Science Needs Public Relations
LiveScience had a great article on people’s interest in Science. However, I differ with them somewhat on the interpretation of the results.
The good news, which they emphasize, is that there are 60million Americans “intellectually curious”, which was interpreted as being interested in Science. The even better news, from my perspective, was that 47% of those who were passionate about science were women. Yay! We need more women involved in science.
The bad news was that over half of the people surveyed (55%) thought that science was not relevant to their lives. Ouch. The irony of this is that these people were participating in a scientific survey.
Apparently too many people still do not realize how pervasive science is in their lives: any communication more sophisticated than yelling out the window to tell the neighbor’s kid to stop stomping around in your flower patch is based on science. Same thing with transportation and medicine. Even advertising and TV programming all are based on scientific surveys of what people want to hear. (What do you think Nielson ratings are?) Perhaps the problem is that we are like fish in a pond: we are so surrounded by science that we take it for granted.
The fault is also due to scientists themselves. We are so wrapped up with publishing and debating the latest discoveries, things which will have no real effect on people’s lives for many years that we forget to talk about the “old stuff” which is changing people’s lives right now.
Know any good P.R. firms?
posted by Tom Bradley @ 12:10 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
I would consider myself in the Science with Passion group mentioned in the article. It's quite interesting indeed that a large percentage of women are passionate about science. You mentioned the fact that scientists are wrapped up with publishing and debating the latest discoveries. I have some questions concerning this. The process of "peer review" is pretty much a mystery to me. I have no idea how the science "heirarchy" for lack of a better term is even laid out or even if there is such a clear cut thing. How are decisions made as to what get's reviewed first and what is even legitt and worthy of review? Does the discovery of a lifetime get delayed just because it's at the end of a long waiting line? Who makes the call if something is pseudoscience or it has merritt? Are all scientific discoveries expected to come from scientists working for some institution or can they come from any intelligent individual? Just curious.
pastalavista:
Good questions. Here is what I know from my own experience and things I have read from others:
In short: A proposed article is first prescreened by an editor of the publication (who may or may not be very knowledgeable in the field). If it passes this, then it gets passed on to the peers (others in the same field who have established credentials, usually by having had research of their own published). These people (usually about three to five of them) do a technical review and either OK it, reject it, or require some changes in order for it to be up to their standards. If changes are required, the author can do them, withdraw the paper or explain why he does not think the changes are needed. Since scientists often have very strong disagreements, papers regularly get published with one or more of the peers objecting to it. This process is usually very fast in comparison with the time it takes to do the actual research. Publication is usually a matter of months while the research can take years.
The purpose of this process is to weed out the hoaxes (there have been some very embarrassing ones which have been published in highly regarded publications), the poorly done research and the stuff from people who don’t know what they are talking about.
The details: The prescreen usually does not try to do a technical evaluation of the proposed article. Instead the editor usually looks for indications of legitimacy. If one or more of the authors has previous publications, if they are associated with institutions which are recognized in the field or if they have advanced degrees from accredited universities. The more impressive the authors, the easier it is to get published (I have seen some stuff written by established researchers which I considered pretty much pure speculation, not real science at all).
If the author(s) is unknown with no previous publications, then getting published is much harder. The editor will likely look next at the references to previous publications in the field. If there are none, then the proposal will almost certainly be tossed. From what I have read, all the scientific publications have stacks of this sort of proposal lying around. Supposedly, Albert Einstein’s first publication would have been thrown out by this standard, but things were different back then: it took much more work to put together something and send it in for publication; no word processors. What the editor is looking for is references to fairly recent publications in the same field. She also looks to see if the format of the proposal is similar to previous articles. These things show that the author is familiar with what others have been doing in the field. If he is not, then it is very unlikely that he will have anything of real value. Poorly written stuff also gets tossed automatically. The reason for being so picky is that doing a good technical review of a proposal takes much work and is usually done for free. If a peer reviewer wastes time reviewing junk, then he is unlikely to be willing to do any more reviewing for this editor. So the editor wants to stay on the good side of those who are willing to do this work.
