Category: science communication

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evolution metaphor science communication

Metaphor in Darwin’s “Origin of Species”

Metaphor plays a number of roles in the scientific process, from facilitating exploration of newly-recognized phenomena, to grounding predictive models that aid in analysis, to transporting ideas among different scientific fields, and perhaps finally to public communication. When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, metaphor had a central role in shaping his ideas about evolution by natural selection. He also was explicit about using metaphor to describe his theory.

Artificial selection apparent in dogs (Ellen Levy Finch).

Darwin used a number of different metaphors in his book for different aspects of his theory. Some of these metaphors took years to develop, and became central organizing ideas of his work. He used others more to ‘translate’ his ideas for the public consciousness. Howard Gruber lists five main metaphors in the Origin: artificial selection, wedges, war, a tree, and a tangled bank. Of these, the tree of life and warfare metaphors seem to be the two that are most widely referenced today.

Darwin used artificial selection– plant and animal breeding- to relate natural selection to a familiar process. In both types of selection, a population of organisms starts with genetic variation. In natural selection, limited resources and competition mean that only some of the organisms will survive to reproduce. In artificial selection, people pick organisms with desired traits to reproduce. This metaphor illustrates that selection can result in large changes in a population over time. One problem with this metaphor is that “selection” implies a “selector,” and natural selection happens largely via chance.

Action of a wedge (Wikipedia).

The wedge metaphor made it into the first edition of the Origin, but Darwin removed it from the second- so most people haven’t seen it. He says: “The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards with incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.” Wedges that stay in the yielding surface are species that survive, but to stick into the surface they presumably have to pop other wedges out.

While the wedge metaphor implies that competition is necessary for survival, the warfare metaphor makes this more explicit. For example, seedlings need to overcome “enemy” seedlings in a competition for space, and males compete for females in sexual selection. Today, the warfare metaphor is largely known by the phrase “survival of the fittest” (which didn’t actually appear in the first edition of Origin).

Darwin’s tree metaphor is probably his central organizing vision of evolution over time. From a single starting point, genetic changes in different populations send species down different evolutionary paths. Some of these “branches” survive, and split in turn to end off new branches. Other branches wither, and species become extinct. Over time, the single starting species gives rise to a multitude of different species, some persisting and some passing away. The metaphor of the “tree of life” is one that Darwin worked on for years and was never entirely satisfied with, but it’s a metaphor that still has a lot of resonance today.

Another "tangled bank": a coral reef (Richard Ling, Wikipedia).

While the tree of life represents the grand scope of evolution over time, the tangled bank illustrates the diversity of life that we can see all around us: “It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.” He uses the diverse “tangled bank” to illustrate how complexity can arise from the interaction of a few simple rules for natural selection. This is actually the final grand metaphor in the Origin, and in it he tries to provide readers with a vision of life’s diversity, underpinned by the common relationships of species.

References:

Darwin, Charles, and James T. Costa. The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2009. Print.

Gruber, Howard E. “Diverse Relations Between Psychology and Evolutionary Thought.” in Howard E. Gruber and Katja Bodeker (eds.) Creativity, Psychology and the History of Science, pp 167-191. New York: Springer, 2005. Print.

Edited 20 June 2011 to fix broken link.

Categories
birds environment science communication

Cooper’s hawk in library captured

The Cooper’s Hawk that’s been trapped inside the US Library of Congress reading room for the past week has been captured. She’s underweight, and will have to be rehabilitated before she’s released (presumably away from downtown Washington, DC).

The hawk strikes a dramatic pose (Library of Congress blog).

I find this account of the capture interesting. You can generally tell the sex of raptors apart, because of size (females are larger than males) and sometimes markings. You can also tell she’s a juvenile- adults have different markings:

Adult Cooper's Hawk (Peter Wallack, Wikipedia).

However, even though this hawk’s gender was known, reporters are having a really hard time referring to her as ‘her’- they seem to bounce between referring to her with female pronouns and gender-neutral pronouns.

I wonder what prompts this sort of confusion, in a case where the sex of a specific animal is definitely known. I know English a rare European language in which species aren’t ‘assigned’ a gender automatically (my German-speaking grandmother constantly refers to Noe as ‘he’ even though she knows she’s female!) I know the convention is to refer to animals as ‘it’- at least wild animals, that is. Maybe the author of this piece just can’t get past that convention? Then, of course, there are all the commentators that call the bird ‘he’- maybe because she’s a powerful bird of prey and therefore must be male?

