Monthly Archives: December 2011

December 22, 2011 · 1:59 pm

Part 3: In Which Ben Gets to the Point

I’ve spent a couple posts raining hate on the media’s portrayal of science and  exuberantly praising science bloggers. I’d like to wrap this series up with a few suggestions for how the excellent science communication in blogs might be applied to other media, specifically museums. Science blogs currently reach a relatively small audience, but the strategies for science communication employed by bloggers can be utilized by media forms that attract far more people.

Museums occupy the lower middle range of visibility among science communication venues. America’s most-visited natural history museum, the National Museum of Natural History, had seven million visitors in 2009, a number which pales in comparison to the 431 million homes reached by the Discovery Channel, but which is considerably higher than the 500,000 2011 subscribers to Scientific American magazine. Nevertheless, museums require special recognition in that they are among the most trusted of media forms. 86% of Americans view museums as a trustworthy source of information, substantially higher than the number of Americans that trust books (61%), television (49%) or newspapers (41%). Since museums are blessed with such high public trust, the stakes are higher for museums to report information accurately.

The New Museums

The museum field has undergone a significant revolution since the 1970s, trading its traditionally academic leadership for an audience-focused and education-based model. This change is beneficial because museums are now beholden to serving the needs of the public, and are trying (and occasionally succeeding) to serve increasingly diverse audiences. Visitors are now seen as active participants in the learning process, rather than passive spectators. This new paradigm has, however, made museums vulnerable to the same pitfalls that plague other media forms. Some in the museum field have noted that concern for public interests has been in some cases led astray by devotion to entertainment. Many newer exhibits sacrifice scholarship and educational value for gimmicks and sensationalism, not unlike the practices in science journalism.

An additional hurdle facing museums is the difficulty of communicating science through objects. Museums are based around objects, but science is based on ideas and concepts. Traditionally, science exhibits would place a spotlight on spectacular objects, but would communicate very little information about why those objects are important and what scientists can learn from them. For example, a paleontology exhibit is typically centered on the enormous mounted skeletons of dinosaurs, but visitors can only learn so much from this kind of display. The audience will surely be impressed by the size of the skeletons, but will leave without understanding what those skeletons tell us about the age of the earth, the evolution and diversity of life, and the place of humans in the natural world. The lack of science in science museums is an oversight that has unfortunately stood the test of time, and museums would do well to reconsider their approach to science communication.

New Strategies

Museum workers are moving toward an audience-centered institutional mission, but have struggled to do so without resorting to the same non-educational sensationalism seen in attempts at science communication in other media. Science blogs, however, are achieving this goal right now: they foster dialogue between scientists and laypeople, without sacrificing intellectual substance.
One of the most important aspects of science blogs is that they introduce audiences to real people doing real science. Firstly, the public gains direct access to the scientific process, which instills appreciation in the reliability of scientific conclusions. Additionally, communicating with working scientists and seeing the work they do demythologizes the process of making knowledge. Science is shown as a tangible process that anybody can become involved with or contribute to. Putting a human face on the scientific process is a powerful tool for engaging the public, and one that some museums have already started using. For instance, as part of the “The Scientist is In” program at the National Museum of Natural History, staff curators set up shop in the exhibit halls, where they answer visitor questions and discuss their current research. This program has proved popular both among visitors and the scientists, who appreciate the opportunity to find out what their audiences are interested in. The implication from “The Scientist is In” and from science blogs is that the idea that scientists are universally poor communicators is false. Public education need not be the exclusive domain of education specialists, and many scientists are eager and willing to take part. Indeed, it is good practice to limit the number of layers of interpretation, as this often contributes to distortion of facts.

