I’m going to back up John Lynch on this one. The Flock of Dodos guy, Randy Olson, has a list of “TEN THINGS EVOLUTIONISTS CAN DO TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION”, and I have to say I’m not excited about them. While they’re well-intentioned and would be good things to do, it’s too glib and unrealistic. I’ve got a couple of comments over there, but I’ll just repeat one here to summarize my complaint.
I think another twist on this is to point out that maybe one reason you found it so easy to list problems is that you’ve picked the obvious, including some problems that we’re already well aware of. It’s like having a general inspect the army and create lists of shortcomings—they’re too few in number, they don’t have enough ammo, the new recruits are poorly trained—and just declaring “fix those, and we’ll win.” Well, yeah. Finding weaknesses is easy. Declaring that the way to achieve victory is to be flawless in all matters is obvious.
What is more useful and far more difficult is to rattle off a list of strengths (I suspect science might have a few) and explain how those might be exploited in spite of deficiencies elsewhere to achieve that victory.
That’s what we’re looking for now. Telling scientists that they have to be witty and humorous and media-savvy and rich and less intellectual is nice (maybe we should also all have ponies, too, and hey, Very Large Breasts are always a plus), but it doesn’t help. What we need are accurate assessments of what we do have, and what we can capitalize on.
Maybe it’s my own high dork factor talking, but I’m not too receptive to people telling me I need movie star qualities to be able to support science, or that we have to pander to superficial sensibilities to communicate a message. Our strengths are depth, intelligence, evidence, history, the whole damn natural world, and just plain having the best and most powerful explanation for its existence. Don’t tell us to dumb it down and glitz it up—I think people should be smart enough to understand it, and there’s grandeur enough in it that dressing it up in rhinestones is just silly. We need to know how to communicate real science, not Hollywood cartoon science, to people.
I was annoyed that Olson kept using the term “evolutionists,” which I am pretty sure came from the creationists. We don’t have to call ourselves ’round-earthers’–we ought to push the idea that evolution is the default view, and it’s the other side that needs a special label. If we gotta have a label, the one the other side uses for us is probably not best. I think they chose ‘evolutionists’ because it sounds like ‘abortionists,’ and everybody knows how evil they are.
I don’t know…I’m not as bothered by that one. I am an “evolutionist”, in the sense of being a guy who accepts the validity of evolution. The one that bugs me is “Darwinist”, which they tend to use more often, and is absurdly inaccurate.
Of course, it’s an “ism”/”ist” word, like abortionist and Marxist and communist and anarchist and socialist and feminist, and we all know how evil those are. Unlike capitalist.
Our strengths are depth, intelligence, evidence, history, the whole damn natural world, and just plain having the best and most powerful explanation for its existence.
Daahling, that whole reality-based thing is sooo passé. This is the 21st century, silly. Let’s go through your so-called “strengths”, shall we?
1. Depth
Sorry, we don’t do depth. Superficiality is better for the ratings.
2. Intelligence
Intelligence is not a strength these days. Conviction, purpose, the holding of any belief (no matter how stupid) so long as it’s held with sincerity is a strength. Look at our President. Strength is a strength.
3. evidence
You’re still on that whole reality-based schtick, aren’t you? Evidence does not count. Feelings count. You know as well as I do that when the House Committee on Un-American Activities reconvenes to outlaw evolution, they will be taking evidence from three scientists. Mike Behe, Philip Johnson, and Alan Colmes.
4. history
…..is bunk.
5. the whole damn natural world
….is the best evidence for design. Right?
6. and just plain having the best and most powerful explanation for its existence.
I think a great many creationists would disagree with you on that one. You see? You’re only spouting your opinions about something that is just a theory. In fact, it’s no different from saying God created everything. It’s just another religion. Except that your religion (atheism) leads to murder, abortion, man-on-dog action, cephalopod lust and contamination of our precious bodily fluids. Why do you hate America so much, Dr. Meyers?
I think I’m going to need a lie down now……
You’re making me cry, Groves.
Well, since this has turned into Blogday for me, I might as well offer a few comments here to address your disappointment with what you feel is the superficiality of my suggestions. We live in a superficial society. We know that. Its a proven fact. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to retreat into your enclave and hope the current attack on science abates by itself? Or are you going to encourage others to confront the attack, explore it, try to understand it, and try to use the current tools of mass communication in an effective way.
I’ve spent 15 years in Hollywood, pounding away, dealing with massive amounts of rejection, but also trying my best to explore the system, just as I explored coral reefs as a scientist. And I’ve learned a few things, such as the situation is not hopeless. But of one thing I am certain, it requires a great deal of innovation and exploration, and I don’t see that going on in the world of science communication. And that’s a lot of what I’m trying to point out. And as for the dork factor, I would bet I could match you point for point. A few years ago Premiere magazine had an article about the filming of “The Perfect Storm” in which they quoted Mark Wahlberg saying that he loved watching the gray whales off Gloucester. I wrote them a letter to the editor saying that those must have been stunt whales flown in from Hollywood since there haven’t been gray whales in the Atlantic for several hundred years. And I ended up at a major Hollywood cocktail party a couple months later where all of a sudden somebody opened up the magazine, spotted my letter, and read it to the whole group who burst out laughing. And he said, “Half the time you seem like one of the coolest guys we know, but the other half the time, you’re a total dork.”
Ignorance is strength, remember? When people are ignorant, their sense of certainty is strong. Unfortunately, what science considers strength is what people in an anti-intellectual society call weakness, and vice versa.
What happens when we go up against an opponent’s strengths with our weaknesses? That’s right — we lose.
The problem is not on the part of the scientists. It’s on the part of the people that make up American society. There isn’t a lack of respect for science and engineering in India, or Germany, or Japan, and I have yet to see any evidence to suggest that scientists behave any differently there. What makes the difference? The people and the culture.
You cannot change the culture with the tools of science. You cannot reach the people without first changing the culture. So what can we do?
We can cut our losses, stop throwing good intellectual capital after bad, and move to a different society.
I just reread chapter 11 of Dawkin’s “The Selfish Gene” this morning. He uses “Darwinism” on page 196.
