Thanks again, Susi, for compiling the replies. 'Tis a great service to us all.
Yours,
Michael Maniates
At 06:43 PM 2/14/2005, you wrote:
Hi everyone -
I don't think I can attach files to messages to the entire list, so I insert below the compiled, pretty much unedited feedback and suggestions I received from you. I also contacted the editor of Science Communication and through her found lots more, so hopefully this is all useful to you.
Thanks - as always - for your help.
Susi
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Scientists Speaking out in Public – Outreach and Education in Their own View
Dear gep-ed'ers –
I have a question regarding the state of the literature and some good references on a topic I’m currently interested in. What has been written, studied, previously said about scientists’ own perceptions and attitudes toward communicating environmental problems to the public? Issues and questions of interest here include:
- scientists’ opinions of the public’s scientific literacy and interestedness in science
- scientists’ beliefs of the public’s access to the professional research literature and their use of that
- scientists’ opinions of whether or not the public cares about research or environmental issues (e.g., if public doesn’t change it’s behavior after hearing a scientist’s talk, do scientists then believe that the public must not care about the issue they talked about?)
- scientists’ incentives (or lack thereof) to speak out in public (all audiences, incl. policy-makers), do public ed and outreach
- scientists’ opinions on whose job it is to disseminate research and do outreach
- physical scientists’ opinions of social scientists’ (e.g., do physical scientists believe that it’s the social scientists’ job, i.e., social scientists as “journalists” or “extension agents” while the physical scientists do “the real work”…)
- requirements and accountability of scientists to do public outreach/ed
I've just completed a 2-year AAAS Fellowship at the US State Department. The AAAS program places PhD scientists in government agencies for 1-2 years with the dual purpose of infusing the government policy process with scientific thinking and expertise, as well as educating scientists in the ways of policy-making so that they can take this knowledge back to the classroom. I can't help you with specific references, but AAAS has been running this program for 20 years and focusing on this exact topic. I would guess they could definitely send you in the right direction. Try: http://www.aaas.org/programs/
Good Luck,
Dorothy C. Zbicz, PhD
I don't know if my thoughts will be of any value, but I thought I would offer them in case they might be of some interest to you. I have been teaching environmental studies for 34 years (I'm in my last semester of teaching), during which I have worked in a department and with others across campus, the majority of them from the sciences and from economics. I also have had many professional occasions to work closely with scientists. Among these is the four day conference on "complexity in bioengineering in medicine and agriculture" for which I am the moderater, held in Montana every other year. There I am one of the few non-scientists, (most there are geneticists are others working in fields with strong genetics ties) and the scientists are much taken up with discussing many of the issues of public attitudes, public perceptions, etc, that apparently concern you.
First caveat: ignore everything I say because it is fatal to stereotype. Scientist are like every other group, enormously diverse in personality, background, politics, and perspective.
Ignoring the caveat and proceeding to stereotypes. When I was young, I read C.P. Snow's classic work, "The Two Cultures" that takes up many of the questions you are asking here. It was written by an Englishman in England and a long time ago. I was at first very taken with it and thought that he was saying something of enormous importance. I then had more experience working with, for, and against scientists and began to think that what he had to say was too simplified and based on stereotypes, and that it was no longer useful. Then, I discovered, as the Zen masters say, that with enlightenment, a mountain is once again just a mountain. I now think that Snow's essential insights were just about right and that they are a very good starting point for discussing these issues. I recommend it highly to you.
The gist of it is that there is a genuine and vast cultural chasm between scientists and those trained in sciences and humanities. The precise nature of this gap is very hard to define, but I am more than before convinced that it exists and is profoundly important. The best I can do to define it is to say that while good scientists are rigorously trained in critical attitudes towards knowledge, many tend to hold an implicit and unexamined, even unconscious, view that there is or ought to be a discernable and reasonably reliable truth about a situation, and they tend to assume that human society is simpler than the natural world. Thus, there should be some reasonably reliable truths about human society. Those of us on the other side of the chasm (did I say I was trained as a historian, with a broad background in geography, economics, and anthropology added?) assume that nothing is more complex, in any meaningful sense, than human society and human motivations and we tend to assume that most knowledge on these matters is extremely provisional and unreliable.
