IMS_Blog

From this Physics Today article and originally seen various places around the web:

Obviously due to coming from a paper discussing how to talk about climate change the phrases are those that would tend to turn up in such a discussion but some of them are certainly much more widely applicable and it doesn’t take much effort to think up others. This is one of the great problems with science communication, possibly increasingly so in these media frenzy rich times when any “descenting” voice is given the same weight as majority opinion (and finds an easy outlet in the internet). scientists use terms in their communications because that is what they mean, and in general are careful about the terms and words they choose. The problem is that taken away from that context the precision is lost so that what was an exacting phrase becomes a source of confusion.

The obvious solution to this is to try and communicate beyond the high towers of science with words the public will understand in a natural way. This seems to me a double edged sword however. While it may lead to a better comprehension and less of a feeling of alienation there is also the increased risk of misunderstanding due to that very loss of accuracy—this can happen to the point that what is actually a clear cut point can become bogged down in what is actually an argument over semantics.

Something else which comes across from reading the article (well worth five minutes of your time if you care about PUS is how when dealing with the public we need to break of our normal shackles of discretion. Scientists are used to couching everything in a web of caution. We place error estimates on our numbers, add numerous caveats, talk about “probably” and the like (look how even the summary for policy makers of the Contribution of Working Group I to the IPCC says Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. (additional emphasis mine). Perhaps it is time to throw of the constraints and be more positive, simply stating what all the evidence indicates without all the rest of it (and ignore that this may cause longer term problems given that one of the ways to spot a crank is that they don’t tend to bother with this cautiousness).

In conclusion, communicate clearly, but be careful to still say what you mean!

As a further thought this does all remind me somewhat of how we learn to “read” papers. See for instance this list of actual meanings (I’m sure there are others around; that was just the first my googling turned up). I’m pretty convinced that one of the major barriers to science study and understanding is actually getting used to the language.

Simple enough physics, cool results:

More info

Doug Natelson over at Nanoscale Views makes good points on lab habits (particularly the first four points on his list). It’s sort of what I was getting at here (could have sworn I’d touched on the topic more extensively but I can find no trace…and don’t have any notes).

I still think this is one of the hardest things to convey to undergraduate science students (and, yes, probably guilty as charged myself your honour). The number of times I’ve seen undergrads present their “lab book” for examination, all very neat and tidy. When questioned they inevitably say something like “Oh, I wrote it up neatly later.” Getting them to understand that no one is going to take marks away for an untidy, scribbled on, complete with crossing out book seems impossible. I’ve always thought a useful exercise would be to something like having them try and write it up months later, or better, perhaps the first task of second year should be to repeat an early first year lab experiment with no guidance other than their own notes from doing it…

Continue reading the rest of this post

Doug Natelson over at Nanoscale Views makes good points on lab habits (particularly the first four points on his list). It’s sort of what I was getting at here (could have sworn I’d touched on the topic more extensively but I can find no trace…and don’t have any notes).

I still think this is one of the hardest things to convey to undergraduate science students (and, yes, probably guilty as charged myself your honour). The number of times I’ve seen undergrads present their “lab book” for examination, all very neat and tidy. When questioned they inevitably say something like “Oh, I wrote it up neatly later.” Getting them to understand that no one is going to take marks away for an untidy, scribbled on, complete with crossing out book seems impossible. I’ve always thought a useful exercise would be to something like having them try and write it up months later, or better, perhaps the first task of second year should be to repeat an early first year lab experiment with no guidance other than their own notes from doing it…

Continue reading the rest of this post

We really need to get that Mars programme rolling to go and bring the poor little rover home^*. Seriously though; given it was supposed to last 90 days, it’s been one hell of a successful mission!

It’s just possible that my youth may have been overly influenced by such things as Short Circuit, Doctor Who’s K9, and friendly robots like Twiki. I think that Spirit deserves to be brought home, or at least have a museum built around it so the nasty Martian dust won’t bother its solar cells.