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We blogged recently about the challenges of communicating scientific uncertainty to the public, especially when it comes to climate science. The October 2011 issue of Physics Today contains yet another article addressing the very same concept. From the article:
Scientists typically fail to craft simple, clear messages and repeat them often. They commonly overdo the level of detail, and people can have difficulty sorting out what is important. In short, the more you say, the less they hear. And scientists tend to speak in code. We encourage them to speak in plain language and choose their words with care. Many words that seem perfectly normal to scientists are incomprehensible jargon to the wider world. And there are usually simpler substitutes.
We particularly like the table provided at the end of the article, titled “Terms that have different meanings for scientists and the public.” For example, the scientific term “uncertainty” translates to “ignorance” for the general public; the article suggests scientists use the word “range” instead. Error, which the general public reads as “mistake, wrong, incorrect,” might be better replaced by “difference from exact true number.”
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People understand and engage with simple messages; and as a result they trust the messenger.
Scientists use convoluted arguments to impress their peers.
As a result, people that peddle trash become rich and change the world, while honorable people that want to change the world peddle to work.
“Pedal” to work, please!
No, ‘peddle’ is what I wanted to say.
Peddle, ‘to try to sell’. Thanks anyway.
What we need are people who are not experts but understand enough of science to serve as liaisons between scientists and the public. In any case, worrying about people not understanding scientists presumes that they actually want to!
The following essay should be instructive:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html
OR…the general public could get their collective cognitive sh@t together and learn to speak and read properly. Blame the education system that fails to teach basic science and is sometimes even compelled to teach total gibberish! That’s right creationists, I’m talking to you.
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Well here we go. You can look at this two ways, one they don’t know what they are talking about, or they is no problem and they are making it up.
I’m a reasonably educated guy, and my bull crap metter works well. It seems that everything ” scientific researchers” say ends up in babble, so I tend to not listen to any.
I can go along with using “range” instead of “uncertainty” . . . but calling an “error” a “difference from the exact true number” is like calling a LIE a “mistruth” or an “over-suggestion.” Politically.Correct.Hogwash.
We lowly “laypeople” can understand this:
Climate Scientists predicts X
What actually comes true is Y
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,757713,00.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=research-casts-doubt-doomsday-water-shortage-predictions
or this one:
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. . . . “within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event” . . . from Dr David Viner, a SENIOR research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia (The Independent on 20 March 2000.)
So after two devastatingly cold and snowy winters (and another on the way), we’re too stupid to understand that snow is RARE! Our city caretakers listen to the “experts” and don’t buy enough snow plows or road salt.
Oh, I know . . . they’ve adjusted their models and it’s well within “RANGE” . . . they say “that’s how science works.”
Spare me.
Another word that means something completely different to non-scientists: theory.
I’m a theoretical physicist, so I see plenty of jargon, and coming from a very technical field I think it’s bizarre to suggest that scientists “overdo the level of detail” or should craft “clear” “simple” messages to the public.
Science is technical and precise for a reason. Without the details, scientific results just don’t *mean* anything. You simply cannot understand what a result means, let alone be expected to know if it is reasonable, or what it implies, without at least some details. Without details, what you’re doing is just philosophy and feel-good arguments (which we tried for a few thousand years and clearly do not work!).
It’s quite disingenuous to give arguments like that to the public, and, IMO, this contributes very strongly to the way in which most people misunderstand and misuse science. This is exactly what allows crackpots and quacks to sell their homeopathic cures and magnetic bracelets that cure anything, because they can masquerade as being real science by providing nice, “simple to understand” arguments with no proof or details at all. It’s so simple it has to be right!
Indeed, the reason most people don’t understand what REAL climate science actually says is exactly because no details are given to the public. I have never once heard a climate scientist in the media give any real details about climate change. Not *once* have I seen a standard deviation, any kind of margin of error, a discussion of order of magnitude effects, modeling techniques used, discussion of sources of systematic error, any kind of distinction drawn between predictions with strong theoretical foundations or softer observational ones, or any other useful information.
It’s always been “things are bad” and “we’re right” and political catch phrases. Never real science. This really irritates me, and many of my colleagues, because this kind of attitude creates a very bad impression of science. Even though it may get them some attention in the short run, in the long run it hurts the public’s understanding of real science, and gives us a (well-earned!) reputation for looking like we don’t know what we’re doing.
(It doesn’t help that most of the people you see in the media discussing the climate are not really scientists anyway! But more likely activists or “enthusiasts.”)
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Sometimes I see the different public meaning deliberately exploited in order to mislead.
For example, the word “significant”: to the scientist it means that an effect is large enough to be measured. Someone pushing an agenda knows that its public interpretation is “large”.
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