I just had a half-drunk debate over dinner on Tuesday night with one of the founders of the modern environmental movement, a geneticist who is a very dear, close friend. The subject? Was the enlightenment to blame for our environmental troubles? I have let him get away with saying that it was for years without seriously challenging him. This become the serious confrontation. Without getting into the details of the argument, what became clear to me was that for him the enlightenment could be accurately pictured by the works of Descartes and Bacon and a couple of others, and that his conclusions were drawn from their view of the world. Ignoring whether his characterization of these authors was accurate and whether they are therefore to blame for Chernobyl, Love Canal, and global warming, what I struggled with was trying to show him that the enlightenment was many things, and that it was as much as anything a series of arguments, tensions, dialectics, and deeply held attitudes that was Baconian and Cartesian as well as anti-Baconian and anti-Cartesian, and that in my view, if we had to take a single representative of the enlightenment, it was the studied and determined skepticism of Voltaire that was most characteristic. I also couldn't figure out how he could keep his beloved Darwin while throwing out the enlightenment, but he did not see a problem here.
From a stuffy humanists point of view, it seemed that the problem could simply be a lack of depth of knowledge about the multi-faceted Enlightenment, but I don't much faith in that. In some respects, he knows more about it than I do. And I just don't think that captures it. Rather, it is that determination to be able to say that if we have a workable category--the enlightenment--than we ought to be able to characterize it in non-ambiguous and non-contradictory ways. Otherwise, in his view, you have to dispense with the category. That is just not the way of my people, on this side of the chasm. We accept the profound ambiguity and embedded contradictions of human life and knowledge.
So, I find, and I think it is related to this, that many scientists, do, as your questions seem to suggest, begin to think that if they have put forward a finding and the public has not acted on it, then it is appropriate to be scornful and contemptuous of the public. But on this side of the gap, the very category "public" is slippery and treacherous and filled with ambiguities and contradictions. In the same way, our science colleagues are tempted to think of us with our huts on this side of chasm as fuzzy headed and often useless because of our tendency to give fuzzy, complex answers, when they want and think it is possible to say something more straightforward.
Perhaps my biggest complaint in working with scientists is their frequent attitude that anyone can learn our fields in a relatively straightforward way in a short period of time--all it requires is reading enough books--while their fields require the discipline of field and laboratory and mathematical precision that we will never master. And yet, in our ambiguous and fuzzy-headed way, I am hard put to tell them why this is not true.
My biggest complaint about my social science and humanities colleagues is that they have completely insufficient respect for the discipline of field, laboratory and mathematical precision that our science colleagues have internalized. Few on my side of the gap appreciate what hard work goes into demonstrating the validity of even the most limited scientific hypotheses and theories. Few are willing to even try to read scientific literature with dedication and humility, and discuss it openly with scientist colleagues in ways that risk revealing our profound ignorance.
Talking to journalists?!! That is an incredibly difficult issue with scientists. At the Montana conference I tried to get the scientist to talk about how they might be able to approach this problem in a more productive way that would make them feel safer about engaging with the press. I failed utterly--their attitude was that while it couldn't be avoided, any discussion with the press is congress with the devil and that nothing could be done to make it any better than their totally disastrous expectations. Still, most like to see their names in print--there is a reason people have congress with the devil--and perhaps the most common is vanity.
Well, this rant has gone on long enough, and probably isn't that valuable as just the opinion of an opinionated person. Hope it does serves some purpose in thinking about it.
One way to go about it might be precisely to reevaluate C.P. Snow in light of some of the recent literature, including the suggestions others have sent you. This has been done before, but I think it has been awhile, and Snow bears periodic reexamination. After all, as a scientist, politician, and bureaucrat trying to deal with what we might now include in our notion of environmental issues, Snow was trying to get at many if not all of the same issues, and his thinking has reverberated through the literature even among those who have never heard of his name.
Angus Wright
Cal State U. Sacramento
Environmental Studies<>I am teaching a course that required a search for similar materials. Though I was far from satisfied with the results of my search (esp. for articles on political engagement by scientists), I would suggest the references below.
Katharine S. Miller, Wanted: 'Civic Scientists' to Educate the Public, Press and Policy Makers, Stanford Report, February 20, 2001.
