Let's talk about science, baby
Who are you and what have you done with all the scientists?
Hi! I’m Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, co-founder of Tech Without Stress, and mom of two young kids. Here at Techno Sapiens, I share the latest research and practical tips on psychology, technology, and parenting. Subscribe to join 20,000+ readers, and if you like it, please share Techno Sapiens with a friend!
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6 min read
Most people care about science. Or, at least, they care about using what science can teach them to make their lives better. They care about making informed decisions on questions like: how can I get my 4-month-old to sleep through the night? Will eating this 6-day-old rotisserie chicken make me sick?1 Should I get the Shingles vaccine?2 How much screen time is too much?
Science can help with that.
And yet, when it comes to how we actually hear about science in our current world, an unfortunate thing has happened. It is delivered almost entirely through clickbait news headlines and non-expert social media content. We read a scary headline citing a new study that “proves screen time creates sensory issues.” We scroll Instagram, where pastel-colored posts from “child development experts” tell us that sleep training spikes babies’ cortisol and causes irreparable nervous system damage. We watch TikTok videos that tell us about “hidden signs of anxiety,” including—not making this up—“sweat that smells worse than normal sweat.”3
Perhaps you’ve noticed something is missing from these forms of communication about science. That something is scientists.
Ohh, right. Them.
Here’s the weird thing: scientists are upset about this turn of events, too. Everyday, they conduct research on topics they’ve dedicated their lives to understanding. And they really want non-scientists to know about what they’re learning! That’s kind of the whole point!
So, where are all these scientists? Why aren’t we learning about science from them, instead of scary headlines and misleading Instagram reels?
One reason—and as a scientist myself, I’m going to go ahead and use the royal “we” here—is that we are terrible at this. Scientists are generally not good at sharing their research with the public in ways that are understandable and accessible. We litter our writing with academic buzzwords.45 We hem and haw and bury our speech in technical details. We publish in academic journals that the average person can neither find nor afford.
The result is that when you awaken at 3am to a crying baby, blinking at the bright lights of your phone screen as you google “sleep training good or bad?” you’re left with very little science to guide you.
The science of science communication
Perhaps unsurprisingly, scientists themselves have tried to get to the bottom of this issue in the ways they know best: Developing a new field of study (Science Communication). Offering a new concentration in the Harvard School of Public Health devoted to Health Communication. Publishing a 152-page report by the National Academies of Sciences called Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda. In other words, creating a whole new “science of science communication.”
One key insight from this new field is that scientists should stop relying on a “deficit model” when communicating science to the public. According to the National Academies report:
[The deficit model] depicts nonscientists simply as not yet informed about what science has to say on a topic. In this model, “the science” of an important question is settled, and stands immutable and clear to the experts; the task of communication is simply to explain the facts to the public.
In other words, we scientists are bad at talking about science because we’re approaching it with the wrong mental model. Okay, we think, I have the knowledge, and all those other people don’t. All I need to do is deposit these facts directly into their brains, and then they’ll obviously [get the vaccine, quit smoking, stop littering, sleep-train their child, etc.]
The problem with this model is that it is obviously incomplete. Lack of knowledge is rarely the only issue affecting people’s actions. A lot of other things make a difference, too—like how the science is communicated (is it easy to understand?) and who is being communicated to (what do they care about? how do they feel?). When your child is screaming at 3am, for example, a meta-analysis of “behavioral sleep interventions to improve sleep duration” is unlikely to be your only consideration.
So why can’t scientists do better?
As scientists, rejecting the deficit model would mean that when we communicate about science, we listen carefully to our audience. It would mean we tell stories to engage people, and that we communicate in simple, easy-to-understand language. It would mean we take a tentative step off the ivory tower to join everyone else down below.
The “science of science communication” has taught us this. So, why don’t we do it?
Ironically, we can use the deficit model to understand this, too. Most scientists actually have all the facts about how to communicate science better. But just having this knowledge isn’t enough to make us act on it.
That’s because we, like everyone else, are humans. And as humans, we’re afraid.
We are scientists, and we are scared
We’re afraid that when we talk about science, we’ll get it wrong. That we’ll explain something incorrectly, or skip a key detail, so instead we include all the details, losing our audience in the weeds of a study without conveying what really matters.
We’re afraid that our careers will seem less legitimate if they can be so easily explained, so instead of summing up 12 years of research as “sometimes tech is good, sometimes it is bad,” we say, “theoretical work, including the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects (DSME) model, highlights the intersection of dispositional and media-specific effects in determining the psychological impact of these social technologies.”