This gets at one annoying issue in our cultural depictions of animals in popular media- for example, in movies like “A Bug’s Life” and “Barnyard“. Especially in animated films, the social behaviors in different species are rarely depicted correctly. This ranges from depicting animals as the normative nuclear family (e.g., “Aristocats“), to turning female animals male (as in “A Bug’s Life” and “Barnyard”). The case of “Barnyard” is particularly egregious- in that movie, the protagonist is a cow (complete with udders), but is voiced by a male actor.

Notice the offending organ is covered up in this DVD cover (Wikipedia).

Unless there is something seriously wrong with that poor bull’s genitalia, this is a really unfortunate mistake. How can you design a character whose salient bits are a hanging out for all to see, and then assign the wrong gender to it? (Okay, in this case udders are not genitalia, but you get my point.)

…Though I suppose I should give the hawk commenters the benefit of the doubt and concede that, indeed, birds do not have dangling penii to make immediate identification obvious.

Categories
birds environment science communication

Flockalypse redux

Today, I’m revisiting my recent blog post on the “Flockalypse” to try to shed some light on what scientists mean when they say that large numbers of birds being killed “happens all the time.” I’ve seen this phrase in the news a lot lately, and I want to point out that it does not mean that scientists think that these types of deaths are “okay.”

Instead of taking “happens all the time” as a dismissal of the importance of mass bird die-offs, let’s look at as recognizing that many, many birds are killed every day from causes that are directly related to human activity. How many? Well, that’s hard to estimate, for a couple of reasons. One big reason is that many of these deaths occur at night, and night-roaming scavengers quickly dispose of the evidence.

Here’s one estimate of numbers. A 2005 paper by Wallace Erickson, Gregory Johnson, and David Young (“A Summary and Comparison of Bird Mortality from Anthropogenic Causes with an Emphasis on Collisions“) estimates that 500 million-1 billion birds are killed each year in the U.S. alone from human-related causes. This includes:

  • Collisions with buildings – 550 million (58.2%)
  • Collisions with power lines – 130 million (13.7%)
  • Cats – 100 million (10.6%)
  • Cars, trucks, etc. – 80 million (8.5%)
  • Pesticides – 67 million (7.1%)
  • Communication towers – 4.5 million (0.5%)
  • Wind turbines – 28.5 thousand (less than 0.01%)
  • Airplanes – 25 thousand (less than 0.01%)
  • Other sources (oil spills, fishing by-catch, etc) – did not estimate

While recent large mortality events have been in the news, the point I want to make is that a constant level of bird deaths occurs constantly due to human-related factors. These are large numbers. One in six bird species worldwide is threatened with extinction, because of the factors listed above plus things like habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change.

The endangered Florida Scrub-Jay (byVvAndromedavV, wikipedia.org)

Looking at this list, you should be able to see a number of ways that we can work to prevent at least some of these deaths. Things like making windows and other structures more visible to birds, keeping cats indoors, and minimizing use of pesticides are all crucial to the survival of many species. (For more info on some of these efforts, see the American Bird Conservancy’s site.)

So, can public attention to the recent dramatic bird deaths be used to spark wider awareness of what we can do to prevent the constant slow preventable deaths of birds? Hopefully, it can- and many science communicators are trying to get the word out. Human population growth and natural resource use, habitat loss and invasive species, along with global climate change, are ever-increasing threats to the survival of many species. We should try to prevent this constant rate of attrition whenever we can.

Categories
geekery science communication

Science Friday needs help!

Public radio show Science Friday is about to lose its two major sources of funding (the Natl. Science Foundation and Natl. Public Radio(!)), and may go off the air.

As a wee lass, one of the TV shows I most remember watching was Newton’s Apple, a production of our local PBS station (the others were 3-2-1-Contact, another science show, and Reading Rainbow, which ultimately would go on to eclipse the other two in geek connections). Ira Flatow was the show’s host- he’s currently on Science Friday. I must have been all of 6 years old at the time, but Newton’s Apple was really fascinating to me. It talked about science, inventions, and how things worked- there was also a segment with old newsreel footage of really bad inventions that never took off that was hilarious at the time, and many celebrity guests who I probably completely did not recognize.

For some reason, the thing that sticks in my mind most about Newton’s Apple was how I thought it was the neatest thing ever that the P.O. Box number that you could write in to and ask questions was the same as the year: 1983. Then, in the next season, I remember my biggest question for the first episode was: would they get a new P.O. Box number since it was 1984? (They did not.)

