PRAJWAL KULKARNI

Rethinking "Science" Communication

Not anymore. Is it fair to think of theoretical physicists and
ecologists in the same way when scientists in the same discipline often don't even overlap?
At meetings of the American Geophysical Union, it always struck me that soil scientists are completely separated,
physically and intellectually, from space physicists. Even
within space physics, those of us studying near-Earth objects did not interact much with the folks studying Mars.
Sure we were all geophysicists. But I can't tell you the first
thing about soil science, and I suspect soil scientists would
say the same about my research. So how much do different
astyear, 8,411 science and engineering journals
groups of scientists really have in common? How much do
published just over 1.1 million peer-reviewed
we understand beyond our own specialty?
articles. Another 190,000 papers were published
in 3,016 social science journals. This works out
The dilemma only grows when we look outside academia.
to more than two peer-reviewed articles being
We tend to think of science as the abstract pursuit of knowlpublished every minute of every hour of every day for the enedge conducted at a university. Again, this picture may have
tire year. These staggering numbers should change how we
been true at some point. Today it's a lot more complicated.
thinkand talkabout both science and scientists.
We now have environmental science, science for inter^
national development, disability research, pedagogical reConsider that the smallestfield,marine engineering, pubsearch, science for policy, and science of policy. We use scilished 564 articles across 14 journals in 2012 alone. In this
ence to improve air quality in the United States and to prosingle field it would be difficult to keep abreast of the reduce cleaner cookstoves in Africa. Universities, government
search. It is all but impossible for materials science, which had
over 61,000 papers. After the Philosophical Transactions of labs, nongovernmental organizations, foundations, and prithe Royal Society became the world's first scientific journal vate companies all play a role.
in 1665, it took about 200 years to reach 3,000 journals.
Looking at how diverse scientific research has become, it's
We've added almost that many in just the past 10 years.
hard to understand what common phrases like "the scientific method" and the "scientific way of thinking" mean.
So what does it now mean to be a scientist? When it inConsider what should be a straightforward question: Does
volved a few European men studying a handful of topics, it
science involve experiments? At some point we all learned
may have made sense to treat science as a coherent idea.

Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming.

He said there couldn't be any more universal
philosophers. The weight of Icnowledge is too
great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time
when one man would Icnow only one little
fragment, but he would know it well.
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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that scientists use experiments. But is that always true?

Consider space physics. My colleagues and I often argued that you cannot experiment with the Sun because space
conditions change continuously. We instead focused on constructing models, making observations, and collecting and
analyzing data. To this day some of my friends insist that
we never ran experiments. To them, space physics is an observational science only That's a pretty powerful claim worth
repeating: Practicing space physicists believe they do not
conduct experiments.
So saying that science or the scientific method involves
experiments doesn't make any sense. Some fields of science
run careful, repeatable experiments. Areas such as atomic
physics come to mind. This type of research, where every
parameter can be diligently controlled, is how we usually
think of science. But some fields cannot do this.
The phrase "science proceeds by testing falsifiable hypotheses" is similarly imprecise. Sometimes hypothesis testing requires double-blind controlled trials. Other times it
requires computer simulations or observations. Is a doubleblind trial including real people anything like a computer
model of a simulated future? Sometimes we precisely monitor aU variables and make repeated measurements. At others we control just a few variables and do not repeat. Some
hypotheses are clear and are clearly falsifiable: I hypothesize that this solution is acidic rather than basic. Others depend on so many different branches of science, bodies of
data, and physical models that the relevant scientists cannot agree on a test, and falsiability is clearly not possible:
Did global warming intensify the last hurricane?
In this vein, consider the phrase "how scientists think,"
as if in some way we all think alike. As described in journalist Chris Moone/s book Storm World, the data-driven climatologist Chris Landsea, at the National Hurricane Center, weighs observations more than theoretical calculation
and is skeptical that humans can detect a link between global
warming and stronger hurricanes. MIT's Kerry Emmanual,
attacking the same problem, uses the opposite approach and
concludes that there is a strong link. This divide between
emphasizing observation versus theory goes back to the
founding of meteorology. Even scientists in the same field
wrestling with identical questions do not think the same way.
And then there's "the purpose of science," perhaps the
most perniciously misleading phrase of them all. There is no
one purpose to science. Scientists have purposes. They are
as complicated and varied as all human purposes. Some scientists want to explore nature, some want to prevent disease,
some want to create technology, some want to educate children, some just want to do their job, get paid for it, and go

