This originated as a comment on Prof Andrew Maynard’s 2020science blog, but it got longer and longer, so decided to lob it in as a blog also. Andrew’s blog is a tongue-in-cheek response to what I think really is a rather bizarre exchange in the US about the publication of what seemed a relatively interesting and thoughtful doc and accompanying blog from a US commentator Chris Mooney Do Scientists Understand the Public (though must confess not to having read the whole doc in detail).
Everyone must be a scientist!
One of the more vitriolic strands from a number of commentators was about the need for everyone in the land to become science literate. Eg: “The public indeed has no excuse for being scientifically illiterate – a lot of what one needs to know at the bare minimum to be a reasonably informed citizen is already being taught in school, and a lot more could easily be taught too if it wasn’t considered such a hopeless task…..Nobody wants you to remember the molecular weight of sodium. But you should know the basics, chemical properties. That kind of stuff.”
Now I appreciate that the US has perhaps more than it’s fair share of those who, shall we say, are less than interested in science or the facts of such things as evolution, which may explain some of the real anger and frustration I saw in the comments. But I also take exception to those who say both here and there, that unless everyone takes a science subject they can’t make a contribution on the subject of science and can’t hope to get their tiny arty farty little brains around the important stuff!
It can be done even with an arts degree!
I am a History of Art graduate, with not even an ‘O’ level in a science subject, in fact I always actively hated science at school. More recently I developed the Responsible Nano Code, a code of conduct for industry using nanotechnologies, create and wrote much of www.nanoandme.org, I ran the Responsible Nano Forum and now run MATTER, an independent organisation looking at making new technologies work for us all. All of these organisations and initiatives have been supported and dare I say widely respected in the science community and I was recently able to put glowing recommendations from scientists and leaders in science academies as well as from other stakeholder groups on a tender for funding.
So it really isn’t at all necessary to do science in order to contribute to thinking on the development of applications of science. Luckily I don’t need to understand the basic properties of sodium to do my work or make a useful contribution in this arena or any other. Does the fact that a scientist doesn’t know the plot of Waiting for Godot, or the background to the build up of the First World War mean he or she is making less of a contribution to the world? No, of course not – though openness to new ideas and alternate views which may arise from the interest in gaining or retaining that knowledge may be helpful.
What about science’s responsibility?
However, what does concern me about the debate about science and the public is that it can distract scientists and companies from the taking responsibility for the impact of their own work. For example, in the light of the issues with BSE, CJD, GM etc in the UK which is still referred to in every sci comm report I see, the focus of the response was not about how to create more responsible and accountable science and commercial development, but more public dialogue along the lines of ‘ if the public understood the science they wouldn’t have got themselves in such a tizz’ and therefore overlook the issues around governance and safety which were unclear at the time? However I appreciate that many feel that we have gone mad over safety to the detriment of science and industry, so this point of view may not be widely shared!
But perhaps studying science won’t teach the right skills either?
Even some of the most enlightened commentators suggest that the key to a better public understanding of science is better science teaching in schools, so more people are science ‘literate’ and therefore can engage properly with the debate. That won’t do the trick, honest. It might mean we get more much needed scientists entering the job market, it might mean Prof Brian Cox gets more people watching his TV programmes and I hope, though don’t see why it should, it gets more evidence based thinking at the heart of decision making in many areas of work as the diaspora spreads.
But the majority of people won’t take from the STEM courses, as I understand they are currently configured, the importance of understanding the perspectives of others, the ability to think about the impact of their work on society, the ability to communicate and engage about their work and to gain a better understanding of values and morality in relation to science. That’s much more important to the success of science and technology in the world than whether you understand the basic properties of sodium or not. It doesn’t appear to get taught at school or pretty much anywhere else except perhaps some progressive universities, though I may be wrong about that too.
But this sounds like I am not a fan of public involvement with science, I really am, and public involvement in communities, health, planning, schools, politics etc etc as well. I don’t see science as particularly a special case – Hey, it almost sounds like The Big Society, not sure I meant to do that!
But it needs to have a real and useful purpose and be a very good use of the public’s and the scientists time and the taxpayer’s or company’s money. That is not easy to deliver.
Take a look at new report from Sciencewise-ERC
Those interested in exploring this dilemma further may be interested in the varied and thoughtful responses from the contributors to Sciencewise-ERC’s publication The Road Ahead (not sure how recent a publication it is, but only just saw it) which is well worth a read and a nice ‘scientific’ antidote to much of the rant and rage which accompanied the publication of the US document. I have only read a couple so far, and I have found them very thought provoking. Will be interested to see what response we get over here, please let it be less vitriol and more constructive debate!