William G. Wells, Jr., Working with Congress: A Practical Guide for Scientists and Engineers, 2nd Edition, AAAS, 1996.
Jan D'Arcy, Technically Speaking: A Guide for Communicating Complex Information, Batelle Press, 1998.
Henry N. Pollack, Uncertain Science...Uncertain World, Cambridge University Press, 2003. Chapters 2 & 4.
Paul Slovic, Beyond Numbers: A Broader Perspective on Risk Perception and Risk Communication, pp. 48-65 in Deborah G. Mayo and Rachelle D. Hollander, Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in Risk Management, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Gerd Gigerenzer and Adrian Edwards (2003) Simple Tools for Understanding Risks: >From Innumeracy to Insight, British Medical Journal 327:741-744.
Harvey Brooks (1984) The Resolution of Technically Intensive Public Policy Disputes, Science, Technology, & Human Values 9 (1):39-50.
<>
You might want to check out the web site of the American Geological Institute (AGI) where there is extensive information on the “civic geologist” (www.agiweb.org). The Geological Society of American (www.geosociety.org) and a geology and public policy committee and sponsors workshops on communicating with the public and with public organizations. The American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG) also has extensive material about this on their web site (www.aipg.org). These sites will give you information from a scientist’s perspective. I assume that AAAS and other scientific organizations have similar stuff.
There is a “scientists on the hill” event yearly where AGI, AIPG and other scientific organizations (notably AAAS) bring scientists into Washington for two days of lobbying on behalf of scientific research. I’ve participated in this a couple of times. It’s pretty interesting.
Just a comment: as a “lurker” on this list and as a geologist who engages in “public geology” I’ve noticed that sometimes the analyses of the social scientists are weak on facts and science.
Larry Davis
Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of New Haven <>
Additional info: I went to a web site for searching science papers (www.scirus.com) and put in “scientists perception of their role in public policy” and got 597 “hits” just searching journals. Some of them looked interesting. I know that there have been occasional papers presented on this at meetings of the Geological Society of America (I actually organized a symposium on this at northeastern meeting some years back) but, as far as I know, none have been published (outside of abstracts). I have published a paper “The Value of Teaching about Geomorphology in Non-Traditional Settings” that does include some discussion of your topic especially as it applies to public outreach. It is available through Science Direct on-line or I could send you a reprint. The full reference is:
Davis, R. Laurence. 2002. “The Value of Teaching About Geomorphology in Non-traditional Settings.” Geomorphology. 47:251-260.
The National Parks Service operates, in conjunction with the American Geological Institute (I think) a Geologist in the Park program that draws a lot of volunteers who are interested in public outreach and education. You might find some stuff related to that too.
Stanford has three biologists who are in the forefront of communicating to the public -- Paul Ehrlich, Gretchen Daily and Steve Schneider. Look at stephenschneider.stanford.edu.
You might also fine "Environmental Values in American Culture" by Willett Kempton, James Boster and Jennifer Hartley, 1997, MIT Press, to be of some use. It has a chapter of case studies on influential specialists.
I did some reading on this a few years back, so these sources are a bit dated, but I don't think they've been mentioned. Some directly focus on communication to the public. However, I've included a couple that are more on the science-policy nexus, but that touch on some of the issues you listed.<> 1. F. Sherwood Rowland. 1993. "President's Lecture: The Need for Scientific Communication with the Public" in Science 260:1571-1576.<>
2. John Lemmons and Donald A. Brown. 1995. "The Role of Science in Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection Decisionmaking." In Lemmons and Brown, "Sustainable Development: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy", pp. 11-38. Kordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.<>
3. Shardul Agrawala. 1999. "Early Science-Policy Interactions in Climate Change: Lessons from the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases." Global Environmental Change 9:157-159.<>
4. Lawrence E. Susskind. 1994. Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements. New York: Oxford UP. If I recall, he had a pretty good summary discussion on pp. 62-81 of the difficulties and/or obstacles facing scientists in communicating policy-relevant knowledge to the public and policy makers.
