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Episode 104 - The Threat of Miscommunication: Understanding Scientists and Their Public Perception
The discussion today centers on the pressing issue of science communication and the alarming erosion of public trust in scientific endeavors. Our guest, Alex Kirkpatrick, a distinguished scholar in science communication from Washington State University and Cornell Engineering, offers a novel perspective by examining the dynamics between scientists and the public, particularly through the lens of identity and perceived threat. We delve into the inadequacies of the prevalent knowledge deficit model, which assumes that simply imparting scientific knowledge will foster acceptance and trust. Kirkpatrick's research highlights how a scientist's strong identification with their profession can inadvertently lead to negative perceptions of non-scientists, consequently hindering effective communication. This episode promises to illuminate the intricate interplay between identity, communication, and trust in science, providing valuable insights for both scientists and communicators alike.
Takeaways:
- The podcast discusses the critical issue of trust in science and the communication breakdown between the scientific community and the public.
- Alex Kirkpatrick's research reveals how scientists' strong in-group identity impacts their perception of non-scientists as a deficient out-group.
- The knowledge deficit model in science communication assumes that simply providing more information will foster trust and understanding, which is fundamentally flawed.
- The study emphasizes the importance of perceived threat in shaping scientists' attitudes towards non-scientists and their communication strategies.
Transcript
What is up, Brad fans?
Speaker A:How you doing?
Speaker A:How you living?
Speaker A:Welcome back.
Speaker A:Today I have another episode about science communication and the troubling phenomenon of the lack of trust in science or the breakdown of communication between science and the public.
Speaker A:But we're going to be looking at this from a totally unique angle and that's because my guest today, Alex Kirkpatrick, who is a science communication scholar at both Washington State University and Cornell Engineering in the, has decided to look at this problem from a totally unique perspective.
Speaker A:Now many times when we talk about science communication or we study it, it's done in a not very scientific manner and it's also done from this outward facing perspective science.
Speaker A:The science community looking out at the audience and seeing why don't they listen to science, how do things like their identity so their, their, their ideologies, their ethnic, socioeconomic status, how do all of these things play a role in whether they believe trust interact with intake scientific information.
Speaker A:But nobody's really ever done that the other way around.
Speaker A:And Alex did a great study, very scientific study, doing just that.
Speaker A:Alex's work focuses on in group, out group dynamics and specifically threat.
Speaker A:We'll break a lot of this down in the episode, but to give you a very brief overview of the study questions, Alex was looking at how a person's identity as a scientist, how strongly they hold that identity, how connected they are to that identity, might lead to them being more likely to think negatively of the out group, in this case being non scientists, and therefore being more likely to prescribe to what we call the knowledge deficit model of communication.
Speaker A:Again, we'll unpack this in the episode, but in brief, it kind of is the default of a lot of science communication and it comes from this position that the audience doesn't have scientific knowledge, therefore they're deficient in that knowledge.
Speaker A:And if we just give them the knowledge, they will then agree with our position and sort of behave as we tell them to.
Speaker A:Alex and I both agree this is not a great model and you'll hear us unpack all of that.
Speaker A:But Alex added another interesting layer to this and that is threat.
Speaker A:So how does the perceived threat of the out group, in this case again the non scientists, so that could be a threat to your funding, your, your physical threat, all of these kind of things, down to the threat of the way you think, your values, that kind of thing, how would that either increase or decrease the likelihood that you would think negatively of the out group and therefore again subscribe to this knowledge deficit model?
Speaker A:And the answers are fascinating.
Speaker A:I really enjoyed this Conversation, because like I said, I have yet to really come across a study that looks at the scientific community and puts them under the lens of scrutiny in terms of how communication is working, maybe why it isn't working, and what might be going on there.
Speaker A:And this is really, really fascinating.
Speaker A:I also really resonated with this with work because having gone through the PhD program, I really saw how people identified as being a scientist.
Speaker A:Many, many scientists.
Speaker A:This becomes a core part of their identity.
Speaker A:It's more than just a job.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And as we unpack in the podcast, that's both good and bad.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of interesting points in here and I think if you are in science communication or you're just concerned about the breakdown of trust in science, there's some ideas here that might go a long way to helping start bridge that gap.
Speaker A:And it's just interesting things to think about because as Alex points out in the podcast, these sorts of in group outgroup dynamics are not new.
Speaker A:They've been studied in many, many other populations.
Speaker A:So there is known ways of alleviating these sort of barriers between in group and out group.
Speaker A:It's just that it's never been put to the scientific community before.
Speaker A:So I want to thank Alex again for joining the show.
Speaker A:It was a really, really great conversation.
Speaker A:Before we going, as always, please rate, review, subscribe.
Speaker A:Wherever you're watching this YouTube or podcast platform.
Speaker A:Leave us a comment, send us an email.
Speaker A:All the relevant links are in show notes.
Speaker A:Wherever you're getting the show, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker A:So without any further delay, here is my conversation with Alex Kilkpatrick.
Speaker A:Welcome, Alex.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker A:How are you doing today?
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm good, thank you.
Speaker B:Yourself?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Excellent.
Speaker A:European heat wave over here.
Speaker A:So I'm up in the attic office sweating a little bit, but I think I'll manage.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't envy you.
Speaker A:So before we get going and talking about this paper that you wrote that really intrigued me as it talks about science communication, something listeners of the show know I'm, I'm passionate about, I work in, that's my, my, my more or less my field.
Speaker A:I'm curious how you found yourself being a scholar of science communication, a lecturer at the, the Cornell Engineering.
Speaker A:What is it?
Speaker A:Engineering Communications program.
Speaker A:I'll let you give, give the title and everything, but how did you get interested in sort of science, science communication?
Speaker A:What's your background, your journey up until this point?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Well, I actually left school originally when I was like 16 and I didn't return to higher education until my late 20s.
Speaker B:And by that point I was really interested in astronomy and astrophysics and actually did my undergraduate degree in physics, astrophysics and cosmology.
Speaker B:But I didn't really have any formal education prior to that to speak of.
Speaker B:And most of my interest in cosmology and astrophysics and most of my background knowledge that I took into my degree was actually from popular science, things that I'd picked up and learned from reading Popular Science from Brian Greene and Stephen Hawking and watching documentaries and going to museums and science centers.
Speaker B:I'd almost become an amateur astrophysicist.
Speaker B:And so once I got my undergraduate degree, having noted my sub, I describe it nicely as subpar ability with mathematics, I decided not to pursue physics onwards beyond that point, but rather to.
Speaker B:I became really interested in how people like me learned about science, people who hadn't just gone from school to university and onwards, but how contextual factors and informal science really helped build this passion.
Speaker B:And so I went on to the University of the west of England in Britain where I'm from, and I did a two years, two year Master of Science in Science communication where I started to learn all about that and I got really into it and I started loving the social science of it and the kind of philosophy of science in society and how informal audiences both deserve to know about science and how they come to know about science.
Speaker B:And then I took that onto my PhD and I studied at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication in Washington State University in the US and after I got my degree I stayed on for a couple of years as a lecturer there and I've worked as a science communicator for the center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State.
Speaker B:And just recently I got a new job as a senior lecturer in Engineering Communications at Cornell University where I help young engineers before they leave with their degrees in engineering to actually think about communication, how to communicate their ideas and so all about the sort of diffusion of innovations and how to communicate that complexity beyond just academic circles and how to inform a public who are going to be impacted by your innovations, by your science, whatever it is, but how to communicate that both with integrity, but in a language that is widely understood as opposed to the dense kind of field specific lexus that young scientists and engineers are so often taught to communicate in.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I also do some, I create some online courses as well for the School of Continuing Education.
Speaker B:So again, looking at folks who perhaps come to education a little differently like I did, and how to get them back into education and thinking about communication.
Speaker B:In that sense.
Speaker A:That'S a really interesting path, you know, to, to, to sort of leave school and then you find a lot of your education or your, or your, your, your knowledge, your passion through places like, you know, books and, and like, as you said, science centers, these different, these public sort of outreaching.
Speaker A:It's actually, you know, for the science communication world where it often feels like you're.
Speaker A:We're sort of stuck or banging our heads against the wall.
