Randy Olson's "Don't Be SUCH a Scientist," Chapter 5: Be the Voice of Science!

The danger of mass communication

Olson tells the story of Carl Sagan, who, though one of the most beloved scientists, was never admitted to the National Academy of Sciences. He was only the second person to make the final list and NOT be admitted. People attacked him at his nomination for being a lightweight and a poser, even though he had over 100 peer-reviewed articles to his name.

Sagan was popular. And scientists were vindictive. In a word, Olson says, they were jealous.

Communicating science to the masses is dangerous. Olson makes the claim that about 1/3 of scientists will hate you for trying it. Another third will love you for it. And another 1/3 will think it's fine. But that 1/3 that hates you can be extremely vocal about their hatred. As we talked about last time, scientists can let their cynicism and negating tendencies become a bit too much sometimes.

Good communicators

One of the best lines in Olson's entire work comes here at the end:

Good communicators believe in the power of communication. Poor communicators don't.

Ouch! That's a tough line. Biting and incisive, cutting through all the crap. In other words, the people who say that communicating science is a waste of time are probably poor communicators themselves. Take that, naysayers!

But Olson doesn't mean it to be as biting as it sounds. What happens, he says, is that scientists have tried to communicate in the past, but it didn't work. Why? Well, probably because they had poor communication skills in the first place. So now when people try to tell them their group should try to communicate, they say, "Nope, already tried that. Didn't work."

Those who believe in communication are those who are good communicators. They believe in communication because they have seen it work themselves. Because they're good at it, they saw it work, and so they believe in its power.

From Descriptive to Experimental

What we need, Olson tells us, is to move from the descriptive phase ("traditional, conservative, unimaginative") to the experimental phase ("bold, brave, confrontational, innovative"). Like the art world, science communication needs to be more innovative and experimental, more like Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth than standard PBS documentaries. (As an aside, Olson spends a lot of time debating the lack and merit of the Al Gore documentary. He is NOT uncritical of it, but it represents science communication that works.)

What science communication needs is voice. Humanity. People. Narratives. Not cold, hard objectivity.

In short, scientists need to be bilingual: "to be conversant in your area of specialty in both languages," that of science and that of the masses. In other words, scientists need to speak "the right language to the right audience."

Olson ends the main part of his book with the following:

Naomi Oreskes, star oof my movie Sizzle, talks about how a hundred years ago scientists were by traditiona very good at speaking to the lay public, as well as personally and passionately committed to do so. But that changed in the United States after World War II. The government began establishing enormous science agencies and programs and creating a new breed of research scientist who no longer needed to appeal to the public for support. A new standard emerged in which these scientists felt entitled to the right to conduct research without having to explain it to average folk. The heads of science organizations acceded to these desires of scientists, and the idea of communicating science to the public was shifted from second nature to a secondary priority.

Today, however, a change is in the air.