Giving some ideas a decent burial

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

One of us was talking to our colleague David McKie today about re-designing a course we teach and he said that one way of taking the course into the future was to facilitate the extinction of some ideas that we feel obliged to work with and generate fresh ways of thinking and communicating.

It’s during this conversation that David referred us to John Brockman’s just-released anthology This Idea Must Die:Scientific Theories that are Blocking Progress (New York: Harper Perennial). The volume is a collection of answers provided by well-known as well as not-so-well-known scientists, writers, and thinkers to Brockman’s question “What scientific idea is ready for retirement” on his popular digital discussion platform Edge.

We haven’t read this new book yet but going by the reviews, it looks like it is engaging and thought-provoking. Writing about the volume in a recent issue of New Scientist, Simon Ings says that “Some ideas cited in the book are so annoying that we would be better off without them, even though they are true. Take "brain plasticity". This was a real thing once upon a time, but the phrase spread promiscuously into so many corners of neuroscience that no one really knows what it means anymore.” Ings’s favourite response in the volume is from the “paleontologist Julia Clarke” who would like people “to stop asking her where feathered dinosaurs leave off and birds begin” because making sense of animal behaviour based on fossil data is far too complex than linear projections.

Last year, the Edge posted its annual question:

Science advances by discovering new things and developing new ideas. Few truly new ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first. As theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) noted, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." In other words, science advances by a series of funerals. Why wait that long?

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?  

A total of 175 responses came in and each of them is fascinating in its own right. Maria Popova’s review of the book on the Brain Pickings site goes over what she describes as “a catalog of broken theories that hold us back from the conquest of Truth” and these range from IQ to the left brain vs. right brain divide; from human nature to romantic love. Popova chronicles in detail many of the responses that capture the interplay between philosophy and science and shows how public understanding of science is also inherently philosophical.

While on public understanding of science and a word we started this blog with – extinction, an article forthcoming in PUS focuses on whether extinction refers to a point of no return or whether scientists and the lay public alike cause confusion by misusing the term to mean different things in different contexts. For example, can there be such a thing as “local extinction”? Or, for that matter, can species declared extinct be resurrected?

The article by Brenda D. Smith-Patten, Eli S. Bridge, Priscilla H. C. Crawford, Daniel J. Hough, Jeffrey F. Kelly and Michael A. Patten of the University of Oklahoma, USA, argues that frequent misuse of the term has major consequences for systematic conservation action. A loose expression of ‘extinction’ such as conflating it with extirpation (disappearance of a species in a particular geographical area despite being in existence elsewhere), they say, “will result in the term failing to spark the sense of urgency needed for grass roots conservation action and policy change.” Also, there is a tendency to “trumpet rediscoveries or reversals of extinction” which are equally misplaced as they often refer to the sighting of species that had not been seen since being declared extinct.

Clearly, for the authors, extinction is irreversible. It is part of the biological processes of evolution. Living species do have a life span which depends to a large extent on physical and environmental contexts. But work in biology keeps progressing. Surely, ideas have a life span too and it should be fine for some to die out when they are no longer relevant.

Is Science fun or funny?

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

The hugely popular sitcom Big BangTheory is now in its eighth season. In so many ways, it’s like other hit television sitcoms – the joys and sorrows of human relationships, the art and science of human communication, the kindness and meanness of human behaviour, and the rationality and emotionality of human actions. Like Friends, another legendary sitcom, Big Bang Theory revolves around the lives and times of a group of friends and acquaintances.

The difference, however, is that the main characters of this show are scientifically inclined, including two physicists, an astrophysicist, a neuroscientist, a microbiologist, and an aerospace engineer. Their conversations among themselves as well as those with lay people are both thought-provoking and funny.  But inevitably, the conversations have science either in the foreground or in the background. Take a recent episode, for example, when two of the characters seeking to lead a dark matter research expedition in a salt mine are questioned by their friends who don’t believe they have the necessary attributes to withstand the difficult conditions. The characters go about proving their mettle by sweating it out in the extremely hot and narrow confines of a steam tunnel at their University. No matter how funny the dialogues or the settings are, the science in the sitcom is always accurate.

In an earlier blog, we talked about science and humour and how science comedy is indeed a current rage. So are humour and entertainment effective vehicles for science communication? Do they help broaden public understanding of science? Given that science has typically been perceived as a world of complex equations and theorems and abstract theories – in other words, an exclusive domain for nerds, the use of humour does help break down perceptual barriers. Teachers often use jokes and fun experiments to attract the attention of students to understand concepts. But they also run the risk of over-simplification and stereotyping of science and scientists.