We’re afraid we won’t be taken seriously, that our colleagues will see our “dumbed down” version of the science, and they’ll reject us, so we keep speaking in technical details and removing ourselves from the story.
At least, this was—and still sometimes is—true for me. When I started writing Techno Sapiens, I wanted to try talking about science in a new way, but I was scared. I was scared to get it wrong. I was scared that I would lose credibility. I was scared my fellow scientists would see a story about my child squeezing Aquaphor on the floor in a post about operant conditioning and think what on earth is she doing?!6
I was scared that, by being human, I’d no longer be taken seriously.
Scientists are people, too. Let’s act like it.
We sometimes think of scientists as distant figures, standing atop their ivory towers, preaching down to the public below. Sometimes, I think, scientists see themselves this way, too. But last time I checked, the vast majority of my scientist colleagues were humans.7 Real people, with real lives.
We live in an age where the barriers between “public” and “scientist” are increasingly coming down, where communication is a two-way (or thousands-way) street. If we don’t put down our megaphones and grab a walkie-talkie, if we don’t set aside our fear and join the conversation, we’re removing ourselves completely—and there are a whole lot of Instagram reels and clickbait headlines ready to fill that gap.
Of course, the issues around science communication are complex—that’s why there’s a whole field devoted to it. I am not so delusional to think that writing a Substack where I talk about science and make some jokes will solve everything.
But as scientists, we need to start doing something differently. And maybe I’m biased, but I happen to think that recognizing we’re human—with stories and feelings and fears and (bad) senses of humor—is a good place to start.
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The question of 6-day-old rotisserie chicken is one that seems to come up surprisingly frequently in my household.
I once got Shingles during a particularly stressful period of grad school. Would not recommend. The pain was equaled only by the shame of my bewildered doctor’s repeated statements about how young I was, and how she almost never sees Shingles among people below the age of 60, and how incredibly strange and unusual—I mean, like really unusual!—this was. I was 28 at the time.
For a sampling of TikToks revealing the “science” behind “anxiety sweat” smelling worse—should you, for some reason, be interested in that—simply search TikTok for “nervous sweat” or “anxiety sweat.” Speaking of losing professional credibility, I’m going to, um, not link to those here.
The thing that got me thinking about science communication this week was coming across a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) with the leadership of the National Institute of Mental Health. I loved the idea behind this so much! Speaking directly to the public, communicating through a channel that’s already familiar to the average person, etc. But I became worried that some of the NIMH’s answers were not particularly understandable to the average reader—e.g., “…a trend we are seeing in research focused on the genetic risk for suicide (and other mental illnesses) is the aggregation of previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with new study cohorts to increase sample size, thereby increasing the statistical power of analysis and maximizing the number of genetic loci that are discovered.”
One major win of the NIMH’s Reddit AMA was this Redditer question: Do you have any rats there with you and a lovely mouse called Mrs. Frisby along with her kids? It is my sincere hope that the NIMH directors recognized this as a reference to the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH, and decided to play through it, given that their entirely serious answer begins: Rats, mice, and other animals contribute to NIMH research in lots of important ways...Well done.
When it comes to my fear of losing professional credibility, I do still sometimes find myself half-apologizing to colleagues when they mention Techno Sapiens, like: Ah, thanks, yes, glad you liked that post about the science of social media use and teens’ mental health, and just definitely feel free to ignore all that talk about Space Jam. Or: Oh, so glad you could check out that post about tech parenting and, uh, for the record, my toddler is no longer accidentally replacing the “x” in “fox” with a “ck” sound.
Not to mention so many other factors as to why scientists are bad at communicating to the public: we aren't taught how to do this during our training (which, similar to teaching and managing employees, clearly people don't see this as an integral skill worthy of training professionals in), science communication/service is not incentivized (through the tenure process, in grants, etc.), and, let's be honest, some scientists think this is beneath them! Further, when so many people who receive PhDs come from parents who have PhDs, there's an issue with knowledge generation and dissemination coming from only a subsection of the population with an incredibly elite educational background!
As a recently retired Communication professor, I recommend also connecting with the National Communication Association (natcom.org). We are allies in your efforts to communicate effectively with the public. Check out this article, Defending Science: How the Art of Rhetoric Can Help. https://www.natcom.org/communication-currents/defending-science-how-art-rhetoric-can-help