Cross-fertilization of ideas

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

Have you noticed what happens when a physicist sits at the same table with a psychologist; a biologist with an artist; a technocrat with an environmental activist; a bureaucrat with a bioethicist; a nanotechnologist with a social scientist; a West-trained theorist with an indigenous scholar; or a policy practitioner with an academic? The language of communication changes as each person moves away from the loaded jargon of one field to reach out to the other. 

Communication lies at the heart of public understanding of science. The two of us saw communication blossoming when we brought together natural and physical scientists, social scientists, indigenous scholars, artists, poets, activists, and policy practitioners at an international symposium on transforming public engagement on controversial science and technology at the University of Waikato this week.

All the participants had something to say on new and emerging technologies ranging from nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and genetic engineering to gene mapping and assisted reproductive technologies. But, confronted as they were with a wide variety of other points of view, they had an opportunity to reflect on their own positions and engage in unique forms of deliberation. They each made an attempt to listen to and understand the other and re-formulate their own articulations.

One of the keynote speakers at the symposium, Professor Shaun Hendy, an award-winning scientist and science communicator, emphasised that the “value of scientific knowledge depends on the context – the better scientists are at providing the context, the better public understanding of science will be.” A more detailed account of Professor Hendy’s talk can be found in Peter Griffin’s Science Media Centre blog while a summary of the policy engagement session on science communication is available in Dr Alison Campbell’s BioBlog. 

Indeed, the highlight of the symposium were the six policy engagement sessions which followed panel presentations on the themes of ‘citizenship and deliberative democracy’; ‘science communication’; ‘new technologies and ethics’; ‘indigenous science’; ‘science-society interface’; and ‘designing public engagement’. It is at these engagement sessions that people from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds with a shared interest in potentially controversial new technologies deliberated and worked on establishing a common ground among what initially seemed like polarised views.

The tone of the symposium was set by Professor John Dryzek of the Australian National University who made the point that “deliberative democracy rests on the idea that democratic legitimacy depends on the right, opportunity, and capacity of those subject to a collective decision to participate in consequential deliberation about its content”. 

In another keynote address, indigenous scholar Associate Professor Kim TallBear of the University of Texas at Austin presented a powerful critique of the “unethical technoscientific research done on indigenous people by scientists whose assumptions and goals are shaped by a colonial mindset”. This keynote was followed by a stimulating session on “critical indigenous views on biocolonialism and the impact of new technologies” led by Associate Professor Leonie Pihama of the Te Kotahi Research Institute. The symposium had a strong Maori participation. In thought-provoking engagement sessions led by Sandy Morrison and Maui Hudson of the University of Waikato, participants suggested that the very process of decision making on scientific funding should be flipped so as to be driven by community needs and social justice commitments rather than narrowly defined economic gain. The symposium also featured a kapa haka performance by students of the Tai Wananga, a school dedicated to the teaching of science and innovation with a strong Maori perspective. The performance was coached and choreographed by their teacher, Talei Morrison, who herself recently completed Masters research on ‘Maori perspectives on new and emerging technologies’. 

The final keynote was by Professor Lyn Kathlene of the Spark Policy Institute, USA, who talked about the need for “contextual creativity” to shape public engagement. “Flexibility, out-of-the-box thinking, and a willingness to venture into unknown territory are necessary ingredients to designing a process that works for both policy planners and citizens”, she said. 

Indeed, nurturing contextual creativity was the goal of the symposium. If the cross-disciplinary conversations are an indication, participants would have made several steps towards this goal.

A rose by any other name?

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

It’s Valentine’s Day and quite a bit of the discussion around the most romantic day of the Western calendar in recent times has been on the future of Love in a technological age.  Can human love survive when more and more people seem to be so infatuated with their technological gadgets that they have little time to think about the finer points of long-term relationships?

The Sunday magazine of New Zealand’s Sunday Star-Times, in its most recent issue, features the views of a neuroethicist, a futurist, and a philosopher on what it might be to be ‘in love’ in the years ahead. In piecing together their views in an article called “The Love Equation”, Rose Hoare talks about a wide range of possibilities ranging from chemical sprays to keep wavering couples monogamous to “nano-neural interfacing” that allows people “to share thoughts and memories”.

