Am I making myself clear?: A scientist’s guide to talking to the public
Am I making myself clear?: A scientist’s guide to talking to the public
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我说清楚了吗？：科学家与公众交谈的指南
作者：
B. Lewenstein
近年来，科学界的领袖们呼吁加强他们的同行与公众的互动，呼吁“公众参与”，成为“公民科学家”。但是你要怎么做呢？这就是科妮莉亚·迪恩的书，我说得够清楚了吗？一本科学家与公众交谈的指南问世了。迪恩曾是《纽约时报》《科学时报》栏目的编辑，他为科学家和工程师提供了一份简短、直截了当的指南，让他们了解向公众传达工作的具体细节。在用了一系列简短的章节讨论了科学家和媒体之间互动的性质之后，迪恩为“在广播和电视上讲故事”、“在网上讲科学故事”、“在证人席上”、“制定政策”等提供了指导和建议。
在短暂的科学记者生涯之后，我已经教和研究科学新闻学20多年了。这一经历给迪恩的书带来了两个有些矛盾的反应：第一，它非常好，每个科学家都应该读它并依赖它。其次，不幸的是，迪恩错过了一些解决重要问题的巨大机会。
首先是好消息。迪恩给出了很多很好的建议：“好的写作是清晰的。退一步看每一个专业词汇和概念来评估你自己。。。。问问你自己，谁知道这意味着什么，谁不知道。在主动语态中使用直白的语言和动词。(如果你不知道我说的这个术语是什么意思，那就买一本好的使用手册。你需要一个)“(第132页)。她引用了一位洛杉矶时报记者的建议，为万维网撰写的材料应该保持在两分钟内可以阅读的数量。迪恩写道：“我已经听到研究人员反对，试图与注意力持续时间限制在每件物品一到两分钟的人认真交流是毫无意义的。”“但如果你对接触受众感兴趣，你必须考虑这些受众的容量”(第115页)。
尽管迪恩的话几乎没有什么新意，但她提供了一份关于科学新闻的标准建议的全面汇编，并增加了法律和政策背景。她为网络、博客和电子邮件世界更新了这条建议。她的建议是深思熟虑和有益的。
迪恩解决的一个反复出现的问题是准确性。她谈到了开发声音片段的必要性(即使是印刷品)。迪恩说，有一次，一位同事告诉她，她在喋喋不休地谈论泥沙运输、海平面上升和建筑许可。因此，迪恩提出了一句很有道理的话：“由于贪婪和无知，美国人正在破坏他们最喜欢的风景，海滩。”她说，这是“准确的(或足够准确的)”(第68页)。她说，“足够准确”是科学新闻的本质。人们必须了解哪些细节应该省略，哪些数字应该四舍五入，以及哪些科学论点是当前特定问题的核心。
然而，这一好建议同时也是错失机会的关键所在。几章后，在谈到需要为在法庭上作证做好准备时，迪恩提到“确保你所说的一切都绝对准确”(第187页)。这正是记者和科学家之间的争论点。什么时候“足够准确”的东西不是“绝对准确”的呢？迪恩没说。她也没有思考科学实践的复杂性。迪恩建议科学记者等到工作发表在同行评议的文献中后再进行报道，但他忽略了同行评议的广泛构成以及预印本和其他形式的信息分发的作用。她写道，“出于某些原因，科学家使用被动语态是出了名的”，但从未承认科学家选择被动语态是为了将语法重点放在物体上，而不是人身上。按照冷静报道的科学规范，科学家也可能选择被动语态来明确地将自己从行动中解脱出来。
迪恩本身就是一名优秀的记者和作家，她承担过一些具有挑战性的话题。然而，在这本书中，她没有与科学(和新闻业)社会过程的微妙之处达成妥协。她没有解释为什么让科学家简单地学习书写或更清楚地说话可能不能解决公众对科学的理解问题。她没有谈到“与公众交谈”(在她的副标题中)和“公众参与”(科学领袖所呼吁的)之间的区别。
也许问题出在我身上。我可能只是坚持一种过于挑剔的准确性，以解决科学家和公众互动的所有细微差别。毕竟，关于科学家如何更好地向非科学家展示他们的工作，迪恩的书在许多方面都足够准确。但是，错过了帮助科学家更充分地理解为什么他们很难与公众互动的机会，可能会推迟必要的讨论，尽管这本书往往提供了非常好的指导，但迪恩的建议可能无法解决他们的问题。
In recent years, leaders of the scientific community have called for increased interaction of their peers with the public, for “public engagement” as “civic scientists.” But how are you to do it? That’s where books like Cornelia Dean’s Am I making myself clear? A scientist’s guide to talking to the public come in. Dean, a former editor of the New York Times “Science Times” section, has provided a short, straightforward guide for scientists and engineers to the nuts and bolts of communicating their work to the public. After a series of short chapters discussing the nature of interactions between scientists and the media, Dean provides guidelines and suggestions for “telling stories on radio and TV,” “telling science stories online,” “on the witness stand,” “making policy,” and so on.
