A Sci Comm Angle on Cr/Evo

[shernren]

I'm doing an advanced studies option on my Science Communication 1st year subject, and it involves talking about an area of sci comm for about 20 minutes with the group of other advanced studies people, out of which the content will be plucked for extra assessment during tests. I'm thinking of doing something in the cr/evo debate, but right now it's just too big, and I have too much of a theological stake in it to look at it from a sci comm angle. So any suggestions on how to approach it as a sci comm issue would be helpful. Thanks!

 

[Deamiter]

Hmm... I've been lucky enough to avoid such classes in the past, so I'm not sure what the focus of a Sci-comm class would really be.

It seems to me that a discussion is of how to communicate extremely complex ideas supported by thousands of pages of data can be communicated to the general public. The big issue here is that the public in question is highly resistant to any evidence that might change their minds...

If you're talking about communication strictly within scientific circles, it's pretty much a non-issue. I'd be extremely interested to hear a talk on the difficulty in educating those not only uneducated so as to have no basis in reasoning, logic or the way the universe works but resistant to evidence they don't understand because they perceive it as evil.

It hardly describes all creationists (certainly not all or even most who discuss it on these boards) but the vast majority would never think of stooping so low so as to debate their beliefs with 'unbelievers.' Communicating with an uneducated and resistant mind seems like a topic that is vital in this area, but important in all areas of science as it is becoming ever more political and propagandized.

 

[shernren]

Hmm... I've been lucky enough to avoid such classes in the past, so I'm not sure what the focus of a Sci-comm class would really be.

It seems to me that a discussion is of how to communicate extremely complex ideas supported by thousands of pages of data can be communicated to the general public. The big issue here is that the public in question is highly resistant to any evidence that might change their minds...

If you're talking about communication strictly within scientific circles, it's pretty much a non-issue. I'd be extremely interested to hear a talk on the difficulty in educating those not only uneducated so as to have no basis in reasoning, logic or the way the universe works but resistant to evidence they don't understand because they perceive it as evil.

It hardly describes all creationists (certainly not all or even most who discuss it on these boards) but the vast majority would never think of stooping so low so as to debate their beliefs with 'unbelievers.' Communicating with an uneducated and resistant mind seems like a topic that is vital in this area, but important in all areas of science as it is becoming ever more political and propagandized.

It's interesting because your model of sci-comm is something that we call the "deficit model" - i.e., that the publics are under some kind of cognitive deficit and the job of the scientist is to pour more and more science into the publics' heads until they reach the scientist's level of knowledge. This model has actually come under criticism since being proposed in the 80's, not just because it is simply quite rude to the publics. (Publics used in plural deliberately - my lecturers are quite leery of the idea of the unqualified "general public", as if everybody in the large crowd of people shares certain defining characteristics homogeneously.)

Perhaps a possible area of interest is whether creationists use different models of "science" communication to communicate to their target audience compared to groups communicating evolution such as the NCSE, AAAS, etc. Any thoughts?