Another strong practice of science blogs is encouraging interaction from readers. Blog audiences enter gainful conversations with bloggers, and both parties benefit from this process. Museums can mimic this by inviting visitors to form and share their own conclusions. Process-focused science exhibits can show visitors what kinds of information scientists use to make interpretations, and then invite visitors to try it for themselves. For instance, an exhibit could use a variety of animal skeletons to demonstrate how scientists use indicators like gait and posture to determine how extinct animals may have behaved. The goal is to make the museum exhibit an interactive and intellectually involving experience. Involvement nurtures passion for content, which encourages repeat visits and deeper engagement. This is a new concept for museums, which have traditionally positioned themselves as institutions of intellectual authority. Unfortunately, there is little data on how to successfully integrate web-style discourse into a physical exhibit, because very few museums have tried it. Museums will have to be proactive in order to encourage substantive interaction with the exhibit content, or even among visitors. Some museums have successfully integrated user-generated content into exhibit spaces. For example, the “Playing with Science” exhibit at the London Science Museum invited visitors to place photographs of their own objects into the exhibit, alongside brief statements of the objects’ importance. However, something as simple as a comment board can also encourage visitors to respond intelligently to exhibit content.

Finally, museums should refocus content interpretation away from objects for their own sake and toward ideas. As stated previously, the public’s understanding of science is hindered by the media’s focus on encapsulated facts and discoveries, rather than broad, unifying concepts. Most scientific concepts are inherently logical and do not require specialized knowledge to understand if communicated properly. Evolution via natural selection is a good example. The concept that genetic variations within a population of organisms succeed or fail based on suitability to the present environment is easy to grasp, but a troublingly small percentage of the population is familiar with it. Even among visitors to natural history museums, who are more likely to accept evolution as true than the general population, less than a third are familiar with how natural selection works. Evolution is most important concept in biology and unifies the field. Therefore, it would not be difficult to integrate evolutionary concepts into virtually any exhibit on natural sciences. Communication of scientific concepts like evolution is more important for building science literacy than sharing scattered facts and impressive objects. Objects are excellent teaching tools, but are better when used as examples of underlying ideas.

Science communication in the media is at a tipping point. As the media has edged away from education and toward lowest-common-denominator entertaining, the public need for distinguishing reliable and unreliable information has increased. The misleading and inaccurate presentation of science in the media is woefully unhelpful for supporting an active and informed citizenry. Museums, with their high visibility and public trust, are well positioned to take steps toward reversing this trend. However, museum workers must first strike a balance between the sometimes conflicting goals of public appeal and accuracy. Science blogs are an excellent model for reliable, involving and applicable science communication, but they operate on a much smaller scale than museums. The challenge for museums, and any other media forms up to the challenge, will be to translate the strategies employed by blogs at the micro scale to large institutions.

Selected References

Diamond, Judy, and Margaret Evans. “Museums Teach Evolution.” Evolution. 61.6 (2007): 1500-1506.

Gregory, Jane, and Steve Miller. Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility. New York: Plenum Press, 1998.

MacFadden, Bruce J., Betty A. Dunckel, Shari Ellis, Lynn D. Dierking, Linda Abraham-Silver, Jim Kisiel and Judy Koke. “Natural History Museum Visitors’ Understanding of Evolution.” Bioscience. 57.10 (2007): 875-882.

McLean, Kathleen. “Museum Exhibitions and the Dynamics of Dialogue.” Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Ed. Gail Anderson. Lanham: Altamira, 2004. 193-211.

Simon, Nina. “Discourse in the Blogosphere: What Museums Can Learn from Web 2.0.” Museums and Social Issues. 2.2 (2007): 257-274.

Leave a comment

Filed under dinosaurs, museums, NMNH, science communication

Tagged as , , , ,

December 20, 2011 · 12:51 pm

Part II: Why Science Blogs are Neat

Returning to the shameless term paper recycling extravaganza, this post will cover the recent success of science bloggers. This discussion is based pretty much entirely on the blogs I read, which are mostly vert paleo-related. I can only assume that molecular biologists, physicists and those poor, brave souls in paleobotany have similar online communities. Once again, thanks to Matt Wedel and Brian Switek for their thoughts, experience and quotability.

