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.

Neuroscience and personhood

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

The eternal Nature Vs Nurture debate keeps re-surfacing in many different ways. Is social behaviour determined by our biological architecture or is it a result of the social, cultural, and political environment we are exposed to? Is the human brain pre-programmed with genetic circuitry or can it be trained to adapt to social influences?

The escalating interest in neuroscience in the last decade has put the spotlight on the brain, its intricate pathways and its sophisticated signalling systems that control physical and emotional responses. Graphic full-colour images of the brain are now ubiquitous in the media.

But is the proliferating coverage of neuroscience in the popular media radically changing the way people think of notions of Self or personhood? In other words, is the public engagement with neuroscience making significant changes in the way people think about the brain and its influence on the complexities of human agency? This is a topic that Cliodhna O’Connor and Helene Joffe grapple with in their forthcoming article on “How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood?” in Public Understanding of Science.

In a thorough review, O’Connor and Joffe conclude that the propagation of radical neuroscientific explorations has come through “in ways that perpetuate rather than challenge existing modes of understanding self, others and society”. This is because “people selectively attend to and interpret science in ways that cohere with their pre-existing values, identities and beliefs.”

In the course of their review, the authors touch upon what they call the “philosophical battle” between conceptions of every human being as a “free agent” and conceptions of a human whose character, behav­iour and life-course are pre-patterned by their biological constitution”. The latter conceptions, the authors say, paint “neuroscience research as the definitive refutation of the notion of free will, which is cast – in Nobel Laureate Francis Crick’s words – as ‘no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’.”

Talking of Francis Crick, news has just come in of the decision of his family to sell his Nobel medal and give the proceeds to research institutions – see LiveScience. Crick, of course, was not only credited, with his colleagues, of mapping the structure of the DNA but also for his discovery of the molecular structure of nucleic acids and the role this structure played in the transfer of information in human beings. 

Commenting on the news of the sale, blogger Grant Jacobs, in the blog Code for Life, draws attention to one other item for sale – a letter written by the Nobel Laureate to his 12-year-old son to explain the Double Helix structure of the DNA. “It’d be interesting to see his efforts at science communication from the time of suggesting the model for the structure of DNA”, Jacobs says. It would indeed. As James Borrell says in his blog on How to communicate science and not be boring: “There’s a saying that if you can’t explain your research to a child, then you don’t understand it well enough yourself.”

Science rumblings

The conviction of six scientists and a government official in Italy for failing to warn the public about an impending earthquake has sent tremors down the scientific community in general. 

According to reports published in the international media, the scientists were given a six-year prison sentence for manslaughter for their negligence in keeping people informed about the risks of the earthquake which killed over 300 people in the Italian town of L’Aquila in 2009.

The conviction has, predictably, generated a huge controversy with a Guardian headline “From Galileo to the L'Aquila earthquake: Italian science on trial” comparing the recent trial of the six seismologists to the infamous trial of the legendary astronomer Galileo nearly 400 years ago.

For readers of the Public Understanding of Science, the key issue is that the trial of the seismologists is more about communicating science than about science per se. As the New Scientist reports: “The prosecution made it crystal clear all along that their case was about poor risk communication; it was built on an accusation of giving out "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information".

The issue of communication itself is rather murky. A more recent New Scientist article reports on the discovery of taped conversations at a risk assessment meeting in which a senior civil protection official “ordered one of the defendants to issue a reassuring statement.” This is another example of the power tussles among politicians, bureaucrats, and scientists given the diversity of their respective constituencies.

Predicting an earthquake is obviously not an exact science and many scientific bodies have rightly taken exception to the perception that the seismologists may have failed in their scientific endeavours. Two senior scientists in Italy, including the physicists in charge of the National Commission for the Prediction and Prevention of Major Risks, have also resigned in protest against the convictions. But as many commentators have pointed out, the convictions were not about the failure to predict the tremors but the failure in communicating the risks in a timely manner. So the challenge that the case throws up relates to the pitfalls of not communicating science appropriately.

Should scientists get media training to communicate their findings of public interest directly to the media? Are there ways in which science, policy, and media can work together to make sure scientific data and findings are understood clearly by people at large? One such initiative to give scientists training to be media savvy has recently taken off in New Zealand. Learning to communicate in an accessible and jargon-free language is of course important for scientists. But having institutional mechanisms to resist political bullying is perhaps even more important.