the-BA : Joys and duties of a scientist

Dear Editor,
How strange that talking about your profession and passion should be counted a chore! (John Warren’s ‘Sounding Off’, S&PA, March 2006.) Being able to say what they do is a duty for scientists as it is for other consumers of public money (as most scientists are directly or indirectly). But scientists are uniquely fortunate that this duty is, for many, also a joy.
As a journalist and author, I have had occasion to interview professionals in many fields, and it's always been a pleasure to find most scientists in possession of an abundant childlike enthusiasm for their work. It makes a refreshing contrast from talking to people in business and government.
Long may this ingenuousness remain. We should be careful that something important is not lost with the pressure to make scientists 'media savvy' now. I cherish this innocence. Refusniks like Dr Warren must perhaps prepare to suffer the consequences of their failure to communicate, but wouldn’t it be easier to discover instead the joys of talking.

Unrealistic expectations
Dr Warren’s problem is that he sets unrealistic targets. Before he’s prepared to talk, he wants his interlocutors scientifically trained to his level of expertise in his discipline. And before he’ll talk, he wants cash.
Let’s dispose of the second of these. Pay is not the answer to everything, and it’s certainly not the right incentive to replace what should be a natural enthusiasm to talk anyway. With this attitude, what scientist is going to communicate anything worth a damn?
The first objection is more serious, and also more wearily familiar. Scientists should be able to explain. They have to explain what they want to do to funders; they should equally be able to explain what they’ve done to the public, who one way or another provide the funding.
The public, on the other hand, have no corresponding duty to be scientifically literate. Sure, it would be nice if they were – if possibly considerably more challenging to some scientists. But it’s simply not realistic to make it a prerequisite for dialogue. (Incidentally, Dr Warren complains instead that ‘the public are happy to confess their ignorance’, yet surely a scientist above all should regard confessing ignorance as a virtue, not a shortcoming.)
This lack of qualification this should not debar the public from expressing opinions or even suspicions. Scientists who think it should may understand how to run an experiment or a laboratory but don't understand how society works. In a democracy, a person is just as entitled – entitled, not qualified – to voice an opinion on scientific affairs as on social, economic or political matters. Scientists need to understand this.

Understanding communication
The public may not be qualified to understand science, but they are qualified to understand scientists. Just as much human communication is contained in the looks and gestures that accompany words actually spoken, so the non-scientist can potentially understand much aside from the strict content in science communication.
I recently published a book called Findings. It shows what a non-scientific reading can still tell an ordinary reader, not a scientist, in a scientific paper. It's the kind of thing that irritates some scientists, daring to suggest that the unqualified public might inspect their primary literature. But I think it's a public right for us to do so.
Such skills are increasingly needed. Not all scientists now speak to the media in the naïve old spirit, and we all need a sceptical ear when we listen to them as we do with everyone else. In future, the scientist who doesn't talk, as well the scientist who talks defensively or evasively, will be regarded as suspect (just as is a politician or business leader acting likewise).
We’re not there yet. Scientists are still largely respected by the public, and they remain by and large naive in their communication – they say what they know and what they think without affectation. This unspun speaking is a good thing. It stems from natural enthusiasm and from having nothing to hide, and this at least is sensed by the non-scientific public. Scientists who begrudge a few words about their work risk damaging the whole of science in the public’s eyes.

Hugh Aldersey-Williams is a science writer and curator. Findings: Hidden Stories in First-Hand Accounts of Scientific Discovery is published by Lulox Books, www.luloxbooks.co.uk
hughaw@identi.demon.co.uk

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	June 2006

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	The psychology of terrorism

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	Food labelling in Europe - We need information for the majority

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	Food labelling in Europe - It's a mess

	Mobile phones and children - Voluntary Code

	Mobile phones and children - Children face risks

	Mobile phones and children-UK code of practice

	And then there was one

	Joys and duties of a scientist

	Scientists in the pay of industry

	Creationism reviving; science recruitment declining

	All hail the new Science Supremo