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ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

home. None of these goals are more worthy than the others.
It appears that thinking like a scientist, testing a hypothesis, and conducting an experiment can have a different
meaning depending on the research and the scientist in
question. By themselves these phrases are vague and uninformative. Yet they are used in public all the time as ifthey
communicate something specific and essential to science,
as if they add up to a single "purpose." But they don't.
The world is a very complicated place, and we can't expect
scientists to apply the same rules and procedures to the millions of questions they ask. Scientists need intellectual and
methodological fiexibility. Certain tools and methods are
appropriate for atomic physics, others for space physics.
The problem is that these differences are rarely discussed.
Scientists instead typically give the opposite impression,
presenting science as uniform and monolithic. We promote
the scientific method instead of scientific methods. We discuss "how science works" rather than emphasizing that science is too diverse to work in just one way.
When have you ever heard a scientist publicly acknowledge that "the scientific method" is just a generic phrase
that doesn't tell you how to approach a specific question,
and may mean something entirely different for a subatomic
particle physicist and for an evolutionary biologist? Or that
not all scientists conduct experiments? Or, to go back to my
previous example, that observational and theoretical meteorologists think differently about the same problem?
Addressing the public
Given this diversity in scientific methods, how should scientists approach public communication? To begin to answer this question it might be helpful to first consider how
we speak and think about any large category. There are two
important principles to keep in mind. First, broad overviews
do not always help you understand particular situations.
Even more strongly, a specific claim can contradict a general
one without undermining its truth. The fact that Orange
County is very conservative does not undermine the generalization that California is a liberal state. These ideas can
simultaneously exist without confiict because they speak at
two different scales. The truth of one does not negate the
other; it only complicates it.
Second, the members of any category share differences
as well as similarities. All 50 U.S. states share common features. But there are also differences between Alabama and
California, between northern and southern California, and
even between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto.
Whether we emphasize similarities over differences, or
whether we speak in terms of generalities rather than specifics.

PERSPECTIVES

SCIENCE IS NOW TOO BIG AND TOO DIVERSE, AND ABOVE ALL
TOO DEEPLY WOVEN INTO AN ARRAY OF SOCIETAL ACTIVITIES EVERY BIT
AS DIVERSE AS SCIENCE ITSELF, TO BE CONSIDERED ONLY "SCIENCE."
THERE IS NO SCIENCE ANYMORE, THERE ARE ONLY SCIENCES.

depends on the issue at hand. A comparison between US

and British politics will use national generalizations and ignore the local distinctions between San Francisco and San
Jose. A housing search will take the opposite approach.
I suspect we all instinctively grasp these principles. We
have all discussed categories at different scales. We all know
that statements about red and blue states do not pertain to
everyone within the state.
In my experience, though, we scientists tend to neglect
these principles in our public communication. We overemphasize the broad generalizations and do not spend enough
time explaining the local distinctions. Science is now too
big and too diverse, and above all too deeply woven into an
array of societal activities every bit as diverse as science itself, to be considered only "science." There is no science anymore, there are only sciences.
Nevertheless, there will always be occasion for academic
scientistseven those, like me, who left academia after getting a Ph.D.to explain their research to nonscientists.
And these occasions may require discussing "science." When
we find ourselves in this situation, our use of language must
be meaningftil and precise. Our words should transmit coherent thoughts, and there should be no doubt about what
we are trying to say. In short, what we as scientists say in
public should at least be consistent with our own ideals, if
for no other reason than that we cannot expect the public
to do so if we do not. Though we exhort the public to use
evidence, to value truth, and to not distort, exaggerate, or
cherry-pick examples, we often violate these principles
when we discuss "science."
Consider again that standard nostrum: "Science is about
testing hypotheses."
How should someone interpret this phrase? Is it that all scientific discoveries occur because a scientist is testing some hypothesis? Well, we know that isn't true. Many discoveries
have happened by pure luck. Scientists can't test a hypothesis they don't even know exists. We also know that some research can involve nothing more than observations and data
collection without any conscious hypothesis testing.

