Much ink has been spilled about the debate on evolution vs. creationism. Many in the scientific community argue that this debate, especially within the context of American public education is an impediment to scientific progress.
I don’t believe this is true. Why? Because the debate is out in the open and the arguments for both sides are visible in the mass media.
In this age of information warfare, the scientific community is loosing the battle against real threats to its legitimacy. I can discuss at length why, but I won’t in this post. These threats are subtle and not paid attention to in the mass media, but they are serious nonetheless.
What I want to do is point out the real threat to scientific progress in America. I will use one example to illustrate my point.
People like this “Dr.” (you need to read the whole bio to understand this post.) are appearing on late light radio shows like “Coast to Coast AM” which boast millions of listeners per night.
Although it is obvious to you, the scientist, that this “Dr.” is bogus and makes unsubstantiated claims using pseudoscience, I would argue that most of the people that pay taxes supporting your research grants can not so easily tell.
This “Dr.” is very good at couching non-facts in plenty of scientific-authoritative sounding language. Furthermore, this “Dr.” will be on a radio show this week, talking to millions and millions of listeners about this pseudoscience. Even if some percentage dismisses the “Dr.”, just based on the numbers-another large percentage will accept.
How many millions listen to you about the work you are doing and why it is important?
How many radio shows and internet broadcasts have you been on?
(And I don’t mean to be insulting, but obscure podcasts and NPR “science Fridays” which airs a low-ratings slot in the afternoon do not count for much).
You might say, “They will find us…” Wrong. This is the age of the internet-the signal-to-noise ratio on objective truth just got exponentially worse. You must go to them, or risk loosing them.
Now you might ask, “If we are educating kids in science, who cares about these adults listening to the shows and believing this crap.”
Well, we should care for two reasons: 1) I outlined above…these adults pay taxes that fund research 2) these adults teach the values they internalize to the children around them. These adults fuel the undermining of scientific progress by providing an ungrounded counter to what is taught in our public schools-overtly and subversively.
I ask: where is our forum in the mass media to discuss real science in front of millions?
We need this desperately.
We need scientists who won’t dismiss and alienate the layman by publishing books with inflammatory titles like The God Delusion, but who will get out and engage the children and the adults alike, in a non-confrontational manner. If you show them respect, they will be more likely to think aboout your arguments.
We too can be a real threat to scientific progress.
I guess we have a problem then, because reality just isn’t as convincing as the fantasy world.
Yep, Mark makes an important point. When we’re trained to communicate in a scientific context, we’re generally taught to report methods and results (facts). This means highlighting the boundaries of, or limits to our conclusions. This is vital for comparison within a field, but quickly becomes tedious for those not well versed in that field (the rest of the world).
It’s actually something I love about science – we are (supposed to be) VERY specific about our assumptions and interpretations. But it makes challenging nitwits less engaging in a public forum.
Science is not about ‘facts’, it is about very human things such as hopes, dreams, assumptions, possibilities and maybes. Whenever we create an hypothesis, we are inventing a fantasy world in which cool and unexpected things happen — things we can investigate and explore, with our natural sense of wonder open to anything that might happen.
The problem with the dissemination of science these days is the retrenchment of scientists caused by perceived assault from creationists, pseudoscientists and other nitwits, which lead deluded souls such as He Who Must Not Be Named to present a very dry, aggressive stance in which facts are everything — preferably delivered in a doctrinaire, patronizing, condescending style that’s not only unattractive, but also completely antithetical to the subversive, participatory exploration which we thought science was all about when we were younger.
But, here’s a thing — we were right then, and HWMNBN is wrong, utterly wrong, and the sooner we realize that, the better.
Henry, I think what I (perhaps too loosely) called facts are the direct result of the enquiring, wonderful ideas that people come up with – I don’t think the search for answers (facts) excludes creative questions at all.
I also think we can be very dogmatic in the methods we employ when we ask questions, or evaluate the way other people ask questions. Asking clever questions is fun, but the answers are still the really exciting part for me.
Simply asking the same question with different words isn’t all that interesting if it comes up with the same answer. But sometimes it is (the search for generalities) and this could be a post on its own about repeatability and deductionism…
(Just waiting to hear back from the NN bigwigs about my suitability)
Sorry for sidetracking your discussion, Michael.
Hope the news from the capitol is positive, Mike.
Henry,
I ask: where is our forum in the mass media to discuss real science in front of millions? We need this desperately. We need scientists who won’t dismiss and alienate the layman[…]
It’s what I am trying to address in a journal theme section. Maybe you’re interested!
Maxine: I promise I won’t advertise this all over on NN now :)
You guys are not sidetracking the discussion at all…I think your point, Mike is very interesting.
The idea the “reality is boring” posted by Mark, is the type of intrenched apathy I am upset with. Truth is truth, we all accept that it comes down to data signficance tests as scientists. This does not mean we can’t figure out a way to describe the importance of particle physics and make it exciting and intersting and palatable to a general audience.
Bill Nye did this for kids, but kids don’t pay taxes. We need a serious mass media science program that is interesting and can get into some detailed science.
