| Date: | 2010-09-13 23:25 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Stefano |
| category: | Dissemination, Opinion |
| slug: | the-challenges-of-scientific-communication |
I read with strong interest this post "How Hard Science Saves Lives" from Bente Lilja Bye at Science 2.0. I will make a very short summary for presentation purposes, but I encourage to read through her very interesting post.
The point being made, shortly stated, is the argument between hard-science and soft-science representatives on saving human lives through hard-science research. With hard-science is intended chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics, and any other discipline requiring the application of the scientific method to rigorous, quantifiable information; On the other hand, soft-science are disciplines like sociology, political science, psychology, and more generally encompasses journalists, politicians, and the layperson. The controversy is that hard-science research doesn't save lives, a position brilliantly refuted in the post with effective and concrete examples.
I had the same issues with soft-science scholars in the past; similar personal experiences, where scientific knowledge is not considered strictly as "culture", or where the fact of not understanding math or chemistry was presented as an asset to be proud of, rather than a lack of knowledge to compensate as soon as possible with simple, plain curiosity. I also observe that many scientists and hard-science practitioners I know are also generally interested in philosophy, arts, sociology, psychology, behavior, literature, and they actively search for more information on these topics. On the other hand, soft-science representatives I know, seldom search for accessible scientific knowledge to complement their expertise.
Where does this issue comes from? What are the reasons behind the pure existence of the argument? What can be made to address the issue? I seldom use this blog for "opinion posts", but I think the observation that such issue exists in the first place is a phenomenon that, as scientists, we should analyze by virtue of its intrinsic existence. The risk to neglect this analysis is lingering misunderstanding and falsity, and as scientists it is our duty to promote the truth.
I personally believe there are many factors to be considered for this analysis. It is a complex and long post, so I tried to make it manageable. I divided my post into different sections, one for each factor. In each section, I will
- try to analyze one specific factor I consider important
- analyze the root causes of the issue
- propose possible strategies for mitigation.
I will rely solely on my experience for this analysis, which can be in some cases not factual nor representative of a general behavior. You will feel a lot of weasel words, a lot of "citation needed" spots along the way. I am aware of this, and I basically risk to become what I criticize in lack of proper communication, thus condemning myself. I plead guilty and appeal to the McKean's law extended to concepts and the Gödel's incompleteness theorems for extenuation causes. I also declare I am ready to change my statements in response to additional experiences complementing or refuting the points being made.
Analysis: Earth, 2010 AD. Humanity reached an interesting level of development of new technologies. Research, started when the first human knapped his first rock into a knife, continues to give interesting new answers and solutions, as well as new and intriguing questions. More research is needed for better understanding. So, here we are, building the Large Hadron Collider, shooting rockets into space to bring humans to the Moon and robots to Mars, deploying space telescopes and satellites to peek into the depth of space to see the origin of the universe, the innards secrets of our closest star and the behavior of our spaceship, this planet.
Some of the 7 billions people living on this spaceship of water and rocks is left puzzled by questions: does the Large Hadron Collider save human lives? Does space exploration? Does observing the Sun or the Earth? If you ask the layperson "Do you think that smashing little particles together will save lives?", I would not be surprised the average answer to be a resounding "No".
Let's time warp with our mind to the 18th century. Funny dressed, strange people burn substances in their laboratories and weight the remaining ashes. Let's take a walk on the streets of our 18th century village and tell a commoner that "Mr. Lavoisier spends his time weighting stuff, burning it and weighting the ashes. Do you think it will save your life?". What would you expect the answer to be ?
Did this activity save lives? In retrospect, definitely yes: their research allowed the demise of the phlogiston and the four classical elements as key substances, paving the way to finally understand how matter and heat work. This result boosted 19th century chemists into discovering the structure of natural substances and synthesize new ones. If you followed my series on the "Eight molecules that changed the rules of the game," you probably noticed penicillin and cisplatin. No person today would negate the incredible advancement in terms of "saving life" these two substances granted us. I am the first in line on this regard: I am the direct descendant of a person who was saved from an aggressive TBC infection thanks to the first commercial antibiotics. Without this advancement, I would have never been born. This was possible thanks to the rules discovered by boring people who dedicated their lives to the useless activity of burning stuff and weighting ashes.