Of the 112 million blogs on the internet, science blogs represent a small but growing subset of some 1,200 active contributors. Describing his reasons for co-founding the paleontology blog Sauropod Vertebrae Picture of the Week, Mathew Wedel admits, “if we had a goal at first, it was just to talk about how cool sauropod vertebrae are” (Wedel 2011). However, science blogs have since evolved into a valuable resource for both scientists and laypeople. First, science blogs have the advantage of being written by practicing scientists and other experts in their fields, and therefore remove the distortive barrier typically imposed by the media. As such, they provide a unique opportunity for scientists to communicate directly to interested lay people, and to hear what their audience has to say. Blogs can create public awareness of research or scientific concepts deemed irrelevant by the media, and can rapidly provide commentary or corrections to more widely dispersed reports. Science blogs have also proved invaluable for fostering networks of academic peers, but my concern here is with popularization.

Science blogs also embrace a pluralistic conception of academia that is typically obscured by mainstream media. Whereas the media presents scientists as an invariably unified professional entity, blogs reveal the specific positions and interests of individual scientists, humanizing the discipline in the process. SV-POW is once again a prime example. Posts like this one  reveal the little-publicized controversy over for-profit versus open-access academic journals. The comments generated indicate disagreement, or at least varying levels of apathy, within the scientific community. Similarly, Brian Switek’s recent post on Hell Creek ceratopsian diversity emphasizes the normalcy of scientific debate, combating the widespread assumption that any published paper is definitive truth. The public benefits from these conversations because it provides exposure to important issues in knowledge making that are normally not accessible.

Most importantly, by providing audiences with a direct link to working scientists and accounts of their everyday activities, science blogs demythologize the process of creating knowledge. As Wedel explains, blogs are well positioned to integrate the public into the scientific process:

“If we have one overriding goal now, it’s to break down the artificial walls between interested people, regardless of training or background. And by that I mean the scientific process, what we call making science, and the communication of science in both academic and popular settings. A century ago most science was citizen science. The rise of national funding agencies like NSF and NIH has allowed a lot more professional scientists to do science, but along the way we lost something, which is the idea that any curious, disciplined person can contribute to human knowledge. We firmly believe in that, and we’re doing what we can to bring it back.” (Wedel 2011)

This is a critical point because, as discussed in the previous post, the current standards for science communication do not encourage public participation. Information about science is fed to audiences in a one-way exchange. Science blogs break this mold by encouraging a productive dialogue between scientists and laypeople. They encourage the public to actively contribute to the scientific process, and provide a forum for this knowledge to be shared.

Science blogs are still a young media form, and their potential for communication remains largely untested. Nevertheless, the field is growing rapidly, and scientists who blog are gaining much more respect in the academic community (Switek 2011). While there was once skepticism about quality control in the blog medium, increasing numbers of scientists are entering the fray, and it is now reasonable to foresee most labs including somebody blogging about their work by default. Currently, the majority of the public, even those with strong interest in science, are unaware that this forum exists. Science bloggers, however, are encouraged by their increasing visibility, and some are optimistic that blogs will change the way science is communicated to the public.

Selected References

Batts, Shelly A., Nicholas J. Anthis and Tara C. Smith. “Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy.” PLoS Biology. 6.9 (2008): 1837-1841.

Switek, Brian. Email Interview. 19 Oct 2011.

Wilkins, John S. “The Roles, Reasons and Restrictions of Science Blogs.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 23.8 (2008): 411-413.

Wedel, Mathew. Email Interview. 24 Oct 2011.

Leave a comment

Filed under museums, science communication

Tagged as , , , ,

December 19, 2011 · 3:53 am

Scientific Literacy: They’re Doing It Wrong

It’s that time of year when student bloggers start recycling term papers and calling them new blog posts. To jump squarely on that bandwagon, please find enclosed in the next few posts an abridged and modified version of some of my museum studies work. The short version is that science communication in the media, including museum exhibits, has been hijacked in the name of substance-free entertainment in the interest of attracting as many eyeballs as possible. However, the rising popularity of science blogs over the past few years presents an encouraging model for presenting science in an approachable and engaging manner without sacrificing veracity. After some background on why and how the media has been systematically ineffectual at communicating science, I’ll point out some things science bloggers are doing right and what museums and other media forms can learn from them.

One more thing: A huge thank you to Matt Wedel and Brian Switek, who answered my questions about their blogs and their thoughts on science communication. Since they’re more articulate than I am, I’ve included some quotes below.

Why Should We Care About Scientific Literacy?

