Do Scientists Understand the Public? 511
Mab_Mass writes "The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has an interesting article on the relationship between scientists and the public. [Here's the paper itself, as a PDF.] Rather than point the finger at an 'ignorant' public, this article chastises the scientists for a poor understanding of how to communicate with non-technical people. With a look at the issues of climate change, nuclear waste disposal, genetics, and the future of the Internet, the article provides examples of how the experts in these fields are failing to present their message in a way that encourages public discussion and support."
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Re:Einstein once said... (Score:3, Informative)
Does that mean the "For Dummies" series is some of the deepest, most insightful stuff ever written? Or simply that Einstein ran with some really exceptional six year olds?
Not dumbing down: removing jargon (Score:5, Informative)
I think the key here is that people want a translation of the science into terms they understand.
Exactly! When explaining science to the public my aim is not so much to "dumb it down" as to not use technical jargon and to avoid worrying about unnecessary details. A large fraction of the public can generally understand the basic concepts once they are explained without the technical vocabulary and without all the unnecessary details.
The big problem with talking to the public is that we scientists have developed highly technical vocabularies with precise meanings in order to be able to communicate complex concepts very precisely to each other. Even if we remember not to use this vocabulary there is the strong urge to fill in all the details which less precise, "everyday" vocabulary does not specify.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:1, Informative)
>No, science gets blamed yet again for shit that journalists pull out of their asses.
The journalists would have been Rasool and Schneider and the magazine would have been Science. I tend to agree that we're dealing with hacks writing for a disreputable rag. In '77 Schneider wrote a book called the genesis strategy in which he still maintained that the scientific consensus was global cooling, absolutely deluded. Because as we all should know by now, the small minority believing in global warming as a result of CO2 back then, was in fact the consensus all along.
It's called revisionist history and it doesn't work too well on people who remember that far back.
Cheers!