Science Communication Reconsidered (A Summary and Response)

The Article: Science Communication Reconsidered

This is a summary of and response to an article in Nature Biotechnology, Vol. 27, #6 June 2009, entitled Science Communication Reconsidered. This article identifies an ongoing problem with public opinion on science, the work of expertise in science, and how scientific findings are communicated to the public. In the realm of science, problems arise out of the fact that science is increasingly “interdisciplinary, bureaucratic, global in scale, problem-based and dependent on private funding” (514). In the realm of the public, on the other hand, media tend to build hype, spin and misrepresentation of scientific findings due to omission, ideological bias, sensationalism and conflicting worldviews. Due to these factors, public trust in science continues to diminish. The article considers a few models that have tried to address this problem. I would like to take a closer look at these models and the solutions the article has to offer, then try to
identify and critique some assumptions that I think lie at the foundation of this article.

The Models

-The Deficit Model:
Earlier it was thought that the lack of interest and engagement of the public in science, and the controversies that arose in science, were due to ignorance. The solution to this deficit of knowledge, it follows, would then be the production and disbursement of scientific information to the public. This account, however, did not take into consideration other factors that may inform a given individual’s stance on science, such as ideology, social identity, trust of science
and business, and consumption of popular culture such as film, television, videogames, novels and particularly forms of science fiction. Furthermore, today the proliferation of accessible scientific data is more than available to those “highly motivated individuals” who are interested in being engaged in “collective decision-making”. In the age of information, I would go as far as to agree with Jean Baudrillard’s notion that we are overwhelmed with information.

-The Public Engagement Model
With the realization of factors other than lack of information, a public engagement model was developed in order to encourage interest in the science that directly affects individuals and communities. The public engagement model “emphasizes deliberative contexts in which a variety of stakeholders can participate in a dialog so that a plurality of view can inform research priorities and science policy” (515). This might take the form of a salon-style café scientifique discussions not only about the technical aspects of science, but the ethical, political and economic. Public engagement invites the layman up stream, to use Latour’s analogy.
The article notes two critiques of public engagement: first, the public is all too often motivated after the matter, when the (sometimes rotten) fruits of scientific labor have already entered the market for human consumption—such as, for example, GMOs, anti-depressants or non-recyclable plastics. Second, the public may reach conclusions that “go against the self-interests of scientists” (515), such as watchdog groups, or perhaps the notion that some things should not be meddled with. Despite this, the article concedes to public engagement as one part of a broad remedy to the ills of science communication.

-Framing
After various attempts at public engagement it was found that, despite interest and access to information, the public still bases decisions on biased information, ignoring what does not already confirm and reinforce pre-existing beliefs and worldviews. This is due, according to this article, to ideologically slanted news sources, fragmentation of the media, and “opinion leaders, other than scientists, such as religious leaders, nongovernmental organizations and politicians, [who] have been successful in formulating their messages about science in a manner that connects with key stakeholders and publics but at times might directly contradict scientific consensus or cut against the interests of organized science” (515). In response, the article suggests framing as the new model. A frame is an “interpretive schema” that highlights certain information and ignores (though ideally still makes transparent) other information.
While framing might start to sound like some indoctrination technique or social engineering, one should keep in mind that this model approaches knowledge with the axiom that nothing can be given objectively. Through language, interpretation and emphasis, knowledge is always de facto framed. Indoctrination, spin and hype, on the one hand, can be said to frame information with the intent to obscure, while framing in the sense meant here is done with the intention to illustrate and reveal information with the intent to make it digestible to a given public group.

Solutions Offered

Taking these three models, the article offers six solutions that address their limitations. The first is to expand upon dialogue initiatives and continue forms of public engagement. Next, develop a systematic audience demographics research program; teach graduate science students the social and political groundings of science, analyze factors that contribute to hype and spin in the media, develop more expansive consumer protection laws that fight against false pseudo-scientific information, and finally, to systematically track the opinions on science as they develop in the media.

Critique

I would like to take a step back from this article for just a moment and consider the bigger context in which it is placed. It is written in a science magazine, by scientists, for scientists. With that in mind, it has the tone of someone who has a certain worldview, one that many (though not all) scientists have. This worldview takes a few things for granted, and I think this article is a quintessential example of them.

One is a particular idea of Progress. Progress in this sense is the production of knowledge, or movement toward Truth. Though we may move from one paradigm to another, this movement is still going forward. Science can and will, in theory, one day solve everything. Knowledge is thus, in this view, intrinsically good.

