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Revision as of 03:47, 27 October 2017
Science Communication
Introduction
What is scientific communication? Scientists who work in a laboratory for a career are often shielded from contact with the public. Barriers are set up unintentionally that prevent communication between the two sides. Scientific language, knowledge, and research techniques are some factors that contribute to this divide. However, it is important for the scientists to share their findings with the public, because that is why researches are even conducted in the first place – to generate knowledge that can be applied to benefit the society. In essence, scientific communication is presenting scientific concepts to an average person who does not have the expertise in the field. This often involves explaining in “layman’s” term, and use analogies to refer to more relatable elements of the daily life for the public to understand science. Why is it important? So, why do people care about science? Maybe they don’t. But, science provides the means to evaluate a claim or an idea with evidences; it is good to have that skill on hand so we can understand how things work in the world. Unsurprisingly, we see scientific knowledge everywhere, from schools to social media, from work to TV shows. Gradually, science has manifested into interesting facts or explanations that we see everyday. Scienctific Literacy Nevertheless, one has to be mindful of the implications that arise with the incorporation of “science” in our lives. We might believe that every headline that presents itself as science on Facebook is “real science”. However, do we know where it comes from? Who published the article? Was the scientific methods used to generate credible results? Is it biased? Has it been altered or misinterpreted by the person who transcribes scientific data into writing? These are the questions that we should ask ourselves before we blindly believe in a claim. Because if we don’t, we might just be supporting pseudoscience, and this is extremely dangerous in an era where we can just click a button and share the “fake news” to millions across the globe.Our Project
The Human Practices Team is focusing on scientific communication this year. We broke this theme up into two parts:- Examining scientific literacy among the public.
- Reaching out to the community and various institutions to promote science
- About a quarter of the population with university education is not very comfortable interpreting scientific news publications.
- Most people with a university education trust scientific reports with dramatic and opinionated language to some extent.
- More than half of the people with a university education would not verify new scientific claims with credible source half of the time.
- A small portion of people with a university education share scientific news articles on social media solely based on the title.
- Similar to the group with some post-secondary education, the group without a university degree shows similar trends in terms of trusting skeptical scientific claims and blindly distributing articles without assessments.
- Science Sam: PhD at University of Toronto studying Cell Biology and Neuroscience who blogs about lab science on Instagram
- Bob McDonald: Canadian author and science journalist, currently hosing the CBC radio program - Quirks and Quarks
- Dan Falk: Canadian science journalist, broadcaster and author (published The Universe on a T-Shirt in 2002)
- Dr. Catherine Reeve: Dalhousie Psychology and Neuroscience professor
- University of Toronto iGEM team: one of the iGEM teams that we are collaborating with
- Olivia Roberts: member of the general public, with a post-secondary degree in music
- Journalists and scientists who write articles are sometimes biased or exaggerated the result to a certain extent to grab the attention of the public to read the paper. And just being humans, sometimes we click into articles just because the titles are interesting, although they might be biased or exaggerated.
- People often assume that the articles that are published are credible, because they are “science” and most people do not believe science is false.
- Having a post-secondary education does not mean the person has all the skills required to assess and interpret a scientific article properly. Depending on the degree, quality of education, the person might view science in distinct ways.
Sample Questions and Results
