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Science and the Media - A Growing Gap
Abstract
The scientific community in the United States matured during the Cold
War years, when government funding was ample and secrecy was
encouraged. Furthermore, the language of science is constantly
changing and reflects concepts too narrow and specific for the general
public to understand without explanation. Today, private industry
funds the majority of scientific research.
Scientists can no longer rely on unquestioned government grants to
provide funds; they must now compete in the economic marketplace to
win funds. In order to do this, they must repair the distant
relationship they have with the media. They must come out of their
culture of Cold War introversion and take measures to explain their
research in everyday terms. To improve the scientific environment,
scientists must take time apart from science to act as ambassadors to
the media, which will convey their message to the public. By improving
this media relationship, they will not only be increasing public
support for science but also improving their chances to receive
funding.
If one were to compare the scientist and the reporter, many
similarities would likely arise despite the drastically different
perceptions commonly held of these two types. Both scientist and
reporter investigate; both report their findings; they are both in
search of truth. Why, then, have the two fields experienced such
incompatibility? The relationship between science and the media is
lacking - and has been a growing gap in recent years. Indeed, Carl
Sagan pointed out, "almost every newspaper in America has a daily
astrology column. Most do not even have a weekly science column." This
gap is becoming a large hurdle for the scientific community: "media
inattention is being cited? as a key factor in the reduced outlays
that are eroding the nation's scientific stature." To fix this
problem, scientists must first understand two of the reasons their
relationship with the media is in trouble: the scientific atmosphere
created in the Cold War and the difficulties scientists and
journalists have in communication.
The United States prides itself in its strong culture of scientific
research and innovation. While this culture of science existed in the
U.S. since its beginnings, it was not until the Cold War that an
organized, thriving scientific community truly reached maturity. The
Cold War brought about a new type of warfare; scientific progress was
the battlefield, and every new discovery with military applications
was a blow to the enemy. The public demanded a feeling of safety, and
the government was able to provide it in the form of science. During
the cold war years, the U.S. government emptied its pockets into the
scientific community. It sponsored both applied and theoretical
scientific research in a wide variety of fields. Most importantly,
though, the government provided ample funding without asking for
immediate results or narrow areas of research. The little restriction
the government imposed with its funding was wonderful for scientific
discovery, but one might suggest that it made the scientific community
too comfortable with its funding situation, causing it difficulty
today.
During its period of maturation, the scientific community became
accustomed to the high level of funding the government was providing.
As a result, scientists are having trouble adjusting to the funding
environment of today, which is far reduced from that of the Cold War
years. In fact, U.S. government funding for research and development
has been cut in half when looked at as a portion of the U.S. Gross
Domestics Product. In 1965, the U.S. spent over 1.8% of its GDP on
scientific funding. By 1997, that amount had dropped to a mere 0.9% of
the GDP. Private industry has filled many of the funding gaps that the
government left behind, but funding from the private sector creates a
new problem for scientists: they are nearly forced by their funding
sources to pursue only those topics in the interest of the private
sector. Hartz and Chappell, authors of Worlds Apart, point out, "there
is no way [private enterprise] will ever take on many vital issues -
global warming or ozone depletion?space exploration, astronomy, [or]
archaeology." Funding from private industry has economic restrictions
that the government funding does not; thus limiting the types of
research the funds may go toward. Also, private industry requires that
scientists "sell" the prospect of their research to a much greater
extent than the scientific community is comfortable with. The ease
with which government funding flowed in the Cold War years accustomed
scientists to not having to worry about presenting elaborately
marketed research plans in order to compete for funding. Scientists
must now take this marketing process into consideration when seeking
private funds.
Another Cold War effect on the scientific community was the conscious
detachment of scientists from the media. The Cold War was a time of
intense scientific rivalry between nations, and many of the large
projects funded by the government were top secret. A whole generation
of scientists were raised and trained in an environment where they
could not inform others of their scientific progress even if they
wanted to. This governmentally imposed vow of science leaked into the
rest of the scientific community. A bit of top-secrecy, a bit of
jealousy, and a bit of academic purity led scientists to adopt the
opinion that it was bad manners for scientists to seek press coverage.
This opinion became so strong that "if a scientist talked to the
public too much, or too glibly, he would more than likely be despised,
even ostracized by other scientists." With dwindling media coverage of
science and the need to attract private funding, scientists must
repair their relationship with the media. Public understanding of
current research is essential to the success of scientific discovery
in the U.S. in coming years.
The Cold War origins of organized science in the U.S. have fostered an
atmosphere of introversion within the scientific community. The
relative absence of interaction with discriminating private investors
and the urgent secrecy in which the community developed has placed it
at a disadvantage in today's world. Scientists were once able to exist
in an isolated research world, where the opinion of and relationship
with the media were of little importance. Today, with the gap between
science and media widening, many analysts believe that media
interaction problems are directly related to complications in
scientific funding.