Hey just had a thought to add to my own blog! Perhaps the skills on values, looking at others perspectives, communication etc are actually more likely to be learned from arts and humanities lessons than science lessons – perhaps even in the much maligned citizenship or social studies programmes. That strikes me as quite funny actually!
You say ‘But the majority of people won’t take from the STEM courses, as I understand they are currently configured, the importance of understanding the perspectives of others, the ability to think about the impact of their work on society, the ability to communicate and engage about their work and to gain a better understanding of values and morality in relation to science.’ I am sure that is true, but that is only one angle of what is required for a broader understanding of science, beyond the facts.
Much of the debate – implicit in your blog, and those around the original Mooney article – suggests that the communication path lies directly from scientist to the public (or vice versa), but the reality is that only a fraction of the dialogue, good or bad, follows that route. To back up his contention that ‘that a more scientifically informed public is not necessarily a public that will more frequently side with scientists’, Mooney said ‘According to a 2009 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, children who go unvaccinated by parental choice (rather than because of inadequate access to vaccines) tend to be white, from well-to-do families and with married, college-educated mothers. Parents in such families are more likely to go onto the Internet (what McCarthy calls the “university of Google”) to research the health risks of inoculation than are other groups of parents.’. Yes, they go to the internet (or, for the more old fashioned, newspapers), not to scientists or to primary sources. And on the internet they will find all kinds of articles written by all kinds of people with all kinds of preconceptions and biases or even, occasionally, a total absence of bias. If, for instance, they turn to the Daily Mail for information about cancer, just what sort of gobbledygook will they find (http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/ is very informative on this)! So another aspect of improving communication in both directions is not to require that everyone knows the molecular weight of sodium or the second law of thermodynamics, but that they know how to interpret graphs, risk and statistics. To my mind, if journalists understood these ideas more robustly then less garbage about climate change, the dangers of anything for causing – or curing – cancer, or the likelihood of the latest drug of choice being likely to kill your children would be written. And if it didn’t appear in print – or on the web – then the misinformation would not proliferate so readily. But if the public also had a firm grasp on these ideas they would be less gullible when reading the Mail’s latest hyped up story about science.
One solution to this, in terms of education, would be to encourage media studies syllabuses to have chapters from Bad Science set for students to study; or the Go Figure section in the BBC’s web magazine – a layperson’s introduction to statistics – given as homework in , well practically anything . For instance http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8538751.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8608112.stm would both fit very well into Business Studies.
As a scientist I spent years avoiding the media because of the way they misrepresented my science; many of my science colleagues will have had similar stories experiences. Of course this is a mistake. I need to get more media savvy and keep pushing the points I want to make in the hopes that sometimes the story will be nearly right. I have no problem with arty farty arts graduates making major contributions in many aspects of science, and ethics and societal impact are topics where such contributions are most definitely needed. But I also feel there is a lingua franca required when talking about the impact of science which everyone needs a grip on and this revolves around the concepts I gave above. As it happens, I was never taught statistics at school (though have had plenty of it since), but if doctors say there is a 1 in 100 chance that this medication will kill me, but a 1 in 5 chance it will cure me I would guess most people would, like me, be willing to try to get their heads around what that really means. So many of the major challenges we face –whether having a nuclear power plant in your backgarden is ‘worse’ than a windfarm; how dangerous a vaccination is; or how reliable is the evidence that global warming is due to man’s efforts – rely on being able to examine evidence critically and interpret relative probabilities.
Hi Hilary! I think the arts can possibly do more than that. To use an example from nanotechnology engagement: art-science projects such as ‘nano’ or ‘Nanoscape’ draw attention to the on-going separation of scientific and public spaces in public engagement with science/new technologies. By encouraging different audiences to engage with the materiality of nanotechnology, something which is normally considered ‘off limits’ for publics, they start to create bridges between scientific and public spaces.
Likewise, citizenship & social studies can tell you about the implications of not enabling publics to engage with the materiality of nanotechnology.
Yes quite right Angela, more to be done there I think, good idea!
Yes Athene, you are right about the media and internet. I know the Science Media Centre is trying very hard indeed to counter this problem, but it is very tricky. This is what we were trying to do with Nano&me, have impartial, but thoughtful information on key areas which people can access easily and trust.
Love the idea about the Bad Science lessons!