While traditional characteristics of what it is to be human are rapidly disappearing amidst the onslaught of technology, new characteristics are emerging that are blurring the lines between human and artificial intelligence. Regardless of where we are headed, love will still have a place in some form or the other. Hoare cites the French philosopher Alan Badiou as describing love as something that allows an individual to see beyond oneself. And self-fulfilment comes only when one can see oneself reflected in another being. A ‘selfie’ on a flash new smartphone can never be a substitute.

Yet, the question raised by the new Hollywood science fiction movie Her is whether self-fulfilment can be achieved through a relationship with another being that is not necessarily biologically human but a computer operating system much like the Siri of iphones. The male character of the movie is emotionally and psychologically drawn to the voice of ‘Her’ – she not only keeps pace with the man’s emotions but in many ways gallops ahead of him. Can that be love?

At the dawn of the 21^st century, another science fiction movie, AI, had a memorable scene where a woman asks a professor: “It occurs to me with all this animus existing against Mechas [robots] today it isn't just a question of creating a robot that can love. Isn't the real conundrum, can you get a human to love them back?” Her suggests that humans can indeed “love” software-generated beings back but can the human-machine love continue to be based on 20^th century notions of love based on integrity, respect, even monogamy? 

Science fiction of our times can sometimes be a crystal ball one can gaze into and prepare for the future. With limited avenues for the public to engage with decision-making on new technologies, science fiction is, for better or for worse, a resource to stimulate thinking about science and the future of society.

A 3D look at public understanding of science

Priya Kurian & Debashish Munshi

The three Ds of deficit, dialogue, and deliberation have dominated discussions on public understanding of science for quite a while. As a result there has been a flood of studies on processes of public engagement that have gone beyond filling in perceived gaps of knowledge between scientists and lay persons to intense and informed dialogues and, ultimately, to an architecture of deliberation among a variety of stakeholders.

But, as the current special issue of PUS on “Public engagement of science” suggests, there hasn’t been enough of a reflection on these engagement processes nor is there a sufficiently deep exploration of the social and political contexts of such processes. Despite a widely acknowledged move from ‘deficit to dialogue’, there is a sense that “dialogue continues to reflect deficit-like assumptions,” say the issue’s co-editors, Jack Stilgoe, Simon Lock, and James Wilsdon, in their introductory piece.

The invited articles in the special issue are indeed deeply reflective. Patrick Sturgis of the University of Southampton raises fundamental questions around ensuring all relevant perspectives are represented and heard in any participatory exercise and whether in fact the public supports direct participatory approaches science governance, as proponents of public engagement have long assumed. When participatory practices occur, he points out in his piece, it is important to look at who tends to be involved. Most participants in current processes, he says, are “disproportionately drawn from groups with higher socio-economic status, greater interest in the topic area, and more strongly-held views”. Moreover, these processes tend to generate outcomes that are at least unconsciously influenced by institutions or individuals organizing them, he adds.

For Michael Burgess of the University of British Columbia, processes of deliberation are not always “sufficient to ensure that deliberations have effects on policy or practice”. His article voices concern about “consultations” conferring “legitimacy without having influence”.

SheilaJasanoff of Harvard University calls for a “more robust conception of publics”, arguing that publics are neither ignorant nor simple demographic clusters but are groups “dynamically constituted by changes in social contexts”. In her thought piece, “A mirror for science”, she says that “these issue-oriented publics enter the political arena and participate in imagining scientific and technological futures as knowledgeable actors”. In further problematizing the idea of publics, Brian Wynne of Lancaster University, makes the point that we can never make sense of publics responding to science unless “we examine what it is that those publics experience”.

This special issue forces us to think through each aspect of public understanding of science. The public is not a monolithic entity nor is science. And understanding is not a one-way knowledge transfer; it is a deeper engagement of varying facets of science and technology with publics in their different social and political contexts.

Science and Sensibility

Priya Kurian & Debashish Munshi

One of the challenges of fostering a public understanding of science is to demystify science and help the wider public to view science neither as a miracle nor as a purveyor of doom but as a process of how and why things happen. The long-held deficit model of science is based on a gap in the knowledge about science between scientists and lay persons. Yet, it is not so much about knowledge but how it is communicated that leads to ‘understanding’ science. This communication has, at best, been uneven as scientific research is not always presented in ways that lay persons can comprehend in relation to their everyday experiences of life.