When “scientists” respond to criticism as PZ has here, I feel that they are mistakenly taking on the whole burden themselves. This need not be so. “Science” and “scientists” need only to cultivate more and better allies in the “non-scientist” population. Citizens for Science groups and sympathetic journalists and reporters would be a good start; determine what they need to tell your side of the story and make sure they have it. YOU don’t need to be glib; you just need glib friends.
You’ve got the gist of my complaint: we’re dealing with a deep topic in a superficial world. I agree that we’ve got to confront that and change things, but I felt that most of your suggestions were about putting a glossy veneer on science — basically, saying we should embrace superficiality.
I don’t want to know how to fit into Hollywood. I’d rather know how to subvert it.
subversion — now i’ll drink to that.
I feel as if I have a somewhat unique perspective on this issue since I sit somewhere in between being a scientist and a layperson. I am an undergraduate senior who is waiting to hear on grad schools (and holding her breath). I have done a bit of research and enjoy it but am also in close contact with pop culture on campus.
I believe Olson has hit on some fundamental problems and offers great solutions. These are all small changes that could make a world of difference for the popular image of science, and through it, evolution. They are all reasonable and logical. Most just require a bit more patience than a lot of scientists exhibit with regular people.
Example: I know several scientists who do not like talking to reporters. In fact, one of them hates it with every fiber of his being. Why? Because they get stuff wrong. They don’t listen to what’s important. They misrepresent ideas. They don’t attribute proper significance to ideas or miss the point. (Many of these complaints I have seen on this very blog.) So for these reasons, his research is never released in a form the public can understand. Now maybe he had (a) bad experience(s) with them, and I agree that some people can be pretty thick/don’t care, which is frustrating. But that is absolutely no reason to give up on them or the general populace!
This is an extreme example. I’m not accusing anyone of blowing off the public; I’m just making a point. Improving the image of science won’t require dressing it like a drag queen or even dumbing it down, but it will require time, patience, and effort. The more of these you put in, the more deeply the public will understand and appreciate the beauty of science as you see it.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes#qt0111735
:-D
I’m with Randy Olsen on this one. PZ, I’m surprised to hear someone with your experience as a teacher say, “I think people should be smart enough to understand it.”
You know the old joke:
Patient hitting himself on the head says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.”
Doctor replies, “Stop, doing that.”
You know, that’s something I do do. If a newspaper reporter calls, I jump. They don’t need to quote me on anything, but if they even just want background, I’ll happily talk to them about it. I agree that getting our voice to the media and being willing to help out reporters is an important part of the process.
Now, SEF, if only we had a holocaust cloak…
But people are smart enough to understand it! If they aren’t, we might as well give up now, form a little enclave of smart people, and go live in a mineshaft* until the sub-intelligent hairless apes finish exterminating themselves.
*We males shall, of course, require a surplus of nubile women to maintain our population.
Presentation is everything. Most people get their information from two places these days: the Internet and Television.
Look at the NCSE, Panda’s Thumb, Talk.Origins websites. Frankly most evolution internet resources are still living in the 1996 school of web design and this DOES affect their usefulness and readibility. Pharyngula, The Loom and other pro-blogs are exceptions. Compare to Answers in Genesis and The Discovery Institute’s webpage. They’re slick, they probably paid a few grand to design and implement their websites.
Look at American documentaries. I note in Randy Olson’s notes that he comments that the PBS documentary on Evolution was poorly received. I would have to agree being based in Australia. The US could learn alot from the BBC and the ABC here in Oz. In Australia, the free to air television channels [all 5 of them] show a natural history/archaeology documentary every week between 3-7pm on a weekend. And if it’s a good documentary it will be shown on the weeknights at 8pm. Most people catch at least one doco a week, even if it’s only a few minutes between ad-breaks. A similar thing happens in the UK. And they’re usually good documentaries that make you want to keep watching.
In the USA, you’re basically gimped because you have cable TV, so documentaries get relegated to NatGeo or Discovery [or shudder the Hitler ..I mean the History Channel] and here’s where the problem starts. Americans don’t make good documentaries. PERIOD. You get two types of documentaries in the states. Discovery/Nat Geo repetition style docos where the narrator spends half the time saying the same thing over and over again. Or you get snoozers like from PBS. A discussion about this at my university’s archaeology department suggested that the only good American docos were about the Civil War and Baseball and that was only because you had refined it to a art form.
You don’t need more media-savvy evolutionists, you don’t need more humour, you don’t need to dumb it down. Every science/belief group has it’s great speakers and it’s bad speakers [even Intelligent Design – though I would err more on the bad speaker side]. But people arn’t going to listen to you just because you’re a great speaker. They listen to you because you have something to say and it’s of interest.
Evolution websites have something to say, but it’s so hard to digest that many people just simple avoid them. And American documentaries are so boring that it’s frankly not surprising that few people watch them. Change the way information is presented, and you’ll find your audience much more receptive.
[Pharygula has always been presented well :)]
I agree that people are smart enough to understand science. I think that any concept in biology can be explained to lay people. The trick is to explain the principles to them in a way they can understand without their feeling patronised.
I work at a non-profit research institution that has to raise millions of dollars a year from the public to support our science. We do a great deal of public outreach and meeting and greeting of people with no scientific backgrounds. As a result, I have had to learn (and pass on to the people in my lab) the first rule of science communication, which is simply this: Know Your Audience. That rule applies whether you’re talking to colleagues in your field, biologists in general, scientists who are not biologists, undergrads, clinicians, seniors, or schoolkids.
The main reason why lay people think scientists are weird and that science is beyond their grasp is that most scientists talk to lay people in roughly the same way that they talk to other scientists. Being able to make science accessible is a gift, but it is also a skill that can be learned.
Very Large Breasts are always a plus
Unless they’re Man-Boobs. Those are a total turn-off.
Uh-oh. I guess I’d better call the plastic surgeon with a cancellation.
Speaking of documentaries, why don’t they show any of the Attenborough ones over here (in the US)? I recently watched ‘Blue Planet’, and the credits showed it being co-produced by the Discovery Channel & the BBC. What gives?
I think we need more popularizers – people who do the media rounds and are telegenic and charismatic. We can still have the depth of ‘real’ scientists. I don’t see why it’s a case of one or the other.
