Don't be such a scientst

Finally, reason for hope. There's a new book coming that would have saved the Roman Empire if it were written in Latin, published 2000 years ago, and if someone taught Caligula to read.

It's 'Don't Be Such A Scientist' by filmmaker and scientist Randy Olson. It's all about how to reach people with information that matters but usually comes cloaked in scientific mumbo-gumbo.

It'll be great, and you can pre-order here.

Of course, I don't really believe any of this, I'm just trying to butter up Randy and save $19.95 plust tax by getting a free copy to review if I promise sycophantic praise a la Hollywood.

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Green porno reaches out and touches you

In a way that dry facts can't touch you. I especially like the big, wet slimy foot images in snail sex (below). Isabella Rossellini delivers bug sex performance art like you've never seen it before.

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Global warming wake up call

No, not the kind you want...where people wake up and start to do something. This is a wake up call for those who think what's needed is more information in front of the public, or in front of our leaders.

In a fascinating experiment, highly educated and informed people were asked to respond to credible information about climate change. They failed. According to Communications Professor Matt Nisbet:

When presented with highly technical and science-laden depictions of a problem such as climate change, even our brightest minds with advanced specialized training often lack the required mental frameworks and models to accurately interpret, make sense of, and arrive at correct judgments.

What does this mean? Throwing more information at people is unlikely to result in smart responses to problems such as climate change.

Sorry for you scientists out there, the facts DO NOT speak for themselves. In fact, few things do speak for themselves in the public arena. Maybe nothing does, except free money and big, bad, scary threats that are perceived as personal, real, and immediate.

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Make people like you more

Or at least, make them listen to you. At blogfish, we know our readers have many important things to say, and yet you struggle to stand out among all the other ichthyologists at your AFS panel. Besides a sexy title, what will keep your audience riveted?

Try some of the tips Wired Magazine got from Nancy Duarte, whose firm Duarte Designs did Al Gore's global warming presentation. Trust me, Duarte Designs isn't cheap so these tips are a great value and it is shocking how many presenters still don't follow basic rules like "use a readable font size" and "face the audience." And if you think that's not you, have a trusted colleague watch your next run-through and give you the skinny.

Andy Goodman's "Why bad presentations happen to good causes" is another useful reference, and the many essays of Edward Tufte. Go talk about fish. Better.

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The goal of environmental awareness

We started something here, questioning environmental doom and gloom, and Rick has an interesting answer over at Malaria, Bed Bugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets. Along with a provocative picture (left), seeming to accuse me of dodging problems and spouting happy talk. In the comments on Rick's post, Max makes claims about my unconscious(?) motivations?? Oh really?

What is the gist of this dispute? I think this is a debate over the purpose of raising environmental awareness. Let's explore this with two unrealistic and extreme straw people.

1. The goal of talking about ocean environmental problems is to motivate people to fix them.

Or

2. The goal of talking about ocean environmental problems is to get people to understand them.

These two are not mutually exclusive, but they are different goals. I don't give a @#*&@^#*&^ whether or not people can pass a quiz on the real facts on ocean decline. I want them to get motivated to fix the problems. And I don't think redundant doom and gloom will build motivation, witness the Seattle Times opinion editorial that raised this.

Now I don't think Rick or anyone else actually wants people to pass a quiz, but sometimes enviros seem to act like that. We dump too much information on people trying to get them to understand too much about the issues. The view seems to be that people have to understand the threats pretty well in order to get motivated to solve them. And it's interesting to see complaints if people get motivated by celebrities or some other so-called fluffy approach that is emotion-heavy and fact-light.

This is what I'm after when I rail against too much enviro doom and gloom. We need to focus on building motivation, and scaring people with impending floods and storms is just not a good way to motivate environmental conservation. Our crises are slow and just not that scary. Extinction in 100 years for a whale? Yawn. Storms will get worse and they might flood your house. Click (the sound of the channel being changed). Scare tactics work better for things that are imminent. It worked (for awhile) regarding terrorism after 9/11, because we saw the threat was all too real.

Building environmental solutions over the long term will not happen through fear and scaring people. Sorry, not gonna happen. We need something better.

It's ironic that people can talk about how it's wrong to "soften" the message or otherwise focus on building motivation rather than delivering doom and gloom. What's the goal anyway?