Another example? Chemistry is a discipline basically born from metallurgy, with a Vision so fantastic we are amazed at its ambition: transmute vile metals into gold. Alchemy and chemistry looked for such ambitious goal for centuries, finding many other incredible things along the way. When the Vision was finally reached it was completely and totally useless for the original purpose of becoming rich: nuclear interconversion from lead to gold is possible, but absolutely impractical. Nevertheless, among the consequences of that Vision are nanotechnology and breeder reactors, but everything started because of the need of changing a lump of lead into gold (which would have made gold as worthless as lead, but that's the funny part of economics).
To stay in the present, consider this: without studying superconductivity no Nuclear Magnetic Resonance; without transistors no computers; without lasers no corrective surgery, cd players, internet; without studying the electrons, no TVs and radios. All these findings were totally useless when they were discovered, because the context in which they were discovered did not yet understand their potential.
Root cause: What I wrote above tells a story of misunderstanding from the layperson. The idea that the scientific research process appears to perform useless tasks. This idea is based on different root causes. The first two causes are
- Lack of understanding of how the scientific method works
- Lack of understanding of how the discovery pipeline works
and they are relative to methodology. A layperson with no formal skills in the scientific methodology does not know what's going on in our labs, nor he knows how hard is to do proper research, what are the usual steps to take, the mechanisms to use, the validation and peer-reviewing process. He also does not know that very often the solution of a problem comes from a different discipline who happens to hit the right spot. We are like hundreds of people walking into a maze on different routes at the same time. Each one occasionally tears down walls for the trapped others.
Then there's the indirect nature of research. I have the feeling that the human mind is not well versed towards assessing risk or predicting consequential effects, unless they are direct and immediate. Indirect solutions to problems are "unnatural". This is strange in my opinion: when humanity left the trees we learned to use tools and grow crops, which is a very indirect process to get food. Hard-science research is a very, very indirect strategy to solve problems. Very often, in order to solve one problem, we solve a plethora of other ones either by accident or on purpose. It's easy to say "the Large Hadron Collider is a huge waste of money" on a big title in the newspaper. Less easy to remember and point out that "without the LHC, there would be no World Wide Web (or at least, it would be not what it is today)", among the many other advancements that the LHC promoted. It's easier to criticize X when the many positive results this X produces are not in the Vision, the final goal out of the maze. I have the feeling that the general public interprets these positive results not as a victory, but as unexpected accidental results, tiny edible bits in a "rotten" project. They are unable to grasp that without the "useless project", there would be no need for the "small good bits" that become major technological advancement. This is, of course, regardless of the breakthrough that the project Vision will grant in the future, which comes much much later in time. This must be kept into consideration when communicating to the layperson. I am not sure it is well explained.
It is also important to explain the costs of research, which strongly characterizes the research pipeline structure and management. Science moved from rich's people basements into large scale investments. We need more money to let research happen, for many reasons: we need better technologies to measure very faint but very important effects; we need people to create complex software able to analyze the data on massively parallel computers; we need to dig into complex biological systems we are not able to understand individually, simply because they are too big for a single human's mind; we need multiple disciplines at the same time to solve a problem. There's a cost, but it keeps people employed producing technology, which in turns push the Gross Domestic Product upwards, producing benefits for everybody.
The third root cause is not methodological, but intrinsic:
- Lack of understanding the complex nature of nature
The layperson has no clear grasp of the noisy data we measure, or the superlinear scalability of interactions, like those found in Systems Biology, for example. Superlinearity in the number of problems to solve requires superlinearity in amount of scientific investigation required to make sense to the details.
Mitigating options: The problem is clearly due to of lack of dissemination. A visual guide to the scientific method and research pipeline is needed. The layperson needs simple statements and examples that clearly explain the philosophy of science and the scientific method, from Galileo to Popper. The same guide should also explain the discovery and publication pipeline, the concepts of Vision and Milestones in a scientific project, the current problems science is trying to address and why, how a given Country's scientific board is organized, the background and curricula of all the involved personalities, the five, ten and 20 years development plan.
