One of the largest problems that science has had is a lack of real communicators. Most of the prominent anti-science leadership comes from mass communication specialties: talk radio, politics, and clergy in fundamentalist religion. These people have a command of language and oratory, and a deft ability to manipulate language...

Scientists, on the other hand, tend to be numbers and equation oriented people. Dense factoids and jargon blasts make reading most science journals impossible for people without college educations. Rather than expecting people to crawl forward and say "I'm too stupid to understand you", it would be in the interest of scientists to actually try to consider the little people. Talking above a person's head is a sure way of pissing him/her off, and that makes them more susceptable to the idiot talking head that decries the "conspiracy of evil scientists" (or whatever).

It boils down to this... People pay attention when you talk to them. If you're speaking a language they don't understand, then you aren't talking to them and they won't pay attention.

The best thing scientists can do is to hire some language and mass communication specialists and actually translate their discussions for the common people. A real chance was missed during the energy bubble (don't worry, the supply issue is still there, energy prices will spike again as soon as the recession breaks, so you'll get another chance), when people were genuinely interested in something pertaining to the scientific world... but the only people talking were politicians, fraudulent "alternative energy" companies, and traditional fossil fuel companies. Scientists were debating furiously amongst themselves with jargon and math... but the people (who were actually interested) couldn't understand, so they flocked to the con men selling "water engines" and other complete B.S.

It's sad that most americans don't even understand what a scientist means when he/she says the word "theory" (a theory is NOT a hypothesis)... and it just goes downhill from there.

If you want to win the war against science, you need numbers... not math, you need people. In order to recruit people you have to talk with them. This should be step one.

Science has spokespeople who can expalin science so most anyone who wants to, can understand it. The Science channel is wonderful and full of science boiled down into layman's language so even the ignorant american masses can understand it. If they would only watch it.

Gee, if the science channel were good for anything but an insomnia cure .... maybe.

I think it's more of an education issue. For at least a generation, people have grown up thinking that they'll never use math and science, and our secondary/post-secondary system has done a fine job of confirming that. If you don't have the base knowledge to grasp what a scientist is talking about, no amount of advertising is going to help you.

There are actually many science writers out there who write wonderful, clear pieces for non-experts. Some publish books (James Gleick, Nancy Andreason, Carl Zimmer, many more); some write for newspapers/magazines (Olivia Judson, Natalie Angier, Ken Weiss, David Brown, off the top of my head).

It's up to individuals to read the work of these writers. Researchers in labs only rarely have the talent and time to become excellent communicators for lay audiences. Such communication, I think, is more the role of science writers. In many cases these writers are former or practicing scientists themselves who have the necessary skill and drive to also be translators.

Articles in academic journals (say, for example, the Journal of Chemical Physics) are specifically written for other scientists in the same field, with details of the experiments and analysis. Such articles will never be written for a lay audience and there’s no reason they should be.

In my opinion, beautiful explanations of all kinds of science are already available for anyone with a high school education and enough interest to spend some time reading.

So the question becomes how to get more kids interested in science and engineering from an early age. Wish I knew!

I think Americans form their view of science from mass media, like most everything, and mass media has done a pretty good job of showing group think at work in just about every human enterprise .. scientific consensus is group think for lay persons. Add to that that 80some percent of Americans believe in God, and that "scientists" never sully themselves by providing premises theists would accept, it's no wonder Americans are generally unmoved by science arguments.

tracker wrote:

"Add to that that 80some percent of Americans believe in God, and that 'scientists' never sully themselves by providing premises theists would accept, it's no wonder Americans are generally unmoved by science arguments."

At least when it comes to evolution, certain fundagelical strains of religion are a real road block:

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I used to be really excited to explain my research to people who asked when I first started graduate school. After awhile I got sick of seeing their interest wane after all of 10 seconds. Nowadays when I am asked what my research is I usually just give a couple of words as an answer (usually some buzzword such as "DNA" or "cancer" or "cancer genes").

The problem is this. How are scientists supposed to explain cutting edge research to the public when the public doesn't even have an understanding of the basics. How is an RNA enzyme specialist supposed to explain their work to a public that doesn't even understand what DNA does. It's very easy to say, "scientists need to learn to communicate better," but the actual task of doing that is the hard part. It's like trying to explain calculus to someone who doesn't understand addition rules, or explaining shakespeare to someone who can't read. Until we find a better way to educate the public at the primary levels about the basics there will be no way to bridge that gap.

I've seen the other aspect. I work for a company that honestly has a suite of new technologies which could dramatically help both the energy and environmental crises that are unfolding... and we're now looking for venture capital to develop these technologies. The end result will be a process that recycles waste CO2 back into fuel. (WindFuels)

When we began compiling information to advertise our process and the technology advances that make it possible (or at least efficient enough to be competitive), I faced immediate and unflinching resistance to the idea of making an accessable site. "The people involved in the energy industry will understand, and that's who we need the attention of right now" was the mentality... So for half a year I've been working to try to make the information more readable and accessable, and include information that may be "obvious" to some, though not many... and I've spent most of my time trying to explain some of these "obvious" ideas and facts. Looking at competitor, or potential competitor sites, its far worse than ours... The entire energy market is composed of people who seem to do nothing other than attempt to squeeze as much jargon into as few sentences as possible.

In March, I'm going to take a few months off to try to write a book about the energy crisis... my small attempt to get some of this "obvious" and "well known" information out there in a form that the common person might understand it. But while you may have genuinely tried to communicate with others what you are doing (I'll admit to having little to no understanding of the functional workings of DNA - but I'd listen closely to someone who tried to describe it for me out of interest), I've found many - especially in areas that touch on public policy matters or business matters - seem more interested in solidifying their credentials as authorities on the issue (jargon blasts and numbers) rather than honestly trying to communicate to a high-school graduate level person...

Of course, most of the alternative energy proposals are scams, while the traditional energy markets are very complex... and everyone kind of benefits from the average person (and the average politician) understanding less about it, so that my be the reason for my perspective and point-of-reference.

If you googled "WindFuels" and went to our site (www.WindFuels.com)... as I've won my share of arguments over the last few months, so the site is certainly more readable with much more basic information included... but what is there now is literally the culmanation of hundreds of minor victories, and the average college student would still have trouble with quite a bit of it.