This is not to pick on Rick. He has the right idea, and we're really pretty close in what we'd prescribe. But he does let the "don't soften the blow" criticism infect his message, and that's one place where I think he's a bit off track.

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Sherman's Lagoon on saving sharks

Want to know what can happen to a shark if he's not careful? See what happens to Sherman of Sherman's Lagoon as he gets his fins sliced off, reattached, and lives through the whole ordeal, as Sherman's Lagoon takes a stand for saving sharks.

Here's the opener from last Sunday, and if you go to the Sherman's Lagoon website you can watch Sherman's adventure over the next week (April 14-20, 2008). I don't want to spoil it for you, but it does involve an online bidding site (see toon above--Sherman tries to get his fins back).

In the real ocean, most sharks aren't so lucky and getting their fins sliced off is a one way trip to death. Too many sharks are getting killed for their fins, and courageous cartoonist Jim Toomey is to be congratulated for taking a very public stand for shark conservation, in addition to writing a very funny comic strip.

Thanks Jim. I've always wondered what cartoonists are like, and I had the privilege of meeting Jim and finding out. He's a really funny guy, no kidding! Dinner with Jim is an adventure.

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The false battle between truth and persuasion

It’s interesting and a bit unfortunate to watch the battle currently raging over communicating science. This battle has now devolved into a false battle between truth and persuasion, as though they're mutually exclusive.

It's possible and desirable to use smart communication and accurate persuasion to build public support and acceptance of science, and to strengthen the role of science in public policy. I'm amazed that so many scientists don't wanna go there.

The truth vs. persuasion battle has turned into a shouting match (see post and comments), as scientists, communicators, and communication scientists debate the best way to respond to the anti-evolution and anti-science movie that opened last week, Expelled (No Intelligence Allowed).

Many scientists want to debunk the movie and leave it at that. They seem to believe that it’s wrong to do anything other than speak the truth and hope for the best.

This is most obvious in the science blogosphere, where most science bloggers seem to be wrapped around the axle of truth. Their version of defending truth has put us in the position of ignoring other needs such as winning hearts and minds. And truth, by itself, is only a weak approach to winning hearts and minds, no matter how much science bloggers may wish it to be otherwise. Hoping to change that is a quixotic struggle, with a misguided motivation.

Why do some defend this version of truth so vehemently? It seems that too many scientists view defending truth as the be-all and end-all of being a scientist. Any other task is wrong and beneath us. Who cares if we can build support for science by being persuasive, because that would be an illegitimate success.

What is the relationship between defending truth and being persuasive? Are they really at odds, as many scientists seem to believe? No. It's possible to be accurate AND persuasive. That's the challenge in front of us, and too few seem to recognize that. Several who have tried to point this out are getting attacked, including Matt Nisbet, Chris Mooney, and Randy Olson.

Why do many scientists seem to believe that truth and persuasion are at odds? That's a tough question, and here's my suggestion for an answer.

Most scientists cling too tightly to our preferred method (simple truth statements) because we’re afraid of the slippery slope of trying to persuade. We fear that trying to persuade means accepting that “the end justifies the means.”

But if we use the science of communication, we can be persuasive while still being accurate. If nothing else, we can select what is persuasive from a list of different simple truth statements. Or, if it’s not too scary, we can actually build persuasive materials that are also true. We can parse carefully in communication science, just like we all parse carefully within our specialties.

It’s strange that most of us can split hairs so finely in our specialties, but bluntly refuse to engage in or even tolerate such fine distinctions when we get outside of our specialties. This problem seems to be rooted in how we’re trained and how we get comfortable with certain approaches and tools.

To succeed as scientists, we’re forced to get really, really good at parsing ideas and data in our specialties, and it’s hard to get there. But that’s where success resides, so that’s where we all aim. It works. But what happens when we seek to go outside of that comfort zone?

Outside of our specialties, life gets challenging. Either we’re babes in the woods with little expertise, or we take the risk of using comfortable approaches in a new field where they’re relatively untested. Success may follow, but mistakes should not be a surprise.

How does this apply to anti-science outreach like Expelled? Debunking is an adequate response within scientific endeavors, but it’s only a partial response to Expelled. Relying on debunking alone is misapplying a particular scientific approach. To supplement debunking, we need lots of accurate and engaging outreach that speaks well to large, diverse audiences. We need more movies like Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos. And they need to be fun, not just crotchety attacks on the products of others.

