On Research…

A matter of time . . .

There’s been a recent trend among the scholars and science communications’ practitioners to suggest that researchers and scientists should speak out more publicly in explaining their work. If more researchers were visible and vocal, the logic goes, the public would be better informed about the science affecting public policy decisions today.

On its face, that makes a lot of sense. But it is fundamentally flawed.

All things scientific have become enormously complex in the past decades. Grasping the implications that new research advances bring requires a basic understanding of the subject. How can the public seriously discuss the merits and risks of genetically modified organisms or stem-cell research if they don’t understand the basic biology of DNA, or how proteins and enzymes work in the body?

The gap between the public’s basic collective knowledge and the scientists’ understanding has become gargantuan. Bridging it requires more than just better presentation skills on the part of researchers.

But that concept – that scientists should learn to be better communicators – is at the core of a movement supporting “framing science,” and one of the country’s most vocal proponents of it, Matt Nisbet, is touting its benefits in an upcoming paper in the American Journal of Botany. A column last week in the respected Columbia Journalism Review focused on this issue.

The basic notion of framing is, as I understand it, that to effectively convey information to an audience of readers, viewers or listeners, one has to tailor the message so that it corresponds to audience interests. These “frames,” as they’re called, are the architecture by which information is conveyed, the structure around which facts and context are built.

In essence, the teller-of-the-tale determines the best path along which to lead the audience.

Where this seemingly logical approach falls flat is the fact that the “teller” plans beforehand where he/she wants the audience to go. That’s straight-forward persuasive communications, but traditionally scientists – and science journalists, for that matter – are supposed to be providing information, not swaying opinion.

In essence, doing so differs little from the current trend of marketing and “messaging” where a specific set of statements is continually thrown at an audience in hopes that with time and repetition, the audience will absorb the new mindset. As a tactic long used in advertising, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. In the area of public health, for example, it is the wisest and most effective method available. We want the public to adopt safe activities and actions – our motives are transparent.

But that doesn’t apply for most of the sciences where the object is to uncover information and make it available to all. This issue of the intent of the story-teller is problematic for science.

But that’s not the biggest problem:

Simply put, most researchers simply don’t have the time to enhance their communications skills and, if they did, few have the time available to undertake the kind of evangelism to the public that these “science framers” would like.

In my response to the CJR posting touting the Nisbet paper, I wrote:

In 2007, more than 6,000 researchers responded to a survey by the Federal Demonstration Project intended to gauge how scientists spent their time while working on federal research grants. The report said then that 42 percent of the researchers’ time was now “devoted to pre- and post-award administrative activities – not to active research,” and that compliance issues — adherence to regulations, and the simple management of projects — stole time away from their doing the actual science.

And the case here at Ohio State University, for example, seems even worse concerning available researchers’ time. According to Julie Carpenter-Hubin, director of Institutional Research and Planning, the results of a 2007 faculty survey provide a clear picture of the challenge of faculty finding more time for public engagement.

According to the survey, university faculty say their typical workweek lasts 57 hours (for assistant professors), 56 hours (for associate professors) and 58 hours (for full professors). All faculty surveyed were either tenured or tenure-track.

Assistant professors report spending 36 percent of their workweek on research. Associate professors say they spend anywhere from 21 percent to 29 percent of their time on research and full professors say 31 percent of their time can be spent on research. The rest of their time, they said, was spent on non-research activities like teaching, meeting with students and preparing for class.

Surprisingly, both associate professors and full professors said that they spent 1 percent of their time “talking with the (news) media.”

The question rests with how researchers should spend their time. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press showed that the public’s respect for scientists and their work was substantially greater than it was for clergy, journalists, lawyers and business executives, in that order. One assumes that it is the work scientists do that’s held in such high regard.

What’s worrisome about all of this is the notion that some so-called experts continue to suggest approaches that are unrealistic. How are research faculty supposed to find the additional time to devote to more communications when their average workweek already surpasses the standard American’s by 25 to 50 percent?

Scientists are not opposed to doing more science communications.

But they’d much rather do more science instead.__Earle Holland

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