Why scientists are losing the fight to communicate science to the public

Richard P Grant in The Guardian

A video did the rounds a couple of years ago, of some self-styled “skeptic” disagreeing – robustly, shall we say – with an anti-vaxxer. The speaker was roundly cheered by everyone sharing the video – he sure put that idiot in their place!

Scientists love to argue. Cutting through bullshit and getting to the truth of the matter is pretty much the job description. So it’s not really surprising scientists and science supporters frequently take on those who dabble in homeopathy, or deny anthropogenic climate change, or who oppose vaccinations or genetically modified food.

It makes sense. You’ve got a population that is – on the whole – not scientifically literate, and you want to persuade them that they should be doing a and b (but not c) so that they/you/their children can have a better life.

Brian Cox was at it last week, performing a “smackdown” on a climate change denier on the ABC’s Q&A discussion program. He brought graphs! Knockout blow.

Q&A smackdown: Brian Cox brings graphs to grapple with Malcolm Roberts

And yet … it leaves me cold. Is this really what science communication is about? Is this informing, changing minds, winning people over to a better, brighter future?

I doubt it somehow.

There are a couple of things here. And I don’t think it’s as simple as people rejecting science.

First, people don’t like being told what to do. This is part of what Michael Gove was driving at when he said people had had enough of experts. We rely on doctors and nurses to make us better, and on financial planners to help us invest. We expect scientists to research new cures for disease, or simply to find out how things work. We expect the government to try to do the best for most of the people most of the time, and weather forecasters to at least tell us what today was like even if they struggle with tomorrow.

But when these experts tell us how to live our lives – or even worse, what to think – something rebels. Especially when there is even the merest whiff of controversy or uncertainty. Back in your box, we say, and stick to what you’re good at.

We saw it in the recent referendum, we saw it when Dame Sally Davies said wine makes her think of breast cancer, and we saw it back in the late 1990s when the government of the time told people – who honestly, really wanted to do the best for their children – to shut up, stop asking questions and take the damn triple vaccine.

Which brings us to the second thing.

On the whole, I don’t think people who object to vaccines or GMOs are at heart anti-science. Some are, for sure, and these are the dangerous ones. But most people simply want to know that someone is listening, that someone is taking their worries seriously; that someone cares for them.

It’s more about who we are and our relationships than about what is right or true.

This is why, when you bring data to a TV show, you run the risk of appearing supercilious and judgemental. Even – especially – if you’re actually right.
People want to feel wanted and loved. That there is someone who will listen to them. To feel part of a family.

The physicist Sabine Hossenfelder gets this. Between contracts one time, she set up a “talk to a physicist” service. Fifty dollars gets you 20 minutes with a quantum physicist … who will listen to whatever crazy idea you have, and help you understand a little more about the world.

How many science communicators do you know who will take the time to listen to their audience? Who are willing to step outside their cosy little bubble and make an effort to reach people where they are, where they are confused and hurting; where they need?

Atul Gawande says scientists should assert “the true facts of good science” and expose the “bad science tactics that are being used to mislead people”. But that’s only part of the story, and is closing the barn door too late.

Because the charlatans have already recognised the need, and have built the communities that people crave. Tellingly, Gawande refers to the ‘scientific community’; and he’s absolutely right, there. Most science communication isn’t about persuading people; it’s self-affirmation for those already on the inside. Look at us, it says, aren’t we clever? We are exclusive, we are a gang, we are family.

That’s not communication. It’s not changing minds and it’s certainly not winning hearts and minds.

It’s tribalism.

INDIA'S NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS KEEP DYING MYSTERIOUSLY

(Photo via)

Joseph Cox in Vice.com

Indian nuclear scientists haven't had an easy time of it over the past decade. Not only has the scientific community been plagued by "suicides," unexplained deaths, and sabotage, but those incidents have gone mostly underreported in the country—diluting public interest and leaving the cases quickly cast off by police.

Last month, two high-ranking engineers—KK Josh and Abhish Shivam—on India's first nuclear-powered submarine were found on railway tracks by workers. They were pulled from the line before a train could crush them, but were already dead. No marks were found on the bodies, so it was clear they hadn't been hit by a moving train, and reports allege they were poisoned elsewhere before being placed on the tracks to make the deaths look either accidental or like a suicide. The media and the Ministry of Defence, however, described the incident as a routine accident and didn't investigate any further.    