However, it is hard to get across the true depth and beauty of science by way of two-minute soundbites. Witness something like James Randi arguing with Sylvia Browne and a couple of her sympathizers on Larry King – everyone gets 30-second segments to make their case, and there is no way for anyone who already has a position on psychic powers to get the necessary information to change their minds, even if they were open to doing so – It just looks like people with various opinions soundbiting back and forth; because that is what it is.
Popularizers may be able to instill an interest for science in some people, but for them to really be able to understand and appreciate the science, they obviously have to be motivated to go much deeper on their own.
Don’t tell us to dumb it down and glitz it up�I think people should be smart enough to understand it
To expect that the folks working down at the local Walmart will meet the intellectual standards of a highly educated minority seems unrealistic at best. The average citizen has little understanding of scientific principles and no conviction that the scientific method is the most useful way to explore reality. The reason Joe Sixpack accepts what he hears in church is that he understands the message and it makes sense to him. Theologists have their own jargon and complexities, but you’re not going to hear that stuff in Sunday’s sermon. IMHO, if science can’t match the communications and marketing skills of the competition there’s not much chance to win this horse race.
If you are a professor at a four-year college, keep your eyes open for science majors who are articulate and possess good writing skills. Let them know that the AAAS sponsors a summer fellowship program for people with college degrees in science and engineering who want to help the public better understand the importance of science and technology in our lives. I participated years ago in the AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship Program and got to spend a summer as a science journalist for a major newspaper. Other fellowship sites were magazines and broadcast media (both radio and TV).
The researchers I interviewed for my stories were delighted to have the ear of someone who had a clue what they were doing (or trying to do) and I got lots of great cooperation from them. Then it was my job to try to convey it in language that would be accessible to the newspaper’s readership while remaining factual. It was a challenge, but it was worthwhile. I’m a college faculty member now, but that summer fellowship profoundly affected my life and my appreciation for the hard work of explaining science to the general public.
This is mainly because they don’t really know what the scientific method is. That’s something usually glossed over in most introductory science courses because most introductory science courses are specific to some sort of subject.
Even “science” in grade school tende to be just an overview of some stuff from several disciplines (a little about geology, a little about biology, etc). Little time is spent on making sure the kids know what basic things like the scientific method are.
Unfortunately, the Cambrian explosion isn’t exciting enough for our hip, young 18-24 year olds. Also, trillions of sex scenes just aren’t enough. It looks like you’re a prude trying to make minimal concessions.
Of course, I think the lines of communication could be improved on both ends. I’m of the opinion that the receiving end needs it more. We need some obligatory critical thinking class in school, since kids don’t seem to be getting it in the fact memorization class deceptively dubbed “science.”
Michael:
There are plenty of *college graduates* in fields as involved as engineering and mathematics, as well as poly-sci and many social sciences (and not just DI spokesmen like Dembski) who buy into the ID world view. These aren’t “Joe Sixpack”, these are people whom, as far as science is concerned, the education system of this country has failed, leaving them still susceptable to any number of pseudo-scientific garbage that’s thrown at them with the right amount of emotion to make it sound convincing.
The well-above-average person in this country is still far too easily swayed by the rhetoric of repetition over skepticism and personal validation of facts and analysis of the impacts of their decisions and the decisions of others. They know the ease at which they can get through life without thinking too hard is worth it ’cause they’ll still make that buck or two in the short term.
“Being able to make science accessible is a gift, but it is also a skill that can be learned.”
Where from?
I’m not being facetious – my next job involves some outreach duties, and I’ve never done any beyond getting some cub scouts to extract DNA from onions. I’ve yet to find any advice on talking to the general public that goes beyond the obvious “speak clearly and don’t trip over the furniture” type of thing.
Expecting scientists to learn communication skills may or may not be asking too much; asking them to magic them out of nowhere without help or training is absurd. Is there a good book on the subject, or a decent set of online resources? (I can manage the breasts bit OK.)
Maybe it’s my own high dork factor talking, but I’m not too receptive to people telling me I need movie star qualities to be able to support science, or that we have to pander to superficial sensibilities to communicate a message. Our strengths are depth, intelligence, evidence, history, the whole damn natural world, and just plain having the best and most powerful explanation for its existence. Don’t tell us to dumb it down and glitz it upI think people should be smart enough to understand it, and there’s grandeur enough in it that dressing it up in rhinestones is just silly. We need to know how to communicate real science, not Hollywood cartoon science, to people.
This reminds me of the Mac vs. PC (or, rather, the GUI vs. CLI) wars of a decade ago. And that ended up pretty much a big win for the GUI or glitz portion of the war….
You never get anywhere by thinking the receiver is stupid.
By the same token, you never get anywhere by ignoring how the receiver likes to get information or how they use it.
Ignore the glitz factor, and you make your own task multiple times harder. What you call glitz is NOT an extra; it’s part and parcel of what makes the information memorable and useful to the receiver. That flash is an aid to getting your point across; if you disdain it, you throw away half your weapons at the start.
PZ writes: But people are smart enough to understand it!
Yes, but, given that, if they aren’t understanding it you must look to other causes, right? Look at the words that precede that quote:
I didn’t hear Randy saying to dumb it down or glitz it up. I heard him say: think about effective communication â and examples abound.
Consider Randy’s point #2:
Well, to the people you might wish to sway nothing could be more condescending than a visit to Pharangula. We’ve had this converstation before and I agree with your position: Pharangula is to rally the troops, to provided evidence and emotional energy to the already converted. That’s a great resource for the cause you expouse and you should be, and I think are, quite rightly proud of that accomplishment. People with different skills than yours can come here, get excellent information and an energy boost, and go off to convert the misled using different techniques.
PZ you are obviously an intelligent, committed, knowledgable scientist and I suspect an excellent biology professor. Furthermore, you have a gift for reading and writing quickly, seeing and exposing the fallacies in rhetoric, and are especially facile with the sharp-tongued put-down. Again and again you have shown great ability to stick a knife in a poorly argued point and twist it. Bravo! Give us more of the same. I’m delighted there are people like you with those special gifts on the side of reason and rationality.
It’s too bad that we also need other skillsets â just like the ones that Randy describes â and they require a different kind of organization, beyond the one person blog like Pharangula or The Leiter Reports, beyond even the excellent group blog that is Panda’s Thumb or the great work being done at Naturalism.org. We need a structure that can deliver important content in a contemporary way to the average person in a fast-paced, high-tech, modern, consumer-oriented, market-driven society. That, I think, is what Randy is saying. It’s a damn tall order.