Following this conception of progress is a belief in a Unified Science, or Science. Science is the sublime object. In the minds of those who believe in Science, it has replaced Religion as the closest thing mankind has to Truth. The body of Science is a cohesive, coherent and continually growing collection of facts and theories. Problems of communicating Science to the masses are not inherent in Science itself, but are the fault of the masses themselves, from which Science is normally insulated. I think this disposition can be characterized as faith in science, which is not to agree with the drivel that science is “just another religion”. I would simply like to claim that science, as a social phenomenon, is not only constituted by a (socio-politico-culturo-econo-ethico)-ontology (an assemblage), but by a like epistemology as well, namely as a product of the European “Enlightenment”.

I would like to reconsider the deficit model with the caveat of a more complex understanding of knowledge, and offer a seventh solution to the list. I would posit that there is more than one type of knowledge. The problem is not a deficit in what I would call mere information, but in a lack of critical thinking. Information is but one type of knowledge, creativity another, empathy another, and critical thinking another still. In other words, the science that should be communicated ought not be merely a body of facts, but a grammar (in the Wittgensteinian sense), a methodology, a context.

A school system that favors the science and math over the humanities, where critical thinking and self-reflection develops, has created the very inability to understand that science. While I would agree to the six items on their list of solutions, I think this article, and perhaps the larger scientific community, overlooks this fundamental deficit in critical thinking, and furthermore fails to scrutinize the worldview that predefines much of scientific literature.

 

Science: Knowledge & Power

The following entries under the heading “Science Studies” are reflections on an interdisciplinary science course at Portland State University called Science: Knowledge & Power. This course, taught by Professor Michael Flower, is a survey of the discipline of Science Studies, or what is sometimes called Science and Culture Studies. This discipline might be described as a sociology or anthropology of science, but also encompasses a historical analysis of science, systems of thought, and science (as represented in) fiction, and ties into philosophy of science. We might call Science Studies a meta-level analysis of the intersections where science, culture, politics, philosophy and religion meet (for better or worse). Science Studies approaches science as a social construct, subject to all too human factors, and not as the objective, disinterested product of pure reason as it is often presented.

Throughout this inquiry we will approach science on four levels:

Experimentation – Interpretation of data – Representation to laymen – use in culture and politics

Experimentation and the interpretation of data are what scientists traditionally do in the laboratory. This is where what Bruno Latour calls black boxes are made. A black box is a concept or piece of technology on which other concepts and technologies are built. Once established, a black box becomes closed, as it were, considered as a fact that goes unquestioned and unexplored. Latour takes this metaphor from cyberneticians who call a machine or set of commands that are too complex to analyze a black box. In order to continue working, the cybernetician cannot sift through every set of commands being used. Rather, he or she must simply assume that they work. Scientific facts and theories work in a similar way. The biologist in the lab must simply close the theory of evolution in order to continue experimentation. The average person with a high school education in science likely does a similar thing. Those with ideological or religious commitments aside, the average person believes in the Big Bang, evolution, that the Earth is round, and any number of scientific “facts” without necessarily understanding what scientific, historical and cultural factors produced these knowledges.

Throughout these entries I attempt a few tasks, which might look something like…

1) Exploring the differences and similarities in methodology between a few thinkers in Science Studies, namely Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault, and Peter Kosso.

2) Re-opening a few black boxes that I’ve taken for granted.

3) Addressing some of the major socio-political issues surrounding/involving science today: climate and ecology (climate change, pollution, geo-engineering), abortion and contraceptives, palliative care and healthcare, and the recent science-oriented atheist or naturalist identity that has arisen amongst “the new atheists”, namely Richard Dawkins.

4) And philosophy of science, or, in other words, a meta-level analysis of science. In particular, I would like to take a close look at Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of a community of inquiry.

For more on Science Studies, consider this article:

http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/kendrick/papers/omni.html

 

Interpretation of Religious Experience

I often hear from non-religious people, especially from the New Atheist camp, something along the lines of “well, if you showed me proper evidence I might change my beliefs”. This, I think, is total bullshit. What a scientifically-minded, rational person would consider proper evidence must go through a rigorous test of possible causes and interpretations.
Now, I am going to venture that the only real kind of evidence for God, or some other metaphysical or supernatural phenomenon, would be a direct experience of the thing in question. Most people who claim religious knowledge describe this very thing: “God talked to me” or “Mary appeared to me in a vision”. Encounters with the divine in the Bible follow the same lines –think of the burning bush. Otherwise, there has been no physical evidence for the supernatural that is not continually debunked.