Perhaps we mean only scientists test hypotheses? But we

know that isn't true either. Plumbers also test hypotheses:
They hypothesize that Draino willfixthe problem and modify their belief based on the result. You could argue that we
all do so sometimes: I hypothesize that restarting my computer will get rid of the glitch in the behavior of my mouse.
So if everyone tests hypotheses at some point, and scientists do so only part of the time, what's the big deal? Why
bother emphasizing it at all? And since a "test" in geophysics is so different from one in atomic physics, it makes
even less sense to use a single phrase to explain all scientific explorations.
And what's with "is about"? All the professors I know
spend most of their time applying for grants, managing
them, and sitting on committees. In academic science at
least, it seeins much more accurate to say "science is about
grant-writing and committee-sitting."
Einally, how can "science" do anything on its own, much
less test a hypothesis? Science must be done by scientists
by actual human beings.
A more precise version of the above might be: "Among
their dozens of activities, some scientistsalong with many
other peoplesometimes test hypotheses of various forms
in many different ways to accomplish their goals." This version is both accurate and understandable. Unfortunately, it
is not very interesting.
How can scientists paint a more accurate and interesting
picture of science? The answer is by not communicating "science." Imagine that sportscasters spent most of their time
discussing "sports" and nothing else. We would be left with
nothing but clichs: Sports are about hard work and teamwork! The keys to the game are hustle and good defense!
Fans rightly tune out such commentary. We are enlightened,
however, by deep, insightful analysis of a specific game. We
want to know how an injury will change team strategy, and
when they should run the ball instead of passing it.
Intelligent science communication should emulate intelligent sports communication: low on generic phrases, high
on detail and particulars. In this aspect, our public commu-

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INTELLIGENT SCIENCE COMMUNICATION SHOULD EMULATE

INTELLIGENT SPORTS COMMUNICATION: LOW ON GENERIC PHRASES,
HIGH ON DETAIL AND PARTICULARS. I N THIS ASPECT,
OUR PUBLIC COMMUNICATION SHOULD EMULATE OUR RESEARCH
COMMUNICATION: PRECISE, CLEARLY DEFINED, AND MODEST.

nication should emulate our research communication: precise, clearly defmed, and modest. When we have to make
generalizations, we should do so carefully and reluctantly,
with many caveats and as few clichs as possible. We should
acknowledge, privately and publicly, that any statements
about science as a whole will often be overly simplified and
not very useful.
Communicating about anything as vast and heterogeneous as either science or sports can be done only by glossing over distinctions and muting differences. But at least in
sports we know not to take these clichs too seriously. We
also have phrases that present a more complex and nuanced
image. We hear that professional sports are about money
and greed as well as teamwork.
No one feels the need to choose between these two views
of what sports is "about" because we understand that complex systems must be analyzed from different vantage points
and that there is no single way to encapsulate all of sports in
a few sentences. Professional sports are both a business and
a game. They involve both greed and hard work. Our appreciation would diminish if we forgot that these traits exist simultaneously.
Scientists, on the other hand, do not provide such competing images. We don't hear that science is about writing
grants as much as it is about hypothesis testing, that in some
ways science is objective and value-free, while in others it is
not. We don't recognize sentences with "science is" "science
is about," "science involves," "the scientific method," "the
scientific way of thinking," or "how science works" for the
vague, broad generalizations that they are. We don't see that
any attempt to explain "science," as opposed to one specific
area of science, will often resemble bad sports commentary.
To a certain degree, it's understandable why scientists
speak like this. Categories exist for a reason, and at times it
can be very important to stress the differences between science and nonscience. For all their difterences, atomic physics,
space physics, and ecology have more in common with one
another than with acting and literary criticism. At times it
may be appropriate to speak of these disparate activities as