NSF defines scientific literacy as knowing basic facts and concepts about science and, most importantly, understanding how science works. NSF has been running nationwide surveys on science literacy since 1972, and the results are not encouraging. The majority of the general public knows only a few scattered facts about science, but few can articulate important concepts, such as now evolution works. More critically, only 3% of those surveyed could answer “what does it mean to study something scientifically?”. Most Americans are unfamiliar with the scientific process, or how scientists actually find out the things they know.

An appreciation of the scientific process is extremely important. Scientifically literate individuals can recognize when ideas have been tested in an unbiased manner, and can critically evaluate information for themselves. This is a valuable skill not only in keeping up with important science news, but also in assessing the validity of any type of information. For instance, valuing fairly evaluated information is crucial for meaningful participation in elections and the legal system.

The need for a scientifically literate citizenry is arguably at an all-time high. Americans are bombarded with ever-increasing amounts of information, and require the intellectual tools to separate what is reliable from what is not. In particular, people need to be able to recognize unsupported claims by politicians, such as Michelle Bachmann’s assertions that global warming is not supported by science and that vaccines cause autism. Authoritative statements are meaningless without knowledge of where the information came from and why it is believable. Furthermore, scientific research is often relevant to people’s lives, especially work concerning climate change and alternative energy.

Science in the Media

The mass media is the primary venue for communicating science to the public. As discussed here, “media” refers to the broad and amorphous spectrum of books, television, newspapers, museum exhibits and virtually all other platforms intended to convey information to a wide audience. Science undoubtedly has a strong presence in the media: most media outlets dedicate at least some resources to science coverage, and magazines, cable networks and museums dedicated entirely to science communication are plentiful and easily accessible. Unfortunately, the manner in which science is portrayed and discussed in the media is highly counterproductive. Inaccuracy, misleading emphasis and sensationalism are rampant, and the very structure of how science is communicated is flawed.

Earlier this year, several large and small media outlets, including Fox, CBS, the Huffington Post and Science Daily focused their coverage of the annual conference of the Geological Society of America on a talk that purported that a highly intelligent and self-aware “kraken” was responsible for an interesting arrangement of prehistoric fossils. Despite the fact that this story was unsubstantiated by evidence and clearly absurd, the press passed it along to their audience without any further research or commentary. Had any of the reporters taken a moment to verify the story with experts, they would have been told in no uncertain terms that the “kraken” had no scientific merit. Unfortunately, this incident highlights the reality that the editorial process often favors sensationalist stories that will attract a larger audience over an accurate presentation of information.

The “kraken” story may have been trivial, but the practice of favoring sensationalism over veracity has much more serious implications when journalists pass on bogus claims for miracle cures, or push the myth that vaccines cause autism. While there has been no thorough investigation of whether science communication in the media is more or less accurate than any other topics, it is clear that the media is not as concerned as it should be with communicating reliable science information to the public.

Even when the media manages to communicate science information accurately, its emphasis is not conducive to generating long-term public interest or to fairly representing the scientific community. Few news outlets venture beyond reporting the latest publications in Science and Nature, limiting audiences to only a small sample of the wide variety of research being published on a daily basis. Additionally, the media tends to overdramatize and exaggerate science stories, making “every incremental advance sound like a huge revolution” (Wedel 2011). As a result, the public is quick to conclude that no science stories are as monumental as they are made out to be, or worse, that scientists themselves are prone to jumping to conclusions. This situation thoroughly misrepresents the scientific process, as publication is just the beginning of scientific deliberation and debate (Switek 2011). Furthermore, every discovery is not a revolution, nor should it be: scientific progress is based on generations of incremental additions to our body of knowledge.

Unfortunately, the working practices of scientists and media workers vary considerably. Media methodologies have developed out of a contest for attention, and therefore media professionals typically rely on practices that will gain the largest audience. Sensationalism and fabricated controversy are the objectionable results of this system. Media also favors active and highly visual content, which does not mesh well with much of the work done by scientists. Science occurs mostly in people’s heads, and discoveries are often drawn out over months or years. As such, media presentations of science are often padded with misleading theatrics, such as animated fighting dinosaurs or researchers walking down hallways for no reason. Simply put, the modern media system favors spectacle over education, and is ill-suited to communicating science in an accurate or reliable way.