When it comes to interpretation of experience, Modern Man usually knows better than to trust himself. We live in a post-Freudian world afterall, where we know to not always trust our own consciousnesses or experiences. The sub-conscious can play tricks on the conscious. Furthermore, we now know that we live in an environment full of mind-altering chemicals, from bread mold to spray paint to methamphetamine.

Imagine, if you will, that you were to have the following experience:

You are laying in your bed reading a book, ready to fall asleep, when all of the sudden there is a flash of light and a bearded man in a robe appears in front of you. You can barely see his face because everything is so illuminated. He speaks to you in a language that you cannot understand, then the room begins to melt away and you lose consciousness. When you wake, you are in your bed, book in hand, and a few minutes, say ten or fifteen, have passed.

So, if I had an experience like the one stated above, that we might consider experiential evidence for the divine, I, and probably any other non-religious person of sound mind, would consider the following interpretations in the following order, assuming I am still rational:

1. The phenomenon experienced is actually real, but I just interpreted it incorrectly. (Think UFO sightings)
2. Drug hallucination – Someone has spiked my drink with acid. (Delusion caused by something external to myself)
3. Sudden and severe schizophrenia and/or some other madness. (Internal delusion)
4. I am dreaming, or am having a strange memory.
5. The phenomenon is real and I have interpreted it correctly.

As you see, number five would be the only interpretation that would lead me to conclude that there actually is a God (or ghosts or fairies, et cetera). Many people, I think, jump to interpretation number five before considering the other possibilities that are much more likely.

Perhaps what separates the religious mentality from the non-religious is the level of willingness to trust your own experience of the strange and unknown.

 

Two Sonnets in Shakespearean Rhyme

Hidden from children, high on a shelf
in a little jar are three little pills.
One for sickness, one for health
and another for cheap thrills.
And one quiet night when no one’s around
a little boy goes in search for pleasures,
and two little hands, without a sound,
find as his prize three little treasures.
What he will do and what he will be
is determined this moment in the choice he will make,
(An astronaut, a doctor, a revolutionary)
as a little hand grabs one to take.
And all that we are and all that we will
taken pill, after pill, after pill.
___________________________________________________________

There is an old woman who lives in a chest
with all that she needs, without burden or care
And of all her past homes, this she likes best,
and of the outside world she is unaware.
She lives simple and free in such little space
and passes the time by recollecting her years.
and often you can see on her wrinkled face
old lovers, lost passions, and undying fears.
And when the time comes that she is ready to die
to flowers and dirt she says “heavens forbid!”
And, if able, she asks that you try not to cry
as it is only a matter of closing the lid.
And with that, a lifetime of memories rest
in a little, modest wooden chest.

 

The World That Spun Too Fast

I remember when it started to really accelerate, when it reached that dead point, where there is no going back. I would come up with an analogy to describe it, but there are too many to choose from now. At first, a lot of people got sick from the vertigo. I, however, built up a strong stomach from eating my own shit. Today there is enough shit for everyone, and you only really feel the spin when you look up at the sky.

We are losing mass as we increase in speed. Sometime soon our mass will reach zero, and we will disappear from space-time. It will be pure ecstasy; a blinding white light that moves so fast it is inert.

 

Vibrissology: The Study and Collection of Whiskers

Vibrissa: (vī-brĭs’ə, və-) n. pl. vi•bris•sae (-brĭs’ē) :
Any of the long stiff hairs that project from the snout or brow of most mammals, as the whiskers of a cat.

I have taken up the hobby of collecting whiskers, namely of the feline variety, though there is interest in dog, rodent, cow, horse, sea lion and other specimens. Whisker collecting is not merely a hobby, but an art form and a science. I have developed a methodology for finding and harvesting whiskers that will be explained below.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WHISKERS

As any owner of mammalian pets will no doubt conclude, whiskers are not merely hairs or fur, but special sense-organs that the animal uses for tactile purposes. The vibrissa itself does not contain any nerves, consisting of a material similar to hair. At its root, however, are special sensory cells, consisting of a follicle surrounded by capsules of blood, called blood sinuses. When the vibrissa moves, the follicle agitates the blood sinus, the movement of which is in turn picked up by nerves called mechanoreceptors. This complicated mechanism allows the creature to sense the slightest stimulus, whether it be and object, the air or, in some specimens, even vibrations.
Whiskers come in many different colours and tend to match the fur of their host animal. As the vibrissologist collects samples it is important to document from what breed they are taken. This can be a difficult task for specimens found in the habitat. The field scientist must isolate and examine all whisker-bearing creatures in the habitat to compare the specimen with. The coloration and patterning should match, while size may vary from whisker to whisker.

