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."
Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:2, Insightful)
That would not end well for the scientists.... Their brains would explode from having to dumb everything down for "public consumption."
Hmmph. (Score:5, Insightful)
If somebody happens to be the best available information source on a given issue, failure to communicate with them is a major failing on your part.
All men may be created equal; but only some of them are worth consulting for advice.
Essential difference (Score:5, Insightful)
The Media already has a monopoly on informing the public, scientific discoveries included.
Scientists strive to be factual and complete. Media strives to be sensational and give people what they expect, or want, to hear.
Some of the most exciting discoveries are those that indicate existing beliefs are incorrect. That doesn't jive with...well, you can see where I'm going with this: insert faith here.
Aside from the lack of a common language... (Score:3, Insightful)
Many scientists need to realize that their goals, ideals, and ethical standards may not be universal.
Re:Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmph. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a quite nice term for this in German, it is called "Fachidiot" literally translated Subjectidiot. Basically it entails that the person might be a complete genius concerning his / her respective field but lacks the necessary skills to communicate and have empathy for the in his/her eyes ignorant. Sometimes when one is so lost inside one's own world it is hard to see the outside world through the eyes of another, external person. hey, how many times do couples fight about this! its all about people skills.
Like the poster of this thread pointed out: information is only as good as the quality of its communication.
Re:The story of our lives... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you very much. Science is hard. If you're not willing to work at it, you won't understand it. If you're not willing to work at it, you won't. That's not the scientist's fault.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were, they would be marketroids, not scientists.
There are some, very few, true scientists who are also good at communication. Robert Forward and Isaac Asimov are two that I know of, but we could have many more of those.
True, very true, but, sadly, the human mind does not work that way. People are egocentric, they usually see their failure at understanding as the other party's failure to communicate.
Re:Flip flop the question: (Score:3, Insightful)
The public doesn't necessarily have to understand science. It's not their job.
I would say, however, that it's their job to at least not actively be misled, and that's the rub here. When you don't understand something, you can be neutral, and you haven't made life any worse for anybody.
But being vocal in the opposite direction, and showing an active aversion to learning it... that's something no scientist can fix. Worse, the more a scientist tries, the more you can take the multiple attempts to dumb it down as evidence that it can't be explained.
Scientists do need to learn to explain well, and that's an ongoing challenge to be met. But the vocal and anti-science part of the public is not a problem that can be met. That's damage that has to be worked around.
Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Science had a *huge* positive mind-share during the 20th Century, and the participants basically didn't have much problem with trickle-down to an eager public.
What has changed is that religions out of synch with reality and corporations that don't want to spend the money it takes to deal with reality have been running huge propaganda campaigns to cast doubt on many of the major findings of science, if not on the potential of science itself.
What scientists have to realize is that the nest of little chicks with hungry mouths turned up has been partly replaced with a nest of well-funded vipers.
Scientists Shouldn't Try to Understand the Public (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:we should study this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flip flop the question: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flip flop the question: (Score:5, Insightful)
The public doesn't necessarily have to understand science. It's not their job.
The median US citizen goes to school for 12 years. During that time, they all have to take at least one course on science. If after spending an entire course studying science (and probably many more than one class) they don't have an understanding of what science is and how it works, then I'd say the average US citizen has failed in their duty to become a rational and thinking being.
Science is one of the most basic and important mental tools for forming opinions based upon reason instead of irrational methods. Everyone should understand science, as well as some other, basic, tools for reasoning such as mathematics, logic, and critical evaluation. These should be core elements of every education.
Einstein once said... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I'm having a hard time figuring out how one would explain Special Relativity - or, in my case, SVD-decompositions and unsupervised machine learning - to a six-year old.
Of course, that could simply mean I don't, in fact, understand either one.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to explain scientific concepts to non-scientists is not "lying" or "marketing", it's fucking called "teaching".
How would slashdotters feel if *real* lawyers came here and started laying the smack down on some of the "IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot!" types here? Lots of smart people with degrees in computer science, physics, math, and a million other technical fields, and they don't grasp the first thing about how the law actually works. Does that make them stupid? or just - not expert in the field of law?