At any rate, Newton’s Apple and shows like it definitely helped inspire my love for science as a kid. And while I never did become a paleontologist as planned, shows like this are inspirational to many other kids (and adults) out there!

This news comes from Jim Fruchterman. According to Ira Flatow:

We at SciFri are facing severe financial difficulties, i.e. raising money. NSF [National Science Foundation] has turned us down for continuing funding, saying they love what we do, we are sorely needed, but it’s not their job to fund us. At the same time, NPR has said the same thing, telling us that if we want to stay on the air, etc, we now have to raise all our own money. Despite what listeners may think, NPR only gives us about 10 percent of our funding.

Science Friday is a great example of public science outreach and should stay on the air! I urge you to make a donation to help today.

Categories
exam readings public participation in science research methods/philosophy science communication science studies

Exam readings: Public participation in science

Well, here they are: my last three readings for my public understanding of science reading list. After this, I’ll be spending the next week thinking ONLY about my first exam, which is coming up… And I will be presenting a paper at a conference this weekend- but more on that anon.

Anyway, here are the last three readings. These are all gray literature, but give a current overview of at least NSF’s thinking about the field of PUoS:

First: Friedman, Alan J., Sue Allen, Patricia B. Campbell, Lynn D. Dierking, Barbara N. Flagg, Cecilia Garibay, Randi Korn, Gary Silverstein, and David A. Ucko. “Framework for Evaluating Impacts of Informal Science Education Projects.” Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 2008.

Summary: Report from a Natl. Science Foundation workshop on informal science education (ISE) in STEM fields; provides a framework for summative evaluation of projects that will facilitate cross-comparison. The authors identify six broad categories of impact: awareness, knowledge, and understanding; engagement or interest; attitude; behavior; skills; and “other” (project-specific impacts.) For funding purposes, proposals must outline their goals in these categories- while this won’t fully capture learning putcomes, in provides baseline information for evaluating the field of ISE. Also provides advice and suggestions, e.g., what to think about when coming up with goals, what approaches to take, how to evaluate, and how to document unexpected outcomes. It also discusses evaluation designs: NSF’s preference is for randomized experiments, but general advice is to use the most rigorous methods available (e.g., ethnography, focus groups)- discusses pros and cons of various methods. Some specific considerations for ISE evaluation include different starting knowledge of participants; assessments should be inclusive to those from different backgrounds (draw pictures, narratives, etc.) Also discuss specific methods, potential problems, how to assess impact categories for various types of projects (e.g., exhibits, educational software, community programs.)

Comments: Report is targeted to researchers being funded by NSF, to help them navigate new reporting requirements for projects with a public education component. Not useful for my purposes for theoretical background, but does give an outline of the current state of thinking of the NSF for this field.

Links to: Bonney et al. (use this framework for their report); Shamos (discusses different types of evaluation of scientific literacy)

Second: McCallie, Ellen, Larry Bell, Tiffany Lohwater, John H. Falk, Jane L. Lehr, Bruce V. Lewenstein, Cynthia Needham, and Ben Wiehe. “Many Experts, Many Audiences: Public Engagement with Science and Informal Science Education.” Washington, D.C.: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education. 2009.

Summary: Study group report on public engagement with science (PES) in the context of informal science education- the focus is on describing/defining this approach. PES projects by definition should incorporate mutual discussion/learning among public and experts, facilitate empowerment/new civic skills, increased awareness of science/society interactions, and recognition of multiple perspectives or domains of knowledge. This approach is most common in areas of new science or controversy; the authors mention that the idea is not to water down the science, but to bring social context into the discussion. There are two general forms of PES in informal science education (ISE) projects: “mechanisms” (mutual learning is part of the experience- blogs, discussions) and “perspectives” (no direct interaction, but recognition of multiple values-e.g., incorporating multiple perspectives into an exhibit.) They contrast this approach with two views of traditional PUoS (making knowledge more accessable/engaging): the first view (generally held by ISE practitioners) sees PUoS as a public service; the second view (generally an academic STS/science communication perspective) sees PUoS as non-empowering, based on a deficit model, and not recognizing that the public can be critical consumers or even producers of science. PES arises from this second view: the key is that organizations must think critically about publics and experts are positioned in interactions, and bring in “mutual learning.”