This is the latest in a long list of suspicious deaths. When nuclear scientist Lokanathan Mahalingam's body turned up in June of 2009, it was palmed off as a suicide and largely ignored by the Indian media. However, Pakistani outlets, perhaps unsurprisingly, given relations between the two countries, kept the story going, noting how quick authorities were to label the death a suicide considering no note was left.

Five years earlier, in the same forest where Mahalingham's body was eventually discovered, an armed group with sophisticated weaponry allegedly tried to abduct an official from India's Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC). He, however, managed to escape. Another NPC employee, Ravi Mule, had been murdered weeks before, with police failing to "make any headway" into his case and effectively leaving his family to investigate the crime. A couple of years later, in April of 2011, when the body of former scientist Uma Rao was found, investigators ruled the death as suicide, but family members contested the verdict, saying there had been no signs that Rao was suicidal.   

Trombay, the site of India's first atomic reactor. (Photo via) 

This seems to be a recurring theme with deaths in the community. Madhav Nalapat, one of the few journalists in India giving the cases any real attention, has been in close contact with the families of the recently deceased scientists left on the train tracks. "There was absolutely no kind of depression or any family problems that would lead to suicide," he told me over the phone.

If the deaths of those in the community aren't classed as suicide, they're generally labeled as "unexplained." A good example is the case of M Iyer, who was found with internal haemorrhaging to his skull—possibly the result of a "kinky experiment," according to a police officer. After a preliminary look-in, the police couldn't work out how Iyer had suffered internal injuries while not displaying any cuts or bruises, and investigations fizzled out.   

This label is essentially admission of defeat on the police force's part. Once the "unexplained" rubber stamp has been approved, government bodies don't tend to task the authorities with investigating further. This may be a necessity due to the stark lack of evidence available at the scene of the deaths—a feature that some suggest could indicate the work of professional killers—but if this is the case, why not bring in better trained detectives to investigate the cases? A spate of deaths in the nuclear scientific community would create a media storm and highly publicised police investigation in other countries, so why not India?

This inertia has led to great public dissatisfaction with the Indian police. "[The police] say it's an unsolved murder, that's all. Why doesn't it go higher? Perhaps to a specialist investigations unit?" Madhav asked. "These people were working on the submarine program, creating a reactor, and have either 'committed suicide' or been murdered. It's astonishing that this hasn't been seen as suspicious."

Perhaps, I suggested, this series of deaths is just the latest chapter in a long campaign aiming to derail India's nuclear and technological capabilities. Madhav agreed, "There is a clear pattern of this type of activity going on," he said.

INS Sindhurakshak (Photo via)

The explosions that sunk INS Sindhurakshak – a submarine docked in Mumbai – in August of this year could have been deliberate, according to unnamed intelligence sources. And some have alleged that the CIA was behind the sabotage of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Of course, the deaths have caused fear and tension among those currently working on India's various nuclear projects. "[Whistleblowers] are getting scared of being involved in the nuclear industry in India," Madhav relayed to me. Their "families are getting very nervous about this" and "many of them leave for foreign countries and get other jobs."

There are parallels here with the numerous attacks on the Iranian nuclear scientist community. Five people associated with the country's nuclear programme have been targeted in the same way: men on motorcycles sticking magnetic bombs on to their cars and detonating them as they drive off. However, the Iranian government are incredibly vocal in condemning these acts—blaming the US and Israel—and at least give the appearance that they are actively investigating.

The same cannot be said for the Indian government. "India is not making any noise about the whole thing," Madhav explained. "People have just accepted the police version, [which describes these incidents] as normal kinds of death."

If the deaths do, in fact, turn out to be premeditated murders, deciding who's responsible is pure speculation at this point. Two authors have alleged that the US have dabbled in sabotaging the country's technological efforts in the past; China is in a constant soft-power battle with India; and the volatile relationship with Pakistan makes the country a prime suspect. "It could be any of them," Madhav said.

But the most pressing issue isn't who might be behind the murders, but that the Indian government's apathy is potentially putting their high-value staff at even greater risk. Currently, these scientists, who are crucial to the development of India's nuclear programes, whether for energy or security, have "absolutely no protection at all. Nothing, zero," Madhav told me. "Which is amazing for people who are in a such a sensitive program."

