Scientists Need Stronger Public Engagement in ‘Post-Truth’ World, Says Former NOAA Administrator

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

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> From: FYI <fyi () aip-info org>
> Date: May 11, 2018 at 6:18:54 PM EDT
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> Subject: Scientists Need Stronger Public Engagement in ‘Post-Truth’ World, Says Former NOAA Administrator
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> Number 58: May 11, 2018
> Scientists Need Stronger Public Engagement in 'Post-Truth' World, Says Former NOAA Administrator
> In a series of public lectures, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco has urged 
> the scientific community to focus on the growing importance of public engagement in a “post-truth” world, which she 
> says will require a shift in culture at universities, research institutions, and government science agencies.
>
> Former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head and Oregon State University marine ecologist Jane 
> Lubchenco. (Image credit: Oregon State University)
>
> On April 23, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University marine 
> ecologist Jane Lubchenco delivered the 2018 James R. Mahoney Memorial Lecture on “Science in a Post-Truth World,” a 
> topic on which she has spoken out in recent years. The annual lecture is co-sponsored by NOAA and the American 
> Meteorological Society, an AIP Member Society.
>
> Noting a growing disconnect between science and society in recent years, Lubchenco argued the scientific community 
> should endeavor to fully understand the issue and its relation to the emergence of a “post-truth” worldview, which 
> she defined as one in which “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion 
> and personal belief.” To bridge the gap, she stressed that scientists need to do a better job of demonstrating the 
> value of science, identifying and sharing scientific successes, and modifying scientific culture to better reward and 
> incentivize public and policymaker engagement.
>
> Earlier in April, the National Science Board announced Lubchenco would receive the 2018 Vannevar Bush Award honoring 
> “truly exceptional lifelong leaders in science and technology who have made substantial contributions to the welfare 
> of the nation through public service in science, technology, and public policy.” In addition to serving as President 
> Obama’s first NOAA administrator, Lubchenco is credited with co-founding three organizations that train scientists to 
> communicate better and engage with society: COMPASS, the Leopold Leadership Program, and Climate Central.
>
> Lubchenco warns of growing disconnect between science and the rest of society
>
> Lubchenco began her address by outlining what she calls the “science-society paradox”:
>
> At the very time that science is so important to people’s lives — it is relevant, it is helpful, it is making things 
> possible that never were — we see a widening gap between science and society.
>
> As an example, she observed that the public’s beliefs often conflict with scientific understanding, saying this is 
> particularly true for contentious issues such as evolution, vaccines, and climate change. While noting this is not a 
> new issue, she stressed that scientists need to “understand what the landscape is, what the issues are, [who] the 
> players are” and “then address the reasons why this post-truth world has emerged.” 
>
> She listed factors that contribute to the disconnect, noting that there has been discussion on “how important 
> increased [global inequities] … are in laying the groundwork for a post-truth society.” She also said there are “very 
> powerful vested interests that are promulgating a very self-serving set of messages and anti-science agenda.”
>
> At the same time, she said the proliferation of news sources allows people to “choose sources that are going to 
> confirm their biases about how the world works and what’s important.”
>
> How scientists are perceived by the public is another factor to consider, she said. Noting that a recent survey 
> concluded most Americans cannot name one living scientist, and even fewer can since Stephen Hawking died earlier this 
> year, she framed the lack of familiarity as emblematic of the problem. “We need more scientists being seen as 
> scientists by the public,” she stressed.
>
> She highlighted another study suggesting that in order to be seen as trustworthy, people must be considered as both 
> competent and warm. While noting that the study showed that the public sees scientists as highly competent, she said 
> it found they are not perceived to be very warm.
>
> Lubchenco elaborated on this point in an editorial published last year in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 
> saying “Science needs to be trusted and valued, not seen as imperious, threatening, wasteful, or doom-and-gloom. 
> Let’s shed the entitlement rhetoric and show, not just assert, the merits of science.”
>
> Part of this issue, she argued, is scientists are trained to adopt a “don’t tell stories, stick to the facts” maxim 
> when talking to others about their work. “A lot of the things that are the way the culture of science has evolved 
> don’t help us to be perceived by the public as trustworthy," she concluded.