Comments: While the authors recognize that “engagement” has multiple meanings (action/behavior, learning style, overall learning, participation within a group), the PES approach is not about directly influencing public policy or the direction of research. Presumably that approach is too activist(?)- they do mention the need to work toward using PES to affect policy/research. This report seems to take as a given that mutual dialogue between public and experts is a good thing; I’m not sure how well it would make that case to organizations who are skeptical about that approach.

Links to: Trench-“Analytical Framework” (assessment of the place of “engagement” model)

Third: Bonney, Rick, Heidi Ballard, Rebecca Jordan, Ellen McCallie, Tina Phillips, Jennifer Shirk, and Candie C. Wilderman. “Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education.” Washington, D.C.: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education. 2009.

Summary: Study report on public participation in science research (PPSR) as part of informal science education (ISE.) History of ISE: began as public understanding of science (PUoS)- experts determined what public should know, explanations should lead to greater knowledge, which should lead to greater appreciation. Shortcomings of PUoS are that people have greater engagement when topic is directly relevant or interactive; focus is on content delivery, rather than understanding scientific processes. PPSR projects (citizen science, volunteer monitoring, etc.) ideally lead to learning both content and process. These projects involve public in the various stages of the scientific process to some degree. Three types: contributory (scientists design, public just gathers data), collaborative (scientists design, public helps refine, analyze, communicate), and co-created (designed by both and at least some public participants involved in all steps.) They evaluated 10 existing projects using Friedman at al.’s rubric; potential in PPSR projects to address all categories of impacts. Future opportunities include developing new projects (new questions, engage new audiences, test new approaches), enhance current PPSR projects (e.g., go from contributory to collaborative or co-created), add PPSR elements to other types of ISE projects, and enhance research/evaluation of PPSR projects. Two final recommendations are that projects should do a better job of articulating learning goals/outcomes at the beginning, and that comprehensive evaluation methods should be developed.

Comments: This committee report offers a current assessment of PPSR projects and synthesizes recommendations for future research. Scientific literacy remains a basic individual measure in this framework, even with the emphasis on participatory interaction (in contrast to social constructivist approach.) While the assumption is that PPSR projects do affect understanding of science, there are large challenges to assessing this, even at an individual level; part of the problem is that this type of assessment is often added post hoc.

Links to: Roth & Lee (conceptualize sci. literacy in PPSR as a communal property, not individual); Friedman at al. (framework for evaluating PPSR projects)

Categories
environment exam readings rhetoric science communication

Exam readings: Rhetoric and conservation management

Two papers today, involving rhetoric and environmental technical communication. I’m getting down to the end of my public understanding of science reading list, but also getting close to exam #1. So I’ll just have to concentrate on getting ready for that for the next week and a half…

First: Margaret B. Graham and Neil Lindeman. “The Rhetoric and Politics of Science in the Case of the Missouri River System.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 19.4 (2005): 422-448.

Summary: The authors analyze rhetorical differences in two science reports by the US Fish & Wildlife Svc. in 2000 and 2003; the 03 report was created by a different writing team after changes in the political administration. While the major difference between the reports is different flow recommendations, there were significant differences in narrative structure and omission/inclusion of facts that create very different rhetorical spaces. One example is use of narrative: the 00 report begins with a historical narrative that describes the river as a dynamic system later harmed by humans (incidentally creating a romantic space that leaves little room for people in a restored river); the 03 report replaces this narrative with statistics and doesn’t evoke the river as an ecosystem (making it easier to justify human alterations.) In another example, the 00 report downplays scientific uncertainty (justifying the recommendation of large remedial changes for restoration) while the 03 report emphasizes it (setting up the recommendation for minimal remedial changes.) Rhetorically, control of information presented shapes the response of readers. Graham & Lindeman attribute these differences in the reports to the composition of the (anonymous) writing teams, motivated by their political and social interests. For them, the keys in understanding science communication are: knowledge of the context of the scientific argument(s) presented, understanding the structure and informational content of documents produced, and consideration of the audiences for whom communications are intended (both apparent (e.g., public) and hidden (e.g., supervisors).)

Comments: While this type of analysis is particularly applicable to government/institutional science communication, there are some broader issues as well. The increased public involvement in river decisions recommended in the 03 report is something many scholars have called for, but the authors point out that this sort of involvement often gives bad environmental results. Expertise in a scientific issue can counter manipulative interests in such participatory settings (rather than just being used to maintain a status quo.) There are also ethical concerns raised in this paper that would be applicable to communication research (e.g., framing.)

