Christina this is an incredible piece! You’ve put into words so many feelings that I’ve had the past few years but have been unable to really verbalize. Thank you for writing this.
Love this. There is an insidious hypocrisy when a scientist balks at being questioned by a layperson. Science is defined by questions and the balking is a symptom of arrogance.
Yes! I think there’s a way that we emotionally interpret questions as threats and challenges to our authority and expertise, which makes the response defensive and the whole interaction goes catastrophically off the rails after that. The best scicomm advice I have is to notice and work on those emotional triggers so that you can treat any question with openness and curiosity rather than hostility!
What a good piece, Christina! I've been a high school kid that time, in kind of an immediate geography to Chernobyl, in a country where the access to information was under the total control of the communist authorities, so no segment of the public was aware about the facts and their potential consequences. We've just been surprised by a "visit" of our high school medical team forcing us to swallow a suspicious teaspoon of liquid they presented as an iodine solution. No scientific explanation of the context for this treatment, the risks we've been exposed to or, at least, what actually happened in USSR...
It all happened in a period when the scicomm could have only relied on the official, communist channels. In a period when the sociology academic departments were simply inexistent, following political decissions.
On other hand, around 40 years later, with all the social media channels fully available I am not sure that the general population is ready to receive crisis communication coming from scientists. In many cases, at least here in Eastern Europe, the COVID pandemic period was a time of misinformation and communication failure.
In my opinion, science should be communicated permanently, not only when things get extreme...
Not sure how I stumbled into this Substack……., but I congratulate the author on this well constructed, very informative article. I learned a lot. Thanks.
Christina this is an incredible piece! You’ve put into words so many feelings that I’ve had the past few years but have been unable to really verbalize. Thank you for writing this.
Thanks Kiara!!
Love this. There is an insidious hypocrisy when a scientist balks at being questioned by a layperson. Science is defined by questions and the balking is a symptom of arrogance.
Yes! I think there’s a way that we emotionally interpret questions as threats and challenges to our authority and expertise, which makes the response defensive and the whole interaction goes catastrophically off the rails after that. The best scicomm advice I have is to notice and work on those emotional triggers so that you can treat any question with openness and curiosity rather than hostility!
What a good piece, Christina! I've been a high school kid that time, in kind of an immediate geography to Chernobyl, in a country where the access to information was under the total control of the communist authorities, so no segment of the public was aware about the facts and their potential consequences. We've just been surprised by a "visit" of our high school medical team forcing us to swallow a suspicious teaspoon of liquid they presented as an iodine solution. No scientific explanation of the context for this treatment, the risks we've been exposed to or, at least, what actually happened in USSR...
It all happened in a period when the scicomm could have only relied on the official, communist channels. In a period when the sociology academic departments were simply inexistent, following political decissions.
On other hand, around 40 years later, with all the social media channels fully available I am not sure that the general population is ready to receive crisis communication coming from scientists. In many cases, at least here in Eastern Europe, the COVID pandemic period was a time of misinformation and communication failure.
In my opinion, science should be communicated permanently, not only when things get extreme...
Not sure how I stumbled into this Substack……., but I congratulate the author on this well constructed, very informative article. I learned a lot. Thanks.