science for the people
February 2, 2021 7:59 AM Subscribe
In the 1930s, as Jewish and dissident scientists were forced from their posts in Nazi Germany, many found refuge in the United States. At the time, American scientists were trying to shield themselves from the winds of politics by honing arguments for the value of ‘pure’ science. On the frontlines of the Nazi assault in Europe, however, a handful of scientists believed that the way to ensure the integrity of science was to enrich and deepen its connection to the public, not to sever it. From where they stood, it sure didn’t look like science was intrinsically democratic when left to its own devices. In response, Schrödinger and his contemporaries converged on a novel and radical principle: the importance of allowing the public to help steer the course of scientific research.
I don't know if direct democracy related to science makes any sense at all today, but the principles that led to that idea are definitely relevant. In the field that I am entering (Psychology) there is a pretty huge gap between the consensus of scientific knowledge, and the version of that knowledge that gets out into the public consciousness. Scientists don't really have any incentive right now to engage with the general public, they get a lot of pushback and abuse from both ideological sides and science journalism tends to way over-estimate how important an individual study is while completely ignoring things like meta-analysis or theoretical-summary papers that are much more important and likely to be true.
Starting around the time described in the article and continuing through the 60s-70s scientists were very actively involved in trying to improve general society, and that has completely fallen off. There are many scientists who don't care about morals/public good, or would be paternalistic explainers that would make things worse, and it's honestly fine to keep them isolated from the public. But there are also many scientists who do care about engaging with the public, would do a good job, but are explicitly told to avoid doing so because it would hurt their academic career. I'm not entirely clear on what stopped this wave of engagement from scientists, but it probably has to do with changes at the corporate-run lab level and changes in the media environment.
Most people are tied to ideology and only care about their own little corner of the world, both scientists and "regular" people. But there are also a huge number of people who could actively work to improve the world if there was a framework set up to encourage and allow that. The current scientific process does not provide that framework and there are many things that can be done to improve it.
posted by JZig at 8:53 AM on February 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
Starting around the time described in the article and continuing through the 60s-70s scientists were very actively involved in trying to improve general society, and that has completely fallen off. There are many scientists who don't care about morals/public good, or would be paternalistic explainers that would make things worse, and it's honestly fine to keep them isolated from the public. But there are also many scientists who do care about engaging with the public, would do a good job, but are explicitly told to avoid doing so because it would hurt their academic career. I'm not entirely clear on what stopped this wave of engagement from scientists, but it probably has to do with changes at the corporate-run lab level and changes in the media environment.
Most people are tied to ideology and only care about their own little corner of the world, both scientists and "regular" people. But there are also a huge number of people who could actively work to improve the world if there was a framework set up to encourage and allow that. The current scientific process does not provide that framework and there are many things that can be done to improve it.
posted by JZig at 8:53 AM on February 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
Also.... Just, does science actually need to be democratic to be able to advance and help people?
I think that it needs to be an institution that people trust, at least on a basic level, to be able to advance and help people, yes. Siloing science off from lay people is not the answer to wild conspiracy theories and violence and terror, because the people eaten by those conspiracy theories are not the only lay folks who are forming opinions of science as an institution and deciding whether or not that institution is worth supporting. How do you think you convince people to dedicate funding to basic science, that basic science is not a waste of time? You tell them what you find. You communicate a sense of wonder. You explain how unexpected discoveries yield technologies that make their lives better. You invite folks to get involved with you. You teach their children. You give people something to trust. When a quorum of people say, "my experience is not reflected in the state of your science," you sit down and you listen honestly and you work out whether they're onto something or not.
In that way, you give people a stake in science. You give them something to care about. And you inoculate them against the conspiracy theory that is taking hold specifically because so many people think the world is confusing and overwhelming and the conspiracy theory provides an emotionally resonant story that sticks with folks. You tell the truth, as compellingly as you can, and you provide the value of your knowledge.
C'mon. I get you're scared. I'm scared, too. But turning our backs on everyone else isn't the answer.
posted by sciatrix at 8:55 AM on February 2, 2021 [23 favorites]
I think that it needs to be an institution that people trust, at least on a basic level, to be able to advance and help people, yes. Siloing science off from lay people is not the answer to wild conspiracy theories and violence and terror, because the people eaten by those conspiracy theories are not the only lay folks who are forming opinions of science as an institution and deciding whether or not that institution is worth supporting. How do you think you convince people to dedicate funding to basic science, that basic science is not a waste of time? You tell them what you find. You communicate a sense of wonder. You explain how unexpected discoveries yield technologies that make their lives better. You invite folks to get involved with you. You teach their children. You give people something to trust. When a quorum of people say, "my experience is not reflected in the state of your science," you sit down and you listen honestly and you work out whether they're onto something or not.
In that way, you give people a stake in science. You give them something to care about. And you inoculate them against the conspiracy theory that is taking hold specifically because so many people think the world is confusing and overwhelming and the conspiracy theory provides an emotionally resonant story that sticks with folks. You tell the truth, as compellingly as you can, and you provide the value of your knowledge.
C'mon. I get you're scared. I'm scared, too. But turning our backs on everyone else isn't the answer.
posted by sciatrix at 8:55 AM on February 2, 2021 [23 favorites]
But there are also many scientists who do care about engaging with the public, would do a good job, but are explicitly told to avoid doing so because it would hurt their academic career. I'm not entirely clear on what stopped this wave of engagement from scientists, but it probably has to do with changes at the corporate-run lab level and changes in the media environment.
I'm guessing you're in an NIH field, right? In NSF fields, most scientists are explicitly told to provide plans for engaging with the public as part of grant applications. Some fields have long and active traditions of engaging with this kind of public outreach, including mine (evolution/ecology/behavior/integrative biology) and astronomy, and I see scientists of all levels investing some amount of at least theoretical effort into these activities in some of those fields. For my field, most of us have encountered people who openly deny that our field even exists, and I think that's a strong motivation for this kind of engagement.
I will also say: you do not get much in the way of career benefits from doing this, in my experience. Mostly people who care about it and pour their heart into it wind up dropping out, and people who limit their participation in this kind of work and perform the bare limit of lip service wind up being much more likely to be rewarded with resources for research. "Broader Impacts" type requirements therefore seem to me to be an inadequate answer for creating this kind of engagement between scientists and the public, and I've been grousing for some time that instead or additionally NSF should allocate money for dedicated scientific communicators to be paid a living wage while they communicate science to the public in as engaging and relevant way as possible.
posted by sciatrix at 9:00 AM on February 2, 2021 [11 favorites]
I'm guessing you're in an NIH field, right? In NSF fields, most scientists are explicitly told to provide plans for engaging with the public as part of grant applications. Some fields have long and active traditions of engaging with this kind of public outreach, including mine (evolution/ecology/behavior/integrative biology) and astronomy, and I see scientists of all levels investing some amount of at least theoretical effort into these activities in some of those fields. For my field, most of us have encountered people who openly deny that our field even exists, and I think that's a strong motivation for this kind of engagement.
I will also say: you do not get much in the way of career benefits from doing this, in my experience. Mostly people who care about it and pour their heart into it wind up dropping out, and people who limit their participation in this kind of work and perform the bare limit of lip service wind up being much more likely to be rewarded with resources for research. "Broader Impacts" type requirements therefore seem to me to be an inadequate answer for creating this kind of engagement between scientists and the public, and I've been grousing for some time that instead or additionally NSF should allocate money for dedicated scientific communicators to be paid a living wage while they communicate science to the public in as engaging and relevant way as possible.
posted by sciatrix at 9:00 AM on February 2, 2021 [11 favorites]
C'mon. I get you're scared. I'm scared, too. But turning our backs on everyone else isn't the answer.
I'm certainly not saying turn your backs on everyone, but in a country with racism and ignorance this deep and wide, plenty of those people who are "scared" are made to feel "safe" by the science and engineering behind Predator drones because they know it means it's killing those scary brown terrorists in other countries, it just doesn't seem like letting the general public dictate what is science and what isn't is a great idea.
I'm sorry, but American culture is too geared up on killing others as a way to find safety for this talking about giving people a stake and helping them feel safer... Like, we're already doing that, in a majorly fucked up way. We make them safer by killing innocent people in other countries with the "great" technologies we have built through our understanding of science.
The number of people in this country who love the cops because they are made to feel safe by the violent and unhinged cops who "protect" them should put all this to fucking rest. It's easy to make people safe by saying you're killing the bad guys, especially if you've got great tech to do it.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:09 AM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm certainly not saying turn your backs on everyone, but in a country with racism and ignorance this deep and wide, plenty of those people who are "scared" are made to feel "safe" by the science and engineering behind Predator drones because they know it means it's killing those scary brown terrorists in other countries, it just doesn't seem like letting the general public dictate what is science and what isn't is a great idea.