Persuasion has the goal of getting people to change their minds, and simply stating the truth (like debunking Expelled) is one possible approach that may not be maximally effective. However, stating the truth is the preferred method of scientists, and dropping the method is unacceptable even if it’s persuasive. It’s a clash of goal vs. method and there’s no right answer. Overemphasis of either can turn into a major stumble.

It’s not ok to lie to persuade people that evolution is real, and scientists are justifiably worried about this risk (the worry that the end justifies the means). But many scientists fail to notice that we can make another important error if we cling too tightly to simple truth statements because we’re afraid of the slippery slope of trying to persuade. We can end up indirectly encouraging people to believe in intelligent design, because we’re unwilling to buckle down and learn the science of communication and use it in service of accurate persuasion.

In case you wonder why I feel capable of speaking to this subject...my thoughts come from my experience as a trained scientist and subsequent experience as a communicator and persuader. I learned science successfully, published two papers in Science as a first author from my thesis research, and got a tenure-track professor job. Thus, I believe that I know the science side of this very well. Subsequently, I quit academia and I’ve spent the last 15 years learning how to do conservation work. I’ve learned a lot about persuasion in that time, and it was a long, hard learning process. Not unlike my science training. Others like Randy Olson have similar tales of dual training, science and persuasion. And experts like Matt Nisbet pursue the science of communication and have a lot to teach us if we’re willing to listen.

It’s interesting and ironic to see so many scientists get so worked up regarding the false battle between truth and persuasion. If you take the time to get fluent in both, I think you’ll see that there’s really no problem. We can be truthful persuaders and do a much better job of building support for science and strengthening the role of science in public policy. And we don't need to be afraid of the slippery slope that heads downhill to spin and lying.

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Strange internet black holes that suck data

Ever have trouble getting your daily blogfish? Now we know why, startling new virtual "black holes" in the internet can suck in data and block communication.

The newly-discovered black holes last longer than 15 minutes and are found by tracking incidents of "partial reachability," where a particular site on the internet is reachable from some computers but not others. This means the site is working, but blocked from access by some users.

The strange virtual black holes open and close, and are now being mapped by a University of Washington research team, using the aptly named Hubble tool. See sample map above right or click to get a more detailed real-time map. At the Hubble link you can also check the status of your site, to see whether someone can't reach you!

Now I'm ready to look for virtual biology like internet sharks and virtual hagfish.

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Seafood Summit-rebranding sustainable seafood

What shall we call the ocean product formerly known as sustainable seafood? Chef Barton Seaver has a tongue-in-cheek answer and it's a mouthful.

And then we can get back to the food odyssey in Barcelona...

Seaver (top left) has Hook in Washington DC, a marvelous sustainable seafood restaurant. He spoke on a panel with chef Gerard Viverito and the two of them made a pitch for making sustainable seafood work better, for more people, and with a sense of celebration.

Seaver noted that the organic food movement has lost some of its original ethos, and made a suggestion for keeping sustainable seafood in touch with the real issues. It was a delightful suggestion for rebranding sustainable seafood that did a great job capturing the difficulty of the task. His solution, reprinted in it's entirety:

Autochthonous environmentally or ecologically friendly (define friendly) seafood or other such pleasures derived from comestible experiences formerly relating to the ocean, whose social value extends beyond the law of commons to ensure an enduring experience for all involved...

...not compromising the habitat or seafarer’s ability to adequately provide for his/her family, while providing a tax base for globalization within & without of communities (define communities) as it relates to global well-being of the commodity heretofore to be called “FISH” as presented in Exhibit A through...

...as a product meant to capture desires, both primal & ideological, of a consumer base (define consumer base) in a market setting (define market setting) so the end result sustains human life with a sense of enjoyment.

OK, so the product formerly known as sustainable seafood now has a much more encompassing definition a la Seaver. Then, getting a bit more serious, he offered this comment on reality:

The range of possible interpretations is infinite. How a word is defined falls short of how we define our actions. At the heart of the matter is that sustainability is not an environmental concern, but a social one.

Well said, Barton.

