The basic assumption behind all of the articles is that communicating science to the public is A Good Thing, and scientists should be trying to help with it - whether by blogging about science, or helping to write press releases, or talking more to journalists.
I'm not sure about this. Sure - good, accurate information about science should be available to anyone who looks for it. But the same goes for history, or politics, or cricket. If people want to know about something, they should be able to read good stuff that's been written about it. I think there is an awful lot of great science writing out there, both in books, in print, and online. You can never have enough of it, though, so scientists should certainly be encouraged to write about science or help others to write about science in this way.What I find questionable, though, is the idea that people who aren't really interested in science should be the targets of science communication. The Nature editorial of 19th March warns that
An average citizen is unlikely to search the web for the Higgs boson or the proteasome if he or she doesn't hear about it first on, say, a cable news channel. And as mass media sheds its scientific expertise, science's mass market presence will become harder to maintain.Which is true, but I can't help but ask, why should the average citizen know or care about the Higgs boson? I find the Higgs boson quite interesting, although I admit, not as interesting as the brain. But I don't think that everyone should share my tastes. Personally, I find cricket deadly boring; I've never read the cricket pages of the newspaper, and I don't think I ever will. But some people are really into it, and good for them. If you prefer cricket to particle physics, who am I, or the editors of Nature, to say that's a problem?
The obvious response to what I've just said is that in a democracy, people have to know about science, because a lot of the major challenges facing our society involve science. If the public are ignorant about science, we won't be able to deal effectively with, say, climate change. There's probably some truth in that, but I suspect it's more important to educate people about climate change specifically, than to try to get them interested in Higgs bosons and hope that their passion for physics somehow "spills over" into a concern for the environment.
So, personally, I'm not really concerned if the public aren't interested in science. What concerns me is when they're actively fed inaccurate information about science. This just my personal take, but I would far rather that the newspapers never run another story about neuroimaging, say, than they keep on running rubbish ones.
Nature (2009). It's good to blog Nature, 457 (7233), 1058-1058 DOI: 10.1038/4571058aBrumfiel, G. (2009). Science journalism: Supplanting the old media? Nature, 458 (7236), 274-277 DOI: 10.1038/458274a
Nature (2009). Filling the void Nature, 458 (7236), 260-260 DOI: 10.1038/458260a
Nature Neuroscience (2009). Getting the word out Nature Neuroscience, 12 (3), 235-235 DOI: 10.1038/nn0309-235
8 comments:
I think the task isn't to preach science to those who aren't interested, but rather to try to get more people interested in science. If good science writing isn't easily accessbile, then that will hinder that. Think of it as advertising science.
It's important that people are interested in science, because otherwise they will end up not trusting science or scientists. Funding etc will dry up.
One thing I think you missed about the importance of teaching about science in general first is that most of the general public does not really trust or even *believe* in science.
Most people go through the motions of learning science during school, without really caring or understanding it thoroughly. In their everyday adult life their exposure to science is then limited to shallow news articles that either misrepresent their subject or make fun of "wacky" findings and studies that reach "obvious" conclusions, and they do not engage in finding out further about it because they do not need to anymore.
So, without getting the full picture, and realizing the full capabilities of science, that misrepresentation becomes *the* representation of science for them.
Over time, they start to think of science as just another opinion. Just another story, like faith, mysticism, etc. And that's why being a skeptic is so hard – that is just how *you* see things, but I'm entitled to *my* opinion.
So getting them educated about, say, global warming, won't do much if they intuitively do not "buy" both global warming and science in the first place. It's simply a story that will not resonate with their intellectual preferences, developed over time in the absence of science.
I'm not really concerned if the public aren't interested in science
Don't you think that a public anot interested in science in a democracy could vote for supress funding to scientific endevours?
I think the higg's boson example is not the best example to think the problem. Ok, maybe the average person should not be interested in the standard model, but I think the average person should be interested in learning some of statistics theory in order to avoid mistakes in their own life.
i think higgs is exceptionally good example. it is extremely difficult to communicate such abstract things like theoretical physics or standard model to general public. to do it in a way that fundaments are easy to understand and nothing is oversimplified is a hard thing. but an important one.
common people have just a dim idea about what particle physics (and most of current sophisticated branches of science) is. the same is true for what is to be a theoretical physicist (or generally scientist) and why people do it. ok, maybe they do not need things like higgs to live their everyday life, but why then they should think that it is important? why should they support/"believe" in science then? how you can prevent them to believe in things like creationism? proper translations of the most sophisticated views about "how world goes" are absolutely necessary. it is like to try to make all people literate, to equip them to cope better with misleading informations around.
moreover, LHC in CERN is (as well experiments in Tevatron, US) so expensive that people need to know what is going on and scientists need to be able to explain and communicate.
and, in fact, people are asking... in a way: for what is good to spend such a huge amount of money? to let some physicist play? and interesting is that not only non-scientists are asking. often scientists from other fields are questioning it, like: would not be better to spent such money for cancer research or e.g for cold fusion? this can saves millions of lifes! isn`t it much better then to search some... boson?
i am a neuroscientists but i like theoretical physics a lot. if you go insight enough, you see that that is really fundamental thing of all (and full of mysteries, just waiting to be explained) and is beautiful and fascinating if you thing over a bit about consequences(even though i have no intelectual capacity to understand the math behind). and if we (all of us, despite of particular sci branch) are doing science, isn`t it because we search for fundamental things? (i mean, not only for things, which can be "used" for something). and we have to inform competently and extensivelly about it, about what we have found and how it have changed our view of the world, universe, everyday experience... otherwise there will be informational scissors opening more and more as grow of sci informations is speeding up still. and this just can not be good. neither for scientists nor public.
m.
I think the previous comments have said just about all that needs to be said, generally I agree. The one thing I will add is this, which an old supervisor of mine said;
The vast majority of science funding comes from the public purse, so if the public coming asking for information (probably via journalists) there is a duty to give it.
G.
Improbable: Don't you think that a public not interested in science in a democracy could vote for suppress funding to scientific endeavors?
Well, they might, but I don't think it's likely to happen. it hasn't happened yet, and public knowledge of science is notoriously poor at the moment.
I think a lot of people who don't really understand science see it as something important, even slightly magical, despite that. Or maybe even because of that - science is so hard, it must be really valuable.
Now in many ways it's sad that people feel that way, but on the other hand, it does mean that they're happy for their taxes to spent on science.
G: I completely agree. What I'm querying is whether scientists should be actively promoting science to those members of the public who don't come asking.
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