I'm sorry, but American culture is too geared up on killing others as a way to find safety for this talking about giving people a stake and helping them feel safer... Like, we're already doing that, in a majorly fucked up way. We make them safer by killing innocent people in other countries with the "great" technologies we have built through our understanding of science.
The number of people in this country who love the cops because they are made to feel safe by the violent and unhinged cops who "protect" them should put all this to fucking rest. It's easy to make people safe by saying you're killing the bad guys, especially if you've got great tech to do it.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:09 AM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
In the age of Qanon, the idea of the public influencing the direction of science actually seems like a bad idea...
The public has every right to a say in what questions scientists will be directed to investigate.
And absolutely no right to censor the answers scientists find.
posted by ocschwar at 9:12 AM on February 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
The public has every right to a say in what questions scientists will be directed to investigate.
And absolutely no right to censor the answers scientists find.
posted by ocschwar at 9:12 AM on February 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
Mostly people who care about it and pour their heart into it wind up dropping out, and people who limit their participation in this kind of work and perform the bare limit of lip service wind up being much more likely to be rewarded with resources for research.
That seems to be how it works in Psychology, and is part of the reason I'm not very interested in working towards tenure track. I'm not sure how you would fund effective science communication in general. Many universities have full-time science communicators that do a good job of writing up papers for the public, but they tend to get very little publicity and reach.
The one method that does seem to work in Psychology (and many other sciences) is writing moderately dense books for the general public. Most popular books by scientists that I've read are actually pretty detailed and helpful, but they take a long time to write. But this isn't really reaching a younger audience. I'm interested in video communication as most scientific video communication is either very dry, or uses a TED-Talk aesthetic that is off-putting for most people under 40 (it feels extremely artificial and suspicious to me compared to a Twitch stream or Instagram video)
posted by JZig at 9:19 AM on February 2, 2021 [7 favorites]
That seems to be how it works in Psychology, and is part of the reason I'm not very interested in working towards tenure track. I'm not sure how you would fund effective science communication in general. Many universities have full-time science communicators that do a good job of writing up papers for the public, but they tend to get very little publicity and reach.
The one method that does seem to work in Psychology (and many other sciences) is writing moderately dense books for the general public. Most popular books by scientists that I've read are actually pretty detailed and helpful, but they take a long time to write. But this isn't really reaching a younger audience. I'm interested in video communication as most scientific video communication is either very dry, or uses a TED-Talk aesthetic that is off-putting for most people under 40 (it feels extremely artificial and suspicious to me compared to a Twitch stream or Instagram video)
posted by JZig at 9:19 AM on February 2, 2021 [7 favorites]
IME science communication and community engagement has be be built in to the work and be supported at the top levels in the project. In the teams I'm part of we've dedicated as much as 20% of funding to outreach and never less than 10%. Often times this means a year after primary publication engaging in conferences, public-facing workshops and direct consultations, including going to community halls and standing there with a microphone. In addition we're often working our contacts in the media to get coverage or write articles for them too. That often means the PIs, but we also try to put forward senior students and postdocs in these roles too.
Not every research project needs the full court press, and certainly there are lots of bread-and-butter studies that don't get much more than the publish-conference talk cycle minimum. But the ones we get the big grants for that are multi-group, we really push for.
We will often in fact try to find funding for pre-proposal meetings too to meet with stakeholders and communities to talk about the specific research needs they have. There are, at least in Canada funding mechanisms for grant writing. It's great to do the expert-facing gaps analysis (like the NAS ones), but I've found those get really inside-baseball chummy after a while and tend to be inward looking. Getting outside perspectives, from other academics, from NGOs, from public engagement, before and after is pretty important in my view.
posted by bonehead at 9:29 AM on February 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
Not every research project needs the full court press, and certainly there are lots of bread-and-butter studies that don't get much more than the publish-conference talk cycle minimum. But the ones we get the big grants for that are multi-group, we really push for.
We will often in fact try to find funding for pre-proposal meetings too to meet with stakeholders and communities to talk about the specific research needs they have. There are, at least in Canada funding mechanisms for grant writing. It's great to do the expert-facing gaps analysis (like the NAS ones), but I've found those get really inside-baseball chummy after a while and tend to be inward looking. Getting outside perspectives, from other academics, from NGOs, from public engagement, before and after is pretty important in my view.
posted by bonehead at 9:29 AM on February 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm sorry, but American culture is too geared up on killing others as a way to find safety for this talking about giving people a stake and helping them feel safer...
Look, I literally got thrown out on the street by my grandparents after being explicitly told my science was worthless unless it directly helped to kill enemy combatants. I get it. I get it. I'm not talking about, frankly, trying to appeal to those folks directly. You're right: the things that QAnon truthers want are just going to get folks killed.
I'm actually thinking about the benefits of going out and talking to lots of people, everyone who is interested, and ideally doing it through other channels in your communities that feel like authentic interactions with people who see you as One Of Us but maybe don't know too much about how science generally or your field in particular work.
I'm thinking of natural history and getting folks involved in citizen science. I have a friend who works on pigeon evolution in New York City. I know someone who works on coyotes and explains to people why coyote behavior changes as human population density does. I'm thinking about scientists who are making an effort to listen to "nothing about us without us" and incorporate the perspectives of autistic people into the study of autism. I'm thinking about scientists who are trying to understand why complex trauma creates specific perspectives.
I'm thinking, very specifically, of a talk I gave for the general public on behavioral epigenetics some years ago, in which I delved heavily into the Meaney licking/grooming experiments with rats, where we find that the amount of care a mother rat gives to her pups will predict the level of anxiety and fear the grown pups have when exploring a strange environment, later on. A gentleman raised his hand and asked, trembling, if there was any hope for people who had had stressful childhoods, or what? And I was able to tell him: no, no, you can expose the same pups to enriched environments later, and they will behave like well-cared-for pups; there is always hope, brains are resilient and you can rescue a lot. Maybe not everything, but your life isn't set in stone by your childhood, even though your childhood experiences matter.
When I say "let people feel safe," what I mean is listening to the complaints and questions that ordinary people have about the world around them and taking those concerns seriously. I don't mean letting lay folks set your scientific agenda, but I do mean talking to lay folks and taking their concerns seriously. For example, I'm queer, and I have published on same-sex-directed sexual behavior in animals. While I was writing that manuscript, I spent a lot of time thinking about those very real fears and worries of all the implications of what I was saying: how could people use that information to harm others? What could I do to make things as safe as possible for the people with the least social power?
I have repeatedly read papers about myself and about people like me that were totally divorced from any concept that I might be in the audience, with ideas I thought were completely out to lunch and which most of the people in my community agreed bore no resemblance to our lived realities. I've organized a journal club to do that. And let me tell you, that shit does not inspire trust in the system. I have personally observed how shitty science can get about and towards people who don't have a foot in the door, and let me tell you, it is hard to have any faith in science as an institution when you know exactly how scientists can get to talking about you when they don't think you are paying attention.
I am saying that, as a scientist, we need to pay attention.
posted by sciatrix at 9:32 AM on February 2, 2021 [32 favorites]
Look, I literally got thrown out on the street by my grandparents after being explicitly told my science was worthless unless it directly helped to kill enemy combatants. I get it. I get it. I'm not talking about, frankly, trying to appeal to those folks directly. You're right: the things that QAnon truthers want are just going to get folks killed.
I'm actually thinking about the benefits of going out and talking to lots of people, everyone who is interested, and ideally doing it through other channels in your communities that feel like authentic interactions with people who see you as One Of Us but maybe don't know too much about how science generally or your field in particular work.
I'm thinking of natural history and getting folks involved in citizen science. I have a friend who works on pigeon evolution in New York City. I know someone who works on coyotes and explains to people why coyote behavior changes as human population density does. I'm thinking about scientists who are making an effort to listen to "nothing about us without us" and incorporate the perspectives of autistic people into the study of autism. I'm thinking about scientists who are trying to understand why complex trauma creates specific perspectives.
I'm thinking, very specifically, of a talk I gave for the general public on behavioral epigenetics some years ago, in which I delved heavily into the Meaney licking/grooming experiments with rats, where we find that the amount of care a mother rat gives to her pups will predict the level of anxiety and fear the grown pups have when exploring a strange environment, later on. A gentleman raised his hand and asked, trembling, if there was any hope for people who had had stressful childhoods, or what? And I was able to tell him: no, no, you can expose the same pups to enriched environments later, and they will behave like well-cared-for pups; there is always hope, brains are resilient and you can rescue a lot. Maybe not everything, but your life isn't set in stone by your childhood, even though your childhood experiences matter.