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Here's one piece that talks about keeping science out of political decisions:
<>Freyfogle, Eric T. and Julianne Lutz Newton (2002). "Putting Science in its Place." Conservation Biology 16(4): 863-873.
and another my students found helpful this year:
<>Jeffrey A. McNeely, "Strange Bedfellows: Why Science and Policy don't mesh and what can be done about it", in Cracraft, Joel, and Francesca T. Grifo, eds. The Living Planet in Crisis: Biodiversity, Science and Policy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
<>
Both pieces are more accurately characterized as reflections by scientists rather than actual empirical studies - but interesting, nonetheless.
Science in Public: Communication, Culture, and Credibility, by Jane Gregory and Steve Miller
Reviews/comments at Amazon.com:
We leave our cars to mechanics--why shouldn't we leave science to scientists? Science critic Jane Gregory and chemist Steve Miller tear down our preconceptions about popular science education and erect a scaffolding on which to build new communication systems with Science in Public: Communication, Culture, and Credibility. This deeply thoughtful book explores the lengthy history of scientific mass communication and the various rationales for encouraging greater public understanding of research processes and results. >From Copernicus to Carl Sagan, great thinkers have tried to explain not just the facts and theories produced by science, but the very work itself. Their reasons are enlightening and more often than not surprisingly self-serving, but Gregory and Miller are careful to maintain a tone of fairness throughout. What can we learn about the various forces of academia, government, business, and the media that have profoundly different interests in scientific communication, and how can we use this awareness to best help all the people and systems involved? Science in Public seeks to calmly observe and judge these forces, occasionally using case studies, like the mad cow madness that struck Europe in the waning days of the 20th century, to illustrate points. Any reader interested in science or education will find it a challenging and provocative work. --Rob Lightner
Product Description:
A fascinating and insightful look at science in the media.
Does the general public need to understand science? And if so, is it scientists' responsibility to communicate? Critics have argued that, despite the huge strides made in technology, we live in a "scientifically illiterate" society--one that thinks about the world and makes important decisions without taking scientific knowledge into account. But is the solution to this "illiteracy" to deluge the layman with scientific information? Or does science news need to be focused around specific issues and organized into stories that are meaningful and relevant to people's lives? In this unprecedented, comprehensive look at a new field, Jane Gregory and Steve Miller point the way to a more effective public understanding of science in the years ahead.
The UK did an interesting study that I sent to you and for which the URL is:
Role of Scientists in Public Debate, which can be found at:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc%5Fwtd003429.html [SM: this is a GREAT link!!]
<>
Additional info from Carol Rogers (editor of Science Communication)
As you are probably aware, most studies look at the public's perceptions of science and their knowledge of science. Most don't actually look at the scientists' roles etc.
We have published a couple of things in Science Communication over the last several years -- a piece I remember from Australia a few years ago and we currently have one in the pipeline from the US. We also have published a couple of things dealing with scientists communicating with the public from overseas, if memory serves from the Netherlands and maybe Scandinavia but I haven't had a chance to pull out the specific citations.
Michael F. Weigold (2001). Communicating Science: A Review of the Literature
Science Communication, Dec; 23: 164 - 193.
Svein Kyvik (2005). Popular Science Publishing and Contributions to Public Discourse among University Faculty. Science Communication, Mar; 26: 288-311.
Rick E. Borchelt. Communicating the Future: Report of the Research Roadmap Panel for Public Communication of Science and Technology in the Twenty-first Century. Science Communication, Dec 2001; 23: 194 - 211.
Debbie Treise and Michael F. Weigold. Advancing Science Communication: A Survey of Science Communicators. Science Communication, Mar 2002; 23: 310 - 322.
JoAnn Myer Valenti. How Well Do Scientists Communicate to Media? Science Communication, Dec 1999; 21: 172 - 178.
Nora Jacobson, Dale Butterill, and Paula Goering. Organizational Factors that Influence University-Based Researchers’ Engagement in Knowledge Transfer Activities. Science Communication, Mar 2004; 25: 246 - 259.
Ellen Hijmans, Alexander Pleijter, and Fred Wester. Covering Scientific Research in Dutch Newspapers. Science Communication, Dec 2003; 25: 153 - 176.
Barrie Gunter, Julian Kinderlerer, and Deryck Beyleveld. The Media and Public Understanding of Biotechnology: A Survey of Scientists and Journalists
Science Communication, Jun 1999; 20: 373 - 394.