This is a challenge that young online educators have taken on with great gusto. For example, the Khan Academy’s famous You Tube tutorials on science have a huge following already. As a recent article in The Guardian says, the Academy’s mission is simple: “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Marshall McLuhan had pointed out way back in 1964 that the medium is as much the message as the content. Clearly, new media tools allow people to “experience” things in more ways than ever before. It is the experience that aids the understanding of phenomena that might otherwise seem abstract. Yet, perceptions of human experience and scientific concepts are often seen to be counter to each other and significant effort is made to dispel these entrenched perceptions.

There is, in fact, a dearth of research that explores how the general public comes to understand principles of science that often run counter to common-sensical understandings of how the natural world works. And on how unscientific views on natural phenomena sustain themselves long after they have been proven wrong. Exploring this “learning paradox”, Wolff-Michael Roth and Norm Friesen in an article forthcoming in the Public Understanding of Science, explain the process by which a YouTube science video on the heart and the circulatory system offer learning opportunities for viewers. The video, which presents the heart as a pump, is able to tap into viewers’ knowledge of the world around where “pumps, plumbing and other machine systems are part of the everyday world that constitutes common sense and, therefore, the background against which we constitute the sense of every new experience”.

It is this which allows the transition from “common sense to scientific sense”. With this in mind, Roth and Friesen ask, what if we “design science education in a way that allows people of all walks of life to hang on to their familiar discourses” instead of eradicating “prior (mis) conceptions”? As they point out, “First, all science is grounded in our everyday experiences; and these have not essentially changed in the course of history: We continue to see the sun rise in the morning and to see it set in the evening; and we continue to feel the cold come into the door rather than heat being lost to the outside”. And this “initial worldview” does not change despite scientific explanations about the earth’s orbit around the sun or the laws of heat exchange. Quite simply, it is not so much about taking people to science but making science understood by people on their own terms.

State of the climate

Priya Kurian & Debashish Munshi

Climate change continues to make news with a report last week showing that 2012 was among the ten warmest years on record. The latest State of the Climate in 2012 report, released by the American Meteorological Society on 6 August, presents a picture of a rapidly warming planet with record greenhouse gas emissions, melting Arctic sea ice and rising sea levels. The 23rd annual report shows that concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached a global average of 392.7 parts per million; the Arctic warmed at twice the rate of the rest of the world; and the melting icing led to global sea level rise. These alarming developments herald a “new normal” for the climate, and the release of the report received extensive media coverage globally as seen in the LA Times, the Guardian, Indian Express, and the New Zealand Herald, among others. This has not stopped climate change contrarians to argue in recent times that global warming is slowing or reversing. Yet few deniers seem to have the desire to follow scientist Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkley. A self-described climate sceptic, he examined in 2012 the scientific data on climate change and emerged from the process convinced that anthropogenic climate change is in fact real. Another issue in establishing public perception of climate change has been the significant impact of the wording of statements in eliciting responses from people. Australian researchers Murni Greenhill, Zoe Leviston, Rosemary Leonard, and Iain Walker, in an article forthcoming in PUS, assessed “the consistency of people’s responses across questions and the relationship of different climate beliefs on a range of criterion variables” (p. 14). They found that when people were not given the option of attributing climate change to a mix of natural and anthropogenic causes, a majority were split down the middle between the two causes. Climate change beliefs appear to be multi-dimensional and hence can rarely be captured by a single survey item. Despite concerns that climate scientists are losing the public relations battle to climate sceptics, an in-depth study of media coverage of climate issues in the USA, UK, Germany and France by Reiner Grundmann and Mike Scott, forthcoming in an issue of PUS, shows that the dominant voice on climate change in these countries is that of climate advocates, not sceptics. The USA is different in terms of what gets highlighted, the researchers point out: “The USA gives most prominence to entertainment aspects within the discourse. This is evident if we look at the most visible sceptic, the late novelist Michael Crichton and the movie An Inconvenient Truth. The USA also shows weak connotations of central terms (climate change, global warming) with alarm, action or moral frames.”