And we’re fighting to win the hearts and minds of a public who shuns depth, resents intelligence, is bored by evidence, and firmly believes that its own explanation for existence is not only more powerful, but all-powerful.
The strengths you’ve listed have already convinced every rationally thinking person to side with the scientific consensus, yet somehow there’s still a tremendous opposition. I think the message of Flock of Dodos is that many people don’t speak the language of evidence and reason, and they are an increasingly powerful force. Scientists will only win widespread public opinion when we learn to effectively communicate our message to irrational people, and for that we need to learn to appeal to the most useful emotions.
This does not mean we should discontinue substantive, educational science communication, but that we should add dumbed-down, glitzed-up messages to our collective repertoire. We need Stephen Hawkings and Bill Nyes. And that doesn’t mean conceding that we can’t make science understandable. It means that many people have no interest in trying to understand science, no matter how understandable we make it. We need to find a way to communicate with those reluctant masses because right now they’re running the country.
The ID movement has many weapons that we who are constrained by reality do not. Their whole concept is very easy to understand. It implicitly reinforces peoples’ comforting beliefs about the afterlife. They’re perceived as the underdogs. And they’ve got the “good ol’ boy” factor. They’ve learned to aim these weapons at peoples’ emotions and it’s proven to be very effective.
We also have unique virtues the public values, but we haven’t been using them very well. Science reveals beauty everywhere in nature. Many of the things we study have make anyone go “wow.” Finally, the scientific method is fundamentally a way to keep ourselves honest. Beauty, honesty, and the wow-factor are some of our most emotionally powerful virtues and we barely use them.
Most often we explain a phenomenon and assume people will see the same virtues we do without extra guidance. This is a mistake. These things can be used to give incredible emotional punch to scientific ideas, to make a memorable impression on people who previously found science boring. There’s much to be gained by marketing our ideas to highlight them.
Here’s another way to put it.
Most scientists act like the difference between communicating with other scientists and with the general public is that the public doesn’t have the background and lingo the scientists do.
But communication isn’t just about eloquently reducing complex ideas. We must also consider that the general public judges ideas by very different standards than we do.
This is mainly because they don’t really know what the scientific method is.
My experience on the subject suggests that most people are really not interesting in anything that conflicts with their most cherished beliefs. The simplest solution to the problem of cognitive dissonance is a short circuit. When reason conflicts with belief, people go with whatever is most comforting — and they generally do not choose reason.
Discretion is the better part of valor, and this isn’t a battle we can win. Our opponents suceed because they have no standards which they will not violate in the cause of getting their message out. If we try to sink to their level, they will beat us with experience, *and* we will lose what we’re trying to defend.
“Winning a battle but losing a war is not victory, and losing a battle to win a war is not a defeat.”
It’s punchier in the original Klingon, but it’s still true.
The processes for supporting science have little overlap with those for doing science. Science as an institution is now under siege from the same forces which have long been assailing the rest of modern society, and the ivory tower has been remiss in its own defenses.
In particular, higher academia has neglected lower academia: K-12 education has been left to bureaucracies & boards, with little involvement from collegiates beyond cherrypicking the most rewarding talents (and the largest effort there coming from athletic departments).
Thus, the general population thinks of “science” as what television tells them it is, few having even toured a lab or met a field researcher in their classroom. They’ve been taught to read & do arithmetic, but not to think logically or critically; science, like history & art &c, is known only as the content of textbooks, to be crammed, regurgitated, & rarely mentioned again.
Improving this situation is urgent, but it will clearly be the work of generations, and the resources to achieve it are nowhere in sight.
Meanwhile, science per se is hopelessly maladapted to an environment of competitive sound bites and linkage by association rather than causality. It doesn’t help that science “popularizers” were shunned for so long by “real scientists” (does that attitude persist, PZ?), but thats an area where improvements can be made in a few years. Scholarships for science-journalism students, research projects dovetailed with documentary-taping classes, all eventually leading to routine lab tours, classroom talks, presentations to school boards, and all the other cultivational chores that universities should be doing in their own interest anyhow.
The resources for this are in sight, but theyll have to be pried loose from other (worthy) budgets in a process which may require wider vision than has been selected for in the acado-bureaucratic ecosystem as a whole…
Does it help to know that others are facingparallel assaults ?
Oops – so much for attempted blockquoting & hreffing.
Everything after the first line in my previous post was from an insightful interview with Cristine Page at http://www.alternet.org/rights/32369/ …
Tru Dat!! I’m an interactive designer and a huge fan of science, and the unfortunate state of most pro-evolution sites drives me crazy. Most people are going to trust the snazzier looking sites – Beauty is a usability factor. Let’s face it: if the average American first logs on the half-baked “World of Dawkins” site and then follows up on Rugh Ross’ “Reason’s to Believe,” he’s going to go with whatever crap the Ross site asserts because they look like they have their shit together, and looks count for everything in this culture.
I’ve vowed that as soon as I get settled into my new job I’m going to try and contact some of these sites and volunteer my abilities. I feel obligated, I guess.
For what it is worth, I wrote a post on this topic, from a Freethought perspective, last week. I agree with Roger and Troutnut – marketing could play more of a role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the encouragement of Freethought. Now, I know marketing is a dirty word – its methods are used to sell all sorts of hideous things that lead to negative long-term consequences (like ID ;O). However, those same methods can also be used to reduce road tolls, publicise quit-smoking programs, and increase sun-safe behaviours (a biggy in NZ where the UV rates are high). I don’t see any reason why they can’t, or shouldn’t, also be employed for the good of science and rationalism.
Perhaps because marketing is the very antithesis of rationalism?
“Here, let’s make the idea we’re selling more appealing by jazzing it up, leading to more positive associations with the product and thus making people more willing to buy into it. The idea? Rationality!”
Nope, doesn’t work.
Damn straight. How you get the ideas across is one thing. Trying to pander to some slippery notion of acceptability is another.
People should be interested in the ideas behind science because they are sensible and compelling. Not because the talking head is purty.
Trading one stereotype of “the scientist” for another is a losing proposition.
