A Talk About Talks
Preamble
This is the transcript of a talk I gave at the Cheltenham Science Festival - cleaned up and edited slightly for readability - which might be of interest to SciCom practitioners.
I was given a free hand, so, instead of talking about some aspect of science I talked explicitly about science talks. On the whole SciCom practice isn't overly, or sufficiently, reflective. As someone who promotes and runs workshops on this theme I used the platform to promote the idea.
The Talk (5 minute read)
In what follows I will build up to just one question. It is a question I have no answers to - that I have asked many times in private - but today I am asking in public. I am aiming to be gently, constructively, controversial - maybe I will ruffle a few feathers but that isn't such a bad thing - so here goes.
Scientists are familiar with having to justify everything we say, by citing our own or other peoples research - but only when that research meets certain agreed standards. This is hard work. But it is necessary to get what we might call 'credibility' for short. (Our 'warrant to assert' in more technical language - that is our intellectual right to speak and be heard.)
Scientific researchers are, maybe, a bit disappointed, even perplexed, when this doesn't work with other audiences out there in the 'big wide world'. But that is the way it is - our warrants to assert are really valid only among other scientists. And in practice it is even narrower than that, they are valid only in our community of discourse.
(There is an argument to be had about whether scientific credibility should work outside science - this is the argument that examines the role of 'expertise'. This is closely related to, but not actually what we are talking about just now.)
Along the way it is worth noting that people who aren't scientists do not have such strict requirements. Politicians, or celebrities, for example, can (and do) say things on the flimsiest of grounds and people do listen to them. (I know, I don't get it either!)
So what do researchers do when we make the move out into the wider world? Lots of things - but I will just mention the most obvious three to be going on with:
First: we can choose where we talk. Often we choose to talk only in places where the audience are self selecting - like science festivals, or in the media. There are all sorts of ways we can pitch our efforts so that the audience isn't actually very wide or 'public'.
Second: we can become more skilled at communication, verbal and non-verbal. We become adept at what is sometimes called code-switching - we adjust our language, behaviour, and appearance to fit into the dominant culture. One very popular strand is to adopt storytelling rather than factual presentation - but this is only one of a large number of techniques.
领英推荐
Third: we can promote the idea of celebrity - as we have already said, celebrities have an almost automatic audience. Science Festivals and many other activities are often, sometimes explicitly, about celebrity. Those of us who are not celebrities are granted a sort of temporary sprinkle of celebrity dust by getting our names on the programme!
If we hit all these points: if we are a selected or well known speaker, who has good communication skills, has a good story to tell, and has a self-selecting audience, then we don't really have a very hard job! This sort of opportunity has more than a suspicion of preaching to the converted. In my less charitable moments I am tempted to say it hardly counts as science communication at all - just a sort of parlour game for those in the know. It is however useful for building your own CV and for ticking the 'public engagement' box in your research applications. Careers, funding, and reputational enhancement predominate as motivating factors.
But there are, of course, bigger issues than these. Does any of this reinforce science's social licence to operate? Research money is ultimately public money - and therefore the wider audience are the people that fund, and ultimately have to sign off on, everything we do.
Finally the question I was building up to - and which we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to at least consider. To what extent do engagement activities of this type simply create more opportunities that are much the same? There has to be momentum to enter the 'big game' and not be stuck in the 'parlour game'.
Appendix: Disconnected and Rejected Material
Why do we do research? I run courses and workshops for PhD students and always spend some time discussing this - mostly, bless them, they don't have the slightest idea. Ultimately we are seeking the intellectual right to have our viewpoint taken seriously.
We have learned that it is not helpful to say 'listen to us because we are trained in research and we are likely to be right' - which is to try and take our academic warrants directly in to the community domain. Instead we simply use these warrants to get an audience and have to learn new skills to keep it.
Most people are happy to rely on expert opinion at least some of the time. But this is increasingly a dangerous strategy with experts increasingly called into question by those without any expertise but who do have warrants in the public domain. How do they get them?
It occurs to me that the recipe of getting and keeping an audience, consists of things close to the four barriers to progressive thought we were warned about by Francis Bacon centuries ago.
The things clouding your mind, stopping you from being a true philosopher, are:
It is an uncomfortable truth, but our contract, our engagement, with the audience, when we get one, is shaped around their idols. We exploit peoples idols and by doing so we unwittingly reinforce and validate them