Too often scientists and engineers make the mistake of assuming that "because you don't understand my field of expertise, you must be an idiot." There are plenty of very smart people who simply aren't expert at physics, or computer science, or chemistry, or biology. Talking to them with the presumption that they are intelligent and capable of understanding does not mean you have to lie, or be inaccurate in your statements.
Re:Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The story of our lives... (Score:3, Insightful)
Communication is also a science. Like all other fields, it can be done ad hoc, or it can be taken seriously, studied, and used methodologically. I do say its the scientists fault if he/she refuses to take the time to work at and understand communication. Just as much as the public's inability to relate to the scientist.
Here is one big tip to all techies out there - listen. Do not jump to solutions. Do not tell people what they should do or want without the other person fully explaining themselves even though you may know the answer. Instead, listen, use deflective listening (rephrasing what the person said and lead them to continue), and lead them in a way that opens up your answer in clearer light. Consider it the foreplay to a response. Easy, and applicable to your occupation, friends, and significant other.
Re:Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, you mean Occam's Razor? It won't complicate things too much if I agree with your philosophy that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, will it?
See, the problem is that 'people' want a quick answer. What causes global warming? Well, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation (aka heat) that is produced when visible light hits the earth and transfers that energy into the matter it hits.
Got that out in a single sentence but I lost everyone at carbon dioxide. All it would take to throw me off is some git saying CO2 is the breath of life or that it snowed last winter.
So, yeah, we understand 'people' and we fucking hate them. They're perfectly fine eating our GM crops, using the internet to communicate near instantly across the planet, taking our drugs and undergoing procedures to save their lives, and living in buildings that are safer and more comfortable than anything built before it. But to try to comprehend the efforts behind it? To show the slightest fucking bit of intellectual curiosity in how things work?
SCIENCE IS COMPLICATED. THE WORLD IS COMPLICATED. We can't help you understand if you don't have the patience. I don't think any scientist would have a problem working backwards from any topic, breaking down all the concepts involved, to help someone with an honest interest in the subject. But who has time for that when Real Housewives is on?!
Re:Hmmph. (Score:4, Insightful)
Too often scientists and engineers make the mistake of assuming that "because you don't understand my field of expertise, you must be an idiot." There are plenty of very smart people who simply aren't expert at physics, or computer science, or chemistry, or biology. Talking to them with the presumption that they are intelligent and capable of understanding does not mean you have to lie, or be inaccurate in your statements.
I don't encounter that often at all. They know that plenty of people don't understand their field of expertise because they know how hard it was to gain that level of expertise---and how much they have to learn when hearing about other scientific results.
What does happen us that they assume that "because you don't understand my field of expertise, your opinions about scientific results in this field are infrequently accurate."
Which is undoubtably true.
Some of the worst crap you can see say on slashdot where you have lots of high-IQ people making apparently clever but often very wrong and misleading howlers about climate (I hypothesize, because the consequences don't agree with their political or social preferences.) The smarter the non-expert is, the worse.
For example: physicians are apparently very heavily targeted by financial con-men; the doctors think they're so smart in doctoring that they're smart in other areas, but they often aren't.
Re:Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dumbing down science is not the solution. The solution is improving elementary education, so that people can read and understand what scientists publish, as well as making scientific journals available to the masses and encouraging people to read them...oh, sorry, I wandered into fantasy land there, where we are not driving everything by greed.
That's not their job... (Score:3, Insightful)
The job of science is to seek, explore, and prove truths. It's not their job to be spin-doctors and make it palatable to hicks, politicians, corporations, and Bible-thumpers.
We don't need scientists to become more PR savvy, what we need is less sensationalist journalism, less politicizing of science, and less junk science originating from entities (corporate, political, social, or religious) invested in getting certain results that are all result in a woefully misinformed public, often stirred into a frenzy, with a mixture of half-truths or outright lies.
