Talking about Science

Scientists are failing in their efforts to communicate with the public. Dennis Meredith in a new book, Explaining Research and an accompanying blog has some good ideas about how scientists can communicate more effectively about science.

His blog includes examples of video, audio, blogs and more that illustrate effective way to talk about scientific ideas. In a recent commentary he writes,

"Many academic scientists might consider themselves expert explainers because a significant part of their job entails explaining research to undergraduates in their teaching. But even the most skillful scientist-teachers aren’t necessarily skilled science explainers. Speaking to “captive” student audiences is very different from communicating with any other lay audience, who often must be actively persuaded to be interested in a scientific topic."

Educating the public about science is critical to our ability to make effective decisions and to understand how to deal with the many complex problems of human society. We have learned much about the world, but until that knowledge is available and understandable to the public it won't make much difference.

Informal Science Education--Could this be the future?

"The seemingly endless debate about how to improve US science education seems to make the tacit assumption that learning happens only in the classroom" (p. 813) So begins an interesting editorial in Nature, April 2010, titled, "Learning in the Wild" that suggests that we need to be paying much more attention to informal science learning. The authors go on to write,

"researchers who study learning are increasingly questioning this assumption. Their evidence strongly suggests that most of what the general public knows about science is picked up outside school, through things such as television programmes, websites, magazine articles, visits to zoos and museums — and even through hobbies such as gardening and birdwatching" (p. 813).

This goes right to the heart of the idea that we need to build alot of science microlearning opportunities that engage people's interests and lead them into deeper more complex learning activities. In the editorial the author's note,

"This process of 'informal science education' is patchy, ad hoc and at the mercy of individual whim, all of which makes it much more difficult to measure than formal instruction. But it is also pervasive, cumulative and often much more effective at getting people excited about science — and an individual's realization that he or she can work things out unaided promotes a profoundly motivating sense of empowerment" (p. 814).

I am in agreement with this statement:

"education authorities need to recognize the importance of informal science education and do more to promote it — if only as a way to motivate students in the classroom" (p. 814).

Rather than thinking of science education as either formal or informal, we need to build learning systems that move easily from the informal playful educational experiences to the deeper, richer experiences. This will both foster better learning, but it will be much more fun.

Using Research to Mis-inform

Too often news accounts of scientific research fail to inform the public or fail to use research in useful or helpful ways. This is often frustrating to scientists and at times these failures can be dangerous or damaging. (I have written elsewhere about the debate about the link between vaccines and autism as an example.)

But I find it particularly troubling when a source of information about higher education fails to engage scientific research in a useful and thoughtful manner. In this article,Facebooking Won't Affect Your Grades, Study Finds. At Least Until Next Month's Study Tells You It Will,
Marc Parry provides the worst example of reporting on scientific information.

1. He presents two studies that on the face of it seem to come to different conclusions about the impact of "Facebook" on student grades without any consideration of the methods or approaches.

2. He then compounds this weak exploration of the issue with the citation of the relationship between the use of Facebook and divorce. In this case, he cites no research, but merely provide links to other news articles as if these were sources of evidence.

3. Finally, he concludes with a flip statement that next month's research findings will make counter claims and that all of this is just a matter of "he says, she says" and not really a matter of science.

Rather that provide any sort of thoughtful discussion of the evidence regarding the impact of social networking activities on personal relationships or educational outcomes the reader is left with the idea that scientists studying this issue have nothing really useful to say on this topic.

Health News Review-- A Model for Reviewing Health Claims in the Media and the Web

Health News Review is a website devoted to rating the ways in which news organizations report on health news. They have developed 10 criteria including 1) raising unrealistic claims about effectiveness, 2) cost of the treatment, 3) how the benefits are portrayed, (4 limitations of the treatment and or risks associated with a treatment, etc.

The criteria and the overall service of the website seem very valuable and provide a good way to educate the public about what to pay attention to in regards to the way scientific and/or health information is provided to the general public.

These criteria could easily be adapted to many other scientific topics when presented to the public.

Their ratings of TV health news reporting are particularly troubling. Sadly, the publisher of the website, Gary Schwitzer, Professor in the Health Journalism program at the University of Minnesota, writes that he is abandoning rating TV programs as there seems to be little evidence that they can influence this media.

Falling for Social Science: People in Mind?

In a fascinating book on the role of physical objects and children's developing love of science, Sherry Turkle in Falling for Science, has collected essays from over 25 years of students at MIT in which she asks them to write an essay on the question:

"Was there an object you met during childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your path into science?"

In this book, she shares the essays that students have written over the years that capture the excitement, passion and curiosity that objects often played in these students' growth as young scientists. This is wonderful reading and Turkle uses these reflections to craft new insights into how we foster science education.

The question I was left thinking was how young people's interest in social science emerges. I have often thought that most young people come to social science (family studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology) by the back door. They come into the fields because of an interest in helping people, concern about injustice, puzzled by the difficulties that have witnessed in the lives of their families, communities and so forth. I am not sure many of our entering students would view themselves as entering college in a "science field" or even see themselves as "scientists."

Often it is only after beginning to study that that they discover that there are systematic ways of studying these issues and understanding these problems and fall into love with social scientific work. One of the significant challenges of teaching social science is that students often assume that their own "theories" about how social relationships work and how people grow and change are "right" and have not done very careful thinking about how to test these theories or how to marshal evidence in support or against a particular view of the world. In short, we are often teaching them about how to think critically and scientifically about people and the social world-- in short to think more scientifically about these ideas.

But this is just a hypothesis and I have never explored these questions in the way that Turkle has asked this of her students. So what would the question be to ask young social scientists?

"Was there an event, circumstance, or problem in childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your choice of this major in social science?"

And if it is the case that our students discover that they not only have an interest in making the world better or helping people, it would be interesting to ask them when they began to think of themselves as "scientists." And what pushed these interests and passions forward?