Speaker A:That's kind of like the perfect story.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Is someone who, you know, who did these efforts, who wrote these books, who did these things, grabbed, Grabbed the attention of a young person and got them, got them interested in this.
Speaker A:So it's actually quite a nice story.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's the ultimate aim of science communication and it does work.
Speaker B:You know, I think we get bogged down a lot nowadays, particularly in the US with there's a lack of trust in science and there is this perception, I think, of this, well, this intergroup threat between scientists and people on the outside of science.
Speaker B:But the reality is, I think a lot of people still are very interested in science and popular science does have a big impact.
Speaker B:People still have these big questions about the universe and where they come from and their own biology, and people are very interested.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I guess I am the prime example of that.
Speaker B:But I think it happens every day, people going off to study science, particularly in later life, just as a passion.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think that the topic you mentioned, cosmology, that's one that really grabs public imagination.
Speaker A:I always think about, you know, as a journalist, science journalists, we often, we're kind of trained and told like, you know, you got to show the impact.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Like, people need to see what this work is going to be, what it's going to do for them.
Speaker A:So we always have, you know, we always kind of have this like, almost like standard line in these short news stories about like.
Speaker A:And this may one day you know, impact your life by, you know, whatever your medical treatment, this.
Speaker A:But cosmology in a way, like, is never really going to impact people's lives, but they're just like so fast fascinated by it, you know, I think, I mean, maybe it'll impact their lives if, you know, when the sun explodes or something, you know, like something like this.
Speaker A:But it's like, I think, and it just, it hits at that maybe that root of, you know, people, the unknown, the curiosity, the exploitation.
Speaker A:So it's actually quite a nice thing to kind of think about too when you summarize, like, what is it that's so creative, interesting.
Speaker A:You know, when you think about storytelling, you know, cosmology kind of hits all of these things.
Speaker A:And that's probably the reason why it's is so fascinating to people who are, you know, would.
Speaker A:Would not consider themselves sciences scientists or would even like, go as far to say, like, oh, this, I can't understand this.
Speaker A:This is too much.
Speaker A:But I just.
Speaker A:I love learning about, you know, black holes and things like that.
Speaker A:And so it's a nice bridging point, actually.
Speaker A:I find cosmology, astrophysics, it's like where you kind of see some of the most dedicated scientists and the people that, like, have never touched science in their life.
Speaker A:But there's an interest there.
Speaker A:There's a real connection.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:I think it's.
Speaker B:I always think of it as where science meets mysticism almost.
Speaker B:And I think people aren't just interested in the answers we do have.
Speaker B:You know, people are very interested in that frontier of science where, you know, we don't have answers yet.
Speaker B:I think that's really.
Speaker B:It's a really useful way of getting people involved in science to talk about what is unknown, because that can be.
Speaker B:It's just as exciting for people as well.
Speaker B:And I think that's what cosmology is.
Speaker B:The appeal.
Speaker B:And the appeal of cosmology, of course, is it's unifying.
Speaker B:It's something we all have in common.
Speaker B:It's something that none of us have the answer to.
Speaker B:A lot of these things, and sometimes in science communication as well, we like to put a lot of emphasis on breaking things down and making things comprehensible.
Speaker B:But there's something to be said for the incomprehensible principle as well, in being attractive or a way of engaging people asking a question that's far too big.
Speaker B:It's very emotive and very engaging as well.
Speaker B:And so actually, when I did my master's, I wrote my thesis on narrative as a way of communicating relativity, which general and special relativity, two of the more complex ideas in cosmology and astrophysics.
Speaker B:But actually, because there's so much unknown and potentially exciting about them, there is great fruit for storytelling as well.
Speaker B:When we think about time dilation or the effects of gravity on time, it's just a great region to explore the unknown, a great way to engage people and get them thinking about science deeply.
Speaker A:I have to ask now about that, now that you mentioned, and then we'll get to this paper that inspired me to reach out to you, and we'll Discuss that, but the narrative.
Speaker A:Because as a science journalist, that's what I have been taught so much as well.
Speaker A:It's narrative, it's storytelling, it's characters.
Speaker A:That's how people absorb.
Speaker A:That's how people learn.
Speaker A:So I'm with you all the way.
Speaker A:I'm curious.
Speaker A:You got cosmology and maybe, obviously I'm going to ask you to briefly summarize your master's thesis, which is not possible.
Speaker A:I know, but.
Speaker A:Because in there, oftentimes with science and a topic like cosmology, let's say you.
Speaker A:The brain goes to, well, like science fiction, you know, things like interstellar, something like that.
Speaker A:Or it's like the story of the people who.
Speaker A:Who discovered it or who used it.
Speaker A:I mean, I guess with another physics one, because Oppenheimer was the big movie couple a couple years ago last year.
Speaker A:I can't remember now, but, you know.
Speaker A:So where do you find.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker B:Is.
Speaker A:Are those the two categories that you maybe explored?
Speaker A:Is there a third category in terms of, you know, narrative storytelling and cosmology?
Speaker A:Something like relativity or.
Speaker A:I mean.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker A:I kind of threw a bunch out there.
Speaker A:Threw a lot at you there.
Speaker A:But maybe you understand what I'm trying to say.
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, thinking back, I can't remember that much of my master's thesis.
Speaker A:Fair enough, Fair enough.
Speaker B:But I remember there's a strong visual element to those things as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I think one of them.
Speaker B:There's three stories.
Speaker B:One was about sort of panspermia.
Speaker B:One was.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:May have been to do with time dilation, but on one of them, it was purely sort of visual as well.
Speaker B:It was using comic book and sort of linear storytelling as well, and making use of the visual imagination, like transportation, imagery theory and trying to.
Speaker B:Which, if you're not familiar, it's this idea that if you can tell a story good enough to have someone create their own sort of mental imagery around something, it supposedly decouples them somewhat from their, you know, surrounding reality in that moment.
Speaker B:And then they become very open to persuasion and people persuade themselves, essentially.
Speaker B:So it's all about creating that imagery.
Speaker B:And you can do that through imagery, of course, but also weaving a good narrative as well.
Speaker B:And I think if you think about it, we all do that when we hear a good story.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:There is a point where your brain kind of makes that leap and starts showing you its own images or elaborating on what you're hearing and doing your own storytelling alongside whatever you're reading or hearing or seeing.
Speaker B:And that's the space that in narrative theory at least, that you want to push your audience to beyond simply ingesting whatever they're hearing from you and following your narrative, but actually making that cognitive leap to imagining their own imagery and imagining their owner sides to the story and things like that.
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm a big believer that everybody persuades themselves.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:My ability to persuade is limited.
Speaker B:But I think narrative allows you an indirect route to kind of lay that groundwork, to kind of prime someone to do some of their own imagining, some of their own thinking.
Speaker B:And that's when persuasion really happens and that's when engagement happens as well.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so that's a very general answer because I am avoiding the fact that I can't really remember the stories I told anymore.
Speaker A:Honestly though, I mean, that's a way better answer than the question that I get that I gave you.
Speaker A:That's way more fascinating because.
Speaker A:And I think it leads us kind of to where we're going here with your paper.
Speaker A:Because the next thing I want to say is just maybe kind of set up the background so you're.
Speaker A:The paper's looking at communication and sort of scientists and let's say in general how we can do things better or what are some of the pitfalls maybe that are happening from scientists and the way they think about themselves and other people and all these things.
Speaker A:We'll unpack that.
Speaker A:But the goal of science communication and this looming question, let's say in the US especially, it's something that we hear all over though, this trust in science, declining trust in science.
Speaker A:I think it depends.
Speaker A:There's a country specific angle to this because some, some polls and surveys you can find still rate scientists and, and you know, university institutions, medical professionals, is very high trust in society.
Speaker A:But in the US let's say, because a lot of our media is in the English speaking world is dominated by what's going on there.
Speaker A:And you know, we wouldn't, we don't have to give too much background.
Speaker A:I think everybody knows.
Speaker A:So what do you see as the problem then in terms of science communication in general?
Speaker A:Because persuasion is one thing.
Speaker A:I mean, we also talk about recruitment.
Speaker A:So getting people into the sciences, that's another goal of science communication, let's say.
