Towards Public-Friendly Open Science: YouTube Alongside Journal Articles? 77
Jace Harker writes: The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society. One of the reasons for this is that scientists do not spend enough time communicating their findings outside their own scientific community," writes Authorea Chief Scientist Matteo Cantiello. "It's ironic and somewhat frightening that the discoveries and recommendations for which society invests substantial economic and human capital, are not directly disseminated by the people who really understand them." Cantiello goes on to propose a "Public-Friendly Open Science bundle": scientists who publish a paper should also draft and publish a press release, layperson's summary, and/or YouTube video. Should scientists be more responsible for communicating their results directly to the public? Or should this role be left to science journalists?
As an option, OK. As mandatory, NO. (Score:1)
Re:As an option, OK. As mandatory, NO. (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, many things are approachable by someone of "average" intelligence and background if you try hard enough.
The problem becomes that so much of the populace is outright anti-science, that who are you targeting?
Honestly, it's not the average person to worry about ... it's the people who outright reject that any of this stuff is real and think that "just a theory" means their opinion is just as valid.
The YouTube-ification of science would be quite sad, and probably counter productive as people try to get edgy and appeal to a youth audience .... yo yo yo boi, MC Flava Physix in da house to explain quantum entanglement might be funny once, but we don't need it to be a recurring thing.
These people aren't writing papers for the drooling masses. They're writing them for other people educated in the field.
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos.
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It's not the intellience, its not having specific background. If they're talking about a specific permutation of string theory, I'd be lost in a paragraph, even dumbed down. I don't have the math. Same for high level chemistry. Same for a lot of science. Explaining phd level science to a layperson isn't always possible or desirable.
Communication (Score:3)
It's not the intellience, its not having specific background.
True but that doesn't mean you cannot communicate the concept. E=MC^2 is well beyond most people's ability to derive but the concept that Energy = Matter isn't that hard to grasp. It's very possible to communicate difficult concepts to a lay-person. This requires a certain amount of skill. I would even go so far as to argue that if you cannot explain it to a reasonably intelligent lay-person chances may be that you don't understand the concept well enough yourself.
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I think you far overestimate the average person's understanding of science. They may be able to parrot that energy=matter, but they won't actually understand it, or the consequences of it.
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Physics, astronomy, and chemistry are some of my favorite subjects but my majors were in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. I think I understand all three subjects fairly well for a layperson. I also do not think of myself as particularly bright.
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I'm a grad student in a science field (medical physics) working on a pretty nitty-gritty project, and most people glaze over when I start talking about what I do. That's rather disheartening, but it may not necessarily be their fault: perhaps I'm not great at communicating exactly what it is I'm talking about, or I'm so used to discussing it with people of a similar background that I fail to see what is and isn't actually obvious.
This type of exercise could encourage developing skills t
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That's why I said "average intelligence and background." Neither one is sufficient. If you dumb it down too far then there's no difference between your presentation and that of dozens of others working in your same field. If you don't dumb it down - and it's not groundbreaking results, and obviously so - then many, perhaps most, people will lose interest within a minute or so.
Frankly, what I was afraid of is that sponsors of research would start making such presentations a requirement of funding. I stil
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Maybe, and I do not know, it is YOU and not THEM? YOU are not explaining it in a way that they can grasp it? Maybe?
I had no trouble parsing your text. Perhaps you speak at a level that is higher than those around you? This does, unfortunately, make it a trouble with you if you can not explain it to an idiot. I suffer similar issues. Introspection has given me the chance to see that there are many times I should have explained myself more clearly and in a less long-winded way.
Re:Science Cat Videos (Score:2)
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos
Too late - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvOtUh8Avi8 [youtube.com]
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"God particle"
Thank mainstream media for coining that phrase. Scientists just shrugged because it's easier to let the children be happy with a new shiney while the adults are doing important things.
Actually, you can thank Nobel laureate Leon Lederman. [wikipedia.org] He wanted to call it The Goddamn Particle (because it was so hard to detect) but his publisher wouldn't let him.
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Science should not be trying to suck up to the stupidest among us.
Unless those stupid people are Federal and/or State legislators.
Re:Pandering to the masses? (Score:4, Insightful)
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We need to get Politics out of Politics. Just saying much our problems are self inflicted when we expect others to solve our own problems of our own making.
Public Speaking is Hard (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tyson is an astrophysicist. Here is a list of his research publications. [wikipedia.org] Obviously since he became Director of the Hayden Planetarium he has done more science outreach than actual research but that may be just as important.
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Scientists do public speaking in conferences. Thing is, the public there usually knows some of the necessary background. Making a paper understandable by someone outside the field is not only a lot of work, it's often pointless.
Instead of Youtube videos, we need open journals instead of the walled garden bullshit that's only good for journals.
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Yeah, I don't think this is valid. As a former academic, I did a ton of public speaking. From the hardest of hardcore at very specialized conferences, to teaching graduate and undergraduate students, as well as some public outreach at a journalism conference, and in University promotional videos. There may be certain fields where the antisocial can get by, but the truly successful scientists have to be ruthlessly good communicators.
The barrier to more direct public outreach is that there's absolutely no cle
Left to journalists? (Score:3)
Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah!
No.
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Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah!
No.
Left entirely to science journalists? Probably not.
But some science journalists are pretty good at it. Good enough that some professional scientific societies present awards to journalists for exceptional reporting in their fields.