Wave a banknote at a pundit and he'll predict anything

Of course it is outrageous to jail scientists for honest errors, but it is legitimate to hold them to some account

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Thursday 25 October 2012 19.30 BST

Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

On the evening of 5 April 2009, Luigi Guigno of L'Aquila in Italy was phoned by a sister terrified by tremors under their village. He told her not to worry. Government experts in "the forecasting and prevention of major risks" had just been on the news declaring there to be "no danger" of an earthquake. They need not go out into the street. A few hours later an earthquake struck and Luigi, his pregnant wife, their son and 300 others were crushed to death.

This week a local judge jailed six of the scientists, not for failing to predict the quake but for giving what he regarded as reckless reassurances. He fined them £6m and disbarred them from public office. World scientists condemned the verdict as inquisitorial and medieval. Britain's Lord May said it ignored the basic nature of scientific inquiry. Luigi's relatives disagreed. A local official said simply: "Some scientists didn't do their job."

When a forester fails to predict that a tree might fall and it kills someone, he is arrested. The same goes for a train mechanic who fails to repair a carriage, a cook who poisons a customer and a builder whose house collapses. They didn't mean to kill, but they failed to forecast what might ensue from their defective expertise.

Why does the same not apply to the professional scientists, experts and pundits on whose predictive genius so much of our life depends? The answer is that they claim protection, either through (usually weak) self-regulation or by pleading Lord May's fifth amendment, that the nature of scientific inquiry exonerates them of harmless mistakes.

This week agriculture ministers were left floundering by conflicting scientific guidance on bovine TB and badgers. Transport ministers were humiliated by statisticians failing to predict revenue on the west coast railway. The Totnes MP, Sarah Wollaston, called attention to the hysterical 2009 swine flu "forecast", which panicked Whitehall into blowing £500m on dubious Tamiflu, whose test results it refused to disclose.

Yesterday we were told that the nation was recovering from a second "dip" in a recession, which its forecasters had failed to predict. This is despite government economists being served by ever more powerful computers and mathematical models. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has been called to account for this failure.

Science has rarely enjoyed greater status. Schools are in thrall to it. Broadcasters grovel at its feet, with hours of programmes devoted to children gazing adoringly at scientific researchers, depicted as funny, garrulous, lovable role models. Science has taken the place of religion in a cocoon of uncritical certainty. Those who claim the title "scientist", be it natural or social, expect to combine the immunity of diplomats and the infallibility of popes. Science is merging into scientology.

Of course, Lord May is right, that academic inquiry must proceed uninhibited by risk from error. That is what universities are for, and why they should stay independent of the state. But the Italian geologists were not doing research: they were paid to apply their expertise to keep the public safe. They were not researching, but advising. They failed catastrophically.

The truth is that there is one law for the officer class and another for the poor bloody infantry. When experts trained to detect seismic phenomena fail, their fraternity does not criticise or review their work, but treats them as innocent and relieves them of blame. If an ordinary worker miscalculates the risk, if trains crash, trees fall, rivers are polluted or foodstuffs rot, he goes to jail. The difference is not in class of error but in class of person.

Since the dawn of time, people have craved prediction against uncertainty. They have paid soothsayers, witchdoctors, stargazers and palmists. They ask journalists at parties: "Who is going to win the American election?" and seem cheated if the reply is "I just don't know."

Some people are paid to forecast. Their job is to make assertions about the future, assessing likelihood over a spectrum of certainty. When a scientist says this or that "will happen", we expect it to have greater credence than if he had merely gazed into the entrails of a sacred goose.

The worst offenders are meteorologists. A Devon entrepreneur, Rick Turner, declared last month that he would sue the Met Office for inaccurate and "persistently pessimistic" forecasts, which had cost his region millions of pounds in lost revenue. I hope he wins. The gloomy Met Office, seemingly in the pay of the outbound tourism trade, is reckless with other's people's livelihoods. The weather on the Welsh coast this summer was not ideal, but it bore not the slightest resemblance to the daily "forecast" of it on the radio. The sun shone for far more hours than it rained, yet the forecast kept people away in droves. And there was never any hint of correction or apology.

Prediction matters to people. If the variables are too great, science should shut up, rather than peddle spurious expertise. But you can wave a banknote in a pundit's face and he will predict anything you like. Of course, it is outrageous to jail scientists for honest errors, but it is not outrageous to hold them to some account. When did Lord May's Royal Society last inquire into a scientific scandal? Journalists, like bankers, are getting hell these days for their mistakes. Why let seismologists off the hook?