Back at Olson’s original post, Daniel nails the methods the neo-cons and creationists have been so successful at using:
http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/02/17/randy_flock_of_dodos_olson_speaks.php#64228
This is a very important point. Most people accept what I have seemed termed lawyver-type debating, in which the participants distorts their opponents’ views, cherry-pick the results etc.
Obviously this is not how scientists debate.
However, when we debate such people, we should perhaps try to debate the same way? It goes against the grain, but perhaps this is the only way?
A fundamental problem that I see is that science simplified often distorts matters beyond recognition. One example I use a lot concerns writing about what I call “scientific anecdotes” where the process of reasoning to obtain the finding in question is omitted. This approach of simplification destroys the consilience aspect of science which in my view is the single greatest strength of science. When science is presented in pieces rather than as a system of systems of … then it sounds like a bunch of unrelated viewpoints that have no mutual support, in which case simply attacking one soundbite is enough for people or ideologues. But us who are reasonably scientifically literate know that isn’t a correct approach.
Similarly, as we discussed on the earlier thread, mathematics is crucial (and will become even more so in the future, IMO). One needs, for example, mathematical tools to properly understand very matters such as risk, why homeopathy is ridiculous, and many others.
I am now pretty confident that the only way to succeed widely is to start young, but I have no idea how to bootstrap matters.
To expect that the folks working down at the local Walmart will meet the intellectual standards of a highly educated minority seems unrealistic at best.
Oh, bollocks. Small children can understand evolution.
If an adult doesn’t, then it’s because they are refusing to understand it, not because they can’t.
If movie star looks and slick delivery were all it took, can this dodo Olsen explain why the combined efforts of Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones didn’t get Al Gore elected? Can he explain how to get Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s ratings out of the toilet?
Evolution suffers from 80 years of concentrated, plotted bashing by fundies with money. Not even Very Large Breasts can overcome that — as Anna Nicole Smith found out.
“Should” and “is” are not the same thing.
If it takes all the techniques of public relations to win this war, so be it. One should not plan to attend a gunfight armed only with a knife, no matter how sharp.
Hmmm.
But it’s really like, “Doctor, it hurts my kids when the creationists bonk them on the head.”
Doctor replies, “You don’t need a doctor, you idiot! You need a lawyer. Sue the bastards.”
It’s not as funny that way, of course, but it’s more accurate. It’s a better model of reality, a better hypothesis that leads to a workable theory . . .
Kristjan Wagner: This is a very important point. Most people accept what I have seemed termed lawyver-type debating, in which the participants distorts their opponents’ views, cherry-pick the results etc.
Obviously this is not how scientists debate.
However, when we debate such people, we should perhaps try to debate the same way? It goes against the grain, but perhaps this is the only way?
except that we don’t need to distort their views to show that they’re full of crap. the problem is the amount of complexity involved in our own position that corrects the incorrect statement. Taking apart a single sentence of Wells’ Icons sometimes consists of a 10,000 word, highly evidentially supported essay at the talk.origins site. In “debate” this is equivelant to taking 15 minute to correct a sentence the other side took 10 seconds to do, and having to deal with them having made 90 more lies in the 15 minutes it took us to correct just the first one.
if we simplify our answers, they attack the simplification as being inaccurate, or attack the holes we left in there which means we have to fill them up with the remaining details anyways, all the while losing the “audience” and “debate” because they’re still making confident statements one after the other that we don’t have the “time” to answer them all.
I think the real problem has been stated over and over again. The people who would really need to do the gruntwork of putting the kibosh on bad science are busy: busy doing science. Worse, if they stopped doing science just to spend time bickering with ID proponents, it would just lend more creedence to the idea that they are dogmatists defending an orthodoxy rather than scientists doing productive work. So it’s lose lose to engage these critics anywhere but in the journals and in the lab.
That doesn’t mean that the few, the brave, and the beautiful who do take time to combat them are wasting their time. But there comes a point where all the extra effort that would ne necessary to combat these guys is just too much, and takes too much away from real science.
to complete my last thought, its the reason science always wins in a court of law in cases like Edwards or Kitzmiller. In a court of law, we have all the time we need to answer the claims of the liars on the creationists side, as opposed to a public debate where “both sides must have equal time” or a media article where “both sides are presented 50-50 in he-said-she-said form” as Chris Mooney talks about all the time.
Wait, I just thought of the perfect solution: the same one that works in most places in science: pass off the gruntwork to the grad students!
I know that I’d love to take on updating a resource like talk origins into the modern, php/database world: a resource for a new century. I’m NOT doing any useful science right now either. :)
The whole problem is that the majority of scientists are not good communicators. JBS Haldane said “I am convinced that science has more to offer the human mind than all the classics combined, but few scientifc men have any idea of any literary form.”
It’s not just biological evolution – ask a random American to explain quantum physics or relativity to you and the chances are overwhelmingly that (s)he’ll not have a clue. The reason why 1 in 3 Americans takes Gensis literally is not just that they’ve been taught little or no facts, but also they’ve not been taught how to think at all, i.e. the scientific method
Gee willikers! This thread is just loaded with stuff.
It’s not how lawyers debate, either. As I frequently must remind my students and clients, truth tends to win in a fair fight, which is why we have evidence rules in federal courts. Spinning the other guy’s argument produces an objection from the other guy and admonishment from the judge, and maybe a contempt citation. (I oughtta know, since IAAL; your mileage may differ, but I’ll wager not by much.)
Distorting the opponents’ views is a propaganda/campaign tactic. It’s used in public forums, and it works best when the other guy whose views are to be distorted doesn’t even get a chance to speak. This is why ID advocates avoid like the plague all scientific meetings, or any other venue where real, practicing scientists may gather, and instead make speeches in the sanctuaries and fellowship halls of churches, on the internet, and in ghost-written op-ed pieces.
I Am Also A Former Political Flack (IAAAFPF), and I would note there are two kinds of ways to make hay in mass media. One way is to have a clever spin line, if there is no time for the other guy to respond (see the Mike Gravel campaign against Ernest Gruening for the U.S. Senate, in Alaska), and the other way is continuously and quiet have real stuff behind your claims — real action, real results, real dignity, real integrity. There are no asterisks next to Babe Ruth’s name in any baseball record book, even though there’s no one around to spin his accomplishments against Mark McGwire’s or Barry Bonds’.
