the recent article which suggested localised warming around
wind
farms<http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/05/wind-turbines-and-global-warming>.
Another issue is that, in the UK at least, there is very little which can
be done to remedy the occurrence of misinformation/misrepresentation in the
media. I imagine this must be fairly similar to the US with some of the
stuff FOX news puts out. <http://mediamatters.org/research/201204260015>
Chris.
On 17 May 2012 14:19, Basil Iannone <bian...@uic.edu> wrote:
> This article (not Lovelock's, but the woman's) brings up an important point
> about climate change, the lack of scientific understanding in our society
> as a whole, and the role of scientists in educating the public. Clearly the
> general public do not understand climate change or even "believe" in it.
> And why should they when the media and politicians feed them inaccurate
> information (be it intentionally or not). So I ask, should scientists start
> communicating more to the general public; and would communicating more to
> the general public be more of a benefit to our society than increasing our
> publication record?
>
> NOTE: I am asking this question, not to be critical (I too work to publish
> as we all should), but to get opinions as to the role that scientists
> should be playing in communicating what we know. It seems like the
> knowledge is getting lost (or altered) in between our journals and the
> popular media (for whatever reasons). What are the chances that scientists
> will start to be evaluated not only on their publication record, but also
> on how much they try to facilitate understanding in the public?
>
> All thought and comments are welcomed.
>
>
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Neil Paul Cummins <
> neilpaulcumm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Terrible reporting, like you say.
> >
> > Lovelock made predictions in 2006 (The Revenge of Gaia) concerning the
> end
> > of the century.
> >
> > There is still 88 years to ago, and yet the article claims that his
> > predictions have turned out to be false. That he was wrong!
> >
> > Ridiculous!
> >
> > Also, I am sure we can think of lots of examples of people who made
> > predictions, lost confidence and partially 'retracted', only for their
> > initial predictions to turn out to be 'correct'. Einstein springs to
> mind &
> > the cosmological constant.
> >
> >
> > Neil
> >
> > neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thursday, May 17, 2012, Matthew Peter Hill <hil...@unimelb.edu.au>
> > wrote:
> > > I don't think we need to worry too much about what Lovelock does and
> does
> > > not think, especially through reporting such as that..
> > >
> > > For some actual climate change science, this paper went up yesterday:
> > >
> > > http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00649.1
> > >
> > > Showing that the the last 50 years has seen warming like no other
> period
> > > over the last 1000 years in Australasia, and is very likely due to
> > > anthropogenic influence.
> > >
> > > Matt.
> > >
> > > On 17/05/12 7:53 AM, "Matheus Carvalho" <meumi...@yahoo.com.br> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Lovelock, the proposer of Gaia hypothesis, says his predictions (and
> > others
> > >> also) were exaggerated:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> >
> http://www.examiner.com/article/gaia-author-james-lovelock-recants-on-global-w
> > >> arming
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Matheus C. Carvalho
> > >> Senior Research Associate
> > >> Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry
> > >> Southern Cross University
> > >> Lismore - Australia
> > >> http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ostro
> > >>
> > >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Basil Iannone
> University of Illinois at Chicago
> Department of Biological Sciences (MC 066)
> 845 W. Taylor St.
> Chicago, IL 60607-7060
> Email: bian...@uic.edu
> Phone: 312-355-3231
> Fax: 312-413-2435
> http://www2.uic.edu/~bianno2
>