Speaker A:And persuasion being the obvious examples are like vaccines or medical policies.
Speaker A:You want to get people on board with the things that are happening.
Speaker A:But you mentioned too in the beginning this idea that, you know, people kind of have a right to know what's going on and they should know.
Speaker A:And I've always kind of thought that, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Beyond just the, the dollars and cents of your taxpayer, your, your taxpayer dollars fund this.
Speaker A:So you have a right to know.
Speaker A:Yes, of course.
Speaker A:But beyond that, like these technologies, innovations, treatments, whatever, they're going to affect you, whether for good or bad.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You can think of AI, whatever things, all these things.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So the public should be informed and should know what's going on so that they can make decisions based on these things.
Speaker A:So again, throwing a lot at you right there.
Speaker A:Maybe just some thoughts on the goal of science communication in general, how you see it, what your sort of take on that is.
Speaker A:And then what is the problem that we're kind of seeing in the US Again, in a general sense, is it not trust in science or just the, the fruits of science or the institutions?
Speaker A:Like maybe there's a.
Speaker A:Too much to unpack right now.
Speaker A:But again, some general thoughts on the background here.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, it's difficult to pinpoint what the real problem is, but there, I mean, from my perspective, there are lots of motivations for communicating science.
Speaker B:One of the biggest ones, I think, particularly if I think back to my work with the center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, it's to fundamentally sustain people's lives in a positive sense.
Speaker B:So climate change, people deserve to know about threat particularly, and they deserve the opportunity to navigate or mitigate a threat based on the best information available to them.
Speaker B:We all need to keep being fed and so combating diseases in crops and things like that, people need to know about these things.
Speaker B:Where I think it falls down in the US And I think around the world in particular, is when it starts to conflict with things that are very fundamental about the way people exist.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And at the minute, in our juncture in time, it seems to all be about grouping.
Speaker B:It's all about ideology.
Speaker B:And I think we see that in Europe as well, certainly.
Speaker B:But perhaps to a lesser extent, it's always bigger and louder in America, isn't it?
Speaker B:But I think the polarization has always been a problem when it comes to science.
Speaker B:But when you look at the graphs of science literacy over the years, over decades in America, it kind of looks pretty stable.
Speaker B:The amount people do or don't know on a societal scale about science, it kind of chugs along a fair rate.
Speaker B:It doesn't really go up and down too much.
Speaker B:However, trust, on the other hand, has taken a marked dip and keeps dipping in recent times.
Speaker B:And I think that when it comes to my study, I think that was the idea that came to me, is we don't often look at science in the context we look at society very often in reference to science, in science communication it's very outward looking.
Speaker B:We take the science scientists perspective and we look outwards.
Speaker B:And what do the public need?
Speaker B:What do they want?
Speaker B:How are we doing it properly?
Speaker B:Well, how do the public feel about scientists?
Speaker B:Not a lot of people, not as many people, I don't think ask, well, what do scientists think of the public and how is this affecting the way they communicate with them?
Speaker B:And a scientist is just another person.
Speaker B:It's just another person on the street, it's just another person on the Internet, it's just another person down at the shopping center.
Speaker B:And they are not, not immune to the same societal forcings as everybody else.
Speaker B:You know, they too are polarized.
Speaker B:They too spend a lot of time online where polarization and identity are primed and you know, we become de.
Speaker B:Individuated into our groups even more.
Speaker B:And so it became interesting to me to think, well what about this deindividuation then?
Speaker B:What about this polarization?
Speaker B:What about this grouping among scientists?
Speaker B:How does this affect it?
Speaker B:Because I think there's a lot of people out there looking at how groupings of publics affect their views of science.
Speaker B:Sort of how much does religion affect the way they think about it?
Speaker B:How much does being a Democrat or being a Republican affect it?
Speaker B:Okay, that's good.
Speaker B:And these are all questions that need asking.
Speaker B:But at the end of the day it's the scientist that's going to come out and do the communicating.
Speaker B:It's them that's gonna, it's the responsibility we're putting on the scientist is to bridge that gap.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so what's going on with them?
Speaker B:How does their group membership affect them?
Speaker B:Them being just members of the public who happen to do science?
Speaker B:Or are they not that, are they something else?
Speaker B:Is there something unique about being a scientist that makes you communicate with a non scientist a certain way?
Speaker B:And I think fundamentally, yeah it does.
Speaker B:Because any group membership from a theoretical standpoint results in similar sorts of views of out groups and things like that.
Speaker B:So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question at all.
Speaker A:No, I'm just trying to avoid it.
Speaker A:I think you'll notice, I think you'll notice that my questioning style is just to say a lot of things and then not really ask a question.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:Oh good, that's my answer.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it's, I think it's working.
Speaker A:But yeah, so you've, you've teased quite well.
Speaker A:I think this, this, this study and this is what, this is what really drew me to it when I, when I came across it was it's like, oh, finally we're looking at the scientists, the communicators, rather than like you said this, this outward look all the time, like, well, what's going on with quote unquote, the public, you know, this, this big, big group that they all have their own identities, they all have their own groups.
Speaker A:And, and we should, like you said, we should look at that and we should see how those different groups affect how they interact with scientific knowledge, information technology, all that stuff.
Speaker A:But we're not looking at scientists as a group.
Speaker A:And the other thing that we, that we touch on in this paper is the knowledge deficit hypothesis.
Speaker A:And so I think we should unpack that now because we've set up that we're going to be looking at scientists as a group and how they're sort of in grouping their identity as a scientist, who they kind of you group with affects the view of the out group, which would be the people they're communicating to, which I think is something that people can understand, an audience can understand this in group, out group dynamic.
Speaker A:I think a lot of us have heard about that.
Speaker A:But knowledge deficit hypothesis, maybe not.
Speaker A:And this is, you had these questions about scientists and their identity, but you brought in the knowledge deficit hypothesis maybe as a way to sort of test some of these in grouping things.
Speaker A:Maybe I'm getting that wrong.
Speaker A:But let's unpack knowledge deficit hypothesis because it's a style of communication, style of communication, theory of communication, something like this, whatever words you want to use.
Speaker A:But I believe it's the default for a lot of scientists in terms of science communication.
Speaker A:And I don't necessarily agree with it.
Speaker A:I think it's not the best way to do science communication.
Speaker A:So I'll let you sort of give a definition of it and then why, what role it played again in the questions that you're asking in this study?
Speaker B:Right, yeah.
Speaker B:In the actual field of science communication, the knowledge deficit model as it's known commonly sort of around the world is it's kind of like your Science Communication 101.
Speaker B:It's what we all get taught on day one, that there's, there is a limit to science literacy, science literacy being sort of cognition and how much you objectively know about science and its underlying concepts.
Speaker B:The assumption is that the more you know about science and the underlying concepts, the more your attitude shifts in a positive direction towards science, which assumes a hypothesis.
Speaker B:I mean, the hypothesis is then that inextricably attitude is linked to literacy and for decades, this has been only very weakly supported by evidence.
Speaker B:So it's very unscientific to then kind of persist along this assumption, this route that, oh, actually the best outcomes for the public, I assume, is going to be knowing more about science, more quantitative things about science and its underlying concepts.
Speaker B:And if I can just drill this home to people even more, if I can just find the perfect order of words to translate my knowledge into their brains and have them have my knowledge, then they, if they think like me, they will feel like me, and it's just fundamentally incorrect.
Speaker B:I've got ringing bells going on here.
Speaker B:I assume they're real and not just in my head.
Speaker A:I hear them too.
Speaker B:So you're good.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's good to know.
Speaker B:But, yeah.
Speaker B: articulations happened in the: Speaker B:And there were lots of communication breakdowns between scientific authorities from the south who came to the north of England to these old communities that had been in Cumbria that had been hill farming their sheep for thousands of years and trying to tell them how to mitigate this threat, because they knew the threat from a scientific angle and sort of discounted the contextual knowledge of the farmers who knew how to manage their sheep a lot better than these scientists from Cambridge and London.
Speaker B:And of course, this, this breakdown in intergroup communication, this failure to understand each other's culture, led to a lot of bungled attempts to kind of mitigate this threat.