This is not to slight Gerard Viverito, he offerd a very engaging presentation on the need for people to become educated and informed, and he called upon well-funded advocacy groups to quit trying to use people (e.g. chefs) as tools in achieving political goals. Instead, he asks all of us to keep it real for people like chefs, quit offering simple answers, and recognize the many viewpoints and issues involved in the highly complex sustainability-sphere. In summary, he wants more optimism and participation in advancing sustainability.

Gerard's presentation is available on Ocean Commotion, the blog from Passionfish, which is one of his many passionate activities. I suggest that everyone read his presentation, at least twice, it speaks volumes and says it very well.

To complement these great presentations, I offer my own synthesis of several different presentations, including the final panel member Stephen "Mr. Fish" Potter of the Hastings Borough Council, who explained the efforts of a small fishing port to rebrand their products as sustainable and thus build value for the fish and the fishing community.

At risk of offending Gerard Viverito, I'll blithely speak in a soundbite in the hope of finding a big picture value-laden goal to remember. That means here's my take-home message so far:

"Sustainability is a journey, the path taken is important, and there is no single destination."

Thus spake blogfish, from an inspiring conference in a beautiful city.

Now on to more "autochthonous environmentally or ecologically friendly (define friendly) seafood or other such pleasures derived from comestible experiences formerly relating to the ocean..."

It seems that the quest for molecular gastronomy will prove ultimately futile, so abandoning single goals, and appreciating the journey, I plan to ramble La Rambla and thus seek autochthonous pleasures.

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Controversy over finding of high mercury in NY tuna sushi

High mercury levels are found in tuna sushi, says the NY Times. It's so bad that the FDA could take legal action to stop the sale of the fish. It's a story that strikes fear into the hearts of some seafood lovers and probably everyone who sells seafood.

The mercury in tuna story was the number one most emailed story that day, so people are taking notice. This follows on a recent report of high mercury levels in swordfish.

But wait. There's a controversy brewing. The New York Times, that bastion of high standards, now stands accused of egregious misconduct by the National Fisheries Institute, the people who bring you fish. NFI is a trade association that helps seafood venders sell more seafood. Who do we expect to be more objective and less biased here, the NY Times or the NFI?

The NFI is coming out firing both barrels at the Times. According ot their press release, "NFI will be demanding an explanation from Times editors for how these basic breaches in the newspaper’s own standards could have occurred and will also be requesting a formal correction on specific errors."

Judge for yourself...here's what was wrong with the story, according to the NFI (excerpts only)

- There is little if any acknowledgment or explanation of the widely accepted benefits associated with eating seafood...

- The sourcing found throughout the report is almost completely one-sided...sources consulted are (mostly) experts with clear self-interests and or (biased) activist groups

-...Burros chose to have her Sushi samples tested by Dr. Michael Gochfeld. As part of his own work Gochfeld treats patients for issues related to mercury.

-Kate Mahaffey from the EPA tells readers that a rise in blood mercury levels in this country “appears” to be related to Americans eating fish that are higher in mercury. This is pure speculation...

----Environmental Defense is a political activist group with scant expertise in the medical science of food consumption. Burros...describ(es) them disingenuously as “work[ing]…to improve human health.”

-Throughout the article there is a sensational mischaracterization of the RfD (reference dose)...

-In mentioning the levels of mercury found in the samples tested Burros fails to explain that the FDA’s “Action Level” is a calculated estimate that also includes a ten-fold safety factor.

Do the warnings matter to real people buying tuna? A follow-up story in the NY Times found customers buying the tuna sushi anyway, including at stores identified by name in the mercury article. Reactions from customers included:

“If I become iridescent from it, I become iridescent from it,” said one. “I’ll glow in the dark.” Another customer noted “You could worry about salmonella in the chicken, E. coli in the beef and pesticides in the fruit.”

Some customers were talking about reducing their tuna intake, but it didn't seem to like a big deal to many people.

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Stinky Fish lives

Blogfish has a dilemma, I have a copy of the original Stinky Fish YouTube video. I rescued it from my browser cache and I was planning to post it, but now the strong negative reaction to Stinky Fish has me waffling. What should I do? Any help out there?

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Stinky Fish apology from the Marine Stewardship Council

Remarkable. Stinky Fish is here yesterday, gone today. Thus the short life of an edgy conservation campaign. If you ever wonder why environmental groups are conservative and cautious, this Stinky mess shows you why.