That results/dignity/integrity thing is why Darwin hangs on at all after all these years and after all the millions of dollars spent to discredit him and his work. After all, were evolution not good theory, malaria would have been wiped out about 1948. Were evolution not good theory, we’d have had an HIV vaccine by 1990. Were evolution not good theory there would be no grapefruit, certainly no red grapefruit, and McDonald’s would be selling burgers made from “100% fresh ground aurochs.” Oh, and Jimmy Dean would be just a has-been country-pop singer.
If the geology that corroborates evolution were wrong, Exxon-Mobil would be a small specialties chemical company, since the surface-findable oil fields would have been dry years ago.
Lipstick on a pig doesn’t improve the taste of the bacon. It might be an interesting introduction for a movie about pigs. But evolution isn’t about the lipstick, it’s about the rest of that pig, the rest of that movie.
There is much good and important stuff to sell about evolution, but it’s not the same as marketing Tom Cruise. Evolution needs to stick to its own knitting, but not hide those stitches. They are good stitches. Evolution fights disease and feeds people. The corroborating sciences find oil, stop and move rivers, find precious metals and diamonds, and generally make modern life possible. It’s not a flashy story necessarily, but it’s the truth. Tell it.
Hollywood isn’t good at selling quantum mechanics or the quadratic equation, either. For that matter, it has great difficulty selling even the stuff it’s supposed to sell, sometimes — there are more bad movies made about slackers and stoners every year than there are about the classics of literature that are proven sellers over the years in bookstores, at campfires, on the best-seller lists, and on the stage. When was the last time you saw a really great movie done from a Shakespeare play?
Movies rely on science, but they are not science. Selling movies is different from selling science. There are overlaps, but there are greater areas of complete unaffiliation (if not disassociation). Yes, science needs to contend in the marketplace of ideas. No, putting lipstick on P. Z. Myers is not the way to do it, long term.
Well, we can blame that in part on the fact that while creationists may have failed to get their tripe in legally, they have managed to cripple science standards and curriculumn in many places (where they don’t just flout the law entirely and teach creationism or ID directly)
I should also note, as a counter example to my own point, that I do feel like ID/creationists are still winning the war of raising doubts and criticisms far far far faster than they are answered. I get the feeling from watching the debate unfold for some time is that the general patterns is that scientists and interested laypeople get interested in the debate and spend some time engaging in it, tracking down claims, looking up experts, and so on, but quickly tire out and retire from the “game.” Creationists on the other hand, never seem to tire. Therefore, the output of the science side is characterized by fits and starts, a sort of punctuated degree of effort and expertise put into the subject.
Children can easily get a child-level understanding of evolution: They can reasonably grasp a mechanism by which different attributes and different species could arise by natural selection. But going beyond that really is hard.
Yesterday, I was at the Darwin Day event for the Humanist Association of Ottawa. There was an excellent talk called “Dinner with the Darwins” (which, of course, one would eat on Wedgewood china), presented by Dr Rees Kassen, a researcher in experimental biodiversity (http://www.science.uottawa.ca/%7Erkass574/)
It is difficult to imagine an audience *more* sympathetic to the topic than the bunch of intelligent adult (mostly non-scientist) free-thinkers in attendance. But many of the questions demonstrated a misunderstandings of genetics, natural selection, the fallacy of Lamarckianism, etc.
I have tried to explain evolution to doubters and have gotten nowhere. We must remember that all humans are Pleistocene hunter-gatherers; when it comes to rationalism, we’re faking it. Sure, we apply rational arguments when it suits our purposes, but the purposes drive the arguments, rather than the other way around. The kind of intellectual integrity required in science is completely artificial and generally restricted to a few professions, and even then we see violations of it — witness the Korean cloning scientist.
So our problem is that we’re trying to get sub-rational people to accept rational arguments. It just doesn’t work. I spent a lot of time with one student, patiently and tactfully explaining how there was no need for conflict between his religion and evolution. I didn’t even make a dent; after hours of discussion, he remained adamant.
I think we need to approach this as a problem of salesmanship rather than logic. We must first admit that we will NEVER convince a significant number of people. We must instead set as our objective the conversion of those people who might actually be susceptible to logic. I think two fundamental emotional approaches are useful. First, we must never allow people to get the impression that we take seriously the creationist challenge. We should consistently treat them as we would flat-earthers, Holocaust denyers, and flying saucer zealots. Above all, we should make fun of them. C’mon, they really are ridiculous — why don’t we concentrate on that? We should never get angry or show irritation — that suggests that we take them seriously. We should never respond with long-winded explanations. Instead, when they come up with another crackpot claim (‘crackpot’ is a word we should use often), we should just laugh at them and provide a list of references that will enlighten them. Here’s an example of what I mean:
Simplicio: The biochemistry of the cell is too complicated to have arisen by chance.
Erasmussimo: Yes, I’m sure you find the biochemistry of the cell dauntingly complicated. Why don’t you read TEXTBOOK A and TEXTBOOK B? Or for that matter, consult LINK 1, LINK 2, LINK 3, and LINK 4 for explanations of the evolution of the biochemistry of the cell?
Simplicio: Those guys are wrong. They made this mistake right here.
Erasmussimo: Science has a way of correcting errors: you write up a paper and get it published in a proper scientific journal.
Simplicio: But I have done that!
Erasmussimo: No, I’m not talking about the vanity press where you published. I’m talking about scientific journals such that have referrees and follow rules.
Simplicio: Those journals unfairly rejected my paper.
Erasmussimo: Every loser blames the judges.
Simplicio: The scientific establishment is prejudiced against anti-evolutionary thought.
Erasmussimo: Well, it’s true that science does have a prejudice in favor of truth.
Simplicio: How can it find truth when it rejects alternative points of view?
Erasmussimo: No, they don’t reject alternative points of view; they reject crackpot points of view.
And so on and so forth.
An apropo quote from a Christopher Hitchens review of historian Robert Conquest’s new book here.
“Children can easily get a child-level understanding of evolution: They can reasonably grasp a mechanism by which different attributes and different species could arise by natural selection. But going beyond that really is hard.”