Maybe the scientists could promote ideas better with more social skill, and maybe the public could understand the science better with more science education, but none of that matters when there's a machine in the middle drowning out the communication with it's own noise.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nowadays, it seems healthy skepticism has turned unhealthy. Science isn't as respected... in fact, there's a lot of mistrust from the public.
I think the problem is science reporting. Every couple of years, we hear about how "scientists have discovered that coffee is bad for you!" A couple years later, we hear "scientists have discovered that coffee is good for you!" It just alternates every couple of years. Every couple of years, we hear about some wonderful new Theory of Everything that is about to change physics, and then it never materializes. We hear about "teleportation" and something-or-other traveling faster than light, only to hear later that it's BS and we won't be seeing Star Trek technology anytime soon.
Give people a couple decades of that, and of course they're going to be mistrustful.
A scientist can devote her whole career to puzzling out some fact of the world, only to be second guessed by high-school dropouts. "X is affected by Y." People don't accept that anymore. Explain why. Explain how. Spell it out for me in great detail, this X and Y business.
That seems somewhat reasonable. Or what, scientists are just supposed to be revered as priests of hidden knowledge?
Re:Hmmph. (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but if they do not know the jargon, as 99% of them don't, then I have to be inaccurate or shut up. That applies to science as much as to law, btw.
The fact is that a specialized field with a substantial body of knowledge tends to compress complex ideas into convenient aliases, which leads to jargon. When the jargon is in a dead language such as Latin, it is easy to spot for outsiders. But the more modern trend is to overload the meanings of common words and phrases in contemporary languages, which leads to the unfortunate result that a nonexpert can understand the words, but completely fail to understand the message conveyed by the words.
Unless the true meanings are decompressed - which can take years of study - the only option for the public is to hear vague descriptions and arguments that usually fail to hold up under scrutiny.
Re:Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the key here is that people want a translation of the science into terms they understand. To say it's up to a scientist to both be able to think in terms beyond the average Joe, then they have to dumb it down is stupid.
I don't walk in to a fast food shop and demand that they explain their meals in highly technical terms.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I mod the first half of your post insightful, and the second half troll?
Re:Hmmph. (Score:2, Insightful)
Being able to explain scientific concepts to non-scientists is not "lying" or "marketing", it's fucking called "teaching".
Precisely! And understanding the explanation requires *learning*, something many many people are woefully unwilling to do. I make this argument about 'user friendliness' all the time to. Some things are inherently complex, quantum physics, advanced statistics, physical biochemistry, relational databases, take your pick. Some things you simply can't dumb down.
You can give a user a flashy drag 'n drop user interface to design a database query, but if they don't understand and haven't taken the time to learn how relational databases work, they'll never achieve anything more complex than a single table query.
You need to understand basic chemistry and energy minimization to get just the most basic handle the concept of protein folding. In this case high school chemistry might be enough, but it requires at least under-graduate level maths (local minima vs global minima and how chaperons affect one is chosen). Problem is, most people don't remember their high school chemistry.
Re:People are hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn straight. I keep getting told that I need to communicate better with my managers. I didn't become an engineer because of my fantastic communication skills, but my managers became managers because of their communication skills.
Scientists aren't the ones who need to explain it to 'normal' people, we need layers from scientists, through press offices, to journalists, who all need to do their job without claiming every minor discovery will change the world.
Re:Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scientists Shouldn't Try to Understand the Publ (Score:1, Insightful)
What's so damn special about a scientist that they've absolved from any social interaction with the public? Are they elite minds of an ivory temple never to be questioned or expect a layman answer from? While there is no rule that states scientist should try and understand the public, there isn't a rule stating they shouldn't either. What ever happened to the concept of contributing to society through teaching those that don't know?
Re:Finally understand the Young Republicans (Score:3, Insightful)
I could, but I find it more likely to blame the assholes whose continued paychecks depend on not understanding it.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Science had a *huge* positive mind-share during the 20th Century, and the participants basically didn't have much problem with trickle-down to an eager public.
