Science communication and its implications for A/L students

Sean PERERA

Science communication can be defined broadly as conveying the ideas of the scientific community into the wider general public. The scientific community includes people who study about the different scientific disciplines, like chemistry, biology and physics.

The general public is anyone who is not directly involved in the study of a particular scientific discipline. For example, a microbiologist can be part of the general public when listening to a lecture given by a biochemist.

New discipline

In order to understand properly the processes of science communication, it is important to know how science communication evolved historically.

Science communication is a comparatively new discipline. It began in the 1980s, when the scientific community in the UK expressed concern about the general public’s lack of scientific knowledge.

From surveys of around 3000 people in the UK and the USA it was found that the general public did not know basic scientific facts. For example, many people did not know that electrons are smaller than atoms, or that light travels faster than sound.

Therefore, it was decided by a special committee appointed by the House of Lords in the UK to educate the British public about scientific facts and scientific processes. This resulted in Public Understanding of Science Movement.

Later, in the mid 1990s, the scientific community agreed that understandings about science were not enough to engage the public with science.

Therefore, in order to help the general public to make meaningful connections with science and their daily lives, the above movement was changed to the Public Engagement of Science and Technology. As a result, the most important challenge for science communication today is to help the general public to actively engage with science.

Advanced Level

This means that school students, including A/L science students like you, your teachers, parents and friends, need to be able to notice science in everyday situations and interact with science at a personal level.

However, this may not seem a difficulty for you, especially since you study science at Advanced Level.

To fully understand the difficulty of this challenge for science communication I need you to first draw a picture of a scientist. Take a few minutes to draw what you think a scientist should look like; what a scientist would normally dress and what scientists usually do.

The activity you just did is called Chambers’ Draw A Scientist Experiment. This experiment was first done in 1981, and even today produces similar results. Therefore, I am quite sure that the picture you drew is very similar to the one shown below. Is the scientist you drew wearing a lab coat and glasses?

Also, like in the picture, your scientist is likely to be holding some sort of scientific equipment. By drawing a scientist in this way you make it clear that scientists are different from the general public because of the way dress and the work they do.

Many people believe that scientists are not like ordinary people, and therefore that science is not for the general public. This is one of the biggest challenges when trying to communicate science to the general public.

Drawing of a scientist (Image from http://www.chrisdellavedova.com)

Next, think of a name for the scientist you draw. It is most likely that you named your scientist Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein or even Nicholas Copernicus. You would rarely use names like Prof. Cyril Ponnamperuma (the Sri Lankan chemist) or Dr. Abdul Kalam (former President of India, and also a scientist).

This is another challenge, particularly when communicating science to the general public in non-Western countries. Because people in countries in Asia, Africa and South America believe that science belongs to the Western World, they are reluctant to take ownership of science.

Therefore, people from non-Western countries lack the confidence to engage with science at a personal level.

Popular subject

A further challenge for science communication is the belief that men are better at science than women. In fact, it is very likely that the scientist you drew is a man. Because of this belief science is not a popular subject among most women, and we know that women form more than half of the world’s population.

These are the three main challenges science communication faces when trying to engage the general public with science: i.e. science is not for the general public, science belongs to the Western World, and men are better at science than women. However, these three ideas about science are not completely true.

First, as A/L science students you know a lot of scientific information. Unlike the UK and USA publics I mentioned earlier, you know that light travels faster than sound waves, and that electrons are smaller than atoms. You also have personal experiences with science on a daily basis.

For example, if you are yawning while you are reading this article it is because your brain needs more oxygenated blood and yawning helps to increase the amount of air that enters your lungs.

Also, if you think about the temperature in the room you are in, you know that the ventilation holes near the ceiling help to make the room cooler. This is because hot air is lighter and it can escape from those ventilation holes. These simple examples show that the general public interacts with science everyday. Therefore, science is not only for scientists.

Second, science is not something that belongs only to the Western World. Although it may seem that way, that is mainly because of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century and the First and Second World Wars which happened more recently.

All these events happened in Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean in North America. However, this does not mean that scientific developments didn’t happen in other parts of the world.

For example, you may have heard about the 11th Century Persian physicist called Alhazen who was the first to discover the laws of light reflection. He also invented the pinhole camera. Another example is Zeng He, the Chinese Admiral who sailed as far as the Atlantic Ocean long before Christopher Columbus.

You have learnt in school about our own Sri Lankan King Buddhadasa who was a great physician and surgeon. Therefore, it is not correct to say that science belongs only to the Western World. Science belongs to all human beings.

Third, it is wrong to believe that men are better at science than women. One example is Marie Curie. She received two Nobel Prizes: the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 and Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911.

You may also have heard of Lucia Galvani, the wife of the famous Italian physicist Luigi Galvani. She played an important part in her husband’s discovery of bioelectricity.

Personal level

Then there is Roslind Franklin, whom some scientists believe introduced the concept of the DNA Double Helix model to James Watson and Francis Crick. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that men are better scientists than women.

So what are implications of science communication for you as A/L science students? What can you do to engage with science on a personal level? Here are some suggestions. First, try to look scientifically at the world around you.

Try to understand the scientific reasons for the different things you experience everyday. For example, why the soil on the bund of a paddy field (i.e. Niyaraya) is reddish-brown in colour and the mud where the paddy grows is greyish-green.

You might be surprised to know that this difference in colour is due to a simple oxidation-reduction reaction that you have learnt in chemistry. The ferric (Fe+3) ions on the bund are responsible for its reddish-brown colour, while ferrous (Fe+2) ions produce the greyish-green colour of the mud.

My next recommendation is to try to understand the reasons behind Western ideas in science. One way of doing this is to read stories from the lives of famous scientists. These stories describe the way these scientists thought about science.

They also explain the reasons behind scientific laws and principles. Robert Boyle and his discoveries of Gas Laws that you learn for A/L chemistry and physics are one such example. You can also know more about the origins for scientific names for plants and animals by reading these stories.

For example Hydra, the specimen you study for Phylum Cnidaria in Biology gets its name from a mythical Greek snake that had many heads, much like our own legend about Muchalinda. Because of these stories the scientific names you memorise will have new personal meaning to you and they will stop being strange Latin names.

My last recommendation is to always have an open and enquiring mind. Never be satisfied with the scientific knowledge you have. This is because the science we study today is a result of many men and women thinking, experimenting and developing new ideas.

Therefore, science is always changing. As A/L science students and future world citizens you need to be part of that process and contribute to the way science changes. So have an open mind and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Read science magazines, refer the internet regularly, ask your friends and teachers if the things you see and hear about science can be explained differently. Always be curious and open to new ideas.

Bibliography:

Durant, J. R., Evans, G. A., & Thomas, G. P. (1989). The public understanding of science. Nature, 340: 11-14.

Stocklmayer, S. M. (2001). The background to effective science communication with the public. In S. M. Stocklmayer, M. M. Gore, & C. Bryant (Eds.), Science Communication in Theory and Practice. (pp. 3-22). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

(The writer is a PhD candidate and Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University in Canberra)