METHODOLOGY

COLLECTION

METHOD ONE: HARVESTING

If the Vibrissologist is persistant, she may be able to harvest the whiskers straight from the animal’s cute lil’ face. This may be done effectively by running your fingers along the animal’s cheeks, then, when ready, pinch the whiskers between the thumb and pointer finger. Be extremely careful as you pull at the vibrissa, the sensation of their being plucked prematurely can be very painful for the creature involved. If the whiskers are ready for harvesting they will fall into your fingers with the greatest ease.
Do not attempt harvesting if the animal seems at all irritated, as only a thin layer of fur-laden lip lay between the vibrissa and sharp little fangs. Whiskers are not shed as often as normal hairs, and so this process can be a slow and arduous one. Eager field scientists may find combing the habitat to be more fruitful.
DISCLAIMER: Forcefully removing premature whiskers is a violent and inexcusable act and will not be tolerated by the Centre for Vibrissology or the Society of Whisker Enthusiasts.

METHOD TWO: COMBING

Combing the habitat of whisker-laden creatures will yield quicker results, but may make categorisation difficult if multiple whiskered mammalians inhabit said area. Once the daily habits of the vabrissa-bearing creature(s) are known, the field scientist can determine hot spots where whiskers are likely to be found. Cat trees, Dog beds, windowsills, under beds, on beds, near food and water and any place where the creature is found cleaning itself are viable gold mines to the vibrissologist. When dealing with felines, it is well to note that they pick certain spots in the habitats for sleeping, grooming and lounging that they return to repeatedly. These spots are picked for unknown reasons and utilised for seemingly random periods of time. Only the most ardent and perceptive vibrissologists may be able to discern their locations.
Being similar in nature to hair, dust and other light-weight, small objects, whiskers tend to float around the habitat (usually a house or apartment), and may be found apart from the regular hauntings of whiskered beasts. The field scientist must search along the walls, in corners and underneath things where dust tends to pile up. Specimens tend to be brushed to the side on wood or tile flooring, whereas rugs tend to grab onto them, keeping them in place for the observant scientist to find.
Use your hands to comb the area, as whiskers can sometimes blend in with the rug, dust or hair.

UNSURE WHETHER IT IS A WHISKER?
Loose hairs can sometimes look like whiskers, especially when dealing with large canines, whereas whiskers from kittens or puppies can sometimes look like hairs due to their diminutive sizes. The only sure way to discern true whisker-hood is to administer the Backward Rub Test (BRT).
To perform the BRT, hold the specimen at one end between the thumb and pointer finger, then with your other hand, rub your other thumb and pointer finger along the specimen, starting from the end you are holding. Now do the same thing starting at the opposite end. If the specimen is indeed a whisker, it should feel smooth going one way and rough going the other.
The vibrissologist may be able to observe the characteristics of a whisker without the aid of tools. Most notable is the tendency of vibrissae to be thick at the root end, then progressively grow smaller toward the tip. Whiskers tend to be straighter than fur, and damage if bent more easily.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE SAMPLES
For those interested in furthering science, specimens should be sent to The Centre for Vibrissology at the address below. The host mammal’s type, breed and age should be included with each sample. Monetary donations for research and equipment are also welcomed and encouraged.

Centre for Vibrissology
6797 SW 179th Ave.
Aloha, OR 97007

 

PTSD, a self-diagnosis

      I have just diagnosed myself with a new disorder called pre-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD). It is similar to post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD). Post-TSD, if you don’t know, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened, according to the NIMH. Pre-TSD, then, is an anxiety disorder that can develop before exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm will occur or will be threatened. My own death comes to mind, and I imagine it will happen sometime between right now and no more than eighty years from now. Being that I live in America, do not smoke and am not over-weight, I am guessing it will either be some kind of cancer due to exposure to pollutants, or a car accident.

 

I am infinite…

I am infinite            nothing
and were it not that I were dreaming
I would explode.

 

Upon a windowsill was a plant…

Upon a windowsill was a plant that grew downward.
It grew downward out of depression.
For, through the window it would watch the plants outside
growing wild and free in the sun and rain.
Eventually its vines grew so long and heavy that it fell
off of the windowsill.

When it landed, soil splattered everywhere.
And among shrivelled brown leaves and the shattered pieces of a planter
lay a broken and twisted vine,
but no note.

 

There was a woman who…

There was a woman who would plant lavender in a garden that was not her own.
As it grew the owner of the garden would cut the lavender that he did not plant
and again she would return and lay more seeds.

Long after they had both died the garden became wild and her lavender did grow and blossom.