What has changed is that religions out of synch with reality and corporations that don't want to spend the money it takes to deal with reality have been running huge propaganda campaigns
I think actually what changed was World War 2 and particularly the atomic bomb, when it became clear that abstract 'science' could be used equally well for creative and destructive purposes, and that scientific advancement was not only no guarantee of peace or safety or utility, but could even be trending in the opposite direction.
In the next few decades, nuclear war and MAD led the pack as the ultimate embodiment of self-destructive science, but there were also a number of high-profile failures: overpopulation (held at bay only temporarily by the oil-dependent Green Revolution), pollution and species extinction, the corruption and collapse of the commercial nuclear industry, the failure of modernist urban design to produce livable cities (the 'housing projects') and the decades-long failure to find (or motivate) a replacement for fossil fuels. Then the rebirth of neoclassical economics and its 'scientific' models leading to hollowed-out cities, financial bubbles and collapse, and the end of the dream of manned spaceflight.
Criticism of science as an absolute self-justifying system isn't some strange new thing. For those of us who were in school in the 1970s, it's been a long litany of science's broken promises. And this is why there were hippies in the 1960s - the system's self-contradictions were evident even then.
Re:Finally understand the Young Republicans (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article, "Republicans who are college graduates are considerably less likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than those who have received less education."
That's the crux of the problem right there. No, not Republicans - irrationality, distrust and dishonesty. It's not communication skills that we're short on, it's moral and intellectual honesty.
The reason scientists are not believed now is because there is a deliberate campaign in place to discredit them by any means. Because they know most people can't or won't read the actual journals, the same cynical geniuses who bald-faced lied about the effects of smoking are teaching a new generation that scientists as a class are motivated by the same venality, mendacity and say-anything-to-get-approval motivations as are the rest of the world.
It's pretty easy for people to believe this, because we recognise that there's some of this in all of us. Indeed, it's trivially easy to find individual examples of greed, jealousy, laziness and other human weaknesses in any field. But it's a lie, of course, because it's not true of scientists as a class, and therefore not true of Science. Science, by definition, is the removal of these weaknesses from the pursuit of knowledge.
The problem is that doubt is a stronger weed than trust. When we are no longer honest as a society, we cannot conceive of honesty in others, let alone in systems.
This problem can't be fixed by explaining or communicating better, because anyone with the patience to listen is almost certainly not part of the problem group. The problem is that those with an unreasoning, idée fixe view of the world are no longer focused on the redeeming elements of human nature such as charity, kindness and respect. They've been transformed into crusaders [sic] against everything that's wrong in the world. As a result the dominant elements of modern culture today are intolerance, distrust, and cynicism deeper than we've seen in generations.
The biggest problem facing scientists today, therefore, is bad timing. They're trying to save a world that doesn't trust them to help.
Re:Flip flop the question: (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFY.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I think its probably a bigger social problem that science reporters, as a class, aren't particularly proficient about communicating scientific results accurately to the masses than that scientists aren't.
Its also a big problem that schools aren't particularly effective at teaching people to interpret information well (including, but not limited to, science reporting.)
Re:Hmmph. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you haven't answered her question, have you? You've said it's a unit of storage, but that's completely useless in practice, she can't use that definition for anything practical. If I tell you "a mole is a unit of substance", do you now know what a mole is, and can you use that knowledge to understand a chemistry problem?
Worse than that, you've tried to paper over the obvious deficiency of your explanation by giving a common use case that you're hoping is practical: more gigabytes means you can put more stuff on the disk. But what does that actually mean?
She still doesn't know what a gigabyte is, and you haven't explained the relationship with terabytes, so when she goes to buy a 500 gig drive, she'll think it has more space than a 1 terabyte drive. Also, you haven't explained that the stuff you're talking about isn't the usual stuff like photos or music files etc. She can in fact put a lot more music files on a smaller drive than movies on a bigger drive, for example, which is confusing. Since you haven't explained to her that the word stuff doesn't mean single objects like files, but rather only the amount of information required to encode those files, which can actually be compared between disparate entities like music and movies and letters and images, and that's assuming that the encodings are comparably efficient....