The Stinky Fish video is now a "private" video on YouTube, and I can't find a live copy anywhere. I'll repost if I can find it. WWF has the following mea culpa posted on their Stinky Fish page, along with a link to some boring outakes.

Fish do have ears. Seems I've kicked up quite a stink during the last few days. Some folks out there have shared some good points. And since we all want the same thing at the end of the day - sustainable seafood for generations to come - hell, I'd be a single cell amoeba if I didn't listen. With my movie debut offline while I talk to my Agent about the sequel, why not enjoy some outakes from the original film

Meanwhile, the Marine Stewardship Council has issued the following apology and promise of action.

On Thursday January 17th WWF released a short online video titled Stinky Fish to try to raise awareness amongst younger, web-savvy audiences about the problems of overfishing and build support for responsibly-caught sustainable seafood.

The premise of this WWF campaign was that while the seafood industry and retailers have already made great strides towards embracing sustainability, consumers – particularly young consumers – do not know much about the solutions the industry is backing. The campaign sought to use humour, irreverence, and satire to appeal to the online audience and get across a very important message in an engaging way. This approach is typical of successful “viral marketing” campaigns that are fun and quirky enough to cut through the plethora of messages out there and get passed around amongst target audience e-communities.

The reaction to the video and the main character has been mixed but parts of the seafood industry have reacted quite negatively in opposition to the campaign and have specifically asked for MSC’s position on the video and the campaign. Our position is as follows:

· This is a WWF campaign, conceived, developed and owned by WWF
· MSC has not provided any financial support to the campaign
· MSC staff were consulted during production and did believe the video could be useful in raising awareness and support for sustainable fisheries amongst audiences not usually reached through traditional communications

· We did not, however, foresee the negative reaction that the video and the main character would engender with our partners and colleagues in the seafood industry
· We regret and apologize for any offence given by the campaign to all those partners and colleagues in the seafood industry who work extremely hard to ensure sustainable and legal fishing that results in high quality seafood products in the market

Today, and over the preceding 48 hours, the MSC has taken the following actions:

· We have withdrawn the use of the MSC logo and we have disassociated the MSC from the Stinky Fish campaign
· We have communicated these concerns to WWF and requested that they take immediate action to address them
· We have removed any reference to it from our website and communications
· We have alerted all MSC stakeholders to this position.

info@msc.org

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Stinky fish campaign backfires?

There's a new "Stinky Fish" video making the rounds, it's an edgy attempt to use new media for conservation. See it while you can, I wouldn't be too surprised if its makers pulled it off the air soon.

Stinky Fish is an interesting attempt to capture some buzz for the very boring topic of overfishing (YouTube clip below). But...could Stinky Fish be a bit too edgy?

Stinky fish is a creation of the World Wildlife Fund, known more for their patient and collaborative style, along with viral movie makers Free Range Studios. The spot is fronted by a fish puppet called "Stinky" who harangues fish eaters over sustainability issues. It's reminiscent of your least-favorite ocean environmentalist who strikes fear into the heart of dinner companions who dare order fish. At one point, Stinky confides the truth that he doesn't even eat fish.

With Stinky Fish, WWF seems to have stumbled in going for the jugular and making a South Park-style pitch telling seafood customers:

“It's time to slap your appetites into line with your ethics.”

It's rarely a good idea to try to convert people with punishment. Unless you can promise something really good like eternal bliss.

Some in the seafood industry are complaining, saying Stinky Fish is inaccurate and misleading. It's true that Stinky Fish is not exactly promoting seafood. Stinky is supposedly trying to push SUSTAINABLE seafood, but Stinky isn't exactly pro-seafood and even his name says fish is bad. I don't think Stinky Fish will get anyone to eat more of anything.

For me, Stinky raises another point. Are we environmentalists afraid to say we love seafood? Even worse, are we afraid to love seafood? Well, let me be clear: I'm an environmentalist and I love seafood, and I don't see that one side of me should slap the other side around. My job is to find a way to elevate both sides, environmentalism and seafood.

Watch Stinky Fish in the video box below (double click the button) and let me know what you think. Good conservation campaign or lame attempt at humor?

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How lucky do you feel?

Which will it be, column thinking or row thinking? Don't know what I'm talking about? Well, then you're out of it.

Everybody who's anybody has seen this video and can talk about columns or rows. It's at more than 4 MILLION views and counting. Even if you've never watched YouTube, it's easy, just double-click the triangle and go.