When I say "let people feel safe," what I mean is listening to the complaints and questions that ordinary people have about the world around them and taking those concerns seriously. I don't mean letting lay folks set your scientific agenda, but I do mean talking to lay folks and taking their concerns seriously. For example, I'm queer, and I have published on same-sex-directed sexual behavior in animals. While I was writing that manuscript, I spent a lot of time thinking about those very real fears and worries of all the implications of what I was saying: how could people use that information to harm others? What could I do to make things as safe as possible for the people with the least social power?
I have repeatedly read papers about myself and about people like me that were totally divorced from any concept that I might be in the audience, with ideas I thought were completely out to lunch and which most of the people in my community agreed bore no resemblance to our lived realities. I've organized a journal club to do that. And let me tell you, that shit does not inspire trust in the system. I have personally observed how shitty science can get about and towards people who don't have a foot in the door, and let me tell you, it is hard to have any faith in science as an institution when you know exactly how scientists can get to talking about you when they don't think you are paying attention.
I am saying that, as a scientist, we need to pay attention.
posted by sciatrix at 9:32 AM on February 2, 2021 [32 favorites]
Thank you for the deeply thoughtful response, sciatrix. I agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying here, and I do think that those kinds of communications with communities, where you help the community understand why it might matter to them, and you're doing it on a more personal and connected level, are indeed deeply important.
Also, to be clear, I'm not a scientist myself, I just happen to know several. (Mostly botanists)
posted by deadaluspark at 9:37 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also, to be clear, I'm not a scientist myself, I just happen to know several. (Mostly botanists)
posted by deadaluspark at 9:37 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
In the age of Qanon, the idea of the public influencing the direction of science actually seems like a bad idea
I think this is almost backwards in cause and effect. It's that people are now largely in the dark about so much of why the world is changing so rapidly that they turn to conspiracy theories and "saviors" who promise them a return to a world they understand. Science is no different than any other area of human endeavor and understanding, whether that be music appreciation, Wall Street, sports, or climate change.
People need to invest in the subject to feel they are a part of the process and that the results make sense and matter to them. Telling them their voices or actions don't matter is a sure way to build distrust or disengagement. I mean one only needs to read the fable of Stone Soup to see this is a long known thing, get people to actively share themselves and they'll feel a sense of connection and meaning in the work or process and care about finding the best outcomes. Sharing isn't dictating, it's just the sense of being involved.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:39 AM on February 2, 2021 [13 favorites]
I think this is almost backwards in cause and effect. It's that people are now largely in the dark about so much of why the world is changing so rapidly that they turn to conspiracy theories and "saviors" who promise them a return to a world they understand. Science is no different than any other area of human endeavor and understanding, whether that be music appreciation, Wall Street, sports, or climate change.
People need to invest in the subject to feel they are a part of the process and that the results make sense and matter to them. Telling them their voices or actions don't matter is a sure way to build distrust or disengagement. I mean one only needs to read the fable of Stone Soup to see this is a long known thing, get people to actively share themselves and they'll feel a sense of connection and meaning in the work or process and care about finding the best outcomes. Sharing isn't dictating, it's just the sense of being involved.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:39 AM on February 2, 2021 [13 favorites]
I think that it needs to be an institution that people trust, at least on a basic level, to be able to advance and help people, yes. Siloing science off from lay people is not the answer to wild conspiracy theories and violence and terror, because the people eaten by those conspiracy theories are not the only lay folks who are forming opinions of science as an institution and deciding whether or not that institution is worth supporting.
QFT. Also, the fear of the monolithic authority of science, while pretty reliably not based in reality today, is not exactly wrong...
As the “computational propaganda” and other forms of disinformation continue to develop and become more sophisticated while we proceed deeper into the twenty-first century, the solution isn't to lock in one version of science as an undisputed standard to enforce and amplify, because whatever we might rigidly enforce will be prone to manipulation with those same techniques; science needs to remain a living and empirical thing, and the best way to combat it all is to get every single person on Earth as elbow-deep in science as possible.
posted by XMLicious at 9:44 AM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
In the age of Qanon, the idea of the public influencing the direction of science actually seems like a bad idea
I work in an area that has a great number of advocates with a great diversity of opinion. Often opinions or viewpoints are strongly held, in some cases with related issues that are fundamental to our countries construction. Land-rights, settler vs first nation, constitutional issues. On the flip side, there are also opportunists, fly-by-nighters and straight up scammers in related businesses too.
You have to grow a thick skin. It's work that has to be done, even if it's not always the most fun job being the person everyone is angry at that day, mostly because you're the one who is there. You still have to be there and at least take their comments onto the record. Almost everyone has something worthwhile hearing, even if it's just knowing that there's a particular concern or problem they have.
posted by bonehead at 9:58 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
I work in an area that has a great number of advocates with a great diversity of opinion. Often opinions or viewpoints are strongly held, in some cases with related issues that are fundamental to our countries construction. Land-rights, settler vs first nation, constitutional issues. On the flip side, there are also opportunists, fly-by-nighters and straight up scammers in related businesses too.
You have to grow a thick skin. It's work that has to be done, even if it's not always the most fun job being the person everyone is angry at that day, mostly because you're the one who is there. You still have to be there and at least take their comments onto the record. Almost everyone has something worthwhile hearing, even if it's just knowing that there's a particular concern or problem they have.
posted by bonehead at 9:58 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
The public has every right to a say in what questions scientists will be directed to investigate.
And absolutely no right to censor the answers scientists find.
"Find evidence the Democrats stole the election at the behest of the Reptilians!"
...time passes...
"OK, we looked, and didn't find any. Here's a thousand-page report."
"I don't need to read it. Look harder!"
...time passes...
"We still didn't find any, here's our addendum to the prior report."
"Words are boring. Look harder poindexter!"
...time passes...
"Uh, we still haven't found any, here's a secondary report building on the first one plus the addendum."
"Don't you understand English! You're not looking hard enough, look harder! You're not getting paid until you look hard enough!"
...ad infinitum...
While Sciatrix is unquestionably correct, there still needs to be a way to just straight-up ignore large numbers of people otherwise mendacity wins.
posted by aramaic at 10:07 AM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
And absolutely no right to censor the answers scientists find.
"Find evidence the Democrats stole the election at the behest of the Reptilians!"
...time passes...
"OK, we looked, and didn't find any. Here's a thousand-page report."
"I don't need to read it. Look harder!"
...time passes...
"We still didn't find any, here's our addendum to the prior report."
"Words are boring. Look harder poindexter!"
...time passes...
"Uh, we still haven't found any, here's a secondary report building on the first one plus the addendum."
"Don't you understand English! You're not looking hard enough, look harder! You're not getting paid until you look hard enough!"
...ad infinitum...
While Sciatrix is unquestionably correct, there still needs to be a way to just straight-up ignore large numbers of people otherwise mendacity wins.
posted by aramaic at 10:07 AM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
The public has every right to a say in what questions scientists will be directed to investigate.
"Every right to comment" is different from "will take direction from". Listening isn't the same as agreeing. Consolations don't lead directly to proposals. They're part of the mix, but not the only consideration.
posted by bonehead at 10:27 AM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
"Every right to comment" is different from "will take direction from". Listening isn't the same as agreeing. Consolations don't lead directly to proposals. They're part of the mix, but not the only consideration.
posted by bonehead at 10:27 AM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
If we want democratic control of science such that the public have a stake in it, we should work on having a democracy and a public first.
Because, right now, all we'd get is whatever Bezos, Zuckerberg and Wallstreet would tell "us" we'd want.
posted by Reyturner at 10:34 AM on February 2, 2021 [9 favorites]
Because, right now, all we'd get is whatever Bezos, Zuckerberg and Wallstreet would tell "us" we'd want.
posted by Reyturner at 10:34 AM on February 2, 2021 [9 favorites]
I don't think it's just a democratic thing; even in, frex, the PRC, the scientific community cultivating a familiarity with and investment in science has a positive effect that spreads to leadership and other corners of society. Combined with a more open society and movements like open access academic publishing, it's even better.
posted by XMLicious at 10:43 AM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by XMLicious at 10:43 AM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
The public has every right to a say in what questions scientists will be directed to investigate.
And absolutely no right to censor the answers scientists find.
I'm not really buying this excerpt in pretty broad instances. Allowing the public a say in the direction of scientific inquiry assures it never even gets to the point of needing censure. It's built right in.
