Can Scientists be Great Communicators?
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
For the past two weeks, we’ve been hosting Matt Nisbet as an Osher Fellow to the Exploratorium. Matt is well known in the blogging community for his Framing Science site on ScienceBlog and his cross-country speaking tour with Chris Mooney. They’ve been talking about science controversies and about ways that scientists can reach the public by framing or contextualizing their work in ways that are meaningful for different audiences. An example he gives is that of the religious community embracing global warming as an issue that needs to be addressed for moral reasons.
Of course, this is something that the museum world is also interested in, especially in ways to reach audiences that don’t traditionally come to science museums. Much of our audience is well-educated, middle-class adults, families, and even senior citizens who have time and money to come to the Exploratorium. Like all museums, we would like more diversity in our audience and to make science appealing to girls, minorities, and other underserved audiences. Matt’s dance card in his residency here has been filled with staff interested in talking to him about ways to communicate to broader audiences and to increase the appreciation for science through “incidental exposure” essentially taking advantage of science angles to popular topics like entertainment or sports. For instance, we were recently featured in a front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle, coinciding with the All Star Game, about the science of baseball. One of our educators demonstrated the physics of pitching and the story was linked to a Web site that we developed as part of our Accidental Scientist series (which also included gardening, music and cooking).
There’s been a backlash though from some bloggers and science communicators that accuse Matt of distorting science, of advocating manipulative tactics similar to that of political operatives. One online comment in a piece by The Scientist says that under no circumstances should anyone “spin” science which is how he interprets framing. The poster, Earl Holland of Ohio State, goes on to say that scientists should stick to their work, running experiments and distilling the facts, and leave the communication to the professionals. I think this shortchanges the abilities of many scientists to tell compelling stories about their work
and make it understandable and relevant to everyday people. Science is multi-dimensional and the implications of the enterprise go well beyond ”the facts” and into realms of politics, policy, culture, education, the economy, and everyday life. Wading into these realms may make some scientists uncomfortable, but it is the right of citizens in a democracy to know what their tax money is supporting and its relevance to their lives and interests. The Exploratorium has a long tradition, beginning with our founder Frank Oppenheimer, of working with scientists fully capable of explaining their work to public audiences and discussing its implications and context in a larger world. The more scientists there are who embrace this more public role, the better we are as a society.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
This is definitely a topic I feel strongly about. I run a program out of Stanford University called Stanford at The Tech that is designed to train scientists to talk and write about science in a way the public can understand and enjoy. The program participant’s writings (as well as mine) are published on The Tech’s Understanding Genetics website and we’ve found that if a topic is personal and written at an easy-to-read grade level in an entertaining way, lots of people who are not scientists become interested in science. We average around 50,000 unique visitors per month! (Well, we did until a few weeks ago when we were hacked out of existence.)
As the NIH budget gets smaller and smaller, I think it is short-sighted for scientists to focus only on science. Why would I as a public taxpayer fund research on fruit flies unless I know why it is important? Make the research accessible and the money might keep rolling in!
September 29th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Awesome Post. My compliments to the author.
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March 10th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Hey! I came across your blog posting after searching for and your post on Can Scientists be Great Communicators? makes an interesting read. Thanks for sharing. I will research more next Monday when I have the day off.
March 21st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Great blog notes.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Reading your blog makes me remember one I read of telling us how a professional communicator became a scientist. From these, I can now see that it is very possible for professionals to change profession if they want to. Thanks for sharing this information.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:39 am
The issue of genetics is very important in life since it deals both with plants and animals.AS such it helps to actually know the good genes required for any growth of living things
May 30th, 2008 at 8:47 am
communication is an art for every work of life so needed by all the scientist need to communicate his work . so he needs to be a good communicator.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:42 am
[...] that there was also an interesting post from Mary Miller at the Exploratorium about the backlash to Matt Nisbetts (the Framing Science guy) perspective on communicating science [...]
June 16th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Matt Nisbett is giving a full-day workshop for graduate students and postdocs at Cal Tech soon, on communicating science. I think this is a wonderful thing, because this is not part of the standard training for soon-to-be-scientists. Graduate students are trained to do science, but generally not how to teach it or to write or talk about it. Regardless of how you feel about the framing issue (whether it’s “spinning” or not), the simple act of talking to future scientists about how to communicate their message can have nothing but positive impact.
Read post from me about it on my blog, too: http://sciencegeekgirl.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/talking-to-scientists-about-the-media/
September 9th, 2008 at 6:59 am
I think that scientists can be more engaging that trained professionals in communicating the excitement of science. There is a certain innocence, confidence, clarity, and just plain relating as a human being exemplified by Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, Dr. Carl Sagan, Don Herbert (”Mr. Wizard”), Prof. S. Hawking, and the dozens of current working astronomers and other scientists who are seen regularly on TV interview programs, TV news segments, and their own shows. If there is a scientific breakthrough to be described on TV, I would rather learn about it from a scientist than a news presenter who has mangled it in a misguided attempt to make it accessible to the general populace. People can understand just about anything if it is described by someone who really knows what they are talking about.
March 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I don’t normally comment on blogs but your post was a real call to action. Thank you for a great read, I will be sure to bookmark your site and check in now and again. Cheers, Amy xXx.
May 14th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Really great article and an even better question to raise.