Links to: Groffman et al. (environmental communication); Yearley (scientific uncertainty often makes sci. a bad ally to environmentalism, public participation in decision-making for environmental issues can lead to bad results)

Second: Marie Paretti. “Managing Nature/Empowering Decision-Makers: A Case Study of Forest Management Plans.” Technical Communication Quarterly 12.4 (2003): 439-459.

Summary: Paretti analyzes forest management plans (FMPs), whose function is to inform landowners and provide practical knowledge (unlike general environmental communication, these plans give advice to active resource managers.) Most research in science communication to landowners has been in how to reach them and how to communicate controversies, not how to communicate technical information effectively. Paretti outlines four models of communication: technocratic (no interchange), Jeffersonian (experts give advice to public), Interactive Jeffersonian (experts give technical advice, public gives values), and Social Constructionist (information and values go both ways). The IJ model describes current practice; Paretti advocates the SC model. FMPs begin by the landowner stating their goals, then the expert provides a detailed description of natural resources and recommendations for achieving goals. The rhetoric of FMPs maintains the landowner-expert divide and leaves owner a novice on own land in some ways: language style is technical, recommendations are framed as directives, and the decision process is not articulated. Paretti suggests changing the consultation process: start by listing resources, then consult together on goals, then have expert give recommendations (while making specific suggestions, using different language, IDing places where local knowledge would be useful).

Comments: Paretti advocates a collaborative, discussion-based consultation process that values non-technical knowledge and emphasizes how the decision-making process works so that the landowner can be educated about it. These recommendations follow a similar pattern to other authors calling for more public participation in socio-technological issues; in this case, the landowners presumable have some local knowledge of their land, so would have something to bring to the table themselves.

Links to: Graham & Lindeman (participatory process not always best for envt.)

Categories
exam readings public participation in science research methods/philosophy science communication

Exam reading: Scientific literacy as collective praxis

Is scientific literacy something that we should be able to assess in individuals? Or is it something that emerges as part of community activity? Traditional evaluations of science literacy are based on the former, but there’s a trend to see science literacy as an emergent property of social interaction (at least in non-professional contexts.) Here’s a summary of one paper on the topic:

Wolff-Michael Roth and Stuart Lee. “Scientific literacy as collective praxis.” Public Understanding of Science 11 (2002): 33-56. Print.

Summary: The authors rethink science literacy as a collective, action-based process, not everyday knowledge; they foreground the social and material aspects to learning (complex knowledge is a product of interaction among people and situated in space and social activities.) Their three propositions: sci. lit. is a property of collective activity; science isn’t a “normative framework for rationality” (people can draw on other approaches for decision-making); and effective learning activities have a community purpose (rather than learning as the primary goal.) They feel that “citizen thinking” (not pure science) is most effective at addressing specific local problems; this includes politics, aesthetics, philosophy, etc. Their research centers on a community group trying to improve a watershed. Group members from different activity systems (e.g., scientists, activists, farmers) represented the situation differently and contributed different understandings; the authors see “scientific literacy” as the more-complete knowledge of the situation generated by the interaction of these different understandings. Key conclusions: science literacy can arise through conversation- making known something that wasn’t known before- the collective understanding of the situation then influences individuals’ understanding. Learning is lifelong and situation-based.

Comments: Seems to apply more to science in everyday life, rather than professional science- so an alternative framework for the effects of citizen science projects. Part of their rationale for distributed nature of literacy is the division of labor and ability to consult experts in modern society. Social construction of learning: learning and agency are social; individual learning/agency are reflections of the social setting. Advocate definition of science as a creative activity “tempered by honesty in the face of experimental evidence.”

Links to: Shamos (key place of experts in public understanding of science-though he doesn’t define this as science literacy)

Categories
exam readings rhetoric science communication

Exam reading: Risk perception in science communication

People are notoriously bad at judging risk- we’re fascinated by rare, unusual events but blase about common and everyday hazards. This page is an interesting example- the comparison of lightning fatalities and shark-related fatalities between Florida and Hawaii is instructive, and bunnies in New York City are apparently really ornery…

A big part of science communication involves talking about risk and uncertainty, so this is a big deal. Today’s exam reading is by Paul Slovic: “Perception of Risk from Radiation” from Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 1996.