Analysis: This factor is threefold, and has to do both with breakthroughs:
- the scarcity of "usable" breakthroughs
- the overabundance of "unusable" breakthroughs, and
- the "breakthrough fatigue".
I'll explain the exact meaning of the quoted words in a second.
When we study the history of scientific discovery, we are presented with sudden, life changing breakthroughs (which I will call "usable breakthroughs") in a fast-paced exposition: the invention of plastic, the discovery of penicillin, the radio, a rocket fires and we are on the moon. What we are never told is the tens of years of "useless research" which preceded these breakthroughs. Ongoing research, in comparison, seems slow, dull and full of "useless research" because we are here to witness it, without the "long story short, they invented penicillin" narrative method. To an observer of the current scientific progress, there's a stark contrast between these two presentation styles, and the misunderstanding "Why in the past they discovered everything so quickly and now we can't ?" quickly follows. On this sense, there's apparent scarcity of "usable" (i.e. life changing) breakthroughs.
Then there's overabundance of "unusable breakthroughs". Almost daily, we read on the news sites "Researchers discover new drug to cure X", but from the lab discovery to the FDA approval (and hence commercialization) the process takes years. When this finally happens, it won't hit the news, aired at every corner. It will hit your prescription, in a room containing you and your doctor. A real world example straight out of the newspaper today: "Say goodbye to glasses. Discovered gene for myopia". The exaggerated and invalid content of such headline is evident.
As said in the previous Factor, the general public lacks a clear picture of the mechanisms behind the steps needed for the commercialization of a research product, and the amplification of these findings not backed up by an actual availability in the stores appears a constant joke where new discoveries are announced but they cannot take advantage of them, hence they must be false, overrated, and for sure unusable. This blows to incredible proportions when the same line of thought is applied to some hard sciences, where announced breakthroughs in addition don't solve an immediate problem a common person faces, such as health or lifestyle.
Finally, there's breakthrough fatigue. We are so surrounded with fast-paced amazing technology that we miss the intrinsic power of it. Today we have: digital cameras fitting in a pocket, sleek cellphones looking like a glass shell, games resembling interactive movies, paper-thin 52 inches screens, the internet, people orbiting around our planet for months, people remote controlling a car on mars, people getting their detached limbs reattached, face transplants, any common disease has an often successful treatment, and much much more. Just going back 15 years ago, all this was not possible. Overwhelmed with the trend, we basically don't recognize breakthroughs anymore, because we raised the bar so much for "revolutionary" that every new thing is simply considered part of the normal trend.
Root cause: While the root cause of the previous Factor was lack of dissemination, the root cause of this factor is improper, excessive dissemination, generally through the words of writers that are not scientifically knowledgeable to perform an equilibrated evaluation of the real discovery, in particular the "how", "when", "why", and "if" some new discovery will affect our life.
Another root cause again has to do with the lack of revolutionary science fiction writers and science popularizers today. The genre had its golden years after the second world war, and produced important dreamer and trend-setters like Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Crichton, Sagan and many others, who in turn inspired a generation of positive science enthusiasm. These writers set the bar for what is considered "revolutionary", conveying this bar to the general public in an easy and pleasant form. Today, the genre is underrepresented and poorly followed by the general public.
Mitigating options : promote good dissemination and discourage incorrect dissemination, but with a positive attitude. Work for correct dissemination, rather than against incorrect dissemination. The major issue with correcting people's mistakes is that both parties develop an attitude, which creates potential attrition and more attitude. We have very good sites for positive dissemination out there, but the issue is the level of communication. Those who make and spread the news are often the firsts requiring proper scientific training and clarification. Some very rough random cerebral activity on potential strategies:
- An "Adopt a journalist" initiative to address his/her doubts when writing scientific articles
- Promote a point of contact between scientists and journalists within the institutions, relying more on direct communication and less on cold and sterile press releases
- An incubator for science fiction writers. Use of the plots to develop open source games to reach the general public.
- Coalescence of many popular science sources into a federated union for scientific popularization, with a peer-review process aimed at improvement, rather than filtering.