In an article forthcoming in PUS (also referred to in an earlier blog), Hauke Riesch of Brunel University undertakes a critical review of the literature on humour and science communication. The article is aptly titled “Why did the proton cross the road?” The author draws on insights from the sociology of humour to take a deep look at the effects of humour on “the science-public relationship” and notes that these effects may not always be benign or helpful to the cause of public engagement”. Some obvious benefits notwithstanding, there are some pitfalls of using humour injudiciously. These pitfalls, Riesch says, include “fostering ingroup cohesion through insider jokes and the construction of reverse-dialogue re-appropriations of the geek stereotype or by excluding imagined outgroups through negative stereotyping”.

There has, of course, always been a fine line between making science fun and making fun of it in the context of public understanding of science. Now is the time for a meaningful conversation on whether science should be portrayed as 'fun' or 'funny' and whether losing sight of the line between fun and funny has an impact on public understanding of science.

The science of blogging

Debashish Munshi & Priya Kurian

Scientists are usually ahead of the curve in new ways of thinking and doing. Yet they don’t often ride the wave of communication technologies to engage the lay public with their ideas. This is where science blogs are beginning to fill the breach. Run by people interested in science, these blogs are a platform for keeping pace with, understanding, and communicatively bonding with the world of science and its rapid and futuristic developments as well as its hopes, anxieties, joys, and controversies.

With the growing ubiquitousness of the internet and the global embrace of social media, science blogs have a potential to take science to the people. Bloggers can cut though the iron walls of jargon and verbosity of research papers, complex equations, caveats and variables, and sheer mystery, to get the core ideas across with brevity, simplicity, and pictorial as well as audio-visual props. 

There are several exciting and informative blogs out there in cyberspace. ScienceBlogs, for example, is a wonderful repository of a very wide range of blogs across domains such as the Life Sciences, the Physical Sciences, the Environment, Medicine, Technology, and many more. Within each of these domains are scores of blogs with a variety of styles, content, and focal points.

However, as Mathieu Ranger and Karen Bultitude point out, despite their accessibility and ease of use, science blogs “constitute only a tiny proportion of science information sources”. In an article forthcoming in PUS, they make the case that “there is still significant room for development before science blogging becomes a truly ‘pluralistic, participatory and social’ element” in science communication. Ranger and Bultitude’s study on the motivations and characteristics of popular science blogs, including an analysis of interviews with seven prominent bloggers as well as blog posts, shows that science blogging is still a “niche” area and most bloggers take to blogging because of their own passion for science rather than to foster public engagement. Science blogs, the authors add, also don’t make as much use of design elements as general blogs and tend to be updated less frequently than popular general blogs.

For those of us following science blogs, there are trends that suggest engagement with science is on the way up. There are several blogs that have caught the fancy of those with a thirst for the wonders (and despairs) of science. The Real Clear Science website recently listed Ethan Siegel’s Starts with a bang; Carl Zimmer’s The Loom; and Deborah Blum’s Elemental as their top three science blogs. While Siegel translates complex topics for curious minds, Zimmer uses his writing skills to attract and retain the attention of readers interested in the life sciences. Blum is an expert on toxic substances.

Although there aren’t that many scientists writing blogs themselves, people in the scientific community are surely and steadily taking to social media platforms. A recent article in Nature, Richard van Noorden suggests that academic social networks are burgeoning with scientists increasingly joining social networking sites such as ResearchGate to share ideas and papers, and foster collaborations. The next step would be to seek out wider audiences and blogs are one such avenue.

A few years ago, scientist-turned-film maker Randy Olsen had come up with four main “admonitions” for scientists looking to communicate with the lay public: “Don’t be so cerebral; don’t be so literal minded; don’t be such a poor story teller; don’t be so unlikeable”.  Taking to writing blogs will take care of these perceptual barriers. 

Science, scientists, and pandemics

The deadly Ebola virus is spreading relentlessly in West Africa even as scientists work around the clock to find an effective way to contain it. In the midst of the race against time to find a solution to contain the pandemic, several frontline science and health workers are paying with their lives.

As many as five co-authors of a study entitled ‘Genomic surveillance elucidates Ebola virus origin and transmission during the 2014 outbreak’ published recently in the journal Science have died after being infected with Ebola during the course of their work. Biographies of the Sierra Leone-based doctor, Sheik Humarr Khan, an expert on Ebola and a medical director of a programme run by Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation, and his four colleagues are sketched in a recent article in Science Insider.

