Academic research relevant to the workaday world of science writing
By Ben Carollo and Rick Borchelt
Get out the vote!
As we submit this article, the election season has just wrapped up in the United States.
During our observation of the various campaigns, we noticed a general lack of discussion about science in the political discourse. We weren’t the only people who noticed, and there has been a range of calls to action. Some people called for individuals to ask politicians about these issues while others were pushing for scientific leaders to raise science topics in public discourse. With all of the competing factors in this election cycle, it is hard to know if any of these actions would have brought science to the forefront of people’s minds as a voting issue (at the national level in the U.S., this has never happened), but some recently published research gives us some ideas about what level of engagement is appropriate in raising these issues and how that engagement sways public opinion.
Chilvers, Jason. Reflexive Engagement? Actors, Learning, and Reflexivity in Public Dialogue on Science and Technology. Science Communication. Published online 7 Sept. 2012. [Accessed 11/13/12 at bit.ly/VgFXy9]
This first article focuses on the mediators and facilitators of science-policy-society interactions, the networks they form, and institutional and individual learning in these networks as a result of public engagement. In the U.K., where the study focuses, the recent trend has been toward increased public participation about science and technology, particularly upstream in the development process. As a result, communities of practice have begun to emerge in the area of deliberative participation, which has resulted in an evolution of the sciencepolicy-society interaction network. Though the analysis specifically focuses on U.K. public dialogue networks, the author suggests that there are significant enough similarities in these networks regardless of their location that the insights shared should be broadly applicable.
Through interviews with 21 “key actors” in the U.K. public participation arena and network analysis of the activities in which they are engaged, Chilvers constructed a map of the types of actors in relation to their roles in driving public dialogue and science-society interactions. There were four types of roles identified in relation to the public engagement process: 1) Studying — researching, theorizing, evaluation, and reflection; 2) Coordinating — networking, capacity building, and professionalization; 3) Practicing — designing, facilitating, and reporting; and 4) Orchestrating — commissioning, sponsoring, and guiding. Additionally, the following actor types were identified: academic social science, participation institutions, think tanks, scientists/science institutions, practitioners, and decision institutions (government, industry, research). The roles align pretty much as one would expect, but the map suggests that none of the actors fall simply into one role, and there is, in fact, a good deal of overlap across the actors. This is a reflection of many of the actors serving in different capacities depending on the time and the place, and highlights the fact that these interactions are generally “co-produced” by multiple actors. The implication of this is that no one group has control of the public engagement space, theoretically leading to a more balanced, realistic dialogue.
The author analyzes how the engagement network learns from its experiences in order to improve the way in which it conducts its work and that individual actors engage each other in doing so. He finds that the actors, as individuals, are very thoughtful about their work, but they fail to engage each other in how the network can function more effectively. This is attributed to sociological phenomena associated with how policy-setting organizations imbed decision-making processes in their culture and become insular in an attempt to maintain credibility in contentious environments. Reflecting on this, we shouldn’t be surprised that science discussions were generally lacking in the recent campaigns, but we should acknowledge that there were a lot of issues not discussed in the campaign, of which science was only one. The agenda setting and engagement processes we have are imperfect and inherently narrow, so what can be done? The author suggests that there is still a good deal of opportunity to enhance the public engagement process. In theory, a more-open learning network could result in science issues filtering more easily into public discourse. Per the author, the four keys to success for creating a more evolved network include: 1) creating spaces for learning, 2) enhancing connections between disparate actors, 3) promoting reflection by ensuring transparency, and 4) making a concerted effort to consider upstream questions about new approaches to engagement. This framework would likely be applicable well beyond the science-policy-society sphere.
Zorn, Theodore E., Juliet Roper, C. Kay Weaver, and Colleen Rigby. Influence in Science Dialogue: Individual Attitude Changes as a Result of Dialogue Between Laypersons and Scientists. Public Understanding of Science 21(7) (2012) 848-864.
This next paper looks at the impact on individuals engaged in a specific type of public engagement activity — dialogue (defined here as a collaborative, mutually constructive, critically reflective, participatory and emergent conversational process in which participants actively examine and reconstruct relationships among self, other, and world). Dialogue is not intended to resolve an issue, but rather create an opportunity for learning and shared understanding. As a consequence, collaboration is theoretically encouraged. The authors note that there is a significant lack of empirical evidence guiding those who engage in science dialogue, so they conducted an experiment to test scientist and layperson attitudinal changes as a result of dialogue.