Analysis: Suppose you don't understand English. Would you classify everything written in English as useless for humanity? Probably not, but certainly is useless for you.
Unfortunately, I found instances where even the first line of reasoning is applied: "I don't understand mathematics, so it's useless nonsense." I won't go into the details of this position now, leaving it for Factor n. 5: Having an attitude.
A proper understanding of science requires highly specific languages and terms, such as domain-specific jargon, and specific logical and mathematical assets and tools, the most prominent probably is Statistics. In addition, statistics takes years of practice to dissipate the doubts arising from its occasional counter-intuitive behavior.
On the other side of the communication bridge, hard-scientists are generally unable (either for lack of skills or time) to communicate major scientific facts easily (although, I agree, there are topics where it's really, really hard). The lack of a "common sharing protocol" exacerbates attitudes from both parts (see Factor n. 5).
We have therefore a group of people unable to understand, supposedly listening to people unable to explain. Deaf against mute. In Computer Science this problem is solved by the Adapter and Facade design patterns: translate meaningless communication protocols into meaningful ones. Seems trivial, but it's a good part of the problem.
Root cause: there are root causes from both sides: the layperson is unable to receive because he is lacking fundamental concepts, sometimes even basic language skills. When even the basic language words are difficult to understand, the content cannot get through regardless of the clarity of the explanation. It would be like having a book written half in native language, and half in an alien language. The root cause lies probably in school education, the mechanism of training, evaluation, reward and punishment. I'm probably not saying anything new here.
Scientists on the other hand need to improve their communication skills, which is, dare to say, not as easy as it sounds, and in most cases not their core business. Scientists should do science, and communicate their results properly. Their skills are in the jargon-filled realm. Very few scientists are also good communicators to the general public, because they are not trained in communication, and because good communication is fundamentally an art: you can train it, but nothing beats a native charismatic and excellent communicator.
Mitigating options: So what's the direction? Here a large part of the issue is strictly political. Schools need to improve. The future starts in the classroom. People must be guided, and not fed with knowledge for just 4 hours a day by tired, scared teachers. Once a person enters school, it's the duty of the government to guarantee the message reaches the audience clearly, eventually with simplifications for specific individuals, but the level of the great picture must be uniform. I'd compare knowledge to an image: you can have a high resolution image or a low resolution one. Both represent the same subject as a whole. If you have a dark square in the middle, the image is useless. It's better to reduce the resolution, and get the image whole. Similarly, letting a person continue in its adulthood with a dark square in some disciplines ruins his image of the world. That dark square will get filled with fear, uncertainty and doubt.
But school is not the only issue: can we make better museums?
I recently started visiting museums with a goal in mind: to see if they are well made. I've seen various levels of the spectrum. Most small scale museums are made by museum creators for museum creators, not for the audience. I can depict the following experiences:
- Poor labeling in hard to see characters, generally at heights not comfortable for children.
- Excessive redundancy of artifacts. I don't care of seeing ten fossils on the same argument. One is enough. Stay brief and to the point.
- Missing, or difficult to access complementary information. If you say "this fossil is from the Ordovician", I don't have to lift my head and look for a poorly made overhead panel with the geologic clock. Make the geologic clock "built-in" into the presentation.
- Poor pictures and panels where the concept is not really explained unless you already have previous knowledge
- Lack of interactivity. I'm not referring to touchscreens. I am referring to tinker toys. Let people touch the science. Let them actively do science while in the museum.
- Lack of skilled personnel able to explain and present scientific facts clearly.
- Lack of public shows demonstrating scientific principles attracting an audience without boring them to death. You have 10 seconds to catch someone's attention and keep him interested. Nobody sits in front of a projection for more than 15 seconds. Once you bore someone away, the message does not get through.
- No return value. A museum has to change, evolve, host occasional events, act as a collector of expertise, a point of coalescence for those who want to know more. If the museum stays immutable, there's no value in going back in four months, in a year, or in five years.
- Poor communication between the museum, the institutions (for services like transport and advertisement) and the scientists who can provide new cool things to demonstrate.