I don’t think so, actually. There is a difference between dividing people into “children/adults,” than dividing them into “novice/experienced” learners of anything. For example, having an aesthetic experience in a superficial world may seem to be out of the grasp of most children, but in reality, it’s not. The important difference is whether the viewer of art is a first-time (“novice”) viewer or an experienced viewer. Novice viewers of art have a different, but not less aesthetic, experience than repeat, educated viewers. I think that this can be true of science as well.
The curriculum that has been shaped to address the different levels of aesthetic experience (VTS) in everyone can, I think, be shaped to address the various levels of scientific understanding in everyone. I’ve been chewing on this idea for some time, and don’t have it worked out yet, but the most important element to remember is that communication is a two-way street. Olson stresses another PR campaign, but in VTS, the novice viewers (not necessarily children, but also adults not used to being comfortable in a museum environment) who are looking at the art do a lot of the talking, and learn from each other through a guided discussion. Perhaps science would be better served if both children and their parents learned it at the same time (since many parents fail to have an understanding of science, too). How to do that is the question, but perhaps it should be considered, since a lot of this “intelligent [sic] design” business seems to be grassroots and parent-driven, despite the Deception Institute and the Dover ruling.
Just for some background, Randy is NOT “this dodo Olsen”.
He legitimately earned tenure in marine biology (although I forget which department) at UNH in the 1990s. He made some funny, goofy, marine biology short movies around then, too. (The raunchy blues music video, “Barnacles Tell No Lies,” is especially funny.) He apparently decided that making movies was better, and ran off to Hollywood to teach marine biology to EVERYBODY, not just to (all 27 of the) college kids in New Hampshire.
Sort of like the SpongeBob guy. Only more accurate.
Dr. Olson is actually trying to effectively communicate science to the populace.
We need that, if we want things like the NIH, the NSF, and NASA to actually get useful funding levels, and if we want people to vote for things like clean water and ecologically sound waterfronts and healthy salmon runs and safe orca habitat (my Seattle-ness is showing).
And Randy actually tackled THE big science-education problem.
I haven’t seen “Dodos” yet, so I can’t talk about how well he succeeded.
But Randy Olson is not a dodo, and IS fighting the good fight.
Thanks, Randy.
My first ever post on Pharyngula. I am studying Science Communication in the UK and just can’t resist this thread.
A few points:
I have worked with marketing and sales people most of my career (which is far too long). It seems to me that if Science gets too absorbed with mass-media communication techniques for their own sakes, then the danger is the proponents of science will appear little different from the proponents of non-science. It will become a battle of who has the biggest marketing budget. Science should distinguish the way it communicates – “science is special”. That doesn’t mean you ignore effective communications but, for example, a science TV programme should at its core provide a balanced assessment of the evidence, whatever the subject, and avoid being polemical and scientists should be very clear when they are talking about something within their expertise and when they are talking as laymen. The BBC Horizon series used to be really good science documentaries but in recent years they are so desparate to be compelling viewing there is virtually no content – just fancy graphics, desperate commentary, and dramatic music.
2) Does it matter so very much? A distinguishing characteristic of real science is that scientists build on each others work and progress – they stand on the shoulders of giants etc. This is what will catch ID out. However much ID is gaining traction in the US at the moment it is bound to run out of steam – nothing of lasting significance will be produced: ideas, discoveries, technology; and sooner or later the fashion will move on to something else. Meanwhile the rest of the world and most US scientists will get on with science :-)
3) Science communications seems to be quite an active academic displine in its own right here (I am just starting) with several masters degrees available. Is that not true in the US?
Cheers
Your point is well taken. That still doesn’t excuse poor communication skills.
Look, being an asocial mumbler – the cheesy stereotype of a geek – doesn’t necessarily make you sincere. But it certainly makes you hard to understand.
Being rich or slick isn’t important. Being clear and organized is. Is that somehow a compromise of science or its cultural norms? I don’t think so. After all, The Origin of Species is beautifully written and organized.
plunge: I do feel like ID/creationists are still winning the war of raising doubts and criticisms far far far faster than they are answered.
I would disagree. Their doubts and criticisms haven’t changed in 80 years, though they’ve been better catalogued through books like Wells’s Icons and the like.
All they’ve succeeded in doing is finding newer audiences who haven’t thought about it enough either way and fill new heads with the same garbage.
Aside from connecting the dots between the arrival of ID and the Edwards decision (by revealing the early drafts of Pandas), the statements made by both sides of Kitzmiller had been repeated over and over again over the last 25 years and beyond. Nothing new has come from the ID side; they simply repeat their crap to new audiences that haven’t heard of it before, particularly as in the NVCC instance documented in the Washington Post 2 weeks ago, to unsuspecting students who simply had never heard of “evolution” until the ID side spewed their crap at them.
I appreciate and am in full agreement with the comments by Mark Frank. To answer his question, the only Science Communication classes at the university level that I am aware of are included under Urban Studies. Do people know of others? I’m intrigued by what is offered in Britain. Is this a possible resource for modeling an outreach program for high school students in the U.S.?
Tell the BBC not to change! I am BBC-starved in Minnesota.
Actually, I think people are more or less effective in different mediums. The best advocate for evolution I’ve seen speak is Ken Miller (I watched the webcast of his talk in Ohio). Bill Dembski chickened out of debating him. I can understand why. Ken Miller is an excellent public speaker. Not everyone can be a Ken Miller.
I think PZ Myer’s blog has been an excellent resource on this issue. I turn to Myer’s blog and Panda’s Thumb when I want background on the issue of creationism.
I also think when dealing with the Intelligent Design Creationists, another good tactic is getting other religious people to debate them. They are actually especially afraid of debating religious people, who have no problems with being religious, and also being convinced by the scientific evidence for evolution. It’s those religious/philosophical arguments that will reach that audience – rather than showing the evidence for evolution.
In Kansas, the people bringing Dempski to speak, refused to allow some mainstream religious people to debate Dempski (they said, this was because he was talking about science and not religion).
Many of the religious/philosophical arguments are arguments PZ has made on this blog, but PZ will be dismissed as one of those evil atheists. The same arguments presented by a believer will be more difficult to dismiss.
I’m not under the impression that the Scientists are losing this battle. It seems that when creationism is exposed, people run from the label. Look at how the Dover School Board LOST when they ran for reelection. There was the court victory, but more important, there was the victory in elections.
