In any given week, the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is almost certain to contain at least one example of popular science writing--though some scientists or lay readers might dispute whether particular books qualify as "scientific." Controversies rage over the value or legitimacy of scientific popularization: do popularizations misrepresent "real science"? If so, is the misrepresentation an example of deceit or simple ignorance? Is it innocuous or harmful, and if it is harmful, whom does it harm?
A premise of all of these contentions is that scientific popularizations strive to be accurate representations of science--accurate, that is, from the point of view of scientists themselves, who are in a position to judge such matters. This premise certainly seems to be valid; after all, most of us were taught that science is the objective and methodical pursuit of truth, and that scientists are those people who have the intelligence and specialized training to draw meaning from nature.
But there is another premise, mostly unexamined: namely, that the singular purpose of science communication is to reflect accurately the scientist's knowledge of nature. That is, the scientist studies nature, formulates scientific meaning, and then expresses that meaning through science communication. If the scientist himself or herself communicates this message directly, then the message represents nature in its purest form, but perhaps not in a form that unspecialized readers can apprehend. Therefore, some mediation is required; the science communicator steps in to make the message meaningful to the lay audience.
Through this mediation, however, the message is inevitably transformed--and, according to the premises above, this transformation inevitably makes the new message less accurate, since the new message cannot possibly represent nature as directly as the scientist's own message. According to this view, the new, "public" version of the scientist's message is inevitably suspect, since it is inevitably at least one further step away. That is, the more a message is "mediated," the less truthful it must be.
Our view of the value of public science communication is tightly tied to our assumptions about how this "mediation" works, as well as what the mediation process is designed to accomplish. If we assume that the singular goal of public science communication is to accurately represent "nature" (here used as a metonym for "what can be known by science") from the viewpoint of the scientist, then we're forced to admit that we'll never actually succeed--that is, our communication will always be less accurate than that of the scientist. The best that we can do is to reduce the damage caused by this failure!
On the other hand, maybe the value of public science communication can be measured with some yardstick other than that of the scientist. After all, even the knowledge produced by scientists is a mediation of nature--it is nature transformed into the language of science. Scientists view a scientific message to be "accurate" if the message agrees with the scientist's prior knowledge and theoretical perspective; it is accurate within a particular domain of knowledge. Non-scientists live their lives in other domains of knowledge, where other measures may be more significant.
I do not mean to suggest that "scientific truth" possesses no value beyond scientific circles--in fact, nonscientists routinely value the claims of science precisely because they have so often found the results of those claims to be reliable. But the reliability of a message for a scientist (with particular plans for that message, as well as particular expectations and assumptions) is not the same thing as the reliability of a message for a lay reader (with different plans, expectations, and assumptions). (I am polarizing "scientist" and "lay reader" here, but I would argue that this same point could be made in regard to scientists in two different disciplines.)
I'll end this section with some questions--not altogether new questions, since we've already begun to explore them the discussions, but worth reconsidering:
See the supplemental material on modes and purposes under this week's "Readings & Resources" entry.
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