Editorial pubs.acs.org/ac
Science Communication: A Science Not an Art
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As science communicators, we need to clearly define our objectives before undertaking efforts to communicate our science. The National Academies report outlines several common overarching goals of science communication: to share findings and the excitement of science, to increase our appreciation for science, to improve knowledge about specific issues, to influence behavior and policy preferences, and to work with groups seeking solutions to societal problems. These goals (and others) are important and worth pursuing, and each goal requires a different approach for effective scientific communication. Of course, these are just introductory thoughts for addressing the broader, more complex issue. Getting back to the article by Maynard and Scheufele, they distilled the long report into several action items, summarized below: • Recognize that science communication is part of a larger information network. • Assess the effectiveness of your science communication. • Engage in a bidirectional dialogue about the promises and pitfalls of your research. • Consider social media’s impact, both the negative and positive. • Understand when and how to communicate science around issues that are contentious. As you decide how to participate in the conversation, I encourage you to take advantage of the available advice and research. I hope that many of you will spend some of your valuable time and effort to communicate the importance of measurement science and the importance of repeatable, verifiable, and quantitative data, both to the public and to the decision makers. Good luck!
t seems I cannot read any of my favorite news sources, in the U.S. at least, without some sort of headline related to science being vilified on multiple fronts. In addition, in 2017, a new phrase has been added to my lexicon−alternative facts−and I expect to be using this phrase for years to come. From questions related to climate change or the effectiveness of a new nutritional supplement, the application of measurement science and the data generated should remain central to helping shape science policy. However, it is increasingly obvious that scientific results do not always guide our national policies. In response, scientists are becoming more vocal about the need for our community to contribute to the public discourse. While some analytical scientists have worked hard to cultivate blogs, write news articles, be interviewed by reporters, and encourage more open discussion with the public, many have not. One common excuse I hear for not engaging in the public conversation is that while many of us believe that we are effective in the lab or at writing manuscripts, we are not good at discussing our science with “outsiders”. If this describes you, may I offer a different perspective? Just as it took most of us years to become effective researchers, is not it worth some time to work on becoming an effective science communicator? It may be that continued support and funding for scientific research depends on our shared responsibility to actively participate in this effort. How should we effectively communicate our science to the lay audience? Said differently, what does the scientific research tell us about communicating science? The independent online news source The Conversation recently posted an essay by Andrew Maynard and Dietram Scheufele entitled “What does research say about how to effectively communicate about science?”,1 in which they refer to a recent National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine committee of experts and their published findings, “Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda”.2 I encourage everyone to read the blog, and if interested, to also read the National Academies report. At >120 pages, the latter is not an easy read, and one of its conclusions: “Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specif ic audiences and circumstances often are not obvious” is somewhat disheartening. Nonetheless, it also serves as an important wakeup call to scientists. I had never really thought about the concept of a “deficit model” of communication as described in the National Academies report, and why it does not work. What is this model? According to the report, a widely held assumption−that it is the lack of information on science that explains why more people do not accept scientific claims or do not engage in polices that are consistent with scientific evidence−is not accurate. Decisions are rarely based on scientific information alone and the reasons why are varied. One of these, as noted by Maynard and Scheifele, is that we all have “...a tendency to take on face value information that seems to confirm our world view.” © XXXX American Chemical Society
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Jonathan V. Sweedler AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Jonathan V. Sweedler: 0000-0003-3107-9922 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) Maynard, A.; Scheufele, D. A. What does research say about how to effectively communicate about science? The Conversation, December 13, 2016; 12.28 pm, http://theconversation.com/what-does-researchsay-about-how-to-effectively-communicate-about-science-70244. (2) https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23674/communicating-scienceeffectively-a-research-agenda.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b00585 Anal. Chem. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