Ebola is a real threat to humankind. The world outside Africa, complacent as it is about the reach of this disease, is largely unaware of the risks the scientific and medical community at the grassroots are dealing with while they work selflessly to not only treat those affected by the disease but also to isolate and neutralise the virus. With over 2,900 people already dead from the Ebola virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading rapidly across Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea and called for urgent assistance from world governments. The range of responses include the widely welcomed offer of Cuba to send over 400 doctors and nurses to the affected countries, financial aid from the World Bank and a promise by the United States to deploy 3000 military troops in Liberia. The step-up in terms of a global response comes even as the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called for a global corps of medical professionals, “backed by the expertise of WHO and the logistical capacity of the United Nations. Just as our troops in blue helmets help keep people safe, a corps in white coats could help keep people healthy.”

If the threat is not yet tangible for many, the world of fiction has a cautionary tale or two. One of us just watched Brad Pitt’s World War Z, a visually dramatic movie about the spread of a zombie pandemic. The story (see trailer) is that of a vicious virus with rabies-like symptoms that turns people into zombies. These zombies then reach out to healthy people and infect them in droves. While city after city is overtaken by armies of zombies, it is up to a former United Nations investigator and a team of WHO scientists to take on the marauding forces. Observing that the zombies don’t touch the sick or the infirm, the team figures out that the only way to stop the zombies was to vaccinate people with strains of a curable disease. These diseases served as a ‘mask’ to protect the people from the advances of the zombies.

Science and fiction, of course, have an ongoing relationship as we have shown in many of our earlier blog posts. An article forthcoming in PUS also talks about this relationship. The article by Van Gorp, Rommes, and Emons outlines the representation of scientists in “fiction and non-fiction media aimed at Dutch children and teenagers”. The authors identify seven prototypes of the scientists depicted – “the genius, the nerd, the puzzler, the adventurer, the mad scientist, the wizard, and the misunderstood genius”. They also raise the possibility of what they call a “rare prototype” of “the doubter”, representing “scientific progress as more capricious and challenging”. 

Science and humour

So why did the chicken cross the road? Going by an exhaustive compilation of humorous responses, the scientific possibilities are endless. Ask an evolutionary biologist and he would say: “It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees”. A physicist on the other hand would begin by trying to find out if the chicken crossed the road or if the road moved beneath the chicken.

Humour is increasingly being used to communicate the complexities of science to lay people. Indeed, as Paige Brown Jarreau says in her recent blog "Making people laugh about science: It's a good thing" in SciLogs, "science comedy is a hot thing". Brown especially highlights the role of humour in engaging the attention of children to science in the classroom by decreasing their "anxiety over 'hard' complex topics". 

In her blog, Brown also interviews DeanBurnett, scientist, comedian and the writer of the hugely popular BrainFlapping blog on the Guardian web site. As Burnett says, “if people can laugh with/about science, then they won't be as intimidated by it, and will perceive that science is a very human endeavour, not some monolithic process hiding behind the walls of academia and curated by emotionless intellectuals.”

Brown’s blog also cites the work of Bruno Pinto, David Marcal, and Sofia Vaz in Public Understanding of Science who found in a Portugal-based study that “stand up-comedy has potential for science communication because of its ability to get people talking about issues they don’t usually comprehend easily.

This potential, however, comes with a caveat. In an article published online last week in PUS, Hauke Riesch says that “humour in public portrayals of science can have effects on the science–public relationship that may not always be benign or helpful to the cause of public engagement.” The article “Why did the proton cross the road? Humour and science communication” cautions that the use of humour can sometimes perpetuate discourses of superiority, draw lines between insiders and outsiders, and ridicule scientific ways of theorising and writing.

Ultimately, however, humour needs to be used in balance. After all, the chicken needs to look left and right, front and back, and cross the road carefully. The crossing is as much a voyage of discovery as the excitement of encountering a new world on the other side. 

Reflections on science and the public

Sue Howard

In balmy, beautiful, complicated Salvador, the 13^th conference of the Public Communication of Science and Technology Network got underway recently with speakers from Nigeria, Brazil, Columbia and South Africa (along with jazz trumpet to lift the soul).

Luisa Massarani introduced the conference noting the relationship between science communication and development, and it seemed to me that here in Salvador, Brazil, there was a sense of optimism about the relationship between science and the public(s).

From the get go, the theme of social inclusion was paramount, with questions raised about changing the 'white male face of science'. Efforts along these lines continued throughout. I saw Luz Lazos Ramirez and colleagues from the Universidad Autonoma de la Ciudad de Mexico present their work on sharing tailored technology with the indigenous peoples of Mexico – the 'recipients' of knowledge and technology have become the designers of technology to suit their own needs and desires.

