Audiences for Science

1. Audiences for Science Thinking Analytically About Audiences Susanna Priest, Ph.D. Editor, Science Communication Visiting Scholar, University of Washington

2. What happens when science leaves journals? • Most people only know science from media reports, including advertising • Science news is heavily subsidized by institutions • Consumers of this information must evaluate competing claims • This includes consumers of products, from cell phones to cars and from foods to pharmaceuticals • Making journals more public may be inherently valuable, but will not solve issues of how people go about this – new skills needed as the influence of traditional journalism recedes • Democratization of science, also an inherent good, requires new levels of audience sophistication • Significant literature on how people process risk information, for example – it’s a complex picture!

3. Five Attitudinal Audiences for Nano-Science (just an example, from student survey/Priest and Greenhalgh 2012) • Science Friendly (familiar with S&T, trust scientists, economic conservatives, want policy based on sci) • Science Unfriendly (not familiar, distrust scientists, social conservatives, do not want policy based on science) • Moralists (want national policy based on moral principles, social conservatives) • Cynics (not social conservatives, distrust many sources of authority) • Environmentalists (distrust religious leaders, not either type of conservative, trust scientists and environmentalists, want sci-based policy) • ONLY ONE OF MANY WAYS TO VIEW AUDIENCES! • These are varied along many dimensions. • Bottom line: People bring pre-existing attitudes to the interpretation of scientific claims.

4. Who is interested in science, after all? • Scientists and others who work in science • People who make decisions about science – policy makers, politicians, regulators, investors, consumer advocates, and environmentalists • People who just think science is “cool” (or, well, not)! • People who must make a decision where science is crucial – due to medical necessity, local environmental issues, etc. • Everybody else!

5. What is science literacy, really? • Traditionally measured on basis of multiple choice tests of knowledge • Some items controversial as “knowledge” measures, e.g., evolution • Statistics on factual scientific knowledge are not reassuring (e.g., Miller) • What people really need to know to make sense of claims about science is something quite different…

6. “Critical science literacy” = sociology and philosophy of science (101) • What audiences really need to know is less about facts and more about “how science works” • Science is a highly social activity – role of scientific meetings, nature of scientific consensus, and role/purpose of peer review • A variety of methods are in use, not just experiments (as in high school lab class) but modeling, surveying, description, etc. • Science is undoubtedly subject to political and ideological influences of which we should be aware – and yet still the best knowledge we have! • Uncertainty and probabilistic conclusions are inevitable, not a “failing” of science

7. Two plugs!

8. The End…. susannapriest@yahoo.com