The following are what I regard as the key concepts contained within the
book “Science in Public: Communication, Culture, and Credibility” (ISBN
0-7382-0357-2), referenced in my post “Recommended Reading” of Sat 28
Apr. I am listing them here without additional comment, but will be
tying them to various issues raised at LPSC (and since then, in this
forum) in subsequent posts. I will also list and comment upon the
authors’ recommendations which appear at the end of the book.

1. Getting media exposure is a matter of matching personalities.
High-public-profile scientists are those with “characteristics required
by media that emphasize news value and the reliability of sources,”
including: tenure, topicality, unambiguousness, conflict with
established beliefs and institutions, verbal articulation and
colorfulness, and preexisting fame within their fields or association
with an already famous organization. (p 83)

2. The public’s ability to discern science from pseudoscience would be
greatly improved by an understanding of “science as an institution,”
especially the elements of scientific training, research protocols, peer
review, and ongoing scrutiny by the scientific community. (p 91)

3. Since broadcast television is not interactive, meaningful discussion
of scientific issues with the public cannot occur through this medium.
Such discussions as do occur are reduced to the level of entertainment.
(p 97)

4. Members of the lay public, and even people working in technical
fields, husband their available mental bandwidth carefully, making room
for “only that scientific information which they need for their own
particular circumstances, and little more.” Scientists should therefore
“negotiate” what they impart to the public. (pp 98–99)

5. Trust in science as an institution may substitute for knowledge and
explicit understanding of science by the public. Any sudden increase in
mistrust of science will bring it under much greater public scrutiny.
(pp 100, 102)

6. Science communication research is mostly about journalists, not
scientists; for analogous research on scientists, look to “the sociology
of science and the science and technology studies communities.” (p 108)

7. Most science news stories are not written by specialists in science,
and whether or not a science story is run is not determined by whether
the writer has any science background or not. (p 108)

8. Science news stories must be meaningful and relevant to the recipient
(reader, hearer, viewer), that is, “fall within the scope of what people
normally think about or can be bothered with”; therefore they often
emphasize practical applications rather than the scientific process.
(pp 110, 116)

9. Science news stories will have added weight if they are consonant
with recipients’ “existing beliefs or attitudes.” Some visitors to
science museums experience “the unease of an unbeliever in a place of
worship.” (pp 110, 206)

10. A science news story is more likely to be run if it is about
something which occurs at a known frequency, or can be accurately
predicted well in advance. (p 111)

11. Science on TV nearly always shows scientists as having successfully
solved a problem, without portraying the process by which this was
accomplished. (p 123)

12. Criticism of pseudoscience usually backfires. Establishment figures
are perceived as representing only themselves, not the scientific
community, when they argue with the proponent of an unorthodox
viewpoint. This is because science reporting is viewed in the same way
as political reporting. (p 126)

13. The greatest achievements, academically speaking, of modern science
are those most remote from the concerns of daily life. Scientists have
responded to the difficulty of popularizing these achievements by
culturally isolating themselves from the public. (p 136)

14. The use of familiar words in unfamiliar combinations can greatly
increase the popularity of a scientific development. (p 147)

15. Be careful of announcing immense breakthroughs too often – the media
will begin treating you like the boy who cried “wolf!”. (p 154)

16. Science is usually chronic, “but the media deal in the acute.” A
time frame of years is short in terms of scientific research, but longer
than all but a few media/historical events. (pp 159, 162)

17. The public needs to understand “science-in-the-making” more than it
needs to understand firmly established science. (p 161)

18. Complexity is not an intrinsic barrier to media coverage of
scientific developments; fascination can overcome it. (p 164)

19. Public trust in governmental institutions can act as a barometer of
public trust in science. Public perception of scientific risk varies
inversely with public trust of government agencies which control the
relevant technology. (pp 179, 193)

20. The public may perceive scientists as having created risks by
publicizing their findings. (p 180)

21. People’s perception of scientific risks grow as coverage of risk
grows, even if the content of the coverage is that the risk is
diminishing or has disappeared; that is, perception tracks quantity, not
quality. (p 188)

22. The media don’t tell people what to think, but they do tell them
what to think about. “Risk is an ideal subject for the mass media
because it is something to think about even though nothing has actually
happened.” (p 188)

23. Television coverage of scientific risks does not include dialogue
which can lead to the development of consensus or resolution of policy
disputes. (p 189)

24. The public’s evaluation of a risk assessment considers many factors
besides the size of the risk itself, including “the kind of people who
are most likely to be affected, the impact on employment and on the
environment of any policy changes, and the possibilities for individual
action to avoid or reduce the risk.” (p 190)

25. Responses to risk which sound clear and practical will be popular
with the public. (p 191)

26. For resolution of major scientific risk issues, the UK relies on the
public’s trust in individual authority figures, while the US relies on
the public’s trust in legal and policy-making processes. (p 195)

27. Newer science museums are often participatory experiences for
visitors, who may even view new exhibits under construction and older
exhibits being repaired. (p 202)

28. New scientific hardware often appears in unattractive,
incomprehensible “black boxes.” (p 204)

29. “There is no such thing as a neutral [science] museum exhibit.” (p
207)

30. Prominent communicators of science become not only authors, but
authorizers, of science. (p 208)

31. Science is a system of ideas, but museums concentrate on objects, so
it may be asked just how much science there is in science museums. (p
209)

32. The average length of a science museum visitor’s stop at any given
exhibit is less than 30 seconds. Visitors spend a majority of their
time in cafés, gift shops, and restrooms. (p 212)

33. Cognitive gains (learning of facts, etc) among science museum
visitors are much easier to measure than affective gains (attitudes,
interests). (p 213)

34. Data indicate that only about 1 item out of 150 truly excites the
average science museum visitor, but this is sufficient to produce a
large affective gain. (p 214)

35. There is a fine line between imparting information about science and
conducting advocacy (or outright lobbying) for science. (p 220)

36. Activists dealing with scientific issues obtain media entreé by 1)
using scientific language and “forcing credentialed experts to deal with
their arguments”; 2) portraying themselves as representatives of the
public or the portion thereof most affected by the science in question;
3) linking moral/political arguments with methodological/epistemological
arguments; 4) exploiting existing scientific disagreements. (p 229)

37. Media workshops are available for scientists to learn “the
techniques required for mass communication.” (p 231)

38. Politically, at the national level, scientific issues are relatively
unimportant. They are more likely to receive attention at regional and
local levels. (p 234)

39. Public understanding of science is a relatively new field, with
curricula relatively unformed and goals largely undecided. (p 240)

40. When science is conveyed to the public, it is encountering not a
vacuum, but “a complicated synergy of deeply embedded cultural themes
and awkward issues such as trust and belief.” (p 241)


Jay Manifold
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