Speaker B:And from then on, people noticed that, oh, this is a thing that keeps cropping up, perhaps this perceived arrogance on the side of science and this unwillingness of science to do one of the more important communication skills that they ignore, I think, which is active listening to your audience and basing your approach upon that, as opposed to going in with, again, this deficit hypothesis that there's something essentially missing in you, that you're not behaving the way I'm prescribing and that must be science knowledge.
Speaker B:And so if I bring up your science knowledge, you will adhere to the scientific rules and you will do as I say and you will be persuaded and you'll like it too, because that's the way I learned and I like it.
Speaker B:And so, but, but, but again, it's very unscientific because there's nothing, I mean, even to scratch the surface, it should be obvious to anybody, really, that attitude and literacy don't necessarily, if at all correlate.
Speaker B:But I don't think scientists very often view communication scientifically, which is silly really, because communication is evolutionary.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's fundamentally a scientific thing.
Speaker B:We're talking about how we as biological creatures try and share cognition essentially.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's very scientific.
Speaker B: eems to be still, Even now in: Speaker B:Well, I'm a scientist, so I should stay out of everything else.
Speaker B:I shouldn't think about polarization and politics.
Speaker B:I shouldn't engage with the things that people want to talk about.
Speaker B:Instead, I should ignore the things that people want to talk about and again, again go on this fabled hunt for this perfect order of words in which I can just communicate this hard science to this person who hasn't, you know, a lot of the time hasn't the background to decode what you're even telling them.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And again, the hope being that not necessarily the outcome that's desired is a raising of scientific literacy.
Speaker B:It's this really indirect way that they think they're going to go about, about getting attitude and trust is by, instead of, instead of directly addressing that, to just throw knowledge, throw knowledge, see what sticks.
Speaker B:And if some of it sticks, then you're gonna like me, right?
Speaker B:You're gonna like the science, right?
Speaker B:But of course, no, there's a lot of people who are very scientific literate and you know, you look at the history of science and along the history of science, throughout Europe, Europe, some of the most influential scientists were also the most religious people as well.
Speaker B:Their own kind of ideology conflicted with their work quite heavily.
Speaker B:But they still, you know, married that.
Speaker B:And if there's, if the deficit hypothesis were true, then that wouldn't happen.
Speaker B:All scientists would be uniformly the same.
Speaker B:They wouldn't have different political views, they wouldn't have different philosophical views.
Speaker B:They wouldn't believe in gods.
Speaker B:They wouldn't, you know, but they do.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they do.
Speaker B:And so, you know, knowledge is one thing and it's important and it's important, you know, to.
Speaker B:But you know, on, on the other hand, is knowledge that important?
Speaker B:If a wildfire is coming your way, does understanding climate change on a molecular level and does understanding the burn rate of certain pine trees really help you like.
Speaker B:No, get out of your bloody house.
Speaker B:There's a fire coming.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:So even then you've got to juggle the amount of background in science that someone actually needs or wants to Know what's useful to people.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I agree with so much of what you're saying because this is, this knowledge deficit model is something that, you know, when I, I, when I, it took me encountering another model, I found this, you know, paper on the narrative policy framework, which, in short, just like says you have to.
Speaker A:And it's, it's, as it says, it's about policy.
Speaker A:So, you know, persuasion, you're, you're getting, trying to get people on board with your policy ideas.
Speaker A:So it's kind of more of a political one, but it works for science, I think, because it's at essence, it's like people make decisions based on more than just knowledge.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Emotions, worldview, religion, you know, family relationships, all these things.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Which is, once you kind of see that, you're like, well, yeah, duh, like, of course, that's how people.
Speaker A:That's, that's humans.
Speaker A:That's how we operate.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so we're talking about, like, meeting them as an audience, presenting information through characters that they can empathize with or that they can understand.
Speaker A:You know, that like, you know, very basic storytelling principles of, like, if the hero of the story looks like the audience, they're going to trust them, that hero and their actions, and they're going to see those actions as something that they would want to emulate.
Speaker A:Very basic kind of stuff.
Speaker A:But this knowledge deficit model just persists.
Speaker A:And I'm curious as to why we think that at some level it's not really important, but you've outlined, I think, a lot of the negatives of it, and I think a big thing too is it sets up a hierarchy.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And you're talking about, about in your paper, in group, out group, and you immediately set up this I know more than you dynamic.
Speaker A:And let me talk down to you about, let me fill in the gaps for you because you clearly don't understand, because if you did understand, we wouldn't have to be having this conversation kind of thing.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And I'm not saying that that's how scientists do it.
Speaker A:I'm sure some scientists feel that way and come across that way, but I feel that's the dynamic that immediately gets set up and it discredits an audience that, like you say, depending on the topic, they probably know just as much, you know, or they know how to do things better than the scientists referencing the sheep farmers there.
Speaker A:There's so many stories like that where scientists come in and say, oh, we could do this, this, this, but the, the local knowledge, the, the people that have been doing it, they have a much better way.
Speaker A:And yeah, so I think it's, it's harmful.
Speaker A:And I wonder if there's like a legacy again, one of these things where, you know, scientists just have always done that.
Speaker A:So that's the way they do it or that's the way you're taught, you know, from your professors in university, like it's that very hierarchical professor, student, you're just absorbing.
Speaker A:So we kind of just assume that that's the way that you learn things, you know, or is it just that plain and simple?
Speaker A:The scientific community doesn't think about these things and just, you know, doesn't put enough effort into wanting to change how they communicate science.
Speaker B:Well, science being a scientist, it's very academic, right?
Speaker B:So yeah, I think a lot of it emerges from that hierarchy of downhill learning, right, that there is someone in charge and there is a deficiency in the student.
Speaker B:And as soon as you start seeing someone is deficient in some way, that's not a good level to start talking to someone on.
Speaker B:It's not a good level to try and exchange knowledge, right, because there's a lack of trust there.
Speaker B:As soon as you see someone as deficient, it's not a two way flow.
Speaker B:You've automatically assumed that one is in possession, possession of knowledge to a sufficient extent and the other person is deficient in some way.
Speaker B:And I think, yeah, in some respects we teach that through the way we train scientists because that's the way they learn and they love science.
Speaker B:And so it makes sense logically that, you know, if other people learn like me, then they will also love science.
Speaker B:But there's also more to it, I think.
Speaker B:I mean, you go back, right, to the foundations of modern science hundreds of years ago, and we are mostly talking about Western European men who were quite wealthy and perhaps really.
Speaker B:And there is a class element there, right?
Speaker B:So Isaac Newton living alone in the English countryside with servants, etc.
Speaker B:Etc.
Speaker B:That's going to imply a certain way of viewing people versus anyone else.
Speaker B:You know, you have a class of people that can read Latin and they can write and they can, they do have the, the resources to explore certain questions and sit around mulling them.
Speaker B:And then you have another class of people who must send their children down the mine or to the factory to do something else.
Speaker B:And so, so from the outset there is a hierarchy there.
Speaker B:And coming back to my study, that is because to be a scientist and to belong to the scientific community can be seen as belonging to a very privileged group.
Speaker B:For all we say about A lack of trust in science or a breakdown in science communication.
Speaker B:Even to this day, even in America, scientists are still held in pretty high regard, right?
Speaker B:There's a lot of deference afforded to scientists.
Speaker B:People are still very.
Speaker B:There is a lot of social clout to being a doctor, even if that's a doctor of philosophy like me, or, you know, an actual real doctor or whatever, or, you know, kids still grow up venerating and wanting to be astronauts and fighter pilots and people on the forefront of technoscience.
Speaker B:There's a lot of social privilege that comes along with it.
Speaker B:And so the hierarchy is kind of established when science was established and it's continued right through.
Speaker B:And the most successful scientists and the most sort of visible scientists are also usually the most privileged as well.
Speaker B:They are those that come from Ivy League schools or Oxford and Cambridge and all of the great global institutions.
Speaker B:And to get there, those people are also quite privileged.
Speaker B:And going back to what you say about the fundamentals of kind of storytelling and persuasion and social presence and allowing people to see people just like them.
Speaker B:Social cognitive theory, right?
Speaker B:Social learning, it's easy, easier to learn of people who are just like you.
