andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1833 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I’ve earlier written that science is science communication —that is, the act of communicating scientific ideas and findings to ourselves and others is itself a central part of science. My point was to push against a conventional separation between the act of science and the act of communication, the idea that science is done by scientists and communication is done by communicators. It’s a rare bit of science that does not include communication as part of it. As a scientist and science communicator myself, I’m particularly sensitive to devaluing of communication. (For example, Bayesian Data Analysis is full of original research that was done in order to communicate; or, to put it another way, we often think we understand a scientific idea, but once we try to communicate it, we recognize gaps in our understanding that motivate further research.) I once saw the following on one of those inspirational-sayings-for-every-day desk calendars: “To have ideas is to gather flowers. To thin
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1 I’ve earlier written that science is science communication —that is, the act of communicating scientific ideas and findings to ourselves and others is itself a central part of science. [sent-1, score-1.55]
2 My point was to push against a conventional separation between the act of science and the act of communication, the idea that science is done by scientists and communication is done by communicators. [sent-2, score-1.765]
3 It’s a rare bit of science that does not include communication as part of it. [sent-3, score-0.899]
4 As a scientist and science communicator myself, I’m particularly sensitive to devaluing of communication. [sent-4, score-0.428]
5 (For example, Bayesian Data Analysis is full of original research that was done in order to communicate; or, to put it another way, we often think we understand a scientific idea, but once we try to communicate it, we recognize gaps in our understanding that motivate further research. [sent-5, score-0.414]
6 ) I once saw the following on one of those inspirational-sayings-for-every-day desk calendars: “To have ideas is to gather flowers. [sent-6, score-0.159]
7 ” Similarly, writing—more generally, communication to oneself or others—forces logic and structure, which are central to science. [sent-8, score-0.639]
8 Dan Kahan saw what I wrote and responded by flipping it around: He pointed out that there is a science of science communication. [sent-9, score-0.831]
9 As scientists, we should move beyond the naive view of communication as the direct imparting of facts and ideas. [sent-10, score-0.587]
10 We should think more systematically about how communications are produced and how they are understood by their immediate and secondary recipients. [sent-11, score-0.139]
11 The science of science communication is still in its early stages, and I’m glad that people such as Kahan are working on it. [sent-12, score-1.163]
12 Here’s something he wrote recently explicating his theory of cultural cognition: The motivation behind this research has been to understand the science communication problem. [sent-13, score-1.099]
13 The “science communication problem” (as I use this phrase) refers to the failure of valid, compelling, widely available science to quiet public controversy over risk and other policy relevant facts to which it directly speaks. [sent-14, score-0.999]
14 The climate change debate is a conspicuous example, but there are many others, including (historically) the conflict over nuclear power safety, the continuing debate over the risks of HPV vaccine, and the never-ending dispute over the efficacy of gun control. [sent-15, score-0.509]
15 The research I will describe reflects the premise that making sense of these peculiar packages of types of people and sets of factual beliefs is the key to understanding—and solving—the science communication problem. [sent-19, score-1.126]
16 The cultural cognition thesis posits that people’s group commitments are integral to the mental processes through which they apprehend risk. [sent-20, score-0.494]
17 There were concerns about individual studies or research programs but not such a sense of a statistics-centered crisis in science as a whole. [sent-27, score-0.414]
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