What about Academia?

Scientists are the best informed about their research and its ramifications, and therefore are arguably the best people to share that information. But although much of the criticism of the media’s portrayal of science has come from the academic community, scientists themselves are not always skilled communicators (but many are!). Although it is now expected that scientists engage the public regarding the content and impact of their research, this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Unfortunately, there is still little institutionalized support for scientists who endeavor to communicate to the public. Public lectures and popular articles are not counted by tenure committees or academic auditors as publications, and scientists that frequently reach out to wider audiences, such as Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall or Robert Bakker, are unduly criticized by their peers.

At a philosophic level, the dissemination of scientific information to the masses has followed the “deficit model”, in which scientists are assumed to have privileged access to truth and the public is considered to have nothing to contribute. This perspective is not only condescending, it is counterproductive to generating public interest in science. If the public is told that it is irrelevant to the process of knowledge-making, there is no reason to expect people to be enthusiastic about the scientific process. Furthermore, laypeople can and have made enormous contributions to science, and can bring new perspectives and ideas that scientists may not have considered. For their part, scientists are not infallible, and it is unrealistic to assume that they always have the best answers. Complaints about public misconceptions are common among academics, but if scientists are unwilling to engage in dialogue with their audiences, these misconceptions will continue.

What Should the Public Know?

There is strong agreement among science communication specialists (e.g. Brok, Diamond and Evans, Gregory and Miller, Nuijens) that the key to understanding science is understanding how scientific knowledge is actually produced. Knowledge of specific facts and discoveries can be interesting and worthwhile, but this information is meaningless without context. Information gains significance only when its relevance, implications and place among current research trends is understood. Additionally, the media’s focus on new discoveries can potentially harm the public’s view of science. New ideas in science are typically contested, and may hold up or be discarded after intensive scrutiny. This is part of the scientific method and is the normal state of affairs. Unfortunately, when the public only sees new ideas, as well as different scientists reaching different conclusions from the same supposed facts, it is inevitable that doubts will arise regarding the integrity of scientists in general.

Ideally, if the public understands anything about science, it should be the nature of the scientific research process. The public ought to know how the scientific method works, and why it is a powerful tool. If the media communicates anything about science, it should be the integrity of the scientific method, from testable and verifiable hypotheses to repeated, objective observation. With this information, the public will appreciate the high standard to which scientific conclusions are held, and the value and trustworthiness of continuously-verified theories, such as evolution. Likewise, the public will understand that any disagreement among scientists is an important part of the process of creating knowledge.

To accomplish this, the media should focus on the ongoing process of scientific research, rather than milestone discoveries. Not only will exposure to the practices of training, peer-review and continuous peer scrutiny support the reliability of the scientific process, but the portrayal of what scientists do on a day-to-day basis will put a much-needed human face on the field. Besides creating a more accurate portrayal of science as a discipline, a focus on the scientific process will provide the public with the tools to evaluate the reliability of any new information, from the realm of science or elsewhere.

Next time, I’ll get to the point: science blogs, and their applications for museums.

Selected References

Batts, Shelly A., Nicholas J. Anthis and Tara C. Smith. “Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy.” PLoS Biology. 6.9 (2008): 1837-1841.

Broks, Peter. Understanding Popular Science. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2006.

Diamond, Judy, and Margaret Evans. “Museums Teach Evolution.” Evolution. 61.6 (2007): 1500-1506.

Enseki, Carol. “Public Trust and Accountability.” New Standard. 2006: 1-2, 8.

Gregory, Jane, and Steve Miller. Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility. New York: Plenum Press, 1998.

Nuijens, Frank. “Why the World Needs Better Science Journalism.” MediaShift. 29 Nov 2011. Web.

Rothschild, David. “Bad Journalism Promotes Bad Science.” Plagiarism Detection and Prevention Blog. 11 Oct 2011. Web.

Switek, Brian. Email Interview. 19 Oct 2011.

Wedel, Mathew. Email Interview. 24 Oct 2011.

Leave a comment

Filed under museums, science communication

Tagged as , ,