In all, I think you've done in this example pretty much what you accuse scientists of doing in general.
Re:As perhaps a member of the skeptical public.. (Score:2, Insightful)
. But I think it's a mistake to take the current theories of the day as "The Truth" (they're so often over turned by later research)
A good scientist is a professional skeptic and will absolutely agree with that. "The Truth" is not the goal of science. It's not even a possible outcome. Science cannot guarantee that we're moving our knowledge closer to "The Truth." It is pretty good at moving our knowledge in a medium-term useful direction. And when we discover something wildly new, like relativity or quantum mechanics, we branch off in a new direction while simultaneously continuing in the old. The most flexible and brilliant scientists send a feeler off toward totally new territory, ***maybe*** making it somewhat more likely that we're approaching "The Truth" in a long term sense... but probably if we're moving toward "Truth," it is purely by accident.
It's still always possible that human science started with some sort of bias (sensory, cognitive) that makes us very, very wrong in a big picture sense. I think it's important to remember that such a possibility exists, but that it's a matter of philosophy until you can present some evidence for that idea.
Science is a way to discard those ideas that are obviously wrong while keeping around a bunch of useful ideas that haven't been shown to be wrong yet. That's what it's for, and it is the best system we've got for that.
I think it's really important that the public understands that scientists are trying to understand the universe but that many of them are deep skeptics who would be willing to completely change everything they think if presented with appropriate EVIDENCE. That's what makes science so useful and strong. It frustrates me that so much of the media discourse about science is focusing on the internal disagreements and the constant overturning of old ideas and pointing to it like it's a BAD thing. It's frustrating. It's kind of like having someone point at you in grade school and call out to all your schoolmates that you're stupid because you're WEARING GLASSES. It should be totally obvious to everyone who's ever seen you that you wear glasses, and yet, in certain social circumstances, people can wield power by pointing out an obvious fact and saying loudly enough that it's a negative thing.
You're absolutely right that you shouldn't look for "Truth" in science. Any good scientist should be on board with you on that. Our most important job is to be professional skeptics and to construct ideas and gather evidence that disproves other ideas and results. That's scientific progress, and having people point at you and make fun of you for doing that shows a certain immaturity, just the same as winning friends by making fun of someone's glasses.
Here's an idea. (Score:1, Insightful)
Here's an idea. Go study some fucking climatology for yourself and figure out what's going on instead of sitting in an armchair bitching about "hiding the decline" and making slimy ad hominem attacks about grant dollars.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:2, Insightful)
Too many career academics willing to do junk science in order to keep the grant money rolling in.
Can you give an example of such a thing? I do know of a few instances of scientific fraud, but they are relatively rare, and the coverage (to the extent it even hits the media) makes it fairly clear that it is rare.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
When science informs society's policy decisions, there are going to be questions, concerns, and issues. Refusing to give them a legitimate hearing (and a reasoned response) is going to only foster conspiracy theories and harden the position of people who feel their valid concerns are being overlooked, ignored, and waved off.
While that is true the problem is that, no matter what you do, there will always be people who refuse to listen to anything you say and continue to claim that their concerns are being ignored - a good example of this is the LHC end-of-the-world scenario. So at some point you simply have to ignore these idiots otherwise you will never get anything done. The problem then arises where do you draw the line? Wherever you draw it there will always be some malcontents who, no matter how provably wrong they are, will continue to get some level of credibility in the eyes of non-experts from continuing media attention.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a bit more insidious than you describe. The problem is that various entities (starting with cigarette companies) realized that they could lobby and shape public opinion more effectively if they sponsored ostensibly scientific research. It's difficult enough to describe complicated scientific ideas in simple language by omitting the complexities without saying anything that is wrong -- and when you're suddenly competing with 'scientists' who have no such compunctions and are willing to lie to espouse a single point it becomes impossible. And this is before we consider the complexity of modern public relations and media dynamics, which require a whole different set of expertise to navigate, much less exploit.
