The sound of a skater on thin ice. Predicting a rainstorm of molten iron on a star fifteen years in the past.
It's been a year since I worried about participating in the first March for Science and two Earth Days have gone by. I've been thinking a lot about the place of science in society. Somehow it's often perceived as disengaged, from culture, cold, dispassionate and disconnected from almost all of society. As if it is irrelevant. At the same time there is widespread confusion global warming, GMOs, evolution, the impact of technologies, and vaccines along with confusion about the relationship of religion and science and the big fundamental questions such as the origin of the universe and life, the mind and the fundamental laws of physics.
It isn't that way. Science is very relevant, but there's a communication and image problem. While formal science and math education need to be fixed, perhaps fixing science communication is something that needs to happen first.
It takes real work and a good deal of thinking to express ideas usually addressed by equations and dense manipulations of experimental data in such a way they're clear and accurate enough. There are some people who make it look easy. My thesis advisor made a big point of it and I've gradually become a bit more adroit, but if someone was to ask about something I haven't thought about translating, I stumble and fail.
Issac Newton was arguably the first mathematical physicist. As an undergrad I made the mistake of trying to wade through the Principia Mathematica - his magnum opus. Its notation is obscure and the Latin is approximately dense. Asked why he didn't write it in English he replied "to avoid being baited by little smatterers in mathematics" . He wanted to make it obscure.
It's an easy trap to fall into. Flying home to Montana at the end of my junior year I found myself sitting next to a pretty girl. Too shy to start a conversation, I pulled out pencil and paper and worked out a solution to a problem a little more cleverly than in the exam. The paper filled with what must have been unintelligible scribblings as I killed any chance of conversation.
Galileo Galilei had a different approach. He had a deep conviction that ideas were to be shared and understood by almost everyone. He created stories with good dialog and characterization and used the tool of metaphor to make his points - the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems being a fine example. His work was readable and interesting enough to become popular and that made him powerful and his science a threat to established dogma. A few followed in his footsteps as great storytellers - Darwin and Faraday come to mind. But science became an institution in the late 19th century with its own culture and language.
That's the challenge.. to use metaphor, images and even characterization to tell the story. It has to be accurate enough and not dumbed down. This is important even when scientists talk to scientists in different fields. You tend to think what you're doing is clear - and it is for anyone who has been working in that field for five or ten years. Many scientists suffer from imposter syndrome. Science in other fields can look very hard - much harder than what you're doing. You fail to realize they've been working at what they do as hard and long as you have and they may feel the same way if you gave a talk. Science is hard won with a lot of work. It is the best description we have of how the Universe works and is often how we find ourselves on the threshold of the unknown. That's the basis for ripping good tales. It's worth creating them.
Years ago there was this wonder public talk as part of a Caltech lecture series. The speaker described being on the rim of the Grand Canyon and those millions of years of erosion. Thousands of feet below a river thundered and raged. In the distance a thunderstorm - the source of those waters. The words of Lauren Isley came to him as he watched:
the magnificent violence hidden in a single raindrop
Indeed.
A few people are good at code switching, fluently moving among different descriptions.. I'm working on it.
BUT its not enough and this is the problem I've been struggling with for the past year. Some areas of science have become politicized. Human-caused global warming is almost universally accepted by the scientific community, but that has an impact of some of the largest businesses in the world and a massive misinformation campaign has been conducted. Scientists and expertise are actively being ignored and ridiculed in some corners. Science education in much of the country is under attack and has been damaged. These issues led to the March for Science. That wasn't enough. Much more contact than a simple attempt to raise consciousness is required. I think storytelling is part of the solution, but you have to understand the audience.
I'm most comfortable chatting with one curious person. With a two-way conversation the level of the storytelling can be adjusted and, if I'm really lucky, they'll tell me their story about something that interests them. This is even true talking with scientists in other fields. If I'm speaking to a class I have a sense of the expected level. A general audience? Let's just say that hopefully can learn from failure.
I thought about dividing up - segmenting - the population so I would know a how to address, or even ignore, different groups. Looking around I settled on the Six Americas segmentation from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University. Designed to ferret out beliefs on global warming, it breaks the US population into six separate groups identified to reasonable accuracy using a 36 question survey. The nice thing is it works for science in general.
The Alarmed are fully concerned about the danger of global warming and are taking personal and political steps to combat it. The Concerned believe it is real, but isn't that important to them yet - maybe it's a top ten issue, maybe not. The Cautious, Disengaged and Doubtful represent a range understanding and acceptance of the problem and none are meaningfully engaged. The Disengaged and Doubtful generally will vote against those who want to do something about the problem as they see the fight as wasteful. The Dismissive are convinced it isn't real for a variety of reasons. They fight it actively and well-funded powerful groups support their cause. Dismissal has become part of their personal identify. (this is important as it is true for other areas of science)
I've wasted far to much time combating the dismissive with evidence. They simply will never buy it. The doubtfuls are also a tough group to talk to. That leaves the concerned, cautious and disengaged as potentially useful audiences and each has different information needs. In fact, when it comes to global warming, the only group seriously interested in actions and steps are the alarmed. Mentioning that to other groups can be counterproductive.
Let's say you have a message and understand which of the six Americas are in the audience. Now you have to be trusted. A Ph.D. in physics has negative value in some of the groups that might be important to address. It has been noted that celebrities taking up the cause can be more impactful if changing minds is the goal. So if you are an athlete, film star or other person in the public eye...
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