Scholarly Pursuits: Academic research relevant to the workaday world of science writing
By Ben Carollo and Rick Borchelt
Public perception of science varies greatly, but the pundits are still at odds over exactly why
As the political season ramps up, daily updates on polling numbers are reported by countless news outlets. Politicos in Washington, D.C., live for this horse race, and many science writers and PIOs are probably paying close attention as well to get a sense of what could happen to the budgets of federal science agencies in the coming years.
In the circles in which we run we have also seen the results of polls that seek to tease out how the public perceives science and scientists. For this edition of Scholarly Pursuits, we are taking a look at one of these polls as well as exploring some recent papers that seek to elucidate how and why people perceive science in certain ways.
In Science We Trust: Poll Results on How You Feel About Science. Scientific American, Sept. 22, 2010.
In 2010, Scientific American and its sister publication, Nature, teamed up to conduct an online poll to determine if the public still trusted scientists after a series of high profile PR nightmares for scientists. This was seen as a particularly relevant question given how much science would be playing a roll in several pending policy conversations on energy, climate change, health, and technology (little did we know that said policy conversations would be put on hold for a while, but that is the subject of another poll entirely).
At the broadest level, the poll results appear to be positive for scientists. On a scale of 1 (strongly distrust) to 5 (strongly trust), scientists come in at a solid 4, higher than all other groups of people — including journalists. Journalists come in with a score a little over 2.5, just above companies and elected officials. Hold that thought for just a moment.
The poll explores several areas where science intersects with society. For instance, in the United States, only 17 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that scientists should stay out of politics; however, only 21 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that scientists know best what is good for the public. Two other statements were tested: Scientists should speak out about what the science says but avoid advocacy (40 percent agreed) and scientists should pay attention to the wishes of the public, even if they think citizens are mistaken and do not understand their work (26 percent agreed).
There were several other questions asked, and we would encourage you to check the poll results for a full accounting of the details, but we found the responses to one question to be particularly interesting. When people were asked about their level of comfort with the risks associated with nanotechnology, 28 percent of Americans were not comfortable, 10 percent were somewhat comfortable, 27 percent were totally comfortable, and a whopping 36 percent didn't know. This is in contrast to responses of the same question as it related to GMO crops and nuclear power, where there was a much more full accounting of respondents' opinions.
This highlights the complicated situation in which PIOs and science writers find themselves when it comes to engaging the public around scientific issues. Most of us in this business probably agree that science should play a role in political discourse (and a relatively unfiltered role at that). However, individuals - and many policy makers for that matter - do not get their information directly from scientists (the trusted source). They must create informed opinions based on information they receive through less trusted mediated parties (journalists). Though the provided poll responses do not provide enough information to determine if all journalists are seen equally, one would hope that science writers gain some additional level of credibility by engaging scientists in their stories. However, a critical question remains: How much interpretation of the evidence should a science writer truly provide? When a third of the participants of a poll of highly science-attentive readers don't have a clue how they feel about the risks of nanotechnology, there is clearly still a vital role for science writers in providing critical context for emerging science issues.
Dudo, A., Brossard, D., Shanahan, J., Scheufele, D., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. Science on Television in the 21st Century: Recent Trends in Portrayals and Their Contributions to Public Attitudes Toward Science. Communication Research 2011 38(6): 754-777.
In this paper, the authors seek to reexamine the work of George Gerbner and colleagues from 1985 on the effect of television on viewers' perceptions of science. This previous work focused on a "cultivation" perspective: That is, television is the most common source of images about many subjects, and thus heavy television viewers will mentally construct the world in a way consistent with what they see on TV. In short, scientists on television were generally portrayed as "good," but with fates in dramatic roles often associated with death or failure. Gerber's team concluded that heavy television viewers were less likely to view science favorably than those who watched less television. Additionally, this negative relationship was stronger among those who traditionally would be more disposed to think favorably of science: the well educated, affluent, and young. Given the many new sources of information and the changes in television programming, the current authors found it timely to see if the previous findings still hold true and determine whether additional factors are at play.