Claire Mcinerney, Nora Bird, and Mary Nucci. The Flow of Scientific Knowledge from Lab to the Lay Public: The Case of Genetically Modified Food. Science Communication, Sep 2004; 26: 44 - 74.
D<>avid A. Rier. Work Setting, Publication, and Scientific Responsibility. Science Communication, Jun 2003; 24: 420 - 457.
A few years ago, the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center did a report on World's Apart, which looked at the relationship between scientists and journalists. It is widely cited but frankly the methodology isn't the best.
http://www.freedomforum.org/publications/first/worldsapart/worldsapart.pdf
See also: Robert A. Logan. Review Essay: Worlds Apart. Science Communication, Mar 1999; 20: 337 - 343.
Research!America has regularly done surveys of scientists asking among other things about obstacles to communicating and find, for example, that scientists say they don't have the skills. They also mention barriers etc.
And several years ago, Dunwoody and a colleague did a study that also looked at scientists.
(for Sharon Dunwoody’s list of publications, see http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/faculty/images/pdfs/dunwoCV.pdf; selected references are listed below.)
<>Sharon Dunwoody, Reconstructing Science for Public Consumption: Journalism as Science Education. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University, 1993. <>
Sharon Dunwoody and Michael Ryan, "Scientific Barriers to the Popularization of Science in the Mass Media," Journal of Communication 35:26-42, Winter 1985.
Sharon Dunwoody, "Scientists and Journalists: A Shared Culture?" Etudes de Radio-Television, No. 33, June 1984, pp. 17-27.
<>Sharon Dunwoody and Michael Ryan, "Public Information Persons as Mediators Between Scientists and Journalists," Journalism Quarterly 60:647-656, Winter 1983. <>
Sharon Dunwoody and Byron T. Scott, "Scientists as Mass Media Sources," Journalism Quarterly 59:52-59, Spring 1982.
<>Sharon Dunwoody, "The Science Writing Inner Club: A Communications Link Between Science and the Lay Public," Science, Technology, &Human Values 5:14-22, Winter 1980.
Reprinted in G. Cleveland Wilhoit and Harold de Bock, eds., Mass Communications <>Review Yearbook, vol. 2 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981) pp. 351-359.
Reprinted in Sharon M. Friedman, Sharon Dunwoody and Carol L. Rogers, eds., Scientists and Journalists: Reporting Science as News (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 155-169.
<>
Sharon Dunwoody, "Relationships Between Scientists and Journalists in the 21st Century," Proceedings: The First World Conference of Science Journalists. Tokyo: National Federation of UNESCO Associations in Japan, 1993, p. 53.<>
Sharon Dunwoody, "The Challenge for Scholars of Popularized Science Communication: Explaining Ourselves. Public Understanding of Science 1(1):11-14, 1992. <>
Sharon Dunwoody, "Scientists Talk to the Press to Help Themselves, Not the Public," Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers 31:6-7, October 1983. <>
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Van der Vink, Gregory E. 1997. Scientifically Illiterate vs. Politically Clueless (Editorial). Science 276: 1175.
Charles R. Chappell and James Hartz. 1998. The Challenge of Communicating Science to the Public. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Available at: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Resources/essays/sci_comm.html
<>Getting the Message Across: Scientists in Public Relations. Science BY KIRSTIE URQUHART
2 MAY 2003; http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/04/30/2
The Role of Young Scientists in Public Communication; Science by TERRY VRIJENHOEK, 19 MARCH 2004; http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2004/03/18/2
Why Should Scientists Bother Talking to the Public? Science BY GRAHAM FARMELO; 7 JANUARY 2000; http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2000/01/06/5
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And last but not least:
Blockstein, David E. 2002. How to lose your political virginity while keeping your scientific credibility. BioScience 52(1): 91-96.
Susi
*****************************************Susanne C. Moser, Ph.D. Institute for the Study of Society and Environment (ISSE) National Center for Atmospheric Research P.O.Box 3000 Boulder, CO 80307-3000 Tel.: 303.497.8132 Fax.: 303.497.8125 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.isse.ucar.edu/moser/index.html "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ******************************************
