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Science Communication

Introduction

What is scientific communication?
Science communication distills complex topics and disseminates them to a non-expert audience. Science communication is important as it help the general public understand the relevance of research.This is not a simple process and often scientists are left worried that information will be lost in translation. Over the course of the summer, we continuously sought to improve our own abilities as science communicators. The more we practiced, the better we developed analogies to support our discussions of complex ideas.

Scienctific Literacy
There are concerns that arise with the incorporation of “science” into our daily lives. For example, we might believe that every headline on Facebook that presents itself as science is real. The problem is that often times the source of the research is unclear. As a result there are many unanswered questions that emerge, such as: Who published the article?, How rigorous was the researchers analysis?, Were there any biases?, and Did the person writing the science-based news article correctly interpret the results? These are the questions that should be ask before blindly spreading the article.

Our Project

The Human Practices Team is focusing on scientific communication this year. We broke this theme up into two parts:

1. Examining scientific literacy among the public.
2. Reaching out to the community and various institutions to promote science

Our goals are to raise awareness on the importance of scientific literacy and also to establish efficient communication between our lab and the public.

What did we do?
We created a survey early in the summer to evaluate scientific literacy and how people view and interpret scientific concepts. This survey was distributed across the globe and received 271 responses in a span of a month. After the results are analyzed, we conducted interviews with various experts with diverse backgrounds to gain insights on the topic with their distinct perspectives.
Some key results of the survey are as follow:

1. About a quarter of the population with university education is not very comfortable interpreting scientific news publications.
2. Most people with a university education trust scientific reports with dramatic and opinionated language to some extent.
3. More than half of the people with a university education would not verify new scientific claims with credible source half of the time.
4. A small portion of people with a university education share scientific news articles on social media solely based on the title.
5. 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.

Overall, some of these results are a bit surprising and contrary to our expectations of the population with a post-secondary education.

Interviews and Questionnaires
The interviewees are as follows:

• 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

Interview Response Conclusions

1. 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.
2. People often assume that the articles that are published are credible, because they are “science” and most people do not believe science is false.
3. 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.

Infographic Summary
Our final initiative was to summarize all the findings and publish a brief infographic that also include the experts’ insights. This informational material could be distributed across the community to raise awareness on the importance of scientific communication.

Limitations

1. Our sample size isn’t big enough to represent the entire global community
2. Most of our respondents are university students or member of iGEM teams
3. We did not analyze our results based on the type of post-secondary degrees

Conversations with Communicators

How can Scientists do a Better Job at Communicating Science?

“Science is lacking in trendiness” says Samantha Yammine of popular science Instagram ‘Science Sam’. “Our goal is to bring people into science and change mindsets as much as possible. If we want to do that we need to target younger people, and if we want to target younger people we need to be cooler.” Sam believes communicating science involves all platforms, “why aren’t more people live streaming, why aren’t more people snapchatting from lab?” Often the science videos you see are so boring, science is exciting, and we should try to communicate that.




Dan Falk is a Canadian Science Journalist, broadcaster and author. He has currently published three books, most recently “The Science of Shakespeare”. As a science communicator who crosses the boundary between scientist and non-scientists we asked his opinion on how scientists can better communicate their work. “Scientists should be more open by talking to journalists. When a journalist calls, you [a scientist] welcome it. Scientists, many of whom are partly funded by the public, have a responsibility to talk openly about what they are doing. I appreciate that this is a complicated subject and so that there is no easy fix.”



Bob MacDonald is a famous science communicator known for his CBC program “Quirks and Quarks”. Here he gives us a bit of insight on how to successfully communicate science. “You’ve got to put your story in human terms so the people who don’t understand the science will understand. So first set the scene, then get into what you’re doing, and do it in terms of what people might understand…So start there, start with storytelling and set the context. If you want to get into the science of it, you don’t have to teach them everything about the science. You can introduce them to the science, and if they want to know more then give it to them.” Bob believes that much of the time you need good science communicators to bridge the gap. “The journalist has to understand that language and translate it over here for the audience who doesn’t speak that language. We are translators.

How can the Public tell when Scientific Media is Sketchy?

“That’s really tough. See it’s tough to put the burden on the reader to go look it up. Where would they even look?” That being said, “any absolutes or anything that sounds too certain is probably fake. Science is all about probabilities.” The biggest warning sign is if the article isn’t cited, “That’s a pretty standard thing in journalism; you should always mention the study.” Other things to look for are if the authors of the article are quoted. That’s a pretty good sign the article is good.




“Going to other popular media accounts to check their portrayal of the story. If multiple sources are reporting it the same way than that is a strong indication what they are reporting it factually correct. The biggest red flag is when something just sounds wrong. Unfortunately, we all have prejudges towards what we want to believe and therefore you may not just be reading the news but an interpretation of the news.”





“As long as it’s a notable publisher or university, then you are doing well. Again, it’s the source. It doesn’t matter where you’re getting it, you always have to look at the source. If it’s coming from a reputable organization then it’s probably fine.” Bob mention to make sure what you’re reading isn’t an opinion piece, or something sponsored by a company with a hidden agenda. He says, “Science is not based on think or opinions, it’s based on evidence and experimental results. So again, separate the science from the opinions.”