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My reaction is mainly because of some of the horrible hyperbole that I have seen in summaries by bad journalists. Things like "artificial life created!" Then it turns out to be a computer simulation of some kind of goat-monkey hybrid, or whatever. I cringe at myself for taking the bait, whenever I read stuff like that.
Like many interested readers, I depend on good science journalists so I can understand discoveries that are outside my field. I enjoy reading well-writ
communication skills are rare (Score:2)
I am often in awe of how badly most technical people communicate.
My whole tech career is based off the fact that I can communicate with people.
So, you're a people person? (Score:2)
Are you anything like this guy? [youtube.com]
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For me, I wasn't born to be good in speaking in person due to my disabilities. :( However, I can decently communicate well online. Thanks God for the Internet and technology.
Bad Timing (Score:2)
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Plenty of science gets announced before it is refuted.
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Neither (Score:4, Informative)
>> Should scientists be more responsible for communicating their results directly to the public? Or should this role be left to science journalists?
At major research universities dependent on grants this role is often part of the public relations arm of the funding coordinators (or university itself). The reason is simple and profit-motivated: the more that constituents and politicians know and hear about scientists' findings and discoveries, the more likely future grants are.
These are the choices? (Score:4, Insightful)
Always have been. (Score:3)
Most science articles are due to press agents at a lab or University or a journal or working for conference organizer either putting together and sending out press releases or contacting reporters they know (or both), and that is always done in collaboration with the scientists issuing the results. Scientists who have access to such resources should certainly use them. Scientists who don't are at an disadvantage (IMHO) and should spend some time figuring out how this is done. Technical people tend to underrate the difficulty of good public communication; it is not trivial to do it well.
Are scientists public figures? (Score:1)
How about in between? (Score:3)
A podcast would be nice:
It's the public's problem (Score:3)
The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society....
Maybe if "the public" spent half as much time learning about basic science in school as they do watching youtube, "the public" might be better equipped to understand science.
.
Why not focus on bringing up the scientific ability of the "the public" instead of dumbing down scientists?
Good and complicated idea, needs great execution (Score:1)
I can see the value in this sort of work, especially in informative videos that most people can understand. That's how many people absorb information these days, since it's usually quicker and more convenient than reading the same information. But they need to have the explaining done by people who are really good at public speaking and connecting with the audience.
I don't think anything too fancy is needed, but whether they'd go with print or video, it needs to be done right and with as little bias as poss
answers to the test. (Score:2)
Probably not a good idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
From a system point of view, this seems like the opposite of what we should actually want. Journal articles exist to communicate the findings of an experiment, they actually have nearly no relevance to the public, nor should they. The results of a single article should not be trusted. It's a finding and it needs to be studied and replicated before it should be communicated to the public. So, I don't think we would ever want to force every scientist who is trying to get an article published to also draft a press release trumpeting the results of their study. Even honest scientists would constantly be tempted to embellish the significance of the results.
It seems to me, that we should actually want an independent science body who's sole job is to replicate significant experiments and confirm that the results are both legitimate and significant. Taking the advertising out of the hands of the original scientist should dramatically reduce the incentive to exaggerate findings and hopefully requiring the result to be verified first would deter all but the least reliable science journalists from writing wild articles based on never repeated experiments.
There would still be major problems, this organization would have to establish themselves as the trust authority for science questions. That would be no easy task. Additionally, there is the question of who would fund this organization. It should not be a single government, nor a single corporation, or even a single industry because of the potential for political interference.
Closed Ecosystem (Score:2)
From a system point of view, this seems like the opposite of what we should actually want. Journal articles exist to communicate the findings of an experiment, they actually have nearly no relevance to the public, nor should they.
But the result of this is that hundreds of thousands of smart people who might be interested in your research never hear about it. I didn't get exposed to academic journals until maybe my third year in college, and they were great, and why the hell aren't they part of life for everyone who's smart? There are bad ones too, of course... but surely you could take small steps, like requiring that every paper have three abstracts: one for the scientific community, one for college students, and one for high sch
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The gist of your argument is that there should be some central authority that verifies scientific results before the media consumes them. That's a noble goal, but I'm afraid I can't hold out any hope for it.
Science can't dictate to the media what they publish, nor should it. Let's accept that scientists and journalists adhere to the covenant of attempting to disclose the truth, but sometimes they get it wrong. By publishing things that are both right and wrong, they can hope to arrive at the truth eventuall
Yeah, THAT's it. (Score:2)
"The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society"
What, you mean those dimwitted philistines don't understand or appreciate
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Literacy Improves Your Chances at a Happy
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The problem is the background (Score:2)
I've been trying to write a little piece about my research so that my friends and family (and anyone else who cares) have a better idea what I do (a subfield of solid-state physics). I don't think the concepts are that hard, and the subject is interesting to many people, but the real problem is providing the background.
This is more of a problem in some fields than others. For example, I met an ecologist who researches frogs -- including colorful ones [wikipedia.org] you see in advertisements for Costa Rica. The creatures a
journals like Science have news summaries in front (Score:2)
I think some of the newsfeeds with science sections (e.g. NY Times) then pick up some of the these new summaries.
I can see it now ... (Score:2)
Meaningful output (Score:2)
It already does not work very well with scientific journalists, whose jobs are to make scientific information available to the masses.
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It already does not work very well with scientific journalists, whose jobs are to make scientific information available to the masses.
(it ate my second sentence): I do not see why it would work better if scientists were asked to do the scientific journalist's work. Being the ultimate expert does not imply any particular skill at producing meaningful information for the masses.
Similarly, (Score:2)
Seems like about the same question.
For review articles maybe (Score:1)