Marie C. Cassandra

I love Alan Alda’s new mission in life: to improve science communication. On this episode of my favorite podcast Hidden Brain Shankar interviews Alan about this new pursuit and how he got into science education from acting.

While every single aspect of life can be (and should be) improved with better communication, the huge communication divide between scientists and the general public is getting us in a huge chunk of trouble these days. Look at the divisions in the US & the UK between the “liberal, educated left” and the “every man” with a huge rift in discourse. So much of that is the “educated liberals” that have access and the ability to understand science well versus the mistrust and misunderstanding of the “general public”.

From the general public’s point of view, they see headlines flying by – today coffee is good for you. Tomorrow it is not. The next day it isn’t. What are they supposed to believe/takeaway from this? Sounds like scientists are schizophrenic and can’t agree – doesn’t sound like they really know what’s going on at all! So “science” sounds pretty much just as credible as the snakeoil salesman down the street selling whatever various modern day equivalent of snakeoil is (Alkaline Water, Gripe Water, Vitamin B17, Jilly Juice, etc). Oh and if you are wondering what all those links are to – it is to the individual episodes of Sawbones. another one of my favorite podcasts where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin take you on a hilarious Tour of Misguided Medicine. They dig through the annals of medical history to uncover all the odd, weird, wrong, dumb and just gross ways we’ve tried to fix people over the years in a lighthearted, fun manner. It’s both education and funny. Best of both worlds.

So yes – the public dismisses science and scientists because they don’t understand some fundamentals of scientistic experiment and learnings. For example, a scientist will never rule out a possibility so will never, ever say something is 100% guaranteed. They’ll at best be able to say 99.9998%. And what people hear is “OK, so you are not sure.”

We need to improve science communication. It’s critical for our entire society. We need to move past IF things like global warming are a problem or not and start discussing the solutions.