The answers are cool, that is why we do it-it is an adventure. With the rise of western religious fundamentalism, the adventures may be ending soon unless we do some work.
Oh yaah.. and I meant to say ‘Michael’, not ‘Henry’.. (sorry Michael!!). […]the rise of western religious fundamentalism[…] – very depressing.
On a more positive note, there has been a successful science popularization show running in France since 1994 (approximately 400 shows so far), called C’est pas sorcier which is ostensibly aimed toward teenagers. As such, and because of its excellent light-hearted but accurate style, it appeals to precocious primary school-age children as well as adults.
The 1/2 hour show reaches some 800,000 people weekly. In a country of 60 million.
Themes touch on obviously science-related subjects like volcanos or astronomy but also on how the state budget gets determined or how cities around the world protect themselves from rising water levels.
Science culture among the general public is, in my opinion, better overall in Europe than in the U.S. (my only other point of reference). This may go hand-in-hand with the far lower profile creationists/fundamentalists of all ilks enjoy here.
It is difficult to control entities such as the internet, or even publishing houses, but established “news” agencies need to exercise significant caution and discipline when reporting on science to the public.
Doesn’t it all come down to transparency? Anybody can claim to be a degree-holding scientist, say whatever they want and attempt to “educate” the public. But those who provide the mass dissemination (such as the show referred to in Michael’s post) need to maintain the editorial and ethical integrity to disclose conflicts of interest; whether those conflicts are financial, political, mental (!!!), etc… This would allow those soaking up the information to make their own choices as to whether the “scientific authority” is actually making objective sense, based on the best available knowledge.
Although some science reports in the media are ill-advised, if the news outlet still sees some value in going forward with the report/feature/story/exposé, it should be cautioned by conflicts of interest, at least planting a seed of doubt in the mind of the viewer/reader/listener during the consolidation of the information. This is opposed to the alternative, in which the consumer of the information assimilates a position without considering why they should be skeptical.
I have discussed this angle elsewhere, if you are interested.
Also pertaining to the coverage of science by the news media, there is an interesting study from PLoS ONE you should look at; it is discussed further here.
In the spirit of Shamless Self-Promotion, pioneered by our own dear
dwarf fetishistHenry, I recently interviewed Ken Miller, star witness at the Dover ID trial, and reviewed his new book “Only a theory”.I feel strongly about the topic we’re discussing here and I feel better prepared to fight for the cause of academic honesty & freedom after reading Miller’s book.
The SciBlog meeting has generated a lot of light elsewhere on NN about the ability of scientists to communicate effectively. The discussion has obviously mostly revolved around media coverage of science. However, I think we can broaden that to our wider societal interactions. We have to be the mouthpiece for science because A) no one else is doing it & B) our opponents, as Michael points out, are very vocal and very well organised.
I honestly recommend that we study their “tactics”, read the literature of those that have gone before us (not to get too militaristic or metaphorical) and each one of us tries her or his best to…talk to people.
I had this rather utopian idea yesterday evening (please bear with me..). So the main problem is the ‘accessibility’ of ‘scientists’ and what they do to the ‘public’, I think – there’s not enough direct access, so the media steps in (I know, there are blogs, but not everyone reads them – it takes time to figure out which ones are interesting/good/pertinent for each of us – and not many people actually go out and actively search for information!).
So what about a massive website, somewhat like a professional directory (but not like the existing ones), of scientists in all kinds of fields worldwide.. explicitly for ‘the public’. The site would be searchable by topic, so e.g. a search for ‘evolution’ would bring up a (random) list of (friendly, approachable..) evolutionary biologists – who are then prepared to answer questions directly and in terms a layperson can understand.
Ian, I guess this would be a bit like talking to people directly and in person (and I think probably all of us already do that kind of outreach on a regular basis with friends, family, and sometimes in slightly bigger circles) – but it would make geeks more widely accessible. Again, the big point here would be the emphasis on communicating to lay persons – not a site only journalists and science writers ever use.
Is this something that people would use? (Who would host such a site? It would have to be advertised widely..)
Whatever effort we would put in popularizing science would be dwarfed by the effort, energy and zeal of those on the ‘opposite’ side.
Hence we would still rely on the quality of our views. Which will fall on deaf ears with most people since they just want an easily consumed soundbite.
small example
People still believe that the Twin Towers came down due to controlled demolition explosions because steel cannot melt at a certain temperature. Whatever scientific explanation you put opposite of that is pointless since it makes more sense to the people that steel can’t melt beyond its melting point, than an explanation of the complex dynamics of a fire, gravity, structural integrity, and add a dozen other factors.
Common sense rules in the mob and we don’t seem to get that fact.
So Mark – do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this?
Steffi — when blogs first started (way way back in about 2002-ish) there actually were directories of them, and bloggers all knew each other. The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood is a good book and covers this history.