So now we're in this strange environment, where real science speaks through the public defender.. erm, I mean science journalist.. and the pseudo-scientific special interests groom the 'data' and the message together. So, what does the American Academy (which was specifically founded to deal with this type of issue) have to say about it?
Scientists and the public both share a responsibility for the divide. Scientists and technical experts sometimes take for granted that their work will be viewed as ultimately serving the public good. Members of the public can react viscerally and along ideological lines, but they can also raise important issues that deserve consideration.
Mostly irrelevant.. How does this attention from the public arise without special interests and the media who caters to them? At that point pseudo-intellectual confusion has been deliberately produced by special interests to feed a visceral reaction regardless of veracity of the science involved.
Scientific issues require an “anticipatory approach.” A diverse group of stakeholders — research scientists, social scientists, public engagement experts, and skilled communicators — should collaborate early to identify potential scientific controversies and the best method to address resulting public concerns.
Taken at face value, this is a great idea. But where's the funding? Simply because the group of stakeholders is so diverse, and the opposition for any "specific controversy" (eg. smoking and cancer) so specific and intense, is this at all practical? Especially given the fact that once it's a "potential" controversy, special interests will be spending like crazy?
Communications solutions differ significantly depending on whether a scientific issue has been around for a long time (e.g., how to dispose of nuclear waste) or is relatively new (e.g., the spread of personal genetic information). In the case of longstanding controversies, social scientists may have had the opportunity to conduct research on public views that can inform communication strategies. For emerging technologies, there will be less reliable analysis available of public attitudes.
This highlights the problem that science has: any new finding that conflicts with a current industry is going to be subjected to withering, ostensibly scientific criticism, until it is controversial regardless of the fields previous status. The current interests will try to re-frame the debate into language that has not been previously studied by social scientists, which if successful supersedes their research. In the case of emerging technologies of course, there nothing stopping industry or other special interests from running amok until they get caught.
Since the current conundrum is due in large part to the vigorous and successful attack by the post-Nixon republican party over the last 40 years in the US (and yes, I'm fully aware the left cherry picks data all over the place, but they don't pay as many people to make it up), I doubt there is a simple way of reconstituting trust of scientists in general within the current media environment. But the great thing about science, is that it always has a potential to push the reset button on the status-quo through a massive discovery.
No, the public doesn't understand science (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, teaching people the facts about the universe we live in is difficult and expensive. But when society fails to educate its members sufficiently about science, to teach them to think critically, then the purveyors of disinformation -- typically organized religions and corporate marketing departments -- are always there to enlighten them with their own versions of the truth.
What can we do about this? First, never cut back on education. An enlightened society is an educated one and maintaining it as such is a endless task. Second, make education accessible to everyone at no cost. Three, we have to be hard on ourselves to ensure that our teachers and educational institutions continue to live up to the highest standards. Four... spend money on marketing facts that are both generally accepted by the scientific community and important to society.
How do we pay for all that? Higher basic taxes, I guess (it will eventually pay for itself), but perhaps also by levying a tax on top of what those purveyors of disinformation spend on advertising.
Pretty incredible, really (Score:1, Insightful)
All the talking past each other that is going on in this thread.
On one hand we have the non-scientists, who are arguing that someone who has spent the last decade or so in science-related postgraduate work should also be perfectly capable of explaining that work to a layman.
On the other hand, we have the scientists assuming the high horse and arguing that "we don't have to explain it to you; if you can't understand it you should learn more science or just take our word for it."
Surprisingly enough, the best answer is (as usual) found somewhere in the middle ground.
There are some topics that can't be explained in simple terms and require a certain level of expertise to understand. For example, I wouldn't expect a scientist to be able to understand the intricate nature of 20th century literary criticism any more than I expect to be able to understand anything other than basic physics concepts.