Through social science magic, the authors come to several conclusions. First, television viewing is not associated with negative attitudes toward science (once they accounted for prior science knowledge). The authors extrapolate this to suggest that television viewing does not have a significant direct effect, generally, on scientific attitudes. Second, television was found to be negatively associated with knowledge of science, which in turn resulted in more highly positive attitudes toward science. Third, those classified as heavy viewers of television are less likely to use other media such as the Internet and newspapers, and the authors found that there was a positive association between people having positive attitudes toward science and their use of the Internet and newspapers. Finally, the authors found that the negative effect of television viewing on attitudes toward science was stronger among those who have taken college science courses and vice versa.
These data clearly support a relationship between attitudes toward science and levels of television viewing. The authors suggest that a displacement theory is driving this relationship - television viewing at high levels displaces other activities that would strengthen science knowledge. The authors' concluded that scientists on television are usually portrayed as good. Couple this finding with the finding that lower knowledge of science is associated with positive attitudes toward science among heavy television viewers, and the displacement theory would indeed be supported. We do feel troubled by these findings, however, as they suggest that those who step away from the television long enough to read the products that science writers are producing have less positive attitudes about science than those who do not. Is the state of science really so bad?
Greiffenhagen, C. & Sharrock, W. Does Mathematics Look Certain in Front, but Fallible in the Back? Social Studies of Science 2011 41(6): 839-866.
The authors of this paper seek to explore various theories that public perceptions of science and mathematics are often askew from the reality of these fields because the "front" of the field is very different from the "back" of the field, which only serves to reinforce myths about these fields. Simply (and crudely) put, the "front" of science is how science is written and presented, while the "back" of science is how science is practiced in the laboratory. The historical discussion on these issues has focused on how from the front (in written documents and in presentations), science is presented in a neat package and that the audience (some group of outsiders) is to believe that this package accurately and completely reflects what went in to making that discovery happen. Accordingly, the science is perceived by these outsiders as infallible. In contrast, many people believe that this model does not appropriately reflect what happens in science from the back (the activities in the laboratory, where human error and intellectual disagreement can happen) and that only a select group of insiders is privy to the true nature of things.
Greiffenhagen et al. take a relatively interesting approach to assess how segregated the front is from the back of mathematics and whether such a segregation promotes this "myth of certainty." Looking at this in the field of mathematics is particularly interesting since the field is viewed by many as the pinnacle of rational thought. The team observed graduate level lectures (the front) and compared those conversations with individual meetings between graduate students and their advisors (the back). We'll spare you the details of exactly how these conversations panned out, but the authors essentially conclude that exposure to the sausage-making process would not lead to any significant change in perception or understanding of how the end product is perceived.
This particular study only looks at the field of mathematics, but let's assume for a moment that the findings apply to the sciences as well. All else being equal, seeing the scientific sausage being made would not affect a reader's appreciation for or understanding of the outcome featured in the story. Many science writers strive to avoid sharing the particularly complicated process that results in a research outcome because we all know that the average attention span for such content is minimal. However, even if the audience maintains an understanding and appreciation of the outcome, have we nonetheless colored the public's perception in such a way that there is a loss of a fundamental appreciation for the scientific process? We all know that science is about more than creating a product. The years of work and effort of countless people that go into creating a single research outcome is lost on most people, but without a greater shared understanding in society of how science is conducted, sustained public support for research could wane. Finding the right balance is complicated, but this is certainly something of which we should all be mindful as we tell science's story.
"Scholarly Pursuits" features articles from journals produced in the United States and abroad. If you read an article you think would make a good candidate for this column, sent it along to rickb@nasw.org.
Ben Carollo leads the issues analysis and response team at the National Cancer Institute at NIH. Rick Borchelt is special assistant for public affairs to the director at the National Cancer Institute at NIH.
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