Democratic often seems conflated or confused with equality in the U.S. Perhaps a different concept would be in need here, because in my mind, democracy and science are concepts that don't really intersect without much confusion and hedging, and probably shouldn't.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:46 AM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
"OK, we looked, and didn't find any. Here's a thousand-page report."
"I don't need to read it. Look harder!"
The idea of science communication being unrewarding has been mentioned here, but really, I think there's a serious need for people to take every science finding and communicate about it both thoroughly and digestably, and in multiple forms.
Digestably is an important idea. Don't give people either a (misleading by necessity, because there isn't time for the complexities) short news blurb/Ted Talk/YouTube video/Podcast or a long paper with bibliography which really needs several other papers for context. Give a pointer, let people discover more when they have questions or need to know how credible/probable a certain result is, and let them find the corroborating evidence for themselves when they have time (people who have time == retirees and maybe researching or "underachieving" high schoolers).
posted by amtho at 11:47 AM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
"I don't need to read it. Look harder!"
The idea of science communication being unrewarding has been mentioned here, but really, I think there's a serious need for people to take every science finding and communicate about it both thoroughly and digestably, and in multiple forms.
Digestably is an important idea. Don't give people either a (misleading by necessity, because there isn't time for the complexities) short news blurb/Ted Talk/YouTube video/Podcast or a long paper with bibliography which really needs several other papers for context. Give a pointer, let people discover more when they have questions or need to know how credible/probable a certain result is, and let them find the corroborating evidence for themselves when they have time (people who have time == retirees and maybe researching or "underachieving" high schoolers).
posted by amtho at 11:47 AM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
As a non-scientist, I think that part of the problem is that science is perceived by a lot of the general public as a monolith (and often slightly frivolous). Most of the information that people get about research or discoveries is filtered through the media, and is reported on with phrases like "scientists discover X causes cancer"* (whereas the research actually shows a slightly increased risk of cancer if you consume X). And, of course, the media likes to report on stuff that sounds slightly off the wall, even if there is often a solid reason for the research
There's normally no sense of the typical uncertainty around research, or the fact that it's not unlikely that there will be later research that calls everything into question. (Or that it's just as likely that an article is simply based on a press release from a company mostly focussing on how wonderful their product is.) It's just Science Says.
I'd like more scientifically literate journalists, who are better able to convey at least a little of the complexities, or the uncertainties. Have people associate science more with "we think, possibly only until better research comes along" than "we know". That way, it's less confusing when the science "changes".
(Quick reminder that there are scientists, and members of the public outside the USA too, and this is a topic that applies everywhere so could you maybe consider a bit before using "we" to mean Americans?)
*If you went by the Daily Mail for example, you could definitely be under the impression that scientists were trying to divided everything in the world into (i) unhealthy (ii) healthy (iii) in a Schrödinger state of healthy and unhealthy at the same time.
posted by scorbet at 12:06 PM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
There's normally no sense of the typical uncertainty around research, or the fact that it's not unlikely that there will be later research that calls everything into question. (Or that it's just as likely that an article is simply based on a press release from a company mostly focussing on how wonderful their product is.) It's just Science Says.
I'd like more scientifically literate journalists, who are better able to convey at least a little of the complexities, or the uncertainties. Have people associate science more with "we think, possibly only until better research comes along" than "we know". That way, it's less confusing when the science "changes".
(Quick reminder that there are scientists, and members of the public outside the USA too, and this is a topic that applies everywhere so could you maybe consider a bit before using "we" to mean Americans?)
*If you went by the Daily Mail for example, you could definitely be under the impression that scientists were trying to divided everything in the world into (i) unhealthy (ii) healthy (iii) in a Schrödinger state of healthy and unhealthy at the same time.
posted by scorbet at 12:06 PM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
Obviously I think this article has resonance for science communication today; that's part of why I posted it. But I think it's really important to keep in mind the context of the people discussed in this essay when we're interpreting it.
The folks advocating for science communication in 1930s Germany and Vienna were Jewish and socialist scientists who were seeing the scientific process change from one that was really integrated with laypeople, to one where "New laboratory methods, automated measuring and recording devices, and statistical techniques rendered obsolete the painstaking work of collecting lay observations" and people are still reeling from WWI and chemical warfare, while also figuring out atoms and things. As the essay says - "Most scientists were grateful when their new status and new techniques freed them from reliance on the public. Now that their labs and observatories were churning out data galore, now that they had demonstrated their utility to warfare, what need could scientists still have to listen to non-scientists?"
BUT when you have science being done by people that the government finds dangerous - Jews, socialists, exciting combinations thereof - people who know that governmental priorities are at best exclusionary and at worst actively evil - you need a corrective. And, in some cases, that corrective can be engaging with the general public. And here, I think it's obvious that they mean a wide swath of the general public. Not every German was a Nazi in 1934, not every American is a QAnoner. Surely, German Jews and Austrian socialists and German children and Indigenous communities and Black and Latinx Americans deserve as much engagement as the governments pushing eugenicist science or muzzling scientists in the EPA.
We know that science is political, we know that science is not free of ideology, and we know that left to their own devices without ethical oversight and, I think, deep engagement with stakeholders and laypeople, scientists can do truly horrifying things. "It sure didn’t look like science was intrinsically democratic when left to its own devices" to Jewish and socialist sciences as the Nazis were rising to power. As a White woman who has been pushed around by a biased scientific system in the US, experienced some degree of harassment, and seen other people (especially people of color, immigrants, and LGBT folks) pushed around and harassed and systematically by the US's scientific structures (especially filtered through the last four years of our political system), I see no reason to disagree with that. Science writ large is not an unalloyed good; government writ large is definitely not an unalloyed good. Neither is The General Public, but we're certainly better off with a broader and more diverse group of people working to set scientific priorities and goals, and becoming scientists. I really loved this framing:
The folks advocating for science communication in 1930s Germany and Vienna were Jewish and socialist scientists who were seeing the scientific process change from one that was really integrated with laypeople, to one where "New laboratory methods, automated measuring and recording devices, and statistical techniques rendered obsolete the painstaking work of collecting lay observations" and people are still reeling from WWI and chemical warfare, while also figuring out atoms and things. As the essay says - "Most scientists were grateful when their new status and new techniques freed them from reliance on the public. Now that their labs and observatories were churning out data galore, now that they had demonstrated their utility to warfare, what need could scientists still have to listen to non-scientists?"
BUT when you have science being done by people that the government finds dangerous - Jews, socialists, exciting combinations thereof - people who know that governmental priorities are at best exclusionary and at worst actively evil - you need a corrective. And, in some cases, that corrective can be engaging with the general public. And here, I think it's obvious that they mean a wide swath of the general public. Not every German was a Nazi in 1934, not every American is a QAnoner. Surely, German Jews and Austrian socialists and German children and Indigenous communities and Black and Latinx Americans deserve as much engagement as the governments pushing eugenicist science or muzzling scientists in the EPA.
We know that science is political, we know that science is not free of ideology, and we know that left to their own devices without ethical oversight and, I think, deep engagement with stakeholders and laypeople, scientists can do truly horrifying things. "It sure didn’t look like science was intrinsically democratic when left to its own devices" to Jewish and socialist sciences as the Nazis were rising to power. As a White woman who has been pushed around by a biased scientific system in the US, experienced some degree of harassment, and seen other people (especially people of color, immigrants, and LGBT folks) pushed around and harassed and systematically by the US's scientific structures (especially filtered through the last four years of our political system), I see no reason to disagree with that. Science writ large is not an unalloyed good; government writ large is definitely not an unalloyed good. Neither is The General Public, but we're certainly better off with a broader and more diverse group of people working to set scientific priorities and goals, and becoming scientists. I really loved this framing:
Schrödinger stressed not the autonomy of science but the way it depended on something beyond empiricism – a faith in the essential universality of human perception. And he insisted that scientific discoveries gained in meaning by being shared as widely as possible, thereby multiplying the subjective experience of ‘discovery’.posted by ChuraChura at 12:15 PM on February 2, 2021 [12 favorites]
I think there's a serious need for people to take every science finding and communicate about it both thoroughly and digestably
I agree, but there are some pretty big issues:
Some science findings require more background knowledge than others to communicate. I think physics is a good example, especially theoretical physics - where a lot of work relies on complex mathematical concepts that rely on other complex mathematical concepts to understand. It's like a Russian nesting doll of communication challenges.
It's not impossible, but that leads us to -
Science communication is an independent skill that takes time to develop - time that we are disincentivized to spend. Others have mentioned this, but it isn't built into the job. There are no allowances or incentives; it's just something we'd be doing in our free time, which we have very little of.