(cue a reductive joke about Literature here - the best ones tend to come from computer science majors who think that literature is "easy" and their "Intro to poetry" class gave them all the knowledge they will ever need to understand deconstruction, allowing them to crack a joke that betrays the fact that they know absolutely nothing about it)
I know that was alot of words just to say "some people are better at certain things than others, and people who are experts at certain things often gain that expertise at the expense of other things." But looking at the comments section for this article honestly makes the article seem more accurate - there is quite a bit of self aggrandization going on here and not much actual communication.
anti-evolutionists (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of reasons people have lost faith in science, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Challenger, Vioxx, WMDs, Cold Fusion, and the general lack of trust in authority that has grown since the 60s.
With the exception of Cold Fusion, these examples seem to be reasons to not trust corporations and political expediency - nothing to do with science. As for Cold Fusion, I guess some optimists have been saying it's "ten years away" for 25 years and some frauds have been perpetrated but I don't see how science as a whole is painted with that brush.
And really there is no reason to blindly believe scientists or anyone else: it's kind of health to ask for proof, as long as you don't keep denying once you receive it.
Sure, but I think evolution is on pretty solid ground which makes about 40% of US citizens deniers and another 20% uninformed at best.
Incidentally, you blame corporations, but a lot of the anti-science movement corresponds to the anti-corporation movement as well: the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO propaganda isn't coming from corporations any more than the anti-evolutionists.
There are crack pots on both sides of most issues, but I think a lot of the anti-corparate based hysteria is a reaction to the fact that they have a pretty bad record when it comes to "science" effecting public safety. I'm all for holding their feet to the fire. On a final note, I think any anti-evolutionists that say they are "questioning authority" are delusional since they are typically "answering to a higher authority."
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic scientific training to report on science news.
As a scientist, let me play devil's advocate:
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic legal training to report on legal news.
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic financial training to report on financial news.
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic medical training to report on medical news.
Really, what it comes down to is that we've allowed "omg, joe says so, and Brittany got a DUI" to replace actual journalism, where an actual journalist asked actual questions in an actual attempt to understand the story at hand.
A journalist, with no science training, should be able to report on science correctly, accurately, and with the simplification needed to inform the public. What we are seeing now is that there are no more journalists. What we have now are eyeball catchers, trained to catch as many eyeballs as possible.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
That reality conflicts with your particular ideology doesn't mean those informing you of it are acting on a political agenda.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you serious? They tried to educate the public for TWENTY FIVE FUCKING YEARS and no one paid attention to anything except newspaper headlines screaming "We're All Going To Die!"
Re:Wait... They want them to dumb things down... (Score:2, Insightful)
Statistically, your attitude that 5,000 jumps compared to 500 jumps is the same as heads or tails after 5,000 or 500 tosses, is quite correct. But it doesn't take into account the human factor involved in skydiving. The skydiver who has done 5,000 jumps might have become cocky, complacent, careless, and is therefore long overdue for an accident. Statistics are fine in big picture, but the human element can trump statistics.
Re:Stats (Score:3, Insightful)
RF=5.35ln(c1/c2) - Fourier 1824.
Re:Hmmph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometime, science explains complicated things. The public doens't like to rely on authoritative figures (a trait it shares with scientists) but sometimes you can't dumb things down. You have to go into statistics to explain why 20 more leucemies near a GSM antenna is not a high deviation from the average.
Re:The Answer is YES (Score:3, Insightful)
The good thing is (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't NEED to communicate with non-technical people. It has worked so far for well over 100 years of outstanding technological progress - why stop now? The drones can go on mopping floors, cleaning windows, and building buildings and we will go on doing our thing yeah? It's called specialization. Just like I don't expect my builder to understand or be interested in the carnitine shuffle, I have neither the time nor desire to get into the details of the local building code regarding a particular section of wall.
The author deserves an "F" for failing to understand that specialization is a good thing, and specialized fields REQUIRE their own efficient technical jargon. When two doctors speak "lingua medica" it's because it's faster, more convenient and more specific than common English. It's not to "say bad things about patients without them understanding". However why should any technical person lower themselves to the level of the common burger-flipper?