Speaker B:I think there's.
Speaker B:Society as a whole reaffirms over and over that scientists aren't just like you.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:The scientists themselves might want to affirm that, but media does it as well.
Speaker B:Media has a tendency to stereotype.
Speaker B:And you know, in recent years, of course, we had, you know, Big Bang Theory and all these comedy shows that do play on these tropes, that there is a strong correlation between nerd culture and scientists.
Speaker B:And it's mainly men of European descent of some privilege that do this, who are also fundamentally socially deficient.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so it works two ways.
Speaker B:But I think when we've come to identify with a group very strongly, we also self stereotype type.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:And that works for any group.
Speaker B:And I think that is the crux of the small study that we're talking about here with me is that that once you belong to a group, any group, from a social theory perspective, the processes that happen are all the same.
Speaker B:Same, right.
Speaker B:The more you strongly you identify with an in group, the more you have a tendency to self stereotype, the more you have a tendency to broad brush and homogenize out groups, whoever that out group is, whether it's like, oh, I'm an American and an out group is a Mexican immigrant or whether I am a scientist and an out group is a deficient non scientist or I am an Englishman and you are a Scotsman or whatever, it works across everything.
Speaker B:And that's why I was surprised, surprised to see that no one had really looked at science in that way.
Speaker B:And perhaps it's because it's a selected group like you, you don't get born a scientist.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:People self select into those groups and so I think that's the fundamental difference.
Speaker B:But being a scientist and self selecting into that group is unique because it isn't just a profession to a lot of people.
Speaker B:It really is a way of life.
Speaker B:It's a system of thinking, quite literally.
Speaker B:And when you're involved in any strict sort of system of thinking, there's a certain way of communicating associated with that.
Speaker B:You know, whether it be the, you're a member of the church of the, you know, the Mormon church or the Catholic church or you know, you're an astrophysicist or whatever.
Speaker B:There are field specific lexis, there are ways of communicating, ways of talking certain words that only make sense.
Speaker A:It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker A:Again, what you're saying, because as someone that, you know, I did the, I did the grad school journey, got a PhD in biology.
Speaker A:So it was like molecular biology, pretty hard science in the lab.
Speaker A:And you could.
Speaker A:I, I always kind of bristled a little bit at the, at the, the identity of the science.
Speaker A:Like I didn't want to be, you know, couched in, in, in this idea that, oh, it's, and this is not to, not to, to throw shade on anyone who has this identity and feels that way.
Speaker A:But yeah, the nerd culture thing, the sort of like, I'm a scientist, I'm a nerd and that's cool.
Speaker A:It's okay.
Speaker A:I never felt that way, you know, like I'm very interested in sports, in music and like all of these things that wouldn't fit that nerd identity.
Speaker A:I was just like, yeah, I just also happen to find this interesting.
Speaker A:But you could feel a very strong identity amongst my peers.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And in some ways I did identify with that as well.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like we had common interests, we shared common interest in the science, you know, in the, in the curiosity and the, in the passion of, of wanting to know more and that thirst for knowledge and that kind of thing.
Speaker A:But there's a lot of things that go into, you know, these, these identities and this self stereotyping.
Speaker A:And again, like a lot of people I knew liked, you know, the Big Bang Theory and they loved that show.
Speaker A:And I was just like, I can't, I can't stand it.
Speaker A:Like these characters are not, it's not me.
Speaker A:You know, like, that's, that's, to me, that was such a caricature and such a.
Speaker A:And again, I know people like it and I don't want to alienate anybody, but yeah, it just didn't speak to me and my identity.
Speaker A:But you could really feel that there was that identity of science and everything that you said about the historical hierarchy and privilege, what it takes to be afforded the opportunity to go and study those things financially, socially, all of these things, I guess, kind of creates these things we're talking about.
Speaker A:So I guess it's like, let's dive now right into what it, you know, the specifics, I guess, of what you were looking at.
Speaker A:I think there was like five hypotheses in the study, and we don't maybe have to go through each one.
Speaker A:If you would like to, we can, but maybe we can group a couple together.
Speaker A:But to me, the core was how does this, what are the factors that, that sort of shape this identity of a scientist trying to like, you know, quantify some of those things and capture some of those things, and then how did this change the way that they communicated or viewed the.
Speaker A:To the out group, to the non scientists?
Speaker A:So maybe I'll let you kind of.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Summarize some of these questions and then we can dig into what you found.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Well, I was.
Speaker B:A lot, A lot of my work revolves around kind of how people view threat, particularly scientific threats.
Speaker B:But I've all.
Speaker B:I've been interested in social threats as well, but this was my first kind of foray into that world, although years ago I read a really interesting social science theory, intergroup threat theory, and I've been very interested in intergroup threat because, as opposed to like a threat that emerges from science, such as, you know, an experiment going wrong or something like that, there's a strong symbolic element.
Speaker B:And so I really wanted to kind of of explore that because I know that when you see threats from other groups, this is inevitably going to change the way you communicate with that group.
Speaker B:But I try and build all my studies well scientifically, so based on theory.
Speaker B:And so I knew, I hypothesized originally my kind of meta hypothesis that there was going to be some root there.
Speaker B:It will make a difference the extent to which someone identifies as and with other scientists.
Speaker B:It will make a difference to the way they communicate with non scientists.
Speaker B:And what I wanted to explore was the mechanism of that.
Speaker B:And luckily for me, a lot of it is all laid out in theory, not particularly to do with scientists, but to do with whatever group you Know lots of different groups.
Speaker B:These theories have been studied.
Speaker B:Irish Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
Speaker B:It's been studied along those lines.
Speaker B:Mexican immigrants in the United States, African American people, white people, women, men.
Speaker B:And so it was trying to find that route.
Speaker B:And the what theory tells me me is that intergroup communication is going to be affected negatively when someone derogates an out group, I. E. They talk about them in derogatory terms.
Speaker B:And the more someone identifies with an in group, so scientists, the more I identify as a scientist, the more that becomes a core part of how I envision myself, right.
Speaker B:Who I am at a core, right.
Speaker B:What percentage of that is taken up by the group dynamic.
Speaker B:And the more that is taken up by being a scientist, the more important that becomes, the more protective over that you become and the more you have a tendency to homogenize people who are not within your group.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like all these sorts of people look the same or all that sort of people think the same.
Speaker B:And so my thought was really quite simple that the more one identified as a scientist, the more someone derogated the out group.
Speaker B:And that kind of sent a light bulb on my head because I realized, well, at the foundation, the deficit model at its worst critique is derogatory of non scientists.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:They are deficient, right?
Speaker B:That in itself, but they are deficient.
Speaker B:They don't know enough.
Speaker B:They are ignorant, ignorant in some sense, maybe not universally ignorant, but these people are ignorant of something that's centrally important to me and my being.
Speaker B:They are ignorant of science, they are ill informed about science and then it's just the next logical step is, well, the way to help them, them, to help them be like me is to have them be less deficient, of course.
Speaker B:And so if I can fill that gaping hole within them and say, you know, no more science.
Speaker B:And it's importantly, not just science, but it's underlying concepts as well.
Speaker B:Know more about scientists, think more scientifically and you know, the next step will be well, well, I've cured your deficiency.
Speaker B:And so how do you feel about science?
Speaker B:Oh, great.
Speaker B:Absolutely brilliant.
Speaker B:Couldn't trust it more.
Speaker B:Trust everything that comes out of the scientific community.
Speaker B:But on the other hand, there is some, there are a lot of positives to identifying with a professional group strongly.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:We deliberately want our students at an undergraduate level to come to see themselves as engineers and scientists because, you know, a lot of that will be good for them.
Speaker B:It's good for their life, it's good for the esprit de corps of the people they're working with.
Speaker B:It's good for science to have scientists think that way and to love what they do and to love science and to think scientifically so it can't all be bad.
Speaker B:And that's where my idea about intergroup threat came in.
Speaker B:I'm like, I'm sure this must be moderated by the amount of threat one perceives from the outside group.
Speaker B:Because if you don't perceive any threat whatsoever from non scientists and you're a scientist, then it's unlikely that you're really going to think derogate them.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:You're not going to think of them derogatory, you're not going to think, well, to my mind, you wouldn't think of them that way anyway.
