Closed minds stifle science

IT'S cognitive misers in the audience who make science communication a hard sell. "Individuals are naturally 'cognitive misers'," warns a new paper, Science Communication Reconsidered, in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

"If they lack a motivation to pay close attention to science debates, they will rely heavily on mental shortcuts, values and emotions to make sense of an issue, often in the absence of knowledge." The paper, wisdom of a Washington, DC, workshop bringing together a score of experts, including Melbourne psychologist Christine Critchley, suggests there is more to science communication than knowledge.

Scientists, it seems, are kidding themselves if they imagine mere ignorance explains public resistance to their projects. "Knowledge is only one factor among many influences that are likely to guide how individuals reach judgments, with ideology, social identity and trust often having strong impacts," the paper says.

It was her work on trust that got Dr Critchley, from Swinburne University of Technology, a seat at the workshop. "If scientists are working in a private organisation ... people tend to perceive their motivation to be more self-interested," she says, offering a thumbnail sketch of her research.

The paper complains of a "blurring of boundaries between public and private science" with implications for public trust. "Science communication ... remains driven by an ever-more-complex relationship between institutions, stakeholders, the media and a diversity of publics."

One strategy is to "switch the frame", pitching stories in ways that connect. To its surprise, the US National Academies found students did not respond well when evolution was put in the frame of well-known court decisions. A frame of modern medical advances worked.

As for public engagement, the paper says this should move "upstream" so people have a say when the science is at a formative stage. "Sometimes an engaged public might reach collective decisions that go against the self-interests of scientists," it says, citing a case where lay members of a nanotech forum morphed into research watchdogs.

Here the paper falls into a trap, says Bob Williamson, a human geneticist who has taken up the science policy portfolio with the Australian Academy of Science. "Scientists may have to take into account and answer public perceptions that are incorrect, such as fundamentalist religion in the US or Iran, or exaggerated fears of genetically modified organisms in Europe," he says. "((But) at the end of the day it is evolution that is the scientific fact and not creationism, and GMOs do not pose major new hazards."

The paper canvasses media training for science postgrads and government jobs for science journalists who've lost their jobs. This was a hot topic at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in Britain last week, says science communicator Jenni Metcalfe, of the Brisbane firm Ecoconnect.

Journalists shed by traditional media have been taking up jobs with government science agencies in Britain and the US. "I'm not sure (their work) can be called independent any more because presumably government representatives are vetting it before it gets published," she says. "It also means there's a lack of investigative science journalism."

17/07/2009