Science Communication - Motivations

Motivations

Partly due to a market for professional training, science communication is also an academic discipline. The two key journals are the Public Understanding of Science (PUS) and Science Communication. Researchers in this field are often closely linked to Science and Technology Studies, but they may also come from the history of science as well as mainstream media studies, psychology, sociology or literature studies. Agricultural communication is considered a subset of science communication from an academic and professional standpoint.

Writing in 1987, Geoffery Thomas and John Durant advocate various reasons to increase the public's understanding of science, or scientific literacy. First of all, this could benefit the faculty of science in general; if the public enjoyed science more, there would presumably be more funding, progressive regulation, and trained scientists. More trained engineers and scientists could allow a nation to be more competitive economically.

Science can also provide benefits to the individual. A case in point, science can simply have aesthetic appeal (e.g. popular science or science fiction). Living in an increasingly technological society, background scientific knowledge can help to negotiate it. The science of happiness is an example of a field whose research can have direct and obvious implications for individuals.

The government and society might also benefit from more scientific literacy - since an informed electorate promotes a more effective democratic society. Moreover, facts uncovered by science are often relevant to moral decision making (e.g. answering questions about whether animals can feel pain, or even a science of morality).

I. Bernard Cohen points out potential pitfalls in improving scientific literacy. He explains first that we must avoid 'scientific idolotry'. In other words, science education must allow the public to respect science without worshiping it, or expecting infallibility. Ultimately the scientists are humans, and neither perfectly altruistic, nor competent. Scientific communicators must also appreciate the distinction between understanding science, and possessing a transferable skill of scientific thinking. Indeed, even trained scientists do not always manage to transfer the skill to other areas of their life.

Cohen is critical of what has been called 'Scientism' – the claim that science is the best or only way to solve all problems. He also criticizes the teaching of 'miscellaneous information' and doubts that much of will ever be of any use, (e.g. the distance in light years from the earth to various stars, or the names of minerals). Much of scientific knowledge, particularly if it is not the subject public debate and policy revision, may never really translate to practical changes for the lives of the learners.

Most of the key criticisms of PUS come from 1990s work from scholars in Science and Technology Studies. For example Steven Hilgartner (1990) argues that what he calls 'the dominant view' of science popularization tends to imply a tight boundary around those who can articulate true, reliable knowledge. By defining a deficient public as recipients of knowledge, the scientists get to contrast their own identity as experts. The process of popularisation is a form of boundary work. Understood in this way, science communication may explicitly exist to connect scientists with the rest of society, but its very existence only acts to emphasise it: as if the scientific community only invited the public to play in order to reinforce its most powerful boundary (according to work by Massimiano Bucchi or Brian Wynne).

Biologist Randy Olson adds that anti-science groups can often be so motivated, and so well funded, that the impartiality of science organizations in politics can lead to crises of public understanding of science. He cites examples of denialism (e.g. of global warming) to support this worry. Journalist Robert Krulwich likewise argues that the stories scientists tell are invariably competing with the efforts of people like Adnan Oktar. Krulwich explains that attractive, easy to read, and cheap creationist textbooks were sold by the thousands to schools in Turkey (despite their strong secular tradition) due to the efforts of Oktar.