Nowadays I think that services such as Postgenomic, which Euan described at Science Blogging 2008, are taking this role. That is, aggregators that provide an index of science blogs (which have to be “accepted” into the aggregator). The aggregator then does clever things, on a simple level displaing most recent, most referred etc posts and blogs, with the ability to search by subject and other keywords, but doubtless other information too. Euan hopes that this service will be available for science bloggers very soon, which I think will be one way to achieve some kind of quality measure of science in blogs.
I have friends who use a lot of alternative, unproven, medicine. They know it’s often not supported by science, and they can easily tell the difference between this “Dr.” and between someone with years of medical training, but they just don’t care. I also showed them PubMed, explaining that if something has been tested and published in the medical literature, it will be in there, even alternative medicine. I also got them to the point where they actually admitted that any benefits they get from any of the stuff they try might just be the placebo effect, but here’s where they just stopped caring. They don’t mind the placebo effect, as long as they feel better, and feel like they avoided Big Pharma and got better anyway.
Eva and Maxine – I think that is what I was trying to say. Information has to be as easily digestible as possible, and accessible at the touch of a button (think evening news as an extreme example). So are we back to square one? I still like my website idea – a directory with real people at the other end answering direct questions, as easy to use as Google.. (dream on..)
Steffi, something like Sense About Science?
Almost. But more interactive. Imagine a Google-type interface – one field to enter keywords. People type in their keywords and up come, let’s say, three (randomly selected from those signed up?) ‘experts’, who then answer questions forum-style. Easier for whoever is looking for information (they can ask EXACTLY what they want to know, and don’t need to read through a bunch of stuff), and more direct interaction between ‘public’ and scientists. Does that sound too far off? Would this actually be used? Again, its success would depend entirely on acceptance (and advertising..).
This is a very interesting line of thought, Steffi. Maybe you can write about it, or ask someone to write about it, for your theme section? (By the way, I think the theme section is a great initiative and I think it is also great that Nature Network is helping to refine some of the ideas for it and also to perhaps identify some authors.)
Thanks for your support Maxine! I could really just discuss/outline this idea, not technical aspects or potential problems something like this might run into. Anyone interested in picking up that end?
Eva-
I have many friends who tell that story too, and who think that I am part of big pharma just because I research basic science and that leads to a slippery slope to developing drugs that will steal money from the poor…those friends may never be swayed until they get really sick, unfortunately.
All these ideas about a website are great-but I think the world is saturated with science blogs and websites, and I don’t think they have had much effect…just check out The Bad Astronomer example.
Just like a old friend told me when I thought I wanted to get multiple B.A.degrees instead of a Ph.D., “Mike, 1000 undergraduate degrees do not add up to one good dissertation,” thousands of science websites would not ad up to one, weekly, highly visible network show about real science (in decent detail) linking basic research to real-life results.
The oil compaines are just starting to get this point actually, have you seen the commercials Shell Oil is running in America with scientists talking about how polymer research will lead to cheaper gas?
This is more what I am referring to. Working people raising a family do not have too much time to peruse the net looking for websites.
Michael,
[You] ask: where is our forum in the mass media to discuss real science in front of millions?
Working people raising a family do not have too much time to peruse the net looking for websites.
Which is where the idea for ONE, VERY easy to use website came from.
..or do you think there’s a better chance to get a 10 minute slot on the evening news in every country on the planet?
All good questions. The competition to persuade eminent (famous) scientists to start blogging might be a help. It is tragic when “science news coverage” is blanket in a case when Prof Reiss of the Royal Society has his remarks misinterpreted, misquoted and attacked, and rather lacking when there are so many interesting real developments going on.
What Is “Scientific Progress”
What Is Needed To Advance Science
A. What is “Scientific Progress”?
What and whereto progresses in “Scientific Progress”?
Answering this requires meticulous pondering. This subject is not one quaint aspect within our present 21st century technology culture. This subject is THE essence and foundation of the course and goal of our existence, of our life as individuals and members of our phenosociety and of Earth’s genohuman group.
B. Please look, even if again, at “Western Culture Wavers At 2008 Junction”
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080924/full/455446a.html
or
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=14988&st=315&#entry380527
Science-based Enlightenment started in the 18th century and was the basis-foundation of Western culture-civilization. It came to a grinding slow-down in the 20th century, and systematic basic study of life ceased by the 21st century. It ceased because the quest for enlightenment has been gradually replaced during the 20th century by the pursuit of technology-capital-greed values-attitudes-morals-ethics of the 21st century technology culture.
C. “Scientific Progress” is the continuous promotion
of the pursuit by science, of convincing, ever closer approaching, approximate models of the real world including life and ourselves. This is furthering Enlightenment’s inherent philosophy and attitudes in regards to individualism, universal human progress and, most important to humanity, the applications of reason.
D. So What Is Needed To Advance Science
Again and again, as long as Science and Technologhy are considered and handled, conceptually and administratively, as one realm and one faculty the disregard of science in favor of technology cannot and will not be overcome. This conception and attitude is THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE BY THE 21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGY CULTURE. I reckon that most, if not all, readers of this post associate science and technology conceptually, demonstrating the tight hold of the 21st century technology culture on their mentality-concepts-attitudes.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q—?cq=1