It's a bit wonky, but do you want to be the ONLY one who doesn't know? You'll feel like that loser in Junior High School who...well you remember and let's not go there.

Watch the video, all the way to the end...and then change the world Greg Craven's way.

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Framing science: gossip trumps facts

What's the best way to figure out whether someone is likely to cheat you? Look at facts on their past behavior? Or listen to what others are saying about the other person?

A new study says people rely on gossip more than facts. Why does this surprise anyone? Facts never speak for themselves, and a good story will always trump a set of facts.

What's the value of a good story? A good story provides everything people need to make sense of information, including a relevant context for facts. Facts become the illustration that verifies the story. Naked facts are less useful since they require interpretation and analysis, which is a slow and uncertain process at best.

This adds to the debate over how best to communicate science. Since even questionable gossip trumps a set of facts, this study warns us about the futility of relying on "just the facts" type arguments. In competition with a good story, naked facts will probably be neglected or even ignored.

The study's authors were a bit disturbed that gossip can outweigh facts. But they shouldn't be upset or surprised.

Let's look a little deeper at gossip. What is gossip? Tittering junior high girls talking about clothes and boyfriends? Yes. But gossip is also important communication that builds trust networks and clarifies social behavior rules. In other words, gossip can convey important information. In some cases, failure to gossip can be viewed as a problem in social groups, because important information is withheld from those who need it.

This study reminds us that context is important for facts. A good story can trump a set of facts, so beware of relying on a set of facts alone. In fact, why not build important facts into a story? Embedding facts into a compelling narrative works with normal communication styles rather than fighting against them.

Will this study help? I don't think any of this will matter to a "just the facts" person. Why? Because the messy world of social communication has probably always mystified the type of people who find a safe refuge in the world of facts.

"We all know people who are not calibrated to the social world at all, who if they participated in gossip sessions would learn a whole lot of stuff they need to know and can't learn anywhere else, like how reliable people are, how trustworthy," said Sarah Wert, a psychologist at Yale. "Not participating in gossip at some level can be unhealthy, and abnormal."

The social context of communication matters, and this includes scientific communication. Of course data matters, along with analysis and conclusions. But also important are social factors such as the reputations of the scientists who publish a paper.

Is this surprising? No, scientists are people, often irascible people, and why would anyone expect them to avoid jealousies, rivalries, and stubborness? Do these social factors dominate? No, but they do matter.

So the next time you want to communicate a set of facts, try building them into an interesting narrative and see whether it works better than plain facts. Who knows, you may notice your audiences getting smarter.

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Seafood benefits vs. mercury risks

Seafood is good for you, and tasty besides. But mercury in seafood is bad for babies' brains. What's a person to do?

Conflicting advice leads to confusion, but there are places you can turn. Purdue University scientist Dr. Charles Santerre is my favorite authority, he offers clear advice untainted by bias.

I talked to Dr. Santerre in order to educate myself after some of my earlier comments raised questions, and...I learned quite a bit. That's always fun.

What's the bottom line? Careful consumption can make mercury risks minimal, and deliver the positive health benefits of seafood. Even pregnant and nursing women can support healthy babies by careful seafood consumption. See Dr. Santerre's website for details on what to eat, including a handy wallet card you can download and print.

For you biochemists, seafood offers healthy omega-3 fatty acids, including the necessary long chain variety (EPA and DHA). Under the right circumstances, our bodies can synthesize long chain omega-3s, but a typical western diet can hinder the ability of our bodies to make these fats vital for brain health and other needs. So relying on synthesis may be a mistake unless you're very careful with what you eat.

A recent controversy was created when a group pushed a new recommendation that pregnant women eat more fish than FDA guidelines, based on a study funded by the seafood industry. Now some health authorities are questioning that new advice.

Hope that clears up any confusion. In the future, I'll be recommending that pregnant women eat seafood that's low in mercury.

Now about that tainted science post...I still worry about the tainted science in the recent advice from the healthy mothers, healthy babies coalition. And now public health officials seem to agree. That doesn't change the fact that babies can benefit from seafood eaten by their mothers, so long as the mothers are careful to avoid fish with high mercury levels.