Another factor increasing the gap between scientists and the media is
the difficulty in communication with each other the two have. The
communication gap between scientists and reporters arises because of
differences in language and focus. Both professions are highly
dependent on vocabulary. However, because scientists are in
the business of discovery, they are constantly being forced to create
new words. Scientists' constant word coinage and the highly
specialized nature of their work tends to cause many of their reports
and summaries to be incomprehensible to all but other scientists in
the field. Moreover, technical education in the U.S. does not fully
equip scientists with the writing and speaking abilities they need to
communicate their ideas to the public. To remedy this, future
engineers and scientists should be required to fulfill many more
writing and speaking "liberal arts" requirements in school than they
do today. Interaction with others outside one's field and publication
are inescapable if one desires a good scientific career. American
schools need to ensure that when their young scientists one day make a
great discovery, they will be able to communicate its importance to
those with a lesser scientific vocabulary. Another possible way to
improve communication between journalists and scientists would be to
train employees to act as a translators, to have employees at both
labs and media houses that are trained in both professions, so they
might act as a bridge between the two.
The communication gap is intensified by the different reasons
scientists and reporters publish their work. Kathy Sawyer comments,
"Science is slow, patient, precise, careful, conservative and
complicated. Journalism is hungry for headlines and drama, fast,
short, very imprecise at times." The exact nature of science requires
scientists to release findings and reports in drawn out,
double-checked fashions. In general, scientists are extremely
reluctant to draw quick conclusions about the importance of their
work, largely because the worth of a discovery is evaluated over time,
as others verify and apply the new information. The media, on the
other hand, is as much an entertainment industry as it is an
information industry. The quick, exciting nature with which this
business conducts itself to win customers does not fit well with the
mood of scientific reports. Many editors and reporters are left
guessing which scientific discoveries are important and newsworthy
because scientists will not jump to conclusions. As a result, science
is routinely left out of the news, despite its overwhelming impact on
our lives. To increase media exposure, scientists of similar fields
might pool their resources together to create ad campaigns or
encourage news stories on their work. Guilds of scientists researching
the human genome, for example, might raise money for an ad campaign
making the public aware of genomic research. To increase news
coverage, scientists could work together with the news media to inform
them of the important work being done and what implications it might
have. If the media were able to meet with scientists regularly to ask
questions and receive explanations, they would have a much better idea
of how to craft scientific stories that would appeal to their
audiences.
The science-media gap is considered a major factor in the current
decline of scientific funding and interest. This gap has been shown to
be largely a result of the way in which the scientific community
matured and the differences in language between scientists and the
media. Scientists must work to solve these problems and both return
science not only to the public eye and generate ample funding for
future research. The scientist must change his views toward the media
-- be active in communication with reporters, send copies of his
research results to magazines, notify the newspapers of upcoming
research. He must be willing to present his research in an exciting
fashion, showing potential funding sources that his research is
important and will give our society greater insight into the world.
Scientists must communicate to the non-scientific world with language
that is easy to understand, and they should give basic explanations of
the goals of their research. These practices will take time out of the
scientist's day, however a small amount of time spent communicating
with the public will improve both the public's perception and interest
of science and the funding environment in which science operates.
One excellent example of the way in which scientists should conduct
their public relations is the recent NASA Shuttle mission that marked
John Glenn's return to space. Granted, every research endeavor cannot
be as exciting as the return of an old hero, but NASA saw a chance to
perform a mission that yielded many scientific benefits as well as
capturing the public eye. Though it yielded enormous publicity,
Glenn's return to space was inarguably not a publicity stunt: his
mission completed more than eighty scientific experiments and provided
NASA with valuable data. Extensive research was done on the effects of
aging in space, sleep patterns, and the repair of deteriorating body
systems.
In addition to the scientific success of Glenn's mission, NASA was
able to generate excitement and support from three generations of
Americans. Parents and grandparents were able to watch the mission
updates with nostalgia of the exciting times when humans were first
entering space. Like a movie sequel, Glenn brought back the excitement
Americans felt when they first watched him fly into space atop a
rocket. For younger Americans, Glenn sparked interest both because of
his legend in America and his age. Children no doubt sat in their
living rooms and pictured their own grandfathers flying to a place
relatively few have ever seen. Stephanie Loer from the Boston Globe
children's book review commented that, after Glenn's return to space,
she "received more requests from teachers and parents for books about
astronomy and space travel than in all [her] years reviewing
children's books". Clearly, NASA enjoyed a public relations success
with this mission.
Scientists can learn from NASA's successful example of how to begin
bridging the gap between the scientific community and the media. In
order to boost support for the community and increase media attention,
scientists must look for ways that can connect their research to
something exciting. As NASA has shown, it is possible to have an
exciting research endeavor without jeopardizing the scientific
integrity of the research. The old scientific community will no doubt
be reluctant to spend time making their research seem exciting to
please the public, but this is a reflection of the environment that
existed thirty years ago. Regardless of one's opinion on making
science exciting, there is no escaping the fact that the majority of
scientific funding is now coming from a private arena rather than a
government source. The private industry is composed of average
citizens: citizens who watch the media and citizens who need
explanation of scientific concepts. By taking steps to encourage
interaction between the scientific community and the media, scientists
can increase their funding and generate a culture of scientific
excitement.
source:
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~eob9q/nasa/casestudies-scijour.html
REGARDS. |