Speaker B:You would be like, well, I don't perceive any threat from them.
Speaker B:There's nothing really wrong with them.
Speaker B:There's nothing that needs attenuating here.
Speaker B:And so that path from in group identity to you're stupid, you don't know enough to I can cure you of your deficiency if you just listen to me and learn more science.
Speaker B:That completely in my mind that would have broken down if one doesn't perceive a threat in the first place, like if you're no threat to me, it's no problem.
Speaker B:And so that's what I set out to kind of explore.
Speaker B:And as a side to that, because I was taking the opportunity, the study itself was among us STEM students and it was a cross sectional study, it was a survey.
Speaker B:And so it was a great opportunity to also gather data on their individual differences as well and how those fed into the independent variable, this identification of as a scientist.
Speaker B:And a lot of that, those hypotheses or that research question that I had of who identifies most, you know, things beyond their control like male, female, non binary, a black white, foreign student, domestic student, all these things.
Speaker B:How does that, how does that feed into it?
Speaker B:And luckily there's a lot of research done on that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:We know that generally speaking, dominant social groups, such as in America at least white men, identify more strongly as scientists than less dominant groups, which in itself tells a story, right, about the deficit model and scientists that the privileged group should feel more scientific than the non privileged group.
Speaker B:Well, that's a story for another day, but yeah, and I found what I knew I'd find and what we find over and over again that that is the case that the in group identification was strongest among the majority groups.
Speaker B:What I didn't find, what a lot of studies do find, but I didn't is that that women did not identify any more or less than men, which may be a sign of the times.
Speaker B:I know that for a long time people find that that's not true.
Speaker B:But I think a lot of work has been done over the past decades to kind of make women feel more included in science and as scientists.
Speaker B:But I certainly did find that, yep, white people definitely identify more.
Speaker B:I think that might be to do with the centrality of the.
Speaker B:The identity.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because I think people of ethnic minorities, in any culture, whatever a minority looks like in that culture, are going to identify their self concept is going to be rolled up in that identity more than anything else because that's a lens via which they view their entire world.
Speaker B:Whereas you're kind of privileged as a white person in a white country that you don't have to think about with being white that often because it's kind of just the default.
Speaker B:So there was that element to it.
Speaker B:But then, yeah, of course I really wanted to test this process model is what we call it, this psychological process, this route from.
Speaker B:So where does identity get?
Speaker B:Lets get you.
Speaker B:And my hypothesis were kind of confirmed.
Speaker B:Nothing particularly novel about that other than the fact it was applied to this social group.
Speaker B:Because there's a rich body of science, social science stretching right back that says that yeah, once you identify strongly, those who identify more strongly with an in group are always going to have more of a tendency to be derogatory about groups because the more central something becomes to you, the more you just want to protect that identity from any outward threat and the more you want that to be socially dominant.
Speaker B:So yes, I found that stronger identity did lead to more belief in the more belief that people who weren't scientists were in some way deficient.
Speaker B:And yes, I did find that once the stronger you believed that people were deficient, the stronger you thought that by teaching them more science and correcting that deficiency, they would have better attitudes.
Speaker B:But the most important thing I think I found was that the other hypothesis that the model would break down to insignificance if no threat was perceived.
Speaker B:I did find that.
Speaker B:And so what I mean by threat is a social threat can come in two forms really.
Speaker B:It can come in realistic threats, threats, I. E. Threats to your health and safety, threats to money, threats to funding.
Speaker B:And we see a lot of realistic threats being actualized here in America.
Speaker B:At the minute a lot of funding is being taken away, a lot of scientists are losing their jobs.
Speaker B:During COVID 19, a lot of people who work in STEM were physically attacked and were under a very realistic threat, as we call it.
Speaker B:And also there is the Symbolic threat.
Speaker B:The other angle to it, that they're a threat to my system of thinking, they're a threat to my values and my belief system.
Speaker B:And the more people believed that, the more that link between in group identification to belief in the knowledge deficit hypothesis, the stronger that became, the more of a threat was perceived, which is what I expected and I expected it to get weaker the less people perceived that threat.
Speaker B:And it didn't just get weaker, the whole model broke down.
Speaker B:And what I mean by that is that the independent variable being in group identification has no relationship to the outcome variables at all.
Speaker B:All if you perceive little to no threat, social threat.
Speaker B:So people who didn't think that non scientists posed any real realistic threat or they didn't pose any real symbolic threat to science, then they could identify as a scientist as much as they wanted.
Speaker B:It could take up 100% of how they viewed themselves.
Speaker B:This would not lead to any derogating of the out group.
Speaker B:Therefore it did not lead to any belief in the deficit model.
Speaker B:And so that's, I think the most interesting part is like ah, and then I started to think, well that's how these theories always suggest more intergroup contact between groups is a great way to improve intergroup relations, but intergroup communication, and I think there's value to that as well because once you, you, once you start mixing with other groups and you realize oh, there's no immediate threat here, it's, I think that's when these models break down.
Speaker B:And I'll just, you know, this is a very small study and it's a very specific psychological model, but I think it's a good jumping off point to start thinking about how to improve communication.
Speaker B:And it isn't just taking a strategic vantage and talking about how to correctly word things and how to knowledge share, but it's about just putting groups of people together and having them kind of communicate with one another and get used to one another and learn that there's very little threat in reality to be perceived from a person on an individual basis.
Speaker B:You know, I think that's one great way of improving science society relationships.
Speaker B:Which I guess leads into that dialogue model.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And I think that's why people push that dialogue between science and society.
Speaker B:Because the more you mix with people, the more you come to trust them.
Speaker B:And trust is like a super fluid for communication, isn't it?
Speaker B:It's like a superconductor.
Speaker B:The more you trust people, the more information actually flows back and forth uninhibited.
Speaker B:And so ironically, if your real aim is to Share knowledge or share complex information, then ignoring that as an outcome variable and ignoring that as the aim of your communication is probably a good way to go and instead focus on building trust and then you'll just accidentally share a lot of knowledge.
Speaker B:That's my view anyway.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean it makes sense and like you said, some of these theories have been established in other groups.
Speaker A:And I think if you're just hearing this story, hearing you talk about it, it makes sense how these factors play out because we all know, we all kind of understand human behavior and we've seen, like you said, these intergroup dynamics play out where identity and then out group and the threat one is interesting.
Speaker A:So a few things came up in my mind here, but.
Speaker A:And maybe this question is like there's no answer to it, but do you the relationship between threat derogation and identity?
Speaker A:Do you know, is there any way of knowing which one drives which?
Speaker A:Like what you know is, is, is it just, is it all, you know, circular and it, there is no kind of starting point or is there sort of a one that sort of fuels the other?
Speaker A:I don't know, I don't know how this, these things work and if you would even be able to answer that question.
Speaker B:Well, I think like anything it, a lot of studies and a lot of confirmation.
Speaker B:But I think when you look at all these theories and even when you think about it logically, it all really has to begin with this self identification, right, this self categorization.
Speaker B:Because without that nothing else comes, right?
Speaker B:Because if you, if you, if you don't identify as a scientist, well, you're out of the study.
Speaker B:You're not a scientist, like so you're not, you're not thinking these things about non scientists because that's not even how you look at the world.
Speaker B:And it's the same with people who maybe feel other intergroup conflict.
Speaker B:Things like perhaps have racist views and things like that, you can't really have them unless you first perceive yourself quite strongly to belong to a certain race.
Speaker A:Or culture or as different than the other.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:Because I guess that's what I was.
Speaker B:Thinking of is it difference?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you got to establish that.
Speaker A:I was thinking that maybe threat drives a stronger identity because you feel a threat and then you, you aim to find or others like you so that that threat is mitigated.
Speaker A:But that's all predicated on the fact that I'm different than, than this threat or this group or something.
Speaker A:So I guess identity really does drive the, the, the show.
Speaker B:Yeah, but you raise a good point Right.
Speaker B:That communication is never a one way street.
Speaker B:It is circular in some respects.
Speaker B:So you know, the more, the more you identify, the more you derogate.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It will eventually come back.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And the same with threat.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Threat is a moderator.