Where it’s important for scientists to spend their energy is to be active locally. That means watching what goes on in School Board meetings. Make yourself available to talk to high school and grade school classes. It also means listen to talk radio and call in when there is nonsense about creationism. When you are talking the local talk show hosts, you will get on the show, and calling in to talk radio is an excellent way to practice honing in on your points.
Also it’s worth pointing out that the same people who claim they are unhappy with the elitism of Scientists, are also very unhappy with hollywood.
You’re right. My coffee was late, I was rash. My apologies.
Science communication in the U.S.? There are a few — there should be more emphasis on getting journalism schools to include courses on how to report science, especially research — it’s a lot different from covering the police beat, or a fire, or a court case.
Here are a few programs:
University of California – Santa Cruz: http://scicom.ucsc.edu/
University of Iowa: http://www.uiowa.edu/commstud/resources/health.html
Columbia College in Chicago: http://sciviz.colum.edu/
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science: http://www.ian.umces.edu/
Cornell University: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/bvl1/
University of Wisconsin – Madison: http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/faculty/dunwoodybio.html
That’s probably not enough.
Science reporting in the U.S. is suffering, as are most areas of specialty reporting. The Dallas Morning News used to have a wonderful and good science section that was expanded to its own section — but about a year ago it was abruptly discontinued and the science editor was fired after he’d just won a couple of big awards. Olsen is right that television is where the action is, but television remains for the most part a vast, vast wasteland.
I disagree with Olsen’s characterising of the PBS “Evolution” series as dull. I thought it was terrific, and so did our kids. Even my father-in-law was excited by it. But as with most PBS stuff, it comes in an hour or two-hour format, and it doesn’t lend itself well to classroom use.
Joe Shelby, while you may be right in terms of broad arguments, its the specific claims which grow legion very fast. Almost every day there is new science to misrepresent, a new article to snark about, or some scientist with a statement to quot mine. Just read the volume of the blogs like Uncommon Descent. These guys raise more crap in a day than anyone can cover in realtime.
“I get the feeling from watching the debate unfold for some time is that the general patterns is that scientists and interested laypeople get interested in the debate and spend some time engaging in it, tracking down claims, looking up experts, and so on, but quickly tire out and retire from the “game.” Creationists on the other hand, never seem to tire.”
Yes. It’s difficult to get other scientists who are inexperienced with “the public” to maintain a visible stand against IDC due to the vicious backlash they’ll get from total strangers: hate mail, insults, crank phone calls to their boss demanding immediate termination, even death threats. I’m sure PZ can attest to this. One has to have a very thick skin and plow onward. Faced with a choice between staying in the fray and making a quiet exit, waiting for the crank threats to die down while you return to your normal lab work, it’s unfortunately easier (and understandable) to choose the latter. Creationist scammers and bad used-car salesmen like Dembski, Hovind et al. don’t have to deal with this because the cranks are *for* them, and scientists don’t use middle-school bullying or physical threats as persuasion tactics.
In my experience, the average “person on the street,” not educated in science, who doubts the reality of evolution and listens to the ID nonsense, tends to think that science is something done in far-off labs that has nothing to do with them directly. They don’t have a psychological or emotional connection to it. Of course they value their TV, cell phone, computer and pills, just like they value their car and lawn mower, but they don’t want to know how or why they work — they don’t want to be bothered. It’s almost a *burden* for them to know. That’s something taken care of by some white-coated geek, toiling in a closed building, almost a different species than they are. But the religious message is with them every hour of every day, it resonates, and its power depends on their devotion to it. Ironically, a major strength of science — that its conclusions and applications remain valid and workable regardless of “belief” — turns into a weakness for this sort of mind. They don’t have to be “pro-science” to drive their car to work, but they sure have to believe in IDC for it to be real to them.
In the big picture, the “game” isn’t really evolution vs creationism, but objective reason vs superstition.
The evolutionists have been sucked into a feint.
I suppose we tire of waging the war when we come to the realization that our professionally honed skills in logic and reason are no match for durable power of entrenched religion.
Besides, we only offer knowledge, whereas they can offer everlasting life.
Maybe it’s my own high dork factor talking, but I’m not too receptive to people telling me . . . that we have to pander to superficial sensibilities to communicate a message.
Respectfully, I think you’re wrong about what you call “pandering to superficial sensibilities” and what I’d call “putting things in terms non-science people can understand.”
I’m always a little disheartened by attempts to call out these ID hustlers by dissecting their scientific arguments. It’s preaching to the choir. People whose eyes don’t glaze over when someone starts talking about science are overwhelmingly on our side already.
As for the rest of them, trotting out the numbers and methodology arguments is just playing the IDers’ game. Most folks do tend to tune out conversations that they perceive as over their heads. So instead of absorbing your brilliant point about what claptrap ID is in terms of zebrafish embryology, they hear a couple scientists arguing as equals over what they’ve already been told–by the ID crowd–is a controversial subject in the scientific community.
And sure enough, there it is, right in front of them: Scientists controverting. What more proof do they need?
And the ID hustlers know this. They know–as y’all don’t, damnit–that it’s a waste of their time trying to convince anyone who knows jack about science.
Their targets are people who barely passed high school biology, whose idea of a scientist was formed somewhere between Lex Luthor and Dexter’s Lab. They’re no more going to follow the scientific inaccuracies than if you gave it to them in Chinese. That doesn’t make them stupid. But for most people, science is a ‘way different way of seeing the world than they’re used to and they’re not going to make the effort to switch gears. What are you going to do, flunk ’em?
It’s one thing to make these arguments in this geeky, geeky blog. But if you ever have to convince non-science types, I’d go with the non-science arguments:
1. ID is not a controversy in the scientific community. In fact, pretty much the whole scientific community’s on the same page about ID, and the overwhelming consensus is that it’s utter crap.
2. However, unlike any other scientific theory you can name, ID does have PR firms.
3. Among the handful of scientists who do support it, virtually all either derive their beliefs from religion; or are getting paid to support it, or both.
4. School science facilities and classroom time are not unlimited, so any time or resources pissed away on ID have to be taken from something else.
5. This isn’t about science: it’s about pushing a religious agenda into the schools.
6. Etc.