After a brief career as a science journalist, I’ve been teaching and researching science journalism for more than 20 years. That experience yields two somewhat contradictory reactions to Dean’s book: first, it is very good, and every scientist should read it and rely on it. Second, Dean has unfortunately missed some tremendous opportunities to address important issues.
First, the good news. Dean provides much excellent advice: “Good writing is clear. Assess your own by stepping back and looking at every specialist word and concept . . . . Ask yourself who knows what it means and who does not. Use straightforward language and verbs in the active voice. (If you don’t know what I mean by this term, buy a good usage manual. You need one)” (page 132). She quotes a Los Angeles Times reporter advising that material written for the World Wide Web be kept to the amount that can be read in two minutes. “I can already hear researchers objecting that it is pointless to try to communicate seriously with people whose attention span limits them to a minute or two per item,” Dean writes. “But if you are interested in reaching an audience, you must consider the capacities of that audience” (page 115).
Though there is little new in what Dean has to say, she provides a thorough compilation of standard advice about science journalism, adding in the legal and policy contexts. She updates this advice for the world of the Web, blogs, and e-mail. Her suggestions are thoughtful and useful.
One of the recurring issues that Dean addresses is accuracy. She talks about the need to develop sound bites (even for print). One time, Dean says, a colleague told her she was droning on about sediment transport, sea-level rise, and building permits. So Dean developed a sound bite: “Through greed and ignorance, Americans are destroying the landscape they love the best, the beach.” It was, she says, “accurate (or accurate enough)” (page 68). To be “accurate enough,” she says, is the essence of science journalism. One has to learn which details to leave out, which numbers to round off, and which scientific arguments are central to the particular issue at hand.
Yet this good advice is simultaneously the essence of the missed opportunity. Several chapters later, talking about the need to prepare oneself for giving testimony in a courtroom, Dean refers to “making sure that everything you say is absolutely accurate” (page 187). This is precisely the point of contention between journalists and scientists. When is something that is “accurate enough” not “absolutely accurate”? Dean doesn’t say. Nor does she reflect on the complexities of scientific practice. Dean advises science journalists to wait until work has been published in peer-reviewed literature before reporting on it, but overlooks the wide variety of what constitutes peer review and the role of pre-prints and other forms of information distribution. She writes that “for some reason, scientists notoriously use the passive voice,” never acknowledging that scientists may choose it to keep the grammatical focus on the object instead of the person. Scientists may also choose the passive voice specifically to remove themselves from the action, following the scientific norm of dispassionate reporting.
Dean is an excellent reporter and writer herself, who has taken on some challenging topics. Yet in this book she has not come to terms with the subtleties of the social processes of science (and of journalism). She has not explained why having scientists simply learn to write or speak more clearly may not solve the problem of the public’s understanding of science. She has not addressed the difference between “talking to” the public (from her subtitle) and “public engagement” (as called for by scientific leaders).
Perhaps the problem is mine. I may simply be insisting on an overly picky accuracy that addresses all the nuances of the interaction of scientists and the public. Dean’s book is, after all, accurate enough about many aspects of how scientists can better present their work to nonscientists. But the missed opportunity to help scientists understand more fully why it is so difficult for them to interact with the public may delay the necessary discussion about why, despite the often very good guidance in this book, Dean’s advice may not solve their problems.