Speaker B:But these models, they work in a theoretical sense and in a short term sense, but it's very difficult to establish the multiple forcings that create that sense of identity.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:A lot of that is completely out of anyone's control, especially if it's based on your upbringing or your location in the world.
Speaker B:And even the type of science you study makes a difference as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Natural sciences people tend to feel more like scientists.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because that's again, it comes back to that self stereotyping, the white coat in the laboratory.
Speaker B:That's what a scientist looks like.
Speaker B:I'm a biologist or a microbiologist or whatever, I must be a scientist.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Then it becomes more fundamental.
Speaker B:It's more difficult to think of yourself as a scientist.
Speaker B:Perhaps if you're, you know, you've never been in a lab.
Speaker B:Lab or engineers don't see themselves as scientifically even though if someone's working in a lab constantly on machine learning or something like that, then they're performing science just the same as anyone else.
Speaker B:But they don't necessarily.
Speaker B:It's not as central to them.
Speaker B:But you're absolutely right.
Speaker B:The more you see threat or the more you derogate, it's these reinforcing spirals potential.
Speaker B:Actually from my vantage that's it's just a real pain in the ass to try and measure that or investigate that over time.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:But doubtless that is the way it works, right?
Speaker B:Logically speaking.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:It's funny because I'm thinking about these things too again in my own experience and I'm sure engineers feel the same way again if, if you on average, maybe, but it was like for sure, like the biologists, there's all these grouping, there's all these tribes within it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And engineers were something else over there.
Speaker A:And they're engineers, they're not scientists, they're engineers.
Speaker A:And there's biologists and there's chemists and there's physics and there's all the sub disciplines and stuff.
Speaker A:So I can, looking back now, you know, you can see all these dynamics kind of playing out.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like, like on a subconscious level, like again, like I don't think a lot of people are really consciously thinking about, you know, derogating the out group and things like that.
Speaker A:But it's just sort of human behavior Tribal, you know, our evolution, I guess, as a social species.
Speaker A:So there's a couple things as we can.
Speaker A:We can start kind of wrapping up.
Speaker A:And I think you mentioned, like, so what do we.
Speaker A:This is a jumping off point in terms of rethinking communication, so dialogue that sort of just like getting to know the other group.
Speaker A:Removing that threat is.
Speaker A:Is a great way to start.
Speaker A:And I'll admit that I've thought about this thing again from that outward science communication, outward thing and never the other way around, because I've always thought like, some of the best, you know, science communication efforts in recent times that I've seen is this idea or trying to, you know, humanize the scientists, let's say, or show people that scientists are just like normal people.
Speaker A:People, you know, for all the, The.
Speaker A:The immense flaws that are now apparent in the podcasting platform and, and shows like Joe Rogan, I thought like five, 10 years ago, the way that the communications he had, the.
Speaker A:The interviews he had with scientists were so humanizing.
Speaker A:You know, they were able to sit with.
Speaker A:And it kind of spawned a lot of, you know, these scientists coming into spaces like comedy and.
Speaker A:And other places to just sort of sit and have a chat.
Speaker A:I thought that was a great, great thing.
Speaker A:Now, obviously, we've seen a lot of problems spiral out of that, and we could.
Speaker A:That's a topic for another day.
Speaker A:But media, I think, plays a role in this.
Speaker A:We talked about this at the beginning, stereotyping a scientist into this, you know, lab coat, whatever.
Speaker A:So whether that's news media, whether that's our.
Speaker A:Our movies, our films, you know, the thing that really ended up driving me nuts at the end of the COVID was trust the science.
Speaker A:Science.
Speaker A:This very condescending message that was coming from media.
Speaker A:Obviously it was coming from scientific institutions, but you heard that from the journalists all the time.
Speaker A:And then celebrities pick it up and all this, and it's just this, trust the science.
Speaker A:Like this blind.
Speaker A:Well, I understand what they're doing, so I trust it.
Speaker A:That one really drove me nuts.
Speaker A:So you can go from trying to humanize science to.
Speaker A:And show that these people.
Speaker A:So then you're reducing the threat from.
Speaker A:From the other side.
Speaker A:But then it's like, how does a scientist get to get to reduce their feeling of threat from the other way?
Speaker A:Because, yeah, scientists are watching the same movies that we're watching, which portray everyday people in everyday lives, you know, but you're not getting that same level of thought or same, you know, focus, I guess.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Is the, Is the way, you know, the Everyday person, that character is, is less of a, a stereotype.
Speaker A:That's, that's, that's thought about even when you're consuming media about an everyday character kind of thing.
Speaker A:I don't know it, it, it.
Speaker A:I wonder what, what you think of in terms of how to break down that, that trust barrier both ways.
Speaker A:Going both ways, I think or threat barrier, I guess.
Speaker B:I think localizing it helps as when I'm teaching my students and things like that is not to think about the problem too broadly or on a abstract level.
Speaker B:Because when you look at it on a societal level, that's again, when you prime thinking about groups, right that top of the mountain view, you start thinking about your grouping again.
Speaker B:And in a very polarized society like the US everything becomes polarized.
Speaker B:And so yeah, they'll trust in science as you say, becomes a polarizing thing thing because it becomes generally the domain of the liberal side of it, whatever that looks like in your country or nation.
Speaker B:They become the mouthpieces for blindly trusting something or not questioning.
Speaker B:And so then it becomes a liberal thing, a liberal elite thing.
Speaker B:And if you've ever met a group of scientists, you know, there'll be some liberals there, but there'll be all sorts going on, all sorts of.
Speaker B:So yeah, and on, on the outset, what I teach with my students is I try and get them to explore communication through community focused things like coming up with an innovation that directly impacts a local community, some a community they already know, a community perhaps they're already part of, and to focus on analyzing that community and how best to communicate with that particular community.
Speaker B:And I think, I think boiling it down similarly to a local level, a more concrete level where you recognize these people, you recognize their way of life and you see the fundamental crossover between you doing science in one building in the town and the rest of the town going on and doing their thing and the driver going out and driving and the person walking their dog.
Speaker B:And how does whatever innovation, what, whatever we're talking about in terms of engineering or science, how does that impact them?
Speaker B:And then how do you communicate with them about that?
Speaker B:And keeping it very grounded and very local is what I assume is working.
Speaker B:I don't know, but that's certainly how I come at from teaching because all good communication originates from, from an understanding of audience.
Speaker B:And so that's where I start with my students.
Speaker B:Let's understand the audience more and let's understand them in as much detail as possible.
Speaker B:And then, you know, later down the line we can think after we've done all this.
Speaker B:And after we've established that we're members of this community too, and they're the same as us, and I'm a human, you're a human, what more is there to say?
Speaker B:Oh, by the way, are these people deficient?
Speaker B:And also, let's talk about the extent to which knowledge alone and literacy alone is going to help.
Speaker B:And then often the answers I get back as well.
Speaker B:Not too much literally.
Speaker B:I mean, they don't need to know the underlying science.
Speaker B:I'm talking about a new kind of machine learning app I've developed about recognizing the birds in the neighborhood and things like that.
Speaker B:And so no, no, it's about other things, things and it's about building bonds and a shared experience.
Speaker B:And a lot of it is to do with enjoyment as well.
Speaker B:Because I think the deficit model also kind of robs science of a lot of enjoyment and us communicating the effective things about science, the things that probably really got us into science in the first place.
Speaker B:It wasn't the deep technical knowledge.
Speaker B:And for me, it wasn't, you know, writing the standard equation on a whiteboard or something like that.
Speaker B:You know, those were the bits that I ended up not liking that much.
Speaker B:It was the, it was, it was the enjoyment.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, as long as you think locally and you think, you know, similar to the way you're looking at it from the inside, looking out is humanizing, right.
Speaker B:That they're not all the same.
Speaker B:And of course they're not.
Speaker B:And the easiest way to prove that is just look around you right now.
Speaker B:Wherever you are in the world, look around you, look into that community, community, and start thinking about how what you do will impact the individual living next door and talk about that.
Speaker B:You know, don't necessarily worry on this societal scale because I haven't got an answer to that.