And then there's a third issue, one that I don't see being brought up that much, which is that most scientists don't have a platform! We're like any other aspiring writer in that regard. We can post to Twitter, but most of us have less than 100 followers, with most of them being people from our social networks. We can post to a blog, but who's going to come to our blog? We can ... submit magazine articles? To where? How do you do that?
If this is something we want we really need institutional support for it. It can't be yet another thing that scientists are just expected to learn how to do, and then do, entirely on their own for altruistic reasons.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:16 PM on February 2, 2021 [10 favorites]
I agree, but there are some pretty big issues:
Some science findings require more background knowledge than others to communicate. I think physics is a good example, especially theoretical physics - where a lot of work relies on complex mathematical concepts that rely on other complex mathematical concepts to understand. It's like a Russian nesting doll of communication challenges.
It's not impossible, but that leads us to -
Science communication is an independent skill that takes time to develop - time that we are disincentivized to spend. Others have mentioned this, but it isn't built into the job. There are no allowances or incentives; it's just something we'd be doing in our free time, which we have very little of.
And then there's a third issue, one that I don't see being brought up that much, which is that most scientists don't have a platform! We're like any other aspiring writer in that regard. We can post to Twitter, but most of us have less than 100 followers, with most of them being people from our social networks. We can post to a blog, but who's going to come to our blog? We can ... submit magazine articles? To where? How do you do that?
If this is something we want we really need institutional support for it. It can't be yet another thing that scientists are just expected to learn how to do, and then do, entirely on their own for altruistic reasons.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:16 PM on February 2, 2021 [10 favorites]
Pre-covid Harvard had an ongoing public outreach program in the sciences. Seemed to be as much a training for future scientists to be better at communication. REally interesting and often fun for all involved. Given the area it was really smart people presenting to just as smart people (personally I love being the dumbest person in the room:-) but it was clearly challenging to get the the ideas expressed, science theses day is so hyper technical, jargony and specialized. I remember going slightly off topic and the answers clearly needed info just slightly adjacent to their particular silo.
To pick a hot button, CRISPER badly needs a full world wide community ethical understanding from all directions. On the other hand explaining on Fox tv, Mochizuki's Inter-universal Teichmüller theory will be a stretch.
posted by sammyo at 12:21 PM on February 2, 2021
To pick a hot button, CRISPER badly needs a full world wide community ethical understanding from all directions. On the other hand explaining on Fox tv, Mochizuki's Inter-universal Teichmüller theory will be a stretch.
posted by sammyo at 12:21 PM on February 2, 2021
Slightly off-topic, but here's an interview with Schrödinger's wife Annemarie that I came across talking about her memories of his work, his colleagues and their journey to from Graz to Dublin in 1938/9 (including the difficulties of arranging the trip).
posted by scorbet at 12:32 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by scorbet at 12:32 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
One thing that is sitting with me is the attrition rate of the 1940s on these minds. Schroedinger, the only non-Jew among the five, lives out his life in Dublin in exile after leaving Germany in 1933; he continues publishing and his research career lasts until his death of tuberculosis in 1961 as an old man.
Fleck is Polish and lives and works in the then-Polish (now Ukrainian) city of Lviv, which is conquered within a month of Nazi Germany declaring war on Poland. He winds up interned in first Auschwitz and then Buchenwald, but is allowed to live (and his family allowed to live) because his research expertise pertains directly to typhus and the Nazis see value in directing him to produce typhus vaccines. After the war, he moves to Polish Lublin and immediately becomes the head of the Institute of Microbiology of the School of Medicine of Maria Sklodowska-Curie University. He picks up his career and keep publishing through to the 1960s.
Zilsel gets out in 1939, makes it to the US, and gets a Rockefeller fellowship to focus on research and publishing without having to also teach for the first time in his entire life. (He is 40 years old at this time.) But it runs out after two very productive years. He is told it will not be renewed and he's got to cultivate a relationship with a US institution to survive, and he winds up completely socially and intellectually isolated at Mills College in California. He lives through another three years in misery and commits suicide in 1944.
Neurath survives the Nazis, gets to England, survives an English internment camp, is beginning to pick up his career and set up his lab, and then abruptly dies unexpectedly in 1945, five years after reaching England; he was 64, and maybe he had a stroke, but the level of stress he had been surviving for the past fifteen years cannot have helped.
Walter Benjamin was trying to flee the Nazis through Vichy France when he crossed into "neutral" Francoist Spain, whose fascist government had decreed that all transit visas were invalid and that anyone trying to cross the border should be sent back to France; he was told he would be deported back to France the next day, crushing his hopes of escaping to the USA via Portugal. He committed suicide rather than be sent back.
These were not, by and large, people who felt they had nothing to fear at the time they were spinning up these ideas. Might be worth tucking that in mind, to place it alongside Chura's comment.
I also, like ChuraChura, know science is political. Hell, just in the context of the Nazis: in 1933, Magnus Hirschfeld's groundbreaking and incredibly scientifically important Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, for the study of sexuality and gender. Hirschfeld had been beaten almost to death by Nazis much earlier, in 1920, and for its part the IFS lasted a whole four months after Hitler took power in 1933 before it was sacked, its staff beaten, and its books formally burnt by the SA.
I am currently working at a piece I think will be important and useful but also expect to receive a fair bit of pushback, and I am rather sober as I sit and consider the impacts of these thinkers in the context of their lives. Some of them were coping with attempts to actively drive them out of the academy because their work was considered too much of a threat to more powerful academics and scientists, particularly Zilsel, whose career was dogged by such incidents. But that happened to almost all Jewish intellectuals and scientists who lived in Nazi-occupied regions, and that was something many of their peers in the academies were complicit in in exchange for plush scientific posts. These men were not speaking smugly of proselytizing to Nazi youths without being acutely aware of the risks they faced. The terror of QAnon, fascists in the streets, and large factions of people and politicians actively advocating to end democracy would have been familiar to them. That all five came to these conclusions is not a matter of simply not realizing that violent extremists exist.
If this is something we want we really need institutional support for it. It can't be yet another thing that scientists are just expected to learn how to do, and then do, entirely on their own for altruistic reasons.
Of course this is also absolutely true. Doing this kind of work is work. Important work, but still work. Private science journalism is a rare enough trade; how are you supposed to make a living doing it these days? There's so much precarity and so much of this work is described as vocational in lieu of actual cash to pay the rent with. If the work is valuable, we should pay for it. But with what money? What time?
I wish I had answers that didn't hinge on "if this is valuable, fucking pay someone to devote a career to it."
posted by sciatrix at 12:47 PM on February 2, 2021 [15 favorites]
Fleck is Polish and lives and works in the then-Polish (now Ukrainian) city of Lviv, which is conquered within a month of Nazi Germany declaring war on Poland. He winds up interned in first Auschwitz and then Buchenwald, but is allowed to live (and his family allowed to live) because his research expertise pertains directly to typhus and the Nazis see value in directing him to produce typhus vaccines. After the war, he moves to Polish Lublin and immediately becomes the head of the Institute of Microbiology of the School of Medicine of Maria Sklodowska-Curie University. He picks up his career and keep publishing through to the 1960s.
Zilsel gets out in 1939, makes it to the US, and gets a Rockefeller fellowship to focus on research and publishing without having to also teach for the first time in his entire life. (He is 40 years old at this time.) But it runs out after two very productive years. He is told it will not be renewed and he's got to cultivate a relationship with a US institution to survive, and he winds up completely socially and intellectually isolated at Mills College in California. He lives through another three years in misery and commits suicide in 1944.
Neurath survives the Nazis, gets to England, survives an English internment camp, is beginning to pick up his career and set up his lab, and then abruptly dies unexpectedly in 1945, five years after reaching England; he was 64, and maybe he had a stroke, but the level of stress he had been surviving for the past fifteen years cannot have helped.
Walter Benjamin was trying to flee the Nazis through Vichy France when he crossed into "neutral" Francoist Spain, whose fascist government had decreed that all transit visas were invalid and that anyone trying to cross the border should be sent back to France; he was told he would be deported back to France the next day, crushing his hopes of escaping to the USA via Portugal. He committed suicide rather than be sent back.
These were not, by and large, people who felt they had nothing to fear at the time they were spinning up these ideas. Might be worth tucking that in mind, to place it alongside Chura's comment.
I also, like ChuraChura, know science is political. Hell, just in the context of the Nazis: in 1933, Magnus Hirschfeld's groundbreaking and incredibly scientifically important Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, for the study of sexuality and gender. Hirschfeld had been beaten almost to death by Nazis much earlier, in 1920, and for its part the IFS lasted a whole four months after Hitler took power in 1933 before it was sacked, its staff beaten, and its books formally burnt by the SA.