One of the best examples I've seen is the Tokyo Miraikan Museum, which is my golden standard when it comes to museums (although it's not perfect, but pretty close). I've never been to the Milan Science and Technology museum, but judging from their website, I feel they also did a great job. These are, however, big museums, in big cities. Dissemination of scientific knowledge should be accessible easily, with strong locality. Children are the prime motor for curiosity, and the exposition should be mainly tailored to them. Parents will follow as a natural consequence.
Yes, most of the problems I decry here are due to lack of money. There are, however, resources that can be proficiently used, such as volunteers from associations, University students and Ph.Ds, theater companies, hobbyists, radio amateurs, retired seniors. I am aware I could be an idealist, and this may be just wishful thinking: volunteering does not pay electricity bills; a museum is hardly a business, maybe not even a no-profit one. A strategic decision to invest in knowledge is needed from a higher administrative level.
Museums are not the only resources for proper dissemination. Cartoons, Video Games, novels, movies. Disney performed useful documentaries such as Donald in Mathmagic Land and Our Friend the Atom (regardless of the propaganda period, it did have a crucial scientific dissemination value); Disregarding the naive plot, I really enjoyed "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" core message: the nerdy, socially inept protagonist saves the world through his knowledge of science, rather than magic. Big Bang Theory made nerds funny and brought to the general public terms like "string theory". We need more of this. We need more Mythbuster, more Brainiac, more SuperQuark. Please note that I say "more of this". I'm not saying "less of something else". If you build it, they will come if you build it well.
Analysis: The development of a researcher is a long process, requiring years of investment. Typically, a researcher's career must end into scientific management (i.e. professorship), otherwise the person is thrown out of the academic system. Seldom there's a different direction. It's a big risk, and people tend to shun a life of compromises, political issues, low salaries and satisfaction in favor of a more finalized specialization, closer to better employment possibilities when the project, or career attempt, is drawn to a close.
Could this effect produce a cumulative rejection of hard-science? A rejection not because of the discipline per-se, but because of a migration of frustration concerning the associated lifestyle into the perceived usefulness and satisfaction level provided? I would picture something along these lines: "Screw hard-science, I don't want to work myself to death and find myself 40, single and childless, moving every year. I have other priorities." or "Screw science, I'm already 35, single and childless. I'm looking for a normal job and get over it. It's not worth it".
The public stereotype of the scientist is well known: if good, he is an inept asocial nerd with a good heart but too many quirks. If bad, he is the essence of evilness, madness and uncontrolled anger. These stereotypes are probably rooted in old literature, such as Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde, or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Regardless of the origin, normal people don't think to scientists as normal people. Either with reverence or with resistance, scientists are considered different, and thus "not normal", and who can raise any objection, really? A scientists' lifestyle is far from normal in layperson's terms. Once this separation exists, communication becomes more difficult.
Academia works in a very unusual way. I love to compare academia to a private company to picture the idiosyncrasies of the system. Let's describe together Academia Corp. Ltd.:
- All newly hired personnel will have to attend an unpaid five years general training phase, followed by additional three years poorly paid specialization phase. After this phase of strong training, they are technically able to do their job, but in most cases, they are fired or choose to look for different employment.
- Those who stay are productive in the company for one or two years. After this period, regardless of their productivity they are probably fired, sending to a competitor their expertise.
- Employees within the company are either working on completely unrelated issues with no expertise sharing, or even in direct competition.
- Each employee, regardless of his position in the company, must find clients as if he is also working in marketing, provide free consulting as if he's also working in customer support and convince venture capitalists to pay his salary and part of the company's live expenses as if he's working as a VP/CTO.
- Very often a high-expertise employee continues his job, but is hired with a janitor contract just to keep him in.
- Every project is responsibility of a single employee, without backup in case of sickness, pregnancy, or resigning. When one of these events occur, the project grinds to a halt, as well as all its dependencies.
- Every employee deals with colleagues that are on the other side of the globe. These colleagues work for competitors and frequently have no real interest in the employee's task. In other cases, they actively disrupt it.
- Evaluation of an employee's productivity is done through assessment of amount of products sold, and how important is the client. Before getting to the client, the product is tested by quality assurance, which is an anonymous competitor (who is also trying to sell a similar product to the client).