The experiment focused specifically on issues related to human biotechnology (HBT). There were two hypotheses and two research questions identified in the study. The first hypothesis stated that participation in dialogue with scientists will produce more positive attitudes and more empathy towards scientists among laypersons. This hypothesis was supported by the experiment, though the shift in attitude was not large. The second hypothesis states that participation in dialogue will produce convergence of attitudes towards HBT. This hypothesis was also supported, generally, meaning that laypersons grew more favorable about HBT while scientists became more concerned by HBT. The first research question explored the effects of dialogue on participants’ communicative self-efficacy. The data suggest that participation in the discussion increased participants’ confidence and motivation for engaging in HBT discussions, but the dialogue did not have an effect on scientists’ self-efficacy on the matter. Overall, this supports dialogue proponents’ assertions that dialogue leads to shared understanding. This contradicts previous research that showed that scientists are biased against claims contrary to their pre-existing views. The second research question focused on how the format of the dialogue affected the dialogue participants. Not surprisingly, variables such as group size, prior knowledge, amount of time devoted to “education” of the topic in a session, and initial perceptions affected the outcomes of the dialogue.
Assuming that these findings can be generalized to the broader topic at hand, we wonder what impact widespread dialogues on scientific topics would have in the realm of public opinion and electoral politics. If a science debate were held for presidential candidates, would they both simply move to the middle on all of the issues and hug it out at the end because the party’s candidates realize that they aren’t that different after all? Probably not. In a politicized environment, outside of a closely controlled dialogue, the effects of dialogue could change greatly. This is not said to discount the authors’ finding, but we are left wondering how much effort should be placed into engaging the few who are able to participate in a controlled dialogue experience where shared understanding has the potential to be discovered.
Erikson, Robert E. Public Opinion at the Macro Level. Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Fall 2012: 35-49.
This final paper looks specifically at the dynamics of public opinion and electoral politics in the U.S. at the macro level through an analysis of micro-level political behavior. The general message here is that there is significantly more predictability and rationality in the political space when one looks at the aggregate level than would necessarily be assumed by looking at the limited awareness of the average citizen. The level of sophistication and knowledge of the “average” voter in the U.S. is considered to be fairly low at the individual level. This notion certainly pertains to science issues based on the evidence that we have seen. However, there appears to be a much greater degree of “intelligence” in public opinion at the macro level.
The author notes three primary reasons why this is the case. First, in a large group, opinions at the extremes will cancel each other out. Second, when public opinion shifts, it is usually the “informed” part of the electorate that is changing opinion as opposed to the larger “uninformed” segment of the population. Finally, small changes in opinion (survey data) become significant in the aggregate if we are looking at an environment where majority rules. This last point is particularly noteworthy when opinion is fairly evenly split on an issue among a group. More importantly, however, the author discusses how he and his colleagues have shown that over time, public opinion does drive political decision-making (even if it takes a significant amount of time for policymakers to catch up with the huddled masses).
Accordingly, it becomes increasingly important to understand how that public opinion evolves. The author suggests that people form opinions based on what they think will happen in the future. However, people will build their prediction of the future based on past experience. As a consequence, informed experts end up driving the direction on particular issues (at least on the economic issues discussed in this paper) since their analysis will reach the “informed” individuals, thus swaying them to one side or another. Moreover, the author discusses how policy changes come in conservative and liberal cycles (tied to political leadership majorities), which result in corrective elections as policies sway beyond the comfort level of the informed voters.
So, did it really matter that science was not a priority in the recent elections? This is probably not the right formulation for this question. Rather, we should ask what consequence science and technology’s absence in the election dialogue will have over the long haul. By not being placed on the agenda by the major parties, science and technology are inherently relegated to second-string issues for the next legislative cycle. A few science and technology issues may be addressed as the result of significant interest group action, but the rhetoric of the 2012 campaign (or lack thereof as the case may be) signals that there is a lack of collective desire among politicians to address science and technology issues at a broad level. Is there something that can be done about this? We believe that, yes, science communicators of all types contribute to supporting science as a cultural value, and that the farther this value spreads, the more science issues will come to the forefront of political discourse.
Scholarly Pursuits features articles from the social science research community in the United States and abroad. If you read an article you think would make a good candidate for this column, send 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.