Speaker B:Don't come asking me about it.
Speaker B:But like, I haven't got an answer to the polarization issue.
Speaker B:And yes, Republicans are going to attack science, but that doesn't mean the Republican living next door is going to attack you or your way of life or your way of thinking.
Speaker B:You know, I'm sure they're a perfectly reasonable, intelligent person who are willing to hear something interesting about birds or the trees or a common threat that you both share.
Speaker B:You know, yeah, it's about just communicating on that human level as opposed to.
Speaker B:But it's very difficult nowadays because when most communication happens online, Online.
Speaker B:Online has, when we communicate online, it has a tendency to, again, push us back into that meta view and push us back into our groupings.
Speaker B:And making those groupings more salient to us.
Speaker B:And so I think just getting face to face is important.
Speaker B:That real intergroup contact between people, not just one way communication.
Speaker A:That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker A:And I mean, I'm glad you brought up audience because it's another thing that, that I, when I do workshops and stuff with students as well is like it's, you have to focus on the audience, you have to know your audience.
Speaker A:You have to understand what's important to them, what motivates them, what they're afraid of, what they might, you know, all of these things.
Speaker A:And that allows you to speak in common terms, common language.
Speaker A:You have an understanding, you know, you build that relationship.
Speaker A:And I do think about it a lot.
Speaker A:Like live events, science communication, like science live events, these kind of things is where you, in my experience again as a grad student sort of volunteering at the science center, the local science center, doing these things.
Speaker A:That's where you got like so many of these nice interactions where it was like we were doing something for kids, but you know, the parents would come over and just chat with you for like 30 minutes, you know, asking questions and wanting to know more.
Speaker A:And I think that that's something that people in science forget is that yeah, people do find this stuff interesting as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, there is that sort of, they get turned off by the idea, like we said, this, this stereotype, this, this implied hierarchy or this.
Speaker A:I, I've seen it in my own life with family members, you know, like intimidation.
Speaker A:It's like they're like, oh, that's great you're doing that science thing.
Speaker A:I'm not going to understand that.
Speaker A:So I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna ask you about it because it's gonna make, I don't know what their motivation is, but you get the sense that like maybe it, they're gonna feel stupid or they don' it, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:So those face to face interactions really are important.
Speaker A:I brought up media in my previous kind of question or statement as well because there was the other thing I was going to ask you about is this online.
Speaker A:Everything is online.
Speaker A:And it's almost like all of the communication that seems to happen between science and the individual, the public, let's say, is filtered through some kind of.
Speaker A:Of media.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:There's some kind of lens.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like even on social media, people, scientists that are doing the direct, you know, they're still putting on some kind of a show in order to get attention.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like to get people to actually.
Speaker A:And so that ends up.
Speaker A:I think those efforts end up resembling more being directed at the audience of a scientist as someone in that in group, like, you know, you're not really reaching out.
Speaker A:Other places we talked about, like news media, your films and stuff like that.
Speaker A:So I think it's really difficult without actually, like you say, physically going out into the community to have that, you know, reaction to build that trust.
Speaker A:And I, I often think sometimes it's, it's.
Speaker A:Especially when they think of news media and how news portrays science.
Speaker A:Again, Covid being the big example.
Speaker A:It's maybe not so much a trust issue, or at least the trust issue is being exacerbated by a.
Speaker A:What's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker A:But they never actually see a scientist.
Speaker B:That's true.
Speaker A:Someone never actually meets a scientist.
Speaker A:If you're watching the news, you're not seeing the scientists talk about it, you're seeing someone else talk about their study in a way that says you should do this or this is what you need to know.
Speaker A:This is, you know, they said it.
Speaker A:So that's why we believe it, that's why we should trust it kind of thing.
Speaker A:So this like this live interaction, this getting out into your community makes a lot of sense.
Speaker A:I think that's really.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, I think it's probably one of the only ways that you can see that maybe there's the odd, like I said, interview program or kind of show where you can kind of see.
Speaker A:And now again I'm gonna, I find myself, I'm back into that science communication outward and not the other way around.
Speaker A:But I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker A:I know we don't have answers for this is usually where I get to in these conversations is all interesting questions.
Speaker A:What are the answers?
Speaker A:What do we do?
Speaker A:But I love your, your recommendation of this, this real intergroup mixing.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think there are a lot of people working on that and exploring things like citizen science to get people involved.
Speaker B:I also did a study recently about that kind of unidirectional communication as well about artificial intelligence and found that kind of media richness.
Speaker B:And even online it still comes back to social presence.
Speaker B:And the amount of humanness that can be perceived even in a mediated context from the scientist does increase trust.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I think honestly as a whole and broad brushing globally, I think scientists need to look at communication scientifically to see what's known out there and to also say, say, you know, maybe not everybody has to be a science communicator.
Speaker B:Perhaps more people do Though I think perhaps scientists should start seeing that as part of their role, which I know they don't.
Speaker B:They often see it's completely outside my remit.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter.
Speaker B:But it's like if you're going to be a change maker, then perhaps you should be willing to put yourself out there a little bit more.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because I think that could really help.
Speaker B:But yeah, I think just localizing it.
Speaker B:But the media as well, I think the media do have some impact on things and it is a shame that most science has to be mediated.
Speaker B:And again, this feeds back into that hierarchy.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That it is such a privileged, socially distant group that should it be trusted or how does it really impact me?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so I think on both sides, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Speaker B:I think what works for the public would also work for scientists is this intergroup contact between the two.
Speaker B:And on a fundamental educational level as well, is continuing to tear open those gates and encourage more people to do science, to find the funding to allow more different types of people to bring in their knowledge.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because science is, it does follow a formula of kind of formulaic knowledge, but within that there's a lot of room for creativity.
Speaker B:There's even more room for creativity when there's even more different types of people with different types of perspectives mixing in there and imagining and coming up with things to benefit their communities and things like that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so I think it's a multi pronged approach, but I think it all starts with that getting more people involved in the first place and not being too prescriptive about what it is to be a scientist and broadening that perception among people.
Speaker B:People, you know, because I'm always surprised that engineers really don't see themselves scientifically, even though they're kind of performing science all day long and even writing similar sorts of journal articles and using the same maths and statistics.
Speaker B:And it's kind of like, oh, yeah, yeah, maybe it'd be helpful if you did see yourself that way because that's what you're doing, right?
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:I mean, I think we can kind of.
Speaker A:Yeah, let's wrap it up here.
Speaker A:That's a great way, I think, to finish.
Speaker A:I think it's a lot to think about.
Speaker A:And like I said at the very top, I think that I'm glad that I saw your work.
Speaker A:I'm glad you did this work where it flipped that lens because I think that is something that the science community needs to think about more, you know, is how are we doing this and not just from that knowledge deficit hypothesis.
Speaker A:How can I make it more clear?
Speaker A:How can I make it more understandable?
Speaker A:It's like, how can I connect to people?
Speaker A:How can I actually, you know, break down these, these intergroup dynamics that are playing out?
Speaker A:You know, how can I recognize when I'm doing that?
Speaker A:You know, when I'm maybe identifying too strongly and starting to think of the others as, you know, in this deficient way?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like, there's a lot for science communicators and scientists to think about.
Speaker A:And yeah, I agree.
Speaker A:It'll, it'll.
Speaker A:It'll.
Speaker A:It'll have an effect in getting more people in and then also building trust.
Speaker A:I mean, I assume.
Speaker A:Yeah, but like you said, we need to put it.
Speaker A:We need to put a scientific lens to it.
Speaker A:But hey, we can't.
Speaker A:You can't do all the studies in one in one year.
Speaker A:You got a summer holiday to enjoy, so.
Speaker B:A grain of sand.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:So I appreciate your time.
Speaker A:I really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker A:The links to your paper and everything will be, will be in the show notes so people can find that work.
Speaker A:And yeah, I'll keep track of what you're doing and look for something else that we can, that we can talk about because I really enjoy the conversation.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:It's great talking to you.
Speaker A:As always.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening.
Speaker A:Thanks to the freak motif for the music and please rate, review, subscribe wherever you get new podcasts and we'll see you next time.
Speaker A:Bye for now.
Speaker A:It.