- If an employee does not become the company CEO within 10 years, he is fired regardless of his skills and expertise.
I wouldn't invest a cent in such a company.... but maybe I'm excessive. To be fair, Academia does produce science (and it's very good at it). It's just very hard, if not impossible, to be a researcher as a long-term profession. People employed for Academia Corp. Ltd. have very poor chances of developing a traditional, job-and-family lifestyle. External observers build a very negative opinion about this lifestyle and its protagonists due to diversity and lack of understanding. Researchers on the other hand tend to develop a strong attitude and inner toughness, mingled with political overtones aimed at general backstabbing. Scary? you bet, but that's how it is. I doubt this climate makes academia (and by reflection, science) amicable to externals.
Root cause The root cause is hard to address. It's simply the way it is. Academia is a competitive environment where only the best excel, and they become the best because they had the opportunity to stay longer in the system, thus getting better and better. Some type of research (e.g. geology) requires relocation to forsaken places by its very nature. Others require frequent exchanges with remote expertise. Academia is by definition an industry that produces brain power, thus has no interest in keeping old expertise inside. Its role is to produce new expertise in a cutting edge environment, and get fresh minds and fresh ideas into the mechanism.
Regardless of what said above, I believe we have a public image issue. We appear strange because we have a strange lifestyle. We just have to let people understand that we'd probably like to have home and children, we simply don't have easy conditions for this to happen due to the nature of our employment.
Mitigation options: I really have no opinion on this regard. Maybe we should clarify what is scientific passion, how curiosity makes us click since the first time we disassembled the TV remote to see what's inside, but I doubt this can soften the stereotype.
Analysis: despite the best efforts towards dissemination, there will always be someone who fights against. Haters gonna hate. You could say "Let them to". In most cases it's a sensible solution. Pick your goals wisely. So long for the attitude from the receiver side.
What about the attitude of hard-science practitioners? I see many instances of strong attitude from highly reputed scientists I totally support as great scientists, but not as great communicators, in particular in front of an audience. A communicator with an attitude is the best tool in the hands of any opponent. While I do agree that most scientists are exasperated by facepalming comments, distorted facts and zealous morons, developing a strong attitude is completely counterproductive.
Root cause: The human brain is a box filled with opinions. With 7 billions people in the world, humanity is a relevant statistical ensemble where any particular mix of opinions is likely to exist somewhere in someone's head right now. Someone will exists that won't bulge regardless of any attempt to communicate even the most simple facts. Also, most grown-up humans do not like to change idea, and do not like to be proven or told they are wrong. Sticking to what their neural network already contains is less demanding than readjusting it with a new training set, eventually being proud of not knowing something.
Mitigating options: "It is never socially acceptable to be proud of your ignorance" should be an important "take home message" to convey when facing people with an attitude towards scientific culture. In these cases, only carefully chosen peer pressure can promote something positive: a broad hostile audience is only going to make things worse. Nevertheless, I feel that even in the best conditions, no improvement will be obtained. Remember that "haters gonna hate", and the message won't get through, but it can get through in "lesser haters" also participating in the debate.
When it comes to scientists with an attitude, positive assertiveness is a much better strategy, instead of negative attitude. Sometimes it's simply better to drop out of the conversation. Proper choice of the audience, or supporting partners with positive assertiveness characteristics is also a relevant strategy. The more attrition is generated, the worse it is, and we don't want attrition. We are here to explain this beautiful world.
I presented a set of five Factors that, in my opinion, affect the communication to the general public when it comes to hard-science research. I tried to convey an analysis of the Factors, as well as possible mitigating options in order to improve the situation. I do realize that most of what I propose is hardly feasible, but I think that any food for thoughts is useful when discussing scientific dissemination.
To conclude, I personally think that one simple thing should be always remembered: provided no false promises are used, as long as you improve the human condition for the better it does not matter what you do. Some disciplines take minutes, some others take centuries. However, science is really the only tool we have to provide factual answers and working solutions on how the universe works, how to improve our lifestyle and health, how to mitigate adverse effects from cruel natural events. We are working for humanity, but humanity needs to know it properly.