Andrea Berardi (Open University, UK) and colleagues also take a 'from the ground up' approach to explore communities' own adaptations to climate change, using visual modes to communicate with indigenous peoples in the Guiana Shield. The audience acknowledged that here he was, pale and male, introducing this research, but appreciated the effort to honour the knowledge, resourcefulness and responsibilities of a local Guianan community.

There were several presentations looking at the fractious relationships between science, policy and the media. I found interesting the efforts of Jenny Bjorkman (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden) and Melanie Smallman (UCL, UK) to get policy makers to pay attention to social scientists – it seems they need an interpreter, their languages and cultures are so different. This explains a lot about governance not using the information available to them, even when they themselves commission the research.

The subject of science and the media seems to bring up the old concerns about one blaming the other for an uneasy relationship. Looking at this relationship, Sharon Dunwoody (University of Wisconsin-Madison, US) pointed to the incredible slowness of cultural change, while Simon Lock's (UCL, UK) neuro engagement research demonstrated the same.

Meanwhile, science journalists continue to suffer censorship, directly from governments or indirectly via scientists self censoring because of fear of repercussions. Science journalists Mohammed Yahia and Ochien Ogodo were able to tell us about the Egyptian and Kenyan contexts. The gravity of this topic is utmost: the highest stakes are potential loss of life, as discussed by a representative of Article 19.

In the conference culture, that the deficit model is to be avoided, was almost a given, at least it seemed so to me. Thus, Steve Miller and Susanna Priest, at a plenary, provoking the question about whether it's not so bad to acknowledge different levels of informedness, and to concern ourselves with levelling the playing field, met with a rather frosty response. All these considerations and more prompted Martin Bauer, Editor in Chief of Public Understanding of Science, to create an essay competition for the journal, asking contributors to answer "In Science Communication, why does the idea of a public deficit always return?"

And finally, science communication blogs are a good thing. Are they? Sometimes social media efforts offered by organisations seem like big old adverts, or not so far from the much disparaged deficit model efforts of old, disseminating information with the hope of fostering positive attitudes; maybe that's not such a great use of social media.

Plus, Massimiano Bucchi asked the plenary panel of Dominique Brossard and Mohammed Yahia to comment on a highly charged issue: for all of the effort of blogging, tweeting, engaging and good science communication citizenship on the net, done with good will, for free, are we quietly contributing to the vast incomes of underlying structures? Are these 'big society' efforts unwittingly giving faceless money making machines 'big profits'? 

A bad case of measles

Priya Kurian & Debashish Munshi

There’s been a major outbreak of measles in the city we live in. Scores of children are in hospital; hundreds are in quarantine; at least two large high schools have been closed for brief periods; and several school sports teams have been asked to stay away from playing fields.

The rapid spread of the infectious disease that attacks the respiratory and immune systems has predictably re-ignited the debate on immunization of children. Nearly all the children affected are those who were not immunized at all and some who had only a single dose of the required two doses of the triple vaccine to prevent measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). That the Waikato region of New Zealand has been affected is no surprise either as this region has the lowest immunization rates in the entire country, according to the Ministry of Health.

Resistance to immunization in some pockets of the population is fairly common in various parts of the world and has to do with differing public understandings of the science of immunization. The media often has a major role to play in how public understanding is shaped and framed.

An article in a recent issue of PUS looks at the media coverage of measles vaccination in the UK and China and shows how the approaches in the two countries are so different. The study by Jie Ren of the University of Science and Technology of China and Hans Peters, Joachim Allgaier, and Yin-Yueh Lo of the Research Center Julich of Germany shows that “the government-supported ‘mainstream position’ dominates the Chinese coverage while the British media frequently refer to criticism and controversy.”

As the authors point out, there is a dilemma “between the media functions of informing the media audience about relational risk behaviour, and providing an arena for public deliberation about risk”. The challenge is to balance two important needs – one to ensure the health outcomes for the community and the other to provide the space for people to make an informed choice about the options they have.

And yet, as Stacy Mintzer Herlihy comments in her blog, the problem with thinking about vaccinations as a matter of personal choice is that “that people are not just making a choice for themselves when they choose whether or not to vaccinate They are also choosing for other people as well. A significant subset of the population cannot get many vaccines. This includes small babies who do not produce an adequate immune response as well as those undergoing treatment for diseases such as cancer that may compromise their immune systems.”

Measles vaccinations became controversial after the publication of a research paper co-authored by Andrew Wakefield in a reputed medical journal in 1998 that suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and colitis and autism spectrum disorders. Although the mass media gave wide coverage to the findings of this paper, subsequent studies have refuted and discredited the claims of the paper, with Wakefield being struck off as a doctor in 2010. The paper itself was withdrawn by the journal a few years ago but the controversy lingers on.