Is Science Communication Always a Good Thing?

(Repost from about 10 years ago)

As scientists, we are constantly encouraged, persuaded, and sometimes coerced into distilling complex results into a format that can be digested by the general public.  We are told, and most if not all scientists I talk to, believe this form of public science communication is a good thing.  Rather than accepting this dogmatic proposition, a critical look at important and recent scientific concepts, notably Global Warming, strongly suggest that the universally accepted belief (and I’ll call it belief, because as far as I can tell, there is little data to support the idea) that communicating simplified science to the public is a good thing can actually be catastrophically wrong.

I’ve given a lot of thought as to why some scientific topics attract strong opinions by those who are least prepared, educated or skilled to exercise any personal judgment whatsoever.  Why is it that the topic of global warming has legions of adamant armchair supporters and deniers who have no training in climate or atmospheric science, while other scientific topics receive little or no attention from the same legions of the uneducated?  For example, most people would find it rather odd and even inappropriate to argue about the details of neuroscience, string theory, or black hole physics.  Yet, armed with exactly the same level of ignorance, these same people hold strong and almost immovable beliefs about Global Warming. 

It must be something about the topic.  My original explanatory hypothesis was that Global Warming elicits strong opinions because everyone is familiar with the weather and climate.  We are surrounded by the atmosphere—without it we would die.  Our experience is shaped by the weather and seasons from the moment we become aware of our surroundings.  We become especially familiar with the weather and climate where we spend most of our life.  We start to recognize patterns, and in that sense, we feel as we have not just familiarity but some level of knowledge about the atmosphere.  This, I hypothesized, is the secret ingredient:  Familiarity, experience, and the false sense of knowledge of those two things impart.  We have zero personal experience about strings (if they exist) or black holes or neuroscience.  Those topics are left to the experts.  But when you feel like you have familiarity with a process operating in the world, that can be mistaken for expertise and knowledge of how that process works, and this in turn provides unjustified confidence in personal knowledge about the actual process.

Lately, I’ve come to accept that my original hypothesis may not be complete.  It does a reasonable job at explaining which topics end up in the realm of non-expert opinionators, and false knowledge via familiarity may be a necessary condition.  But it may not be sufficient.  An additional element may be needed to trigger the realization of latent hubris.

A major trigger that releases the beast of uninformed opinion against the necessary backdrop of familiarity may very well be the sacred but dogmatic cow of public science communication.  The very thing it is held to be universally beneficial and important may actually be not only unhelpful but fiercely malevolent.  That communication may be harmful is partly predicated on the idea that “a little knowledge can be dangerous”.  The more important element is that when scientists engage with non-experts in a discussion about complex scientific topics using watered-down and sterilized concepts, they validate the non-expert's unfounded belief in expertise and further inflate the bubble of hubris.  Furthermore, the discussion can magnify the belief that strong, resolute opinions may be generated without having to invest the time that dedicated experts have.  Stated differently, the conversation fuels the notion that not only is intellectual laziness acceptable, it is on par with intellectual diligence. 

When I’ve engaged with armchair climate change deniers, I have in the past done so at their level.  I don’t speak with them as I would with colleagues, because they don’t possess the knowledge or expertise to communicate at the level of an expert.  I spend what seems like an eternity trying to explain complex concepts using simplified explanations in an attempt to get them to understand why their position is incorrect. And, you’re never going to win, because the knowledge base of the general denier will never be sufficient for them to understand why they are wrong.  I’ve now come to understand that arguing with simplified science is, in many cases, precisely the wrong approach, because it gives the false impression that they have something meaningful and useful to contribute to the discussion.  They don’t.  All this time I’ve been validating their false sense of expertise.  And here’s the bigger problem, this doesn’t happen on just an individual basis, it occurs en masse when scientists try to simplify their science on blogs, or in popular science articles, or in other mass media like popular science television features.  This is all that’s needed to trigger that latent hubris among the primed and predisposed public.

In the future, I will likely no longer engage people that have gone down the Dunning-Kruger path of false expertise.  Instead, when I hear someone say something like, “it makes no sense that a change in a trace gas like CO2 can have such a noticeable effect.  I don’t buy it.”, I’ll respond with something like,

The roto-vibrational absorption lines determined as the eigenvalues of the quantum oscillator model of atmospheric molecules like CO2 interact with specific wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation emitted from the surface and isotropically from the atmosphere.  The envelope of actual emission follows the black body Planck function, but with spectral features corresponding to the lines of the emitting gas and surface, collisionally broadened.  For radiation emitted from the surface, Wien’s displacement law dictates that the bulk of the emitted energy falls within a few micrometers on either side of about 10 microns.  CO2 absorbs in this wavelength and following from Kirchoff’s law also reemits at that same wavelength, resulting in an increase of downward infrared flux convergence.  The resultant radiative heating is a function of the local atmospheric density and volumetric heat capacity at constant pressure, assuming a collisionally-equilibrium gas with a Maxwellian velocity distribution, and this energy is radiated isotropically, including the 2p steradian solid angle towards the ground.  Some of that radiation often makes it to the surface, where it may be absorbed, but the precise value of heating must be determined by solving the Schwarzchild equation of radiative transfer given known spectral properties of all gases and taking into account Doppler broadening of the quantum emission line.  Which part of this do you disagree with?

The above should do a few things.  First, it should make them immediately aware that they are out of their element.  Secondly, it should chip away at the notion that they have the knowledge and expertise to discuss the problem at any sort of technical level.  Third, it will convey that lazy intellectualism isn’t going to cut it.  If you want to have a discussion, you’re going to have to crack the books and actually invest the time to truly understand the problem and the underlying physics.  I’m not going to argue a complex problem with you at the level of a 3^rd grader.

 

I am not advocating for discontinuation of public science discourse, but I am advocating for a recognition that communicating simplified science can be devastatingly counterproductive.  It’s important to recognize when that might be.  If you are an expert encountering an arm chair expert, rather than validating their inflated sense of expertise, you may be better served by just shutting them down by un-distilling, un-simplifying, and un-watering down your conversation.  Speak as you would to your colleagues or as you would argue in a peer reviewed journal submission.