I am currently working at a piece I think will be important and useful but also expect to receive a fair bit of pushback, and I am rather sober as I sit and consider the impacts of these thinkers in the context of their lives. Some of them were coping with attempts to actively drive them out of the academy because their work was considered too much of a threat to more powerful academics and scientists, particularly Zilsel, whose career was dogged by such incidents. But that happened to almost all Jewish intellectuals and scientists who lived in Nazi-occupied regions, and that was something many of their peers in the academies were complicit in in exchange for plush scientific posts. These men were not speaking smugly of proselytizing to Nazi youths without being acutely aware of the risks they faced. The terror of QAnon, fascists in the streets, and large factions of people and politicians actively advocating to end democracy would have been familiar to them. That all five came to these conclusions is not a matter of simply not realizing that violent extremists exist.
If this is something we want we really need institutional support for it. It can't be yet another thing that scientists are just expected to learn how to do, and then do, entirely on their own for altruistic reasons.
Of course this is also absolutely true. Doing this kind of work is work. Important work, but still work. Private science journalism is a rare enough trade; how are you supposed to make a living doing it these days? There's so much precarity and so much of this work is described as vocational in lieu of actual cash to pay the rent with. If the work is valuable, we should pay for it. But with what money? What time?
I wish I had answers that didn't hinge on "if this is valuable, fucking pay someone to devote a career to it."
posted by sciatrix at 12:47 PM on February 2, 2021 [15 favorites]
The pandemic has seen a lot of conspiracy thinking and intentional sabotage of public health efforts, but it’s also seen a lot of bad science communication around public health efforts. This is a super important thing to be thinking about right now.
posted by atoxyl at 1:07 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 1:07 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
that will do things like attack 5G towers
People may have “scientifically crazy” reasons for their opposition to 5G but using it as an example feels like using the name of science in defense of a work of engineering on behalf of business interests (which involves commandeering public resources/the metaphorical commons of the frequency spectrum for profit). So I’m not sure I like it that much.
posted by atoxyl at 1:13 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
People may have “scientifically crazy” reasons for their opposition to 5G but using it as an example feels like using the name of science in defense of a work of engineering on behalf of business interests (which involves commandeering public resources/the metaphorical commons of the frequency spectrum for profit). So I’m not sure I like it that much.
posted by atoxyl at 1:13 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
Looks like there is a deleted comment that may or may not be offensive, but from the quoted like could be worth discussing with this crowd, or just maybe too much of a derail.
From discussions of the "scientific method" it's a lot more messy and nondeterministic than the hypothesis-experiment-publish cycle. Scientists are actually members of the public also, and established medical folks refusing to believe washing hands to be valid for years to, well probably several contemporary "theories" that in 50 years will be invalidated. "The People" should be in the loop, but perhaps not in a direct decision making spot.
posted by sammyo at 1:49 PM on February 2, 2021
From discussions of the "scientific method" it's a lot more messy and nondeterministic than the hypothesis-experiment-publish cycle. Scientists are actually members of the public also, and established medical folks refusing to believe washing hands to be valid for years to, well probably several contemporary "theories" that in 50 years will be invalidated. "The People" should be in the loop, but perhaps not in a direct decision making spot.
posted by sammyo at 1:49 PM on February 2, 2021
I think the principle of justice can apply here.
Those whom are most affected by a decision get proportional say in the decision. That could weed out a lot of nonsense.
Those whom are affected the most by climate change, for example, get proportional say in what climate hypotheses are tested.
Dismissing working people's hypotheses out of hand is a poor way to go; often people who live and work in an area know a lot more about that place than a master's student sent into a place for two years to publish or perish. Their knowledge could be contextualized and tested by a person with scientific training.
Science is dying by publication requirements; there should be some kind of appeal to the public interest in order to sustain it as an institution.
posted by eustatic at 2:22 PM on February 2, 2021
Those whom are most affected by a decision get proportional say in the decision. That could weed out a lot of nonsense.
Those whom are affected the most by climate change, for example, get proportional say in what climate hypotheses are tested.
Dismissing working people's hypotheses out of hand is a poor way to go; often people who live and work in an area know a lot more about that place than a master's student sent into a place for two years to publish or perish. Their knowledge could be contextualized and tested by a person with scientific training.
Science is dying by publication requirements; there should be some kind of appeal to the public interest in order to sustain it as an institution.
posted by eustatic at 2:22 PM on February 2, 2021
Those whom are affected the most by climate change, for example, get proportional say in what climate hypotheses are tested.
This example seems like a solution in search of a problem. Are we not already testing climate change hypotheses that are relevant to them?
The problem for climate change science is not that the scientists are testing irrelevant hypotheses that have no connection to the concerns of the public. The problem is that their results have been targeted by a decades-long disinformation campaign, creating a false sense of "controversy." It has massive public interest.
And I also see a broader issue, which is that the public often does not have the knowledge necessary in order to know what is important.
In my own field, linguistics, there is a big divide between what the public thinks we study and what we actually study. It's not that the public is always totally wrong, it's just that certain results are "sexier," and those are the ones that get written about in the popular science press.
It's really easy for me to imagine the public saying that linguists should spend our time working on decoding the Voynich Manuscript; it's a "sexy" topic that makes the news each time some crank claims to have cracked it and it gets people really excited. It's also not that interesting scientifically; decoding it would solve an interesting little historical mystery, but wouldn't advance our knowledge of how language works very much. Meanwhile, people who are doing boring-ass experiments to model the articulatory dynamics of the tongue are going to be hard put to get the public equally excited.
We're also opening up the possibility of a lot of regional bias in what gets worked on. People will naturally prefer to support research that they think is relevant to them. Scientists working on issues relevant to developing nations will be even more sidelined (since these nations do not have the same scientific resources). Let's have more studies on the link between vaccines and autism, and less on malaria.
Practically, how do we give people in Burkina Faso a proportional say in what types of public health problems are researched?
Maybe there's room for both - but fundamentally, I'm just not convinced that the public's mistrust and misunderstanding of science is because they don't like what is being researched. I think it has much more to do with how science is communicated and politicized, and that is not something that is addressed by giving experts less control over what they study.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:14 PM on February 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
This example seems like a solution in search of a problem. Are we not already testing climate change hypotheses that are relevant to them?
The problem for climate change science is not that the scientists are testing irrelevant hypotheses that have no connection to the concerns of the public. The problem is that their results have been targeted by a decades-long disinformation campaign, creating a false sense of "controversy." It has massive public interest.
And I also see a broader issue, which is that the public often does not have the knowledge necessary in order to know what is important.
In my own field, linguistics, there is a big divide between what the public thinks we study and what we actually study. It's not that the public is always totally wrong, it's just that certain results are "sexier," and those are the ones that get written about in the popular science press.
It's really easy for me to imagine the public saying that linguists should spend our time working on decoding the Voynich Manuscript; it's a "sexy" topic that makes the news each time some crank claims to have cracked it and it gets people really excited. It's also not that interesting scientifically; decoding it would solve an interesting little historical mystery, but wouldn't advance our knowledge of how language works very much. Meanwhile, people who are doing boring-ass experiments to model the articulatory dynamics of the tongue are going to be hard put to get the public equally excited.
We're also opening up the possibility of a lot of regional bias in what gets worked on. People will naturally prefer to support research that they think is relevant to them. Scientists working on issues relevant to developing nations will be even more sidelined (since these nations do not have the same scientific resources). Let's have more studies on the link between vaccines and autism, and less on malaria.
Practically, how do we give people in Burkina Faso a proportional say in what types of public health problems are researched?
Maybe there's room for both - but fundamentally, I'm just not convinced that the public's mistrust and misunderstanding of science is because they don't like what is being researched. I think it has much more to do with how science is communicated and politicized, and that is not something that is addressed by giving experts less control over what they study.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:14 PM on February 2, 2021 [5 favorites]
I think the broad topic of what exactly should be the relationship between science and democracy is fascinating and relevant, but I think the author's answer nevertheless skews slightly towards a kind of soft science privilege. Sure, the desired end-state is for science, or STEM, to listen and be humble, that authoritarian science is the wrong direction to go. And that's something that individual scientists who are thoughtful and self-aware can start practicing right now. But the anti-incentives are largely structural and institutional. And the author could've tried to argue that the ultimate answer is just societally increasing the level of science literacy itself, which empowers people to engage with science on their own terms rather than rely on "communication" by a benevolent professional class of scientists in industry or academia.
posted by polymodus at 5:43 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 5:43 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
Those whom are affected the most by climate change, for example, get proportional say in what climate hypotheses are tested.