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a whole. Because the authority of science is often abused

and misused, it can be important to stress a few general,
even overly general, attributes. But it can be dangerous to
take this approach too far. Almost by definition, a big-picture view of science will elide details and hide more than it
reveals. Perhaps most important, these generalizations have
contributed to making scientific authority more vulnerable
to attack than would a more honest portrayal of the richness and diversity ofthe scientific world.
Consider climate change, where a childishly simplistic
model of falsification has been so powerfully deployed to
attack the scientific consensus. Imagine a world where scientists did not continually intone phrases like "science proceeds by falsification" and "scientists change their mind
when the evidence changes."
Perhaps in that world the public would know that sometimes falsification is straightforward and sometimes it is not.
And that in any case the very term "falsification" is a broad
concept that must be applied to a specific researchfield.Perhaps in that world the public would know that there are distinctions between falsification in analytical chemistry and
climate science. And that scientists don't always change their
minds in response to every paper but instead look at the full
body of research. Perhaps in that world, the latest paper on
global warming would be viewed in context rather than as one
shot "proving" or "disproving" global warming.
Why doesn't that world exist? In no small part it is because we in the scientific community have fought its creation. And so we see the same dangerously simplistic model
of science invoked in endless debates over uncertainty about
the risks of nuclear power or the effectiveness of various educational or social policies. Politicians and the public seem
to expect that epidemiology or sociology can create the same
sorts of knowledge and levels of certainty that we see in experimental physics. We have told them that science is science,
and they believe it. And since we in the scientific community do nothing to elucidate the very real and significant
differences among the sciences, we are often powerless to
combat misrepresentations.

PERSPECTIVES

It would help to acknowledge our limitations as scientists. I am not qualified to discuss condensed-matter physics
even though I've taken a few classes on the subject and have
a Ph.D. in applied physics. For any field of science outside
my own, I always hesitate, speak carefully, and qualify my expertise. So how did I ever claim to know the process of "science"? How does anyone?
I know how strange this idea sounds. I understand how
hard it will be to swallow. Somewhere along the way we all
cultivated a false confidence in our knowledge and understanding. Something about our training makes us believe
we can speak for and explain "science." No one taught us
that in the year 2013, individual scientists are a minuscule
part of a $1 trillion, 5-million-person global enterprise. No
one reminds us that we contributed to only a few ofthe over
one million papers published this year.
To get a sense of how we might approach this problem
constructively, it might help to take the sports analogy even
farther. Perhaps we should consider ourselves sciensts in the
same way basketball players are considered athletes. Michael
Jordan rarely spoke for all of basketball, much less for soccer, cricket, or all of sports. Whatever his accomplishments,
his opinion was just thathis opinion. For all his greatness,
Michael Jordan was a small part of something much bigger.
We all would have a cramped and deeply flawed image of
sports if we forgot that there are hundreds of sports, all with
different rules and conventions, requiring athletes with different skills and abilities.

Each scientist too is just a small part of something much

bigger, offering only one individual's opinion among many.
And as with sports, we should not forget that there are
hundredsthousandsof sciences, with different rules
and conventions, requiring scientists with different skills
and abilities, using different methods, standards of proof,
and types of evidence. Any one of us can provide only a
single perspective.
So when speaking to nonscientists, rather than grandiose
proclamations about the scientific enterprise or the process
of science, try to make simpler, more specific, and more human ones about your own research. Your research, the particular scientific methods you use, the nooks and crannies
of your work, your personal journey to your own small corner of science are wonderful and awe-inspiring by themselves. They are the corner of science that, if you're fortunate, you love, and that you know well enough to explain
in a way that is compelling because it is your own.
If science is "about" anything, it is about scientists. It is a
profoundly human story. It is your story. If we remember
that, then we can all help the public gain a deeper, richer
understanding of science.
Prajwal Kulkarni (praj.kulkarni@gmail.com), who works as
an engineer for Intapp, a software company based in Palo
Alto, California, blogs about science in society through the
lens of evolution and creationism at http://doineedevolution.
wordpress.com.

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