The reviewers are selected several different ways. One trick editors use (I have read) is to ask the authors of the referenced papers to review the proposal. If the publication is part of a conference (common), then the people who have submitted papers often review each other’s. This is all supposed to be done anonymously (the reviewers are not supposed to know the author of the proposal and the author does not know who reviewed his paper), but each scientific specialty tends to be fairly small, so people can often figure out who the author and reviewers are. My own experience is that the quality of the reviews varies considerably. Some people put much effort into the review and make useful comments, others just gloss over it and make stock objections. Any decent editor realizes this, so a well-written rebuttal to a reviewer’s objection is often successful (as long as they don’t all object).
Once the editor has decided to accept the paper, it goes into the queue for publication which I usually a few months. If the subject is interesting enough, summary information gets “leaked” out ahead of publication. This is why you often see things like “will be published in Nature in July” in the short science articles in the on-line science news sites.
I have to wonder what proportion of those surveyed --- both those who answered negatively and positively --- have an appreciation for what exactly is "Science". This lack of understanding is probably the more basic issue which gets expressed in the public debate of issues such as teaching intelligent design alongside evolution. This may not be anything new, but I wonder if our reliance on technology has discouraged the development critical thinking skills. "Push-a-button problem solving techniques" do not qualify as Science, and it may therefore not be surprising that Science is suffering while technology is simultaneously flourishing.
Thanks for answering my questions Tom. Your responses were very informative. Do the publishers like "Nature" and others have to have some kind of certifications from the government or other agencies to even publish these articles? Can an article be published by a govenment agency? Are some publishers rated higher than others? Do some have not so good reputations? Also I was wondering, do the claims made in various papers have to be duplicated in the lab before they can be published or can the article be published first and reviewed later? I thought any scientific claims had to be duplicated if possible. Do some scientists have the job of just duplicating experiments? Who funds all this duplication of experiments? Sorry Tom, I know I probably asked twice as many questions as I did to begin with. I'm just trying to learn more about the process. I can't expect you to know everything but I appreciate you answering what you can.
It used to be that the government did not control the publication of any research except the classified type. For a while just about everything had to be approved. (Worries about foreign companies “stealing” our research results). Things have loosened up since then, but I am not sure where exactly things stand now.
Funding from research comes to a large extent from the government. The defense department (DOD) funds all the military research such as for nuclear weapons and such, DOE (Energy) funds fusion and alternative energy research, and so on. Other funding comes from research foundations and private industry.
Independent publications publish research from any source. The government also publishes their research in their own publications and web sites. Some government funded research results are never actually “published”, but are available to any US citizen (sometimes for a small fee) on request (at least if it is not classified research). This sort of stuff is rarely worth the bother unless there is some special information you are looking for.
Most research submitted for publication is only the results of the experiment and analysis that the authors have done. Duplication (or refutation) of the results is left to others. I don’t know of any person whose “job” it is to check other’s results, but creative thinkers are fairly rare. Checking other people’s results or doing variations on a groundbreaking research is more common. (Funding is from the same sources as the more original research). I knew one very respected physicist who never did anything original, but did a very good job of checking other people’s results. If he confirmed something in his field, it was pretty much accepted as fact. This sort of experimental verification does not have to be done before the first article is published. The peer review is more of a check that the original research and analysis appeared to be done correctly.
The most highly respected magazines are the ones like Nature which publish the groundbreaking work from many different fields. Other publications are not usually considered lower in quality, but instead publish duplication or variation studies or research results which are highly specialized and only of interest to a small number of people.
Hope this helps.
Yes that helped a lot Tom. I am much more enlightened now. Pat yourself on the back because you've done at excellent job at "public relations". By the way if you don't mind me asking what specific field are you in?
Glad it helped.
Personally, I started out doing research in astrophysics at Brookhaven National Lab. I moved over to physics/electronics (cosmic ray effects on satellites and such) and then purely into electronics (I like practical stuff). Lately most of the "research" I do is learning about practical psychology/sociology. I am trying to figure out how to keep people/companies/societies from going down unhealthy paths. It’s been interesting, but so far I have not come up with much in the way of good ideas. Lots of work still to do, though.
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