Climate Watch

News about the weather is no longer confined to a nattily-dressed television presenter waving a wand at a blue screen dotted with maps, place names, temperature data, and icons of the sun, moon, the stars, and droplets of rain representing the state of the day just passed and the ones to come. It is now, more frequently than ever before, one of the main stories of the day.

The media is full of Images of hurricanes and tornadoes in the U.S with more punch than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima, a freezing Easter in the UK that left a different kind of icing on the cake, an unimaginable heat wave in Brazil, the coldest winter in China’s living memory, persistent droughts in the watering holes of Africa, and the blazing bushfires in Australia, not to speak of the spate of floods, and the rollercoaster rides of the mercury across the globe.

But how well does the media report on one of the pressing global issues of our time – climate change? “Weird weather, global climate change, and the media” is the theme of the 8^th World Conference of Science Journalists to be held in Helsinki, Finland, from 24-28 June this year. The conference aims to provide an opportunity to science, environment and health journalists and writers “to improve public understanding of extreme weather and climate change”.

The issue, of course, is not as much about journalists as it is about the institutions they represent. The media is not one entity and media institutions often have strong ideological or political leanings which determine the positions they take on issues and this has an impact on their news coverage as well. For example, liberal media organizations are more likely to give more weight to the human hand in climate change than conservative ones which tend to deny anthropogenic climate change.

Findings of a U.S-based study forthcoming in the Public Understanding of Science now show that following conservative media reduces people’s trust in scientists while using non-conservative media increases trust in scientists. The study, by Jay D. Hmielowski, Lauren Feldman, Teresa A. Myers, Anthony Leiserowitz, and Edward Maibach, shows that a decreased trust in scientists leads to a sceptical view of climate change while an increased trust in scientists allows people to be certain about climate change and its impacts. There is, therefore, a correlation between the ideology of certain media institutions and the climate change beliefs of people who follow them. Although earlier research seemed to treat “media use and trust as independent factors”, the authors say that “considering the interplay between these variables” and how they “uniquely influence atti­tudes may provide a more comprehensive understanding of why people hold particular beliefs about climate change.”

Measuring people’s beliefs on climate change is not easy but, in another article forthcoming in PUS, Australian researchers, Murni Greenhill, Zoe Leviston, Rosemary Leonard, and Iain Walker, suggest that differences in the wording on survey statements can elicit different responses. More about that in the next blog.

Dateline Today

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

The plot of Robin Cook’s new thriller on medical nanotechnology is unfolding now – April 2013. Unlike several other science-fiction narratives on the tinier than microscopic realm of nanotechnology, this page-turner is not set in some distant future. The dateline is today.

The prolific novelist’s latest offering Nano emphasises the here and now of a technology that a lot of people still imagine to be futuristic.

The plot of course has many of the ingredients of a popular thriller – an attractive and headstrong woman scientist determined to bring to light the unethical practices of a billionaire playboy businessman who heads a secretive nanotech corporation; international business deals; gangsters; spies; security devices; and the usual rollercoaster twists and turns of the storylines. But it’s not so much the story that hooks the reader but the possibilities of nanotechnology in curing medical conditions – Alzheimer’s, for one.

That the author dedicates the novel “both to the promise nanotechnology brings to medicine and to the hope that any downside will be minimal”, points to the potential of the new and emerging technology. The disclaimer about the dodgy ethics of human experiments notwithstanding, this novel is more upbeat about the ability of tiny nano-robots to destroy bacteria, viruses, and other disease-inducing organisms. This is in sharp contrast to the work of another bestselling science fiction novelist Michael Crichton who presents a far more dystopic view of nanotechnology in his novels Prey and Micro. The more recent Micro not only outlines the possibilities of nanobots annihilating the vital organs of a person without leaving a trace of the causes of death but also talks of bio-prospecting of natural resources at levels unseen by the human eye.

As we said in an earlier blog, regardless of its utopic or dystopic potential, nanotechnology is now entrenched in the present and nanoparticles are ubiquitous in several products of everyday use. Even tiny robots are already in use in medical surgeries. Yet, public understanding of this new technology is still extremely limited and this is something that science communicators and researchers alike have to take up.