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Making science matter in public policy--framing

Last night in Seattle, Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney gave an informative and engaging presentation of their "Framing Science" work that has stirred some blogging scientists to react with great umbrage.

I was eager to hear the presentation and meet the speakers to see for myself what this controversy is all about. Last night's presentation was a thoroughly cogent explanation of framing and how they came to their conclusions. It included lots of supporting data and analysis, along with good and bad examples. I learned quite a bit, enough to see new light shining on some things that I thought I already understood fairly well. Lots to think about.

I suppose it helps that I've been studying framing since reading a consultant's report telling me to frame my work better back in about 2003. I didn't want to hear it then, and so I didn't. After about 2 years and much study and practice, I started to get it, and now the value of framing science is clear.

I won't recapitulate all of the issues and criticisms here. They're available online and can be accessed through the links above or a google search.

In my view, Chris and Matt are advancing the cause of getting public policy to be better informed by science. They're not out to undermine science or turn scientists into spinmeisters. They have a well-reasoned argument, some compelling case studies, and they're not saying they have all the answers. Afterwards, they expressed satisfaction at getting framing on the table for people who want to communicate science, and they're open to seeing the conversation evolve based on input and analysis from all quarters.

There's not much to object to here, which brings me back to the blogospherics. My best answer to why some people are upset is that framing requires scientists to drop superior airs, and that's hard for some scientists to do when they view the general public as deeply ignorant and ill-informed. Note to scientists: understanding evolution doesn't confer superiority any more than a silky smooth jump shot.

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The approach formerly known as framing science

Yesterday's post about Carl Safina's outreach to evangelicals on climate change has generated some conversation. That's a polite word for it. For more, check out Pharyngula, Evolution, Carl Safina's blog, and the Radula.

I raised the issue because there's much debate these days about how to get science to play a stronger role in shaping public policy, and some scientists think the answer is to attack religion. Others suggest "framing" science to (among other things) appeal better to religious people. And it's turned into a bit of a tussle.

Carl's outreach looked good to me, and I wanted to see how it looked to those who want to attack religion.

Interesting, they generally like Carl's outreach, but say it's not framing science to appeal to religious people. OK, I can see some common ground there.

Who cares what we call it, let's just do it. Henceforth, I plan to use the approach formerly known as framing. I'll reach out to anyone who cares to listen, using accesible terms and trying to build trust in the listeners, just like Carl. I'll connect first on shared values and also tell the truth about science. I'll make sure to be respectful while I say things that might contradict messages they've heard previously. And I'll drop the threatening language...no more f-words like framing.

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Framing science done by a master

Scientists opposed to "framing" science keep asking for an example of what framing science looks like when done well. Here's a very good example in Carl Safina's description of an effort to raise awareness of climate change.

I challenge PZ Myers, Jason Rosenhouse and other haters of framing to consider what Carl is doing and respond. And...for those who say what is this about...the question is how can we get scientific information to play a bigger role in public policy. Some say "frame" the science so people can hear the message. Some others say "framing" is wrong

This is especially timely in light of the plea from climate scientist Michael Tobis yesterday, asking

"Why can't scientists make themselves heard?"

and

"the central issue of this blog, is how legitimate science, not the institution but the body of legitimate knowledge that the institution produces, can establish trust in the political community, in competition with the cherry-picking that private interests are so good at spinning into a skewed story."

Answer: read Carl Safina's piece, and call him if you don't understand what he's doing. He's building trust across a cultural divide in hopes of getting an important scientific message heard. He's showing religious leaders first hand about climate change, and its natural and human cost, and trying to recruit them to help use the science and fight the problem.

So you stone-throwers determined to "defeat" religion and expunge "superstition" from our culture. Go ahead and shout about why nobody cares about science in the US if you want, but if you really want to change things (instead of just hearing yourselves rant), then go learn from Carl Safina about changing the world.

Way to go Carl, and thanks.

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Blog Day - new blogs for you to consider?

Today is the 3rd annual Blog Day. It's a day for suggesting new blogs to readers, in hopes of exposing people to new ideas, new people, new news, and new Gnus.

Here are 5 blogs for you to consider, don't know if they're new to you...all have a subject as a starting point for doing more...

Biomes blog - biology and more

Cephalopod centerfold - cephalopods and more

Effect Measure - human health and more

Hope for Pandora - science and more

The Other 95% - invertebrates and more

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