>
> Nonetheless, Lubchenco noted that a new report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences shows that confidence 
> in scientists has remained relatively stable over the last few decades and that a large majority of Americans still 
> view scientific research as beneficial.
>
> Scientists adopting new strategies to address disconnect
>
> Lubchenco said she has been focusing on this topic for “some time,” referencing her address as president of the 
> American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998.
>
> “What I said at that time is ... it was not enough to simply discover new knowledge, to advance the frontiers of 
> science. We had to go beyond it.” she recounted. “We couldn’t just discover and publish; we had to share as well.” 
> According to Lubchenco, it was around that time when the scientific community began to shift its focus “from just 
> doing the science to also sharing it more broadly.”
>
> She said organizations have more recently established the goal of improving science communication by training 
> scientists to be “bilingual,” which she defined as the ability to speak both the “language of science” and the 
> “language of lay people.” She said these current programs are “fantastic,” but that more training opportunities like 
> them are needed. More broadly, she concluded that there has been “a real transformation of the appetite of scientists 
> for being more public.”
>
> At the same time, Lubchenco said many people, including scientists, have been “caught off guard” by recent 
> developments:
>
> The emergence of this post-truth world … is seen by a number of people as a challenge to things that we have held 
> near and dear: the importance of evidence, the importance of information.
>
> This shift in U.S. culture has “galvanized scientists like I have never seen before,” she remarked. “We saw immediate 
> responses that were to demonstrate, to march, to defend science” from scientists as well as citizens. However, she 
> said this response is only “one part of the answer,” asserting “We need offense, not just defense. Not that defense 
> is not important, but it’s only part of the strategy … you really need both.”
>
> Stronger engagement and shift in scientific culture needed, Lubchenco argues
>  
> Lubchenco implored that scientists “can’t just stay in our ivory towers in academia or halls of federal agencies in 
> Washington, D.C.,” if they are going to respond to these current challenges facing science. Rather, she stressed,
>
> We need to be more integrated into society, physically and psychologically integrated. In other words, scientists 
> need to engage more and more effectively with society.
>
> She suggested three efforts that scientists can make to effectively embed science in society.
>
> First, she said scientists need to “demonstrate, not just assert” the value of science to the public. “Make science 
> more accessible, show its merits, and engage citizens.” Citizen science and other initiatives that seek to engage 
> citizens in the scientific process are very powerful, she said, as they create trust and help “develop shared values 
> and shared experiences.” She continued,
>
> Teaching people to do some of the basic things that [scientists] can do, but then interpreting what that means, is a 
> wonderful opportunity for community engagement.
>
> While acknowledging that demonstrating scientific value is easier to do in certain disciplines, Lubchenco stressed it 
> is necessary to evaluate lessons learned that can be replicated in other disciplines.
>
> Second, Lubchenco said scientists need to provide “hope” by sharing existing scientific successes. “We need to not 
> just have everything focus on all the bad, but actually be a little more balanced,” she remarked. “Find the 
> successes, replicate them, and scale them.”
>
> Lastly, she said scientists need to modify how the scientific community incentivizes engagement. In government, she 
> said, scientists are too often rewarded for “being good administrators, not for being good scientists,” and stressed 
> more broadly that “we need to have good scientists but we also need them out engaging with the world, not just 
> managing programs.”
>
> Academia rewards grants, publications, and teaching for tenure, but does not consider engagement, she observed. “If 
> we believe engagement is important, we have to have it be an expectation of what [scientists] need to do.”
>   
> Lubchenco ended by saying scientists have “unparalleled opportunities to serve society better,” but that it will only 
> happen if they decide to “take the bull by the horns and step up and make things happen.” Invoking the lecture's 
> namesake, she ended on an empowering note:
>
> If [James Mahoney] were here, he would say ‘It’s time for us to take back the narrative. It’s time to write the new 
> chapter in the relationship between science and society, and for us to collectively to have a quantum leap in 
> relevance.’
>
> Contact the Author
>
> Alexis Wolfe
> American Institute of Physics
> awolfe () aip org
> (301) 209-3182
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