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Anita Makri argues that the form of science communicated in popular media leaves the public vulnerable to false certainty.
What is truth? How do we find it and does it still carry weight in public debate? Given recent political events, these are important and urgent questions. But of the two industries I work in that are concerned with truth — science and journalism — only the latter has seriously engaged and looked for answers. Scientists need to catch up, or they risk further marginalization in a society that is increasingly weighing evidence and making decisions without them.
[...] What's overlooked by many is how science is losing its relevance as a source of truth. To reclaim this relevance, scientists, communicators, institutions and funders must work to change the way that socially relevant science is presented to the public. This is not about better media training for researchers. It demands a rethink about the kind of science that we want to communicate to broader society. This message may sound familiar but the new focus on post-truth shows there is now a tangible danger that must be addressed.
[...] If the public is better equipped to navigate this science, it would restore trust and improve understanding of different verdicts, and perhaps help people to see through some of the fake news that circulates on scientific matters.
http://www.nature.com/news/give-the-public-the-tools-to-trust-scientists-1.21307
What do you think, will the general public trust these tools, if available ?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:16PM
I'm not quite sure I understand what TFA is arguing for. First, science isn't exactly about "finding truth" in some philosophical sense. I'm guessing the author is arguing that scientists need to be better about contextualizing findings and their implications, rather than the media reports of science we often get which tend to be oversimplified if not outright distorted (and sometimes even marshalling facts to support conclusions different from the science that created those "facts").
But what are scientists to do? One possibility suggested in TFA seems to be public education:
if the public is better equipped to navigate this science, it would restore trust and improve understanding of different verdicts, and perhaps help people to see through some of the fake news that circulates on scientific matters. Lifting the lid on these realities about socially relevant science is mostly about changing the content and framing of what's being communicated. And it could be encouraged by targeting various points of contact between science and the public. Public-engagement programmes of research, educational or cultural institutions are an obvious option. Closer links between educators, communicators and scientists can also strengthen how socially relevant science is represented in articles and curricula.
I agree that having more "science outreach" to the public or whatever would be great. And for a long-term plan to educate the public better in science, maybe this can do some good.
But the immediate issue in TFA is quite different -- and alluded to in the passage I bolded above. The "content and framing" of the science isn't done by scientists, for the most part. It's done by a news media which has a business interest in (1) dumbing things down enough so anyone will understand, leading to oversimplifications, (2) sensationalizing findings to sell papers or clicks -- especially headlines, and given recent findings about the frequency of "fake news" spread around social media, it's pretty clear that large numbers of people don't even bother to read beyond a headline or a first sentence of an article, and (3) telling a story in a way that's entertaining primarily -- being informative is pretty clearly in second place, and displaying nuance is pretty much unheard of in most media reports.
Anyhow, as long as the public is primarily getting "scientific findings" through such sources filtered through a business/entertainment model, obviously they're not going to appreciate scientific nuance, nor will they want to even know about it -- start throwing in too many qualifiers and statistics and people's eyes will glaze over. Part of this is because they don't understand why they need to know about such nuances, but part of it is also that they aren't GIVEN such nuances on a regular basis, because the media likes to feed everyone a "light diet" of celeb gossip and sports, with a sprinkling of "Did you know X food could cause heart disease?"
I'm not sure what scientists are supposed to do about this exactly. The media blitz often begins even within universities themselves, as university press offices play up recent findings from the faculty that already tend to exaggerate things. Once it trickles into mainstream news media, all nuance is lost.
What does TFA recommend?
Scientists can influence what's being presented by articulating how this kind of science works when they talk to journalists, or when they advise on policy and communication projects. It's difficult to do, because it challenges the position of science as a singular guide to decision making, and because it involves owning up to not having all of the answers all the time while still maintaining a sense of authority.
Scientists already do this. Read discussion sections of actual scientific studies. They often have lots of hedging about how far the data really goes, whether it can actually be conclusive, what further work needs to be done to clarify the findings, etc. Scientists are often (though not always) VERY straightforward about a lot of this stuff. And my guess is that most scientists also TRY to convey such nuance to the media if interviewed: "preliminary findings," "more work needed to confirm," etc.
The problem is -- what quotations will the reporters use? Will they print a three-paragraph quote from a scientist clarifying all the nuances? Seriously doubtful. Instead, you'll get the more exciting quote: "This might be the beginning of a revolution in understanding of X" or whatever. And if they can't get a more definitive or exciting quote from the scientist who actually ran the study, they'll call up other researchers until they find someone else who gives them such a quote.
And what does it gain the reporter to try to report nuance? Many readers will find it boring if there are too many technical details or unclear if it hedges too much. Thus, it creates "bad journalism," where of course most journalism has a primary goal of entertainment. (That's what makes journalism distinct from reporting research. If you're a scientist reporting research in an article or book, you're trying to get across information. If you're a journalist writing an article, you want to entertain.)
And if the story turns out to be "wrong" after further research, the reporter will almost never be held accountable. After all, the reporter was just telling the story he/she heard and read, and just a single "preliminary finding" or something buried in the article would be enough to get the journalist "off the hook," just as putting "alleged" a few times in a crime story is sufficient to justify ruining someone's reputation in public, even if the person ends up being innocent in the end.
So, there's really no incentive for journalists to improve, and even being more careful or nuanced when talking to them is unlikely to change the general tenor of science journalism. The only way to solve this problem would be something significantly more radical -- like scientists directly communicating with the public (unlikely to work, since the reason we ask journalists to do this is because they are better at holding attention of the public), or scientists publicly denouncing journalistic coverage that isn't nuanced enough (likely just to result in less science reported in the first place). So I don't know how to fix it without having journalists accountable to scientists -- and aside from things like science journals or science magazines, I'm not sure how that's going to happen.