Bad example, since we can propose an infinite range of hypotheses for the future climate, but only one of them will be tested, and the hypothesis is chosen by the people voting with their gas pedals.
posted by ocschwar at 9:07 PM on February 2, 2021
Bad example, since we can propose an infinite range of hypotheses for the future climate, but only one of them will be tested, and the hypothesis is chosen by the people voting with their gas pedals.
posted by ocschwar at 9:07 PM on February 2, 2021
Practically, how do we give people in Burkina Faso a proportional say in what types of public health problems are researched?
By publicizing the work of Yakuba Sawadogo about the effects on ground water retention of revived traditional farming methods in Burkina Faso? Worth a try, I'd say.
I mean, you're right. Malaria's something that the US public doesn't care about, while the academic priesthood cares a lot about it, along with Bill Gates. It's a text book case of justified elitism here. The priesthood is right. Gates is right. The public is wrong.
The thing is, the elite's very existence is threatened right now. So finding alternatives to elitism is important. Even when the elitism is justified. ESPECIALLY when the elitism is justified.
posted by ocschwar at 9:15 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
By publicizing the work of Yakuba Sawadogo about the effects on ground water retention of revived traditional farming methods in Burkina Faso? Worth a try, I'd say.
I mean, you're right. Malaria's something that the US public doesn't care about, while the academic priesthood cares a lot about it, along with Bill Gates. It's a text book case of justified elitism here. The priesthood is right. Gates is right. The public is wrong.
The thing is, the elite's very existence is threatened right now. So finding alternatives to elitism is important. Even when the elitism is justified. ESPECIALLY when the elitism is justified.
posted by ocschwar at 9:15 PM on February 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
ocschwar >
Any more... Wikipedia—Louisiana (New France):
sammyo >
It seems to me like, in addition to journalism, there's a nexus with art and entertainment here: I'm a big science fiction fan but I usually find the genetic engineering scenarios explored in films, at least, rather unimaginative and uninterested in engaging with the real ethical issues. Novels are a bit better.
The one I use in casual conversation is: for all sorts of complicated reasons, the use and non-regulation and ineffective regulation of skin lightening creams is such a severe problem worldwide that the WHO issues urgent warnings for people to avoid poisoning themselves (PDF). I've seen interviews with people who use this kind of stuff, knowing it's dangerous, but point out that it's not simply a cosmetic or personal preference issue—they point out that people with lighter skin get better jobs in most places.
So let's say we “solve” that public health problem by switching from poisonous topical creams to some “safe” genetic engineering technology, and in a few hundred years every human has light skin as a result of decisions their ancestors voluntarily made. A Shannara Chronicles season 1 future but without even any of the hinted-at historical violence. What does that even mean?
This is the kind of thing that scientists and engineers can't solve themselves and not really even bioethicists and medical ethicists (a hopefully-tiny number of whom appear to actually be pro-eugenics anyways... what); so many of these issues need open dialog across multiple all-hands-on-deck healthy societies with a healthy, vigorous, academic-freedoms-protected international scientific community and other national and international institutions.
posted by XMLicious at 10:59 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Malaria's something that the US public doesn't care about
Any more... Wikipedia—Louisiana (New France):
See also Audubon: “Early Settlers Along the Mississippi”. How quickly we forget.Physical conditions were harsh, and the tropical climate was difficult for colonists. Hurricanes, unknown in France, periodically struck the coast, destroying whole villages. The Mississippi River Delta was plagued with periodic floods and yellow fever epidemics, to which malaria and cholera were added as part of the Eurasian diseases that arrived with the Europeans. These conditions slowed colonization.
sammyo >
To pick a hot button, CRISPER badly needs a full world wide community ethical understanding from all directions.
It seems to me like, in addition to journalism, there's a nexus with art and entertainment here: I'm a big science fiction fan but I usually find the genetic engineering scenarios explored in films, at least, rather unimaginative and uninterested in engaging with the real ethical issues. Novels are a bit better.
The one I use in casual conversation is: for all sorts of complicated reasons, the use and non-regulation and ineffective regulation of skin lightening creams is such a severe problem worldwide that the WHO issues urgent warnings for people to avoid poisoning themselves (PDF). I've seen interviews with people who use this kind of stuff, knowing it's dangerous, but point out that it's not simply a cosmetic or personal preference issue—they point out that people with lighter skin get better jobs in most places.
So let's say we “solve” that public health problem by switching from poisonous topical creams to some “safe” genetic engineering technology, and in a few hundred years every human has light skin as a result of decisions their ancestors voluntarily made. A Shannara Chronicles season 1 future but without even any of the hinted-at historical violence. What does that even mean?
This is the kind of thing that scientists and engineers can't solve themselves and not really even bioethicists and medical ethicists (a hopefully-tiny number of whom appear to actually be pro-eugenics anyways... what); so many of these issues need open dialog across multiple all-hands-on-deck healthy societies with a healthy, vigorous, academic-freedoms-protected international scientific community and other national and international institutions.
posted by XMLicious at 10:59 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Throughout the long 19th century, scientific fields ranging from botany and epidemiology to seismology and meteorology had depended on members of the public to furnish observations of plants, disease symptoms, tremors, storms and more. This led to lively communication between scientists and laypeople, as well as to efforts to keep the sciences as jargon-free as possible. Medical experts eschewed Latinisms in favour of terms their patients used to describe their own experiences of illness; meteorologists formulated wind scales and cloud taxonomies on the basis of the lingoes of sailors and farmers; and geologists came up with terms for seismology that corresponded to the felt reports of earthquake survivors.
This is another thing I keep coming back to in this piece. Criticisms about fearing that conspiracy theorists or quacks will use access to scientists to steer the course of research are off base, because the interactions with lay folks we're talking about don't fit that model at all. By and large, the interactions between scientists and laypeople being described here are interactions involving laypeople who have also been paying attention to the same natural phenomena as scientists have, albeit in a different context: while performing other tasks, or as part of feeding a pet interest, or as part of observing their own bodies. We are starting by talking to lay people who are already interested in the aspect of the natural world that a scientist attempts to understand.
In other words, we are effectively discussing scientists listening to amateur hobbyists. And in many fields this association between amateur hobbyists and scientists still persists! Birding, for example, is a popular hobby that often aids scientists and conservation efforts. Gardeners, too, and hunters, have often interacted with ecologists to provide valuable insights. I can think of another pigeon scientist I know who has had great luck untangling the genetic basis of a number of interesting physical and behavioral traits of fancy pigeons by, in part, talking to pigeon fanciers about their birds and the things they observe while keeping them. Sometimes those lay people turn out to have some pretty good ideas, and sometimes they are wildly off base crackpots, but it generally doesn't hurt to see if there's any substance out there to start with.
In many ways, this kind of reaching out to and listening to amateur hobbyists is falling out of fashion in terms of formal academic training. We're trying to fit more training into a smaller space, and natural history and hobby observation of study species often takes a back seat, especially in the face of the fact that most of us don't come into our fields with any formal programming education and we really do need it. But it's a valuable source of both outreach to the community and also new insight into complex topics which can sometimes be overlooked.
posted by sciatrix at 11:26 AM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is another thing I keep coming back to in this piece. Criticisms about fearing that conspiracy theorists or quacks will use access to scientists to steer the course of research are off base, because the interactions with lay folks we're talking about don't fit that model at all. By and large, the interactions between scientists and laypeople being described here are interactions involving laypeople who have also been paying attention to the same natural phenomena as scientists have, albeit in a different context: while performing other tasks, or as part of feeding a pet interest, or as part of observing their own bodies. We are starting by talking to lay people who are already interested in the aspect of the natural world that a scientist attempts to understand.
In other words, we are effectively discussing scientists listening to amateur hobbyists. And in many fields this association between amateur hobbyists and scientists still persists! Birding, for example, is a popular hobby that often aids scientists and conservation efforts. Gardeners, too, and hunters, have often interacted with ecologists to provide valuable insights. I can think of another pigeon scientist I know who has had great luck untangling the genetic basis of a number of interesting physical and behavioral traits of fancy pigeons by, in part, talking to pigeon fanciers about their birds and the things they observe while keeping them. Sometimes those lay people turn out to have some pretty good ideas, and sometimes they are wildly off base crackpots, but it generally doesn't hurt to see if there's any substance out there to start with.
In many ways, this kind of reaching out to and listening to amateur hobbyists is falling out of fashion in terms of formal academic training. We're trying to fit more training into a smaller space, and natural history and hobby observation of study species often takes a back seat, especially in the face of the fact that most of us don't come into our fields with any formal programming education and we really do need it. But it's a valuable source of both outreach to the community and also new insight into complex topics which can sometimes be overlooked.
posted by sciatrix at 11:26 AM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
Searches for "good faith" or "weaponized" & synonyms thereof in this discussion re: contemporary science communication & citizen involvement. No hits.
