Before the internet, scientists would communicate verbally, or through actual pen and paper.
Since then we’ve come a long way, science can be passed through anything from online jo
urnals to tweets. Yet in this age of almost limitless knowledge, I still see headlines questioning the validity of vaccines on my Facebook feed. Granted I follow some very Humboldt County hippy moms. This is a problem I see replicated across almost every corner of the internet. Any person can access the internet, whether that’s the small computers in our pockets (which may or may not be giving us cancer) or a public library. If a person was to exercise their internet privileges, they would find that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the lead scientist on a paper suggesting autism was linked to a vaccine, was indeed revoked.
This speaks to a greater problem in science. How do we convince the public that science matters but also not bore them to death! As a student in the womb of academia, I get to nerd out with friends and mentors about the phylogeny of sea stars. But when I go home, I can see the eyes of my family members glossing over. Science communication is like a seesaw. If you are accurately depicting a science concept, you have to sacrifice some aspect of its readability. On the other hand if you write a piece in too broad of strokes, you lose important details. The trick is to balance the scale for your audience and objective. For projects like the Flame challenge, the goal is to get kids interested in science, but for a New York Times editor, you can afford to elaborate more deeply.
In high school, I remember getting reprimanded for saying, “my study proves…” because we can’t really prove anything! We can only say, supports or suggests. Often times lay readers want definitive facts, or they’ll keep shopping for headlines that support their agenda. Will the extra glass of red wine give you cancer or will the antioxidants give you a life changing
boost? While the answer may be more nuanced, the prior is the headline most people would prefer, myself included. In all seriousness, there is a tendency to over inflate the results of a study. The unfortunate answer of most studies is that there needs to be more studies. Science is almost a painfully slow process, an then communicating it might be equally as difficult
There might not be a solution to this conundrum, but there are steps that science communicators can take to ensure they are providing the best content, from the perspective of both the consumer and the scientist. Providing accurate titles may be one of the forefront issues. A large portion of scientific content that lay people interact with comes from social media. Clickable title get the most attention undoubtably, however, I can be that many people are guilty of sharing an article before actually reading it. Take home: science communicators, be careful how you frame results, and ensure you are doing the research justice. Consumers, please read the article before you share it. Also go ahead and enjoy your wine, it’s worth it.
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