Summary: Slovic takes a rhetorical approach to communicating radiation risks-in this case, experts’ assessments of risk don’t match those of public. Public risk perception is based more on “dread” (emotion, voluntariness) and event unfamiliarity, while experts base assessments on probability of occurrence plus severity. There’s a psychological “signal effect”- rare, unfamiliar events are more scary than common, familiar ones. These differences in perception have social/political impact (e.g., Three-Mile Island had minor health effects but led to widespread public oppoisition to nuclear power.) Radiation is associated with “cosmic transmutation,” contamination, taint, and cancer; it’s a highly emotional type of pollution, e.g., there can be social stigma attached to people exposed to radiation because of “taint.” Nuclear and chemical risk perceptions share some similarities, e.g., medical applications are perceived as low-risk while environmental applications (pesticides, power plants) are high-risk. In communication, the challenge is getting from expert knowledge to recommendations for public (typical approach is to compare to a familiar risk, but be careful to compare similar hazards- nuclear exposure to x-rays, rather than nuclear exposure to chance of being struck by lightning.) There are large ethical issues with communication, because of strong framing effects- more pragmatically, it’s easy to destroy trust and hard to build it.

Comments: Slovic’s paper is more applied than theoretical, but he does mention some wider issues. For example, mentions ethical concerns around framing. Another big issue is that any type of media attention to an issue (even if saying “there’s no risk associated with doing x”) will tend to lead to perceptions of more risk surrounding that issue- this obviously has practical implications for communicating science.

Links to: Trench (risk=hazard + outrage); Irwin (risk from communications perspective); Nisbet (framing)

Categories
environment exam readings rhetoric science communication

Exam reading: Science comm for environmental issues

And here’s an applied example of the “deficit-dialogue” non-transition. Peter Groffman, Cathlyn Stylinski, Matthew C. Nisbet, Carlos M. Duarte, Rebecca Jordan, Amy Burgin, M. Andrea Previtali, and James Coloso: “Restarting the conversation: challenges at the interface between ecology and society,” from a Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment special issue.

Summary: Science communication and outreach efforts are not currently sufficient to engage the public in pressing environmental issues. The authors summarize current social research and make recommendations. Scientists are widely respected on social-policy issues, but need to rethink outreach efforts. Awareness of environmental issues varies widely (demographics, nationality) and other issues (esp. economy) currently are rated more important; communicators can increase salience of issues by connecting them to people’s lives. Most people learn about scientific issues individually, informally, and sporadically; in the U.S., mainly via TV, but the Internet is a prime source of science info for those who deliberately seek it out (selective perception and interpretation are important). The largest effect of media campaigns is awareness, rather than factual knowledge. Audiences are influenced by presentation, e.g., give both views represented equal weight. Scientists tend to focus on information deficit, rather than changing attention/salience; here’s where framing and mental models come in. There are also new tools and approaches to use: formal research communication, training for young scientists, participation in local social forums, online news communities (e.g., science blogs + news), public participation in research, and recruiting opinion leaders (social networks, etc.)

Comments: Article is introduction to a special issue of journal; other papers go into detail about some of the new approaches mentioned.

Links to: Trumbull et al., Bonney et al., Brossard et al. (public participation in research); Nisbet (framing)

Categories
exam readings politics science communication

Exam reading: “Towards an analytical framework”

In this chapter, Brian Trench comments on various models for science communication. “Towards an Analytical Framework of Science Communication Models” from Communicating Science in Social Contexts: New Models, New Practices.

Summary: Trench posits that the deficit to dialogue model transition has been overstated in sci. comm. circles (it’s more a normative recommendation than a descriptive assessment.) He puts science comm. into the broader context of communications theory (e.g., active audience, risk comm. composed of hazard (probability) + outrage (subjective elements)) and education (e.g., inquiry- and project-based learning). The process of dialogue is not free of power relations, and in practice “dialogue” is often like marketing/message tailoring research. While there is evidence of trends toward more open dialogue (open public debate, scientists active in NGOs), the converse is also true, esp. because of the knowledge economy (commodification of knowledge, the cultural/social values of science are obscured). Overall, the deficit model is still used for much of sci comm (appropriately, in some cases); there’s really a continuum of “dialogue.” His framework goes from deficit to dialogue to participation models. More specifically, deficit includes defense of science and marketing; dialogue includes context, consultation, engagement of public; and participation includes deliberation and critique. He briefly discusses the philosophical/ideological implications of this spectrum.

Comments: Provides a counterpoint to idea of thorough deficit-dialogue shift. In contrast to Shamos, states that scientism is wide trend among scientists, and related to assumption of deficit; their definitions of scientism are different.

Links to: Bucchi (similar discussion of lack of deficit-dialogue binary); Shamos (characterizes scientism as anti-science, not a majority scientific view)