While the subjects of this piece - and the piece itself - were not naive about this (Nazis FFS!), the fact is that that active disinformation, sockpuppetry, greenwashing, capitalism co-opting, the rapid news cycle, and viral spread of "free expression" ("democracy means my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge") on the internet have profoundly changed the landscape beyond recognition of the 1920s-1950s subjects of this piece.
posted by lalochezia at 4:09 PM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
While the subjects of this piece - and the piece itself - were not naive about this (Nazis FFS!), the fact is that that active disinformation, sockpuppetry, greenwashing, capitalism co-opting, the rapid news cycle, and viral spread of "free expression" ("democracy means my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge") on the internet have profoundly changed the landscape beyond recognition of the 1920s-1950s subjects of this piece.
posted by lalochezia at 4:09 PM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
"In other words, we are effectively discussing scientists listening to amateur hobbyists. And in many fields this association between amateur hobbyists and scientists still persists"
I think a big part of this has to do with the fact that there are plenty of people who are considered "scientists" who push absolutely bogus garbage. Lots of dinguses think of Jordan Peterson as a "scientist" because his title is "clinical psychologist" which sounds sciencey enough to most.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but it seems to me like the line between "amateur hobbyist" and "actual scientist" is a lot blurrier than you give it credit for, because I think Jordan Peterson is an amateur hobbyist, yet his legions of acolytes would rabidly disagree.
...And just pointing out, Nazis had scientists, too. Being a "scientist" doesn't magically make you ethical, moral, or not a giant piece of shit. Acting like this is something that only affects non-scientists is kind of 100% bullshit. Nazis learned a lot about the human body by killing people in unique and horrific ways.
There's plenty of scientists who believe absolutely bonkers stupid bullshit. My friends work with some.
So while I get what you're saying, it certainly sounds like you work around other good scientists, but... there's plenty who help push nonsense for their own personal gain. Sure they're probably in the minority, but you can't entirely ignore that they exist, and they have an affect on the public conversations around science.
Jordan Peterson certainly has had an affect on the public conversations around mental health, and not necessarily in a good way.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:20 AM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think a big part of this has to do with the fact that there are plenty of people who are considered "scientists" who push absolutely bogus garbage. Lots of dinguses think of Jordan Peterson as a "scientist" because his title is "clinical psychologist" which sounds sciencey enough to most.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but it seems to me like the line between "amateur hobbyist" and "actual scientist" is a lot blurrier than you give it credit for, because I think Jordan Peterson is an amateur hobbyist, yet his legions of acolytes would rabidly disagree.
...And just pointing out, Nazis had scientists, too. Being a "scientist" doesn't magically make you ethical, moral, or not a giant piece of shit. Acting like this is something that only affects non-scientists is kind of 100% bullshit. Nazis learned a lot about the human body by killing people in unique and horrific ways.
There's plenty of scientists who believe absolutely bonkers stupid bullshit. My friends work with some.
So while I get what you're saying, it certainly sounds like you work around other good scientists, but... there's plenty who help push nonsense for their own personal gain. Sure they're probably in the minority, but you can't entirely ignore that they exist, and they have an affect on the public conversations around science.
Jordan Peterson certainly has had an affect on the public conversations around mental health, and not necessarily in a good way.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:20 AM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sometimes those lay people turn out to have some pretty good ideas, and sometimes they are wildly off base crackpots, but it generally doesn't hurt to see if there's any substance out there to start with.
Are you actually trying to argue to me that I don't know about the many ways that science can and does amplify injustice? Are you sincerely arguing that I don't know how to evaluate evidence and suss out bullshit when someone offers it up to me, as long as they claim hobbyist expertise? Are you actually attempting to argue to me that I am saying that when a puffed up, overconfident amateur serves up a plate of bullshit, scientists should nod, swallow, and ask for more instead of responding with detailed criticism?
Is that your actual argument to me?
posted by sciatrix at 10:39 AM on February 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Are you actually trying to argue to me that I don't know about the many ways that science can and does amplify injustice? Are you sincerely arguing that I don't know how to evaluate evidence and suss out bullshit when someone offers it up to me, as long as they claim hobbyist expertise? Are you actually attempting to argue to me that I am saying that when a puffed up, overconfident amateur serves up a plate of bullshit, scientists should nod, swallow, and ask for more instead of responding with detailed criticism?
Is that your actual argument to me?
posted by sciatrix at 10:39 AM on February 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
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Also.... Just, does science actually need to be democratic to be able to advance and help people?
I mean, I know plenty of scientists who would love to do more work to help people in the world, but the general consensus is that there seem to be very few institutions of learning and very few governments in the world who actually want to pay for those kind of things. So they end up dedicating their work to something that doesn't actually help people as much. (This ties in with another FFP today, about how to fix journalism, where the author admits at the end of the essay that he would probably be fired for expressing how to fix it, because it's all based on profit. You have to solve that before you can start talking about fixing science, when science journalism sucks fucking noodles.)
I mean, aren't "scientists" part of the democratic public themselves? Why must they cede to an increasingly uneducated and out of touch public that will do things like attack 5G towers they are convinced are built to purposefully spread COVID (which is a hoax, ACKTUALLY)?
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I'll give an anecdote I've given a LOT recently in regard to "regular people" viz a viz philosophy.
So, let's talk about Calvinists and religious philosophy for just a moment.
One of the core tenets of Calvinism was that God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, meaning he technically already knows the end of human history and knows which ones of us will be saved and which ones will go to hell. If you are a bookish religious scholar, this is a logical conclusion to make within the sphere of your spirituality.
Now... Let's leave our bookish religious scholar behind and go out into the streets and talk about regular everyday Calvinists. You see, regular ass dinguses take what is a reasonable, thoughtful philosophical position in relation to their spiritual belief, and they turn it unreasonable. One of the most common things I remember about practicing Calvinists is that they were so often sure that they could pick out who was going to hell.
The entirety of regular people who were practicing Calvinism believed that because God knew who was going to hell, that meant they could also know who is going to hell and use it to judge and isolate others. They wouldn't have described it as "blaspheme," but I'd say it's pretty fucking blasphemous to claim you know the mind of God.
I use this as an example because I think it shows how you can take what is a rational philosophical position that doesn't have any malignancy to it and when that same position enters the general public consciousness, they add a malignancy that didn't have to be there. In other words, the public is often too foolish to take such deep ideas and get more than surface-level understanding. And as such, their understanding will often wildly differ from the understanding of the scholars who first created the idea they are using.
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I get what Schrodinger was trying to say. I get that many advancements are made by "regular" people. If the last 20 years has taught me anything, it's that people who run our world are not any more capable than regular people. We know that regular people are often more capable than those running the world, but... the opposite can also be said and be quite true.
"Regular people" are not a monolith, and unfortunately plenty of them would flush science down a toilet if they had a chance. Plenty of them don't care about the scientific method or what "constitutionality" actually means, because they've decided that what they feel it means matters way, way more than objective reality. Seriously, think about what Trump supporters think "constitutional" means. Then think about what that mean about what they think "science" means.
Perhaps this still would have worked in a world with decent education, but the older I get, the more I am genuinely starting to doubt that "education" alone will fix this kind of insane rejection of reality that half the American public seems poised to (or already has) slip into.
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Honestly, in the modern world, the best way to democratize science is to drop the costly publishing houses and make all scientific research widely available to the public, which will lead those who actually respect science having more access and more information at hand. Sci-Hub is the future of science and the future of democratization of science.
Walling it all up and forcing you to have enough capital to access it is all about restricting access to an elite subculture. You want to democratize science, start there.
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Finally, in the article, they describe a time when people distrusted science because they saw the destruction it wrought.
We are now living in a world where the violence and terror that science has brought us is demanded by half of our nation. People love bombing the living shit out of other countries, our citizens practically beg us to do stuff like "bomb the middle east until it's a sea of glass."
If they're smart enough to know how glass is made, how atomic bombs work, and the geographic nature of the area they want to obliterate (desert), they understand the basics, and they don't give one flying fuck about not hurting others. They haven't lost faith in science due to it's ability to harm, they're busy listening to music that says "let the bodies hit the floor" and they fantasize about being the one putting the bodies down on the floor. They love a science that is ready to harm.
Jesus christ having the 74 million people who voted for fucking Trump being involved in science frankly scares the living shit out of me.
posted by deadaluspark at 8:35 AM on February 2, 2021 [29 favorites]