Physicists have been notoriously slow to jump on the social-media bandwagon. Brian Clegg argues that personal blogs and sites such as Twitter are a force for good when communicating science to the public
The conventional media – be it newspapers or TV – often do more harm than good in their portrayal of scientific issues. Indeed, there is little evidence that the mainstream media do much to improve the public’s understanding of science. Broadcasters still feel it is necessary to have someone to speak against climate change to have “balance”, while we regularly see newspapers attempting to show that everything we consume either causes or cures cancer. The Daily Mail, for example, has published at least 20 stories about cancer and wine alone in the last two years, with headlines such as “Drinking just one glass of wine a day can increase risk of cancer by 168%” (23 February 2009) and “People who drink a large glass of wine a day can reduce their chances of getting bowel cancer” (18 January 2010).
Scientists themselves have not helped. All too often, communication from scientists to the public has been either sparse or so laden with jargon that it fails to get any message across. There is also a failure to understand that most people expect science to come up with “the truth” – a black-and-white statement of fact. Science, hedged with probabilities and error bars, needs a much more detailed conversation with the public than either the media allow or scientists realize.
Interacting or broadcasting?
The rise of new media is now making it possible to establish a broader range of communication, and to make the link between scientists and the public more interactive. Broadly, these new opportunities split into two – personal broadcasting with feedback, and interaction with a community. (I am excluding from this discussion members-only sites, such as the Institute of Physics’ MyIOP, which are specifically designed for professionals only.)
Interacting with an online community can be done through a fan group on Facebook, such as the one run by Physics World, or a dedicated environment such as Nature Network. Here, discussions can be built round topics of interest, allowing interaction between scientists and the public in a relatively unstructured fashion. A good example of this is the chemistry forum on Facebook. Here you will find everything from discussions of chemistry as a career to requests for answers to questions such as “Why does silver chloride turn black when exposed to light?”.
Membership of such a community, however, usually implies more commitment than just reading and responding to a blog post, and as such is always likely to have a relatively small audience. The alternative – personal broadcasting with feedback – is better developed than communities and leaves the agenda to the scientists. One of the first effective methods for scientists to communicate directly to the public was Wikipedia, where the science articles are often surprisingly well written and accurate. The article on the Big Bang, for example, has plenty of good content with many opportunities to click through to access more detail on related material. The open nature of the Wikipedia format means that much more information can be provided than in a conventional encyclopedia.
Although Wikipedia remains an interesting way to explain an area of expertise, it lacks the opportunity for feedback. This is where blogs come into their own. A science blog gives a scientist or science writer the opportunity to really explore areas of interest and to put them across to the general public. And because readers can then attach comments, conversation emerges between them and the blogger.
Most blogs are arguably more narrowcasting than broadcasting, typically reaching tens or hundreds of readers. But a good, consistently written blog will build up a following and can start to reach a wider audience. And, crucially, that two-way flow in the comments makes for a much richer form of communication – for example, take a dip into Science Blogs for some good illustrations of this kind of interaction.
Twittering on
This two-way interaction is taken to the extreme in the microblogging site Twitter. It might seem that any medium limiting the author to 140 characters is far too basic to have a benefit for science communication, but Twitter has two huge things going for it. One is immediacy, the other a sense of connection that is not present in an ordinary blog.
The immediacy is evident when you look at the way that Twitter has been used successfully by, for instance, the Planck satellite team and CERN to keep their followers informed of developments. It is like a live news ticker-tape stream – but much more personal. As for the sense of connection, the power of Twitter is its two-way nature. Regular Twitter users, such as the UK science minister Lord Drayson, are much more likely to reply to you on Twitter than they are to respond to an e-mail.
The personal feeling of Twitter makes it ideal for breaking down barriers between the science community and the general public. And though the 140 character message length is limiting, it is actually no bad thing. It makes us think about how we phrase information – essential when communicating. And it is always possible to include a website link in the Tweet for people to access more information.
Science tweeting
Do blogs and Twitter give a real benefit to science? I believe so. You only have to look at the confusion caused by the conventional media’s dealing with a topic like the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and the allegations of its links with autism. Those in the know were able to go to Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog and get an understanding of the limitations of the science involved. In the same way, the Bad Astronomy blog has covered a range of issues in the physical sciences, and more general blogs like my own introduce many science topics.
The best thing for readers of science blogs and followers of science Tweets is that they get their information from those who really understand it, rather than through the filter of an arts-graduate news editor. And though the channel may only reach a small number of individuals, it is arguable that good science communication with the public has to be multi_tier: popular-science books giving the detail and the context; science magazines and news media giving the headlines and features; and interactive online science via blogs, Twitter and forums giving the fine detail and offering the ability to ask questions.
Of course, there is one significant problem with using the Internet to communicate science: anyone can write online about science subjects. If we are to encourage the public to get information in this way, then they also need to be aware of the importance of knowing where the information is coming from. There are two broad mechanisms for this.
The first is “official” blogging and Tweeting. If, for instance, I sign up for a Twitter feed from CERN, I am pretty sure I will get good information. The second is peer recommendation. I follow a law-related blogger called Jack of Kent who has been hugely informative on the libel trial of the physicist-turned-science-writer Simon Singh. Singh has been sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association for an article in the Guardian where he claimed the organization promoted “bogus” treatments. The Jack of Kent blog and Twitter feed have provided detailed information on the case and rallied supporters. I do not know Jack of Kent nor is he “official”, but the strength of recommendation from others that I trust on their blogs and Twitter feeds made it likely that he would be a good source.
Benefits of blogs
So if the electronic media, particularly blogging and Twitter, are valuable, what should physicists be doing about it? We ought to encourage more scientists to make use of these media to communicate directly with the general public. It does not have to take up a lot of time. If you are at CERN or the European Space Agency, then you have a communications team to help, but there is no reason why individual scientists should not build their own following online.
However, before plunging in, would-be science communicators should get a feel for best practice. Internet science communication is most effective when informal and phrased with a good eye for what is interesting, rather than just technically correct. Such writing needs an enticing story-like structure (Twitter can then act as an attention-grabbing headline for a blog post on the subject). And perhaps most importantly, it needs to be phrased on a level with the readers, rather than talking down to them. Some science bloggers, for instance, do not hesitate to describe anyone who disagrees with them on evolution as stupid. Taking this attitude turns a wide section of the audience against the writer, whether or not they agree with the science. Being condescending is no way to communicate.
Without good communication, we get poor public awareness, lack of support for science funding, and, worst of all, no understanding of what science is and why it is so important. Internet science is a 21st-century version of the kind of personal communication that the Royal Institution manages so well in its public lectures. It is an opportunity that should not be missed.
