The complete program and audio files of most presentations are available on the NAS Web site at www.nasonline.org/science-communication. For example, the common knowledge effect arises when people exaggerate how widely their beliefs are shared (30). Did they get the wrong science, and prove irrelevant? The May 2012 Sackler Colloquium on “The Science of Science Communication” brought together scientists with research to communicate and scientists whose research could facilitate that communication. Although people can choose not to do science, they cannot choose to ignore it. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. ��h� ��ݰ'`�8���#-4E��yS�gW�ɭ4�f�S~Y5�@��~�?��&62�%���eC�.��|>���8��,���? Its recommendations called for sustained communications, to ensure that proposals for nuclear power and waste disposal receive fair hearings (83). In Fall 2005, as avian flu loomed, we had the opportunity to survey the beliefs of both public health experts, who could assess the threat, and technology experts, who might create options for keeping society going, should worst come to worst. Thus, although behavior may follow simple principles, there are many of them (as suggested by the incomplete lists in Table 1), interacting in complex ways. For example, predicting a drug’s risks and benefits for any patient requires behavioral science research, extrapolating from the controlled world of clinical trials to the real world in which people sometimes forget to take their meds and overlook the signs of side effects (6). That knowledge might include just summary estimates of expected outcomes (e.g., monetary costs, health risks). Applying a principle requires additional (auxiliary) assumptions regarding its expression in specific circumstances. XD. Research has identified design principles for directing attention, establishing authority, and evoking urgency (41, 69). To avoid such misattributions, communication programs must measure the adequacy of their performance. Whether these probabilities were over- or underestimated seemed to depend on teens’ beliefs about the events, rather than on their ability to express themselves numerically (34). For example, if health effects have legal standing in a facility-siting decision, but compensation does not, then local residents may challenge health effect studies, when their real concern is money. Thus, a process begins by reporting preliminary plans and hearing the public’s thoughts early enough to incorporate its input. Such surveys must pose their questions precisely enough to assess respondents’ mastery of the science. 4 0 obj Colorín Colorado is a bilingual website in English and Spanish and offers basic parent information in 13 languages. �*:19�xg2�5�>Z��b����S5�r�\��u.q�>��f�OP���Z���4����J�;�"N^^-tܰ')d�3�S�F� ��3�5v/���>+��GYYKȭ��]A�HˌS2��&(�Yᩐ��.b�ҳ�MΡYH(Y���˩�ːM�����T�$69�枅L`F���W��6�E1�!2-�& ��d����$��I��3oZW�G�ܯ�J�̜�V�u�y��)�X�� n&��)�Z:V���d�0�S�8%�)/� s�=��z���� uHT��h�ZǸD���F��F!�������� !l�*A�Z�.��H�B�kt����H�:���0�� ;��- D.A.S. Consequently, science news reports should be used in the instructional material for second or foreign language learners. (70) found that users of several methylene chloride-based paint stripper products who relied on product labels would not find safety instructions if they followed several common search strategies (e.g., read the first five items, read everything on the front, read only warnings). For me, one of those moments was as an undergraduate in Introductory Geology at Wayne State University, when Prof. (Joseph) Mozola explained the origins of the Harrisburg surface, which gives central Pennsylvania its distinctive lattice pattern of rivers and gaps. Using such a model, Riley et al. Many thanks. Thus, by increasing the chances of success and aiding the diagnosis of failure, the sciences of communication can protect scientists from costly mistakes, such as assuming that the public can’t handle the truth, and then denying it needed information, or becoming advocates, and then losing the trust that is naturally theirs (9, 24, 72). Even within a domain, knowledge may vary widely by topic. 0000040725 00000 n %PDF-1.3 To realize that potential, however, people need a venue for discussing value issues. Reasonable people may disagree about whether expecting X days less convalescence time is worth expecting Y% more complications, whether the benefits of organic produce justify Z% higher prices, or whether their community has been offered fair compensation for having a hazardous facility sited in its midst. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, HarperCollins, 1982. To these ends, we need the full range of social, behavioral, and decision sciences presented at this Colloquium, coupled with the best available subject matter expertise. eBook includes PDF, ePub and Kindle version. (iii) A comprehensibility standard for user understanding. People forced to learn about cancer may know little about diabetes. The more that people know about the scientific process, per se, the easier it will be for science communications to explain the uncertainties and controversies that science inevitably produces. The more that people know about a science (e.g., physics), the easier it will be to explain the facts that matter in specific decisions (e.g., energy policy). Thus, because intuition cannot be trusted, communicators must study what people are thinking. As a result, predicting a technology’s costs, risks, and benefits requires social and behavioral science knowledge, just as it might require knowledge from seismology, meteorology, metrology, physics, mechanical engineering, or computer science. 0000000792 00000 n Either way, they will have seen the pursuit of uncertainty that distinguishes science from other forms of knowing and the scientific turn of mind: trying to get to the bottom of things, knowing that one never will. More generally, the methodological challenges of asking people what matters to them, when forced to choose among risky options, have changed scientific thinking about the nature of human values. 0000000611 00000 n The myth of panic arises when people misinterpret others’ intense responses to disasters as social disintegration, rather than as mobilization (e.g., the remarkable, if tragically incomplete, evacuation of the World Trade Center on 9/11) (32, 33). As a result, focus groups are much more common in commercial research than in scientific studies. This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. Although advances in one science (e.g., molecular biology) may provide the impetus for a decision (e.g., whether to use a new drug), informed choices typically require knowledge from many sciences. If there are too few links, then people will drown in messages, expecting them to become experts in everything, while ignoring the social networks that they trust to select and interpret information for them (9, 45, 62, 63). At the left is a commitment to two-way communication at each stage. Did they get the science wrong, and lose credibility? Task 3: Design communications to fill the critical gaps (between what people know and need to know). Enlivened with anecdotes from the lives of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists who have contributed significantly to the field, Information conducts readers from questions of subjectivity inherent in classical information to the blurring of distinctions between computers and what they measure or store in our quantum age. It can lead people to confuse others by failing to say things that are seemingly, but not actually, obvious. One of the more interesting chapters deals with the Monty Hall paradox. However, when people need more precise estimates of their cumulative risk, they cannot be expected to do the mental arithmetic, any more than they can be expected to project exponential processes, such as the proliferation of invasive species (55), or interdependent nonlinear ones, such as those involved in climate change (56). Confronting us at every turn, flowing from every imaginable source, information defines our era—and yet what we don’t know about it could—and does—fill a book. Given the stakes riding on effective communication, these studies should be conducted to a publication standard, even if their topics lack the theoretical interest needed for actual publication. However, even the most effective communication cannot guarantee that people will agree about what those choices should be. At other times, though, the science is so unintuitive that people have difficulty creating the needed mental models. H�b```" ^kAd`e`�s$( Much more detail can be found in the rest of this special issue and at the Colloquium Web site (www.nasonline.org/programs/sackler-colloquia/completed_colloquia/science-communication.html).

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