[AstroNet] Academics: forget about public engagement, stay in your ivory towers

Sun Dec 13 09:17:29 SAST 2015

Sam, there are so many reasons why I don’t agree with this post.
It takes a very narrow view on the role of and rationale for public science engagement.

This piece that I wrote for the recent “Science Forum SA” summarises some of the reasons why I believe broad public engagement is important.

It’s time to recognise and reward scientists who engage
By Marina Joubert, science communication researcher at Stellenbosch University, November 2015[i]

Scientists should emerge from their ivory towers and engage with society. Since most scientists do their work with public money, it is fair to expect them to explain the significance of their research and its relevance to help solve real-world problems and improve people’s lives.
Visible and vibrant dialogue between science and society offers a multitude of societal benefits. It helps to bridge the widening trust and knowledge gap between scientists and “ordinary” people. It empowers people to take better decisions about issues in science that affect them. It allows scientists to shape new policies and highlight the consequences of policy action—or inaction. It creates opportunities for people to voice their concerns about the social, moral, ethical, political and economic implications of science.
Healthy debate about issues grounded in science also helps people to understand how science works (a process whereby knowledge advances in tiny incremental steps) and why scientists don’t always agree (e.g., learning that science advances by testing and challenging existing knowledge). Once people understand the nature of science and scientific evidence, they are better able to avoid being misled by pseudoscience and scammed by quacks.
Scientists, too, stand to benefit from becoming more active in public life. Not only will a higher public profile attract the interest of funders, potential collaborators and future students, but it also allows scientists to become leaders, influencers and agents of change in their fields of expertise. 
In line with the rest of the world, calls are also mounting in South Africa – from research funders and policy makers, as well as from society itself – for scientists to accept responsibility for public engagement as an integral part of being a scientist. Earlier this year, South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology announced an ambitious public science engagement strategy, designed to popularise science, enhance public science literacy and develop a critical public that actively participates in discourses around science.
Not all scientists are well prepared for these new public and policy demands.
Some scientists are natural communicators, and even become public celebrities. They thrive on public engagement and enjoy the challenges of sharing science, with its inherent risks and rewards. American astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson – presenter of the new Cosmos television series – is a good example. Locally, names like Lee Berger, Himla Soodyal, Tim Noakes and Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan come to mind. 
At the other end of the spectrum are scientists – possibly the minority – who shy away from public engagement at all costs. Their reasons include: “not my job”; “don’t have the time”; or “not worth the effort”.
In my experience of 25 years of working with research scientists, I found that the vast majority of scientists are somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. They are ambivalent, or at least uncertain, about their role in public life. They agree that they should reach out to audiences outside academia, but are not sure how to go about it. For them, it is not an integral part of their job and not a priority. The importance of a public talk is more than likely overshadowed by the urgency of getting the next academic article ready for publication. While they would like policymakers to take note of their new findings, they are reluctant to contact a journalist, fearing that the interview could go wrong and end up damaging their reputation. They have seen some of the novel ways science is shared online, but they have never worked with playwrights, designers, photographers or data visualization experts before, and never planned (budgeted) for this kind of activity.
I believe that, with a little bit of expert help along with some support and training, most scientists can become visible and active in public life. Such an active role of a scientist, in turn, should then also be recognised and rewarded.
1.       Expert help
Very few scientists will take the first step to engage audiences outside their academic circles. Most of them need some encouragement and ready-to-use infrastructure to do so. It is the role of science communicators (including media officers, communication managers and research directors) within research organisations and universities to be the catalysts that mobilise, motivate and equip researchers for engagement work. They are the matchmakers and facilitators who connect scientists to communication opportunities such as science cafés, science festivals and science centres. It is also their job to build and nurture relationships between scientists and journalists. They should link scientists with illustrators, designers, photographers, videographers and editors who can help them develop novel communication products such as infographics, data visualisations and video clips suitable for social media platforms.
2.       Training
Scientists will shy away from public communication as long as they lack confidence in their own engagement abilities. That is why research organisations and universities need to invest in equipping scientists with communication skills. Planning and evaluation skills will help scientists to become more strategic about why and with whom they communicate. At the practical level, they need to know how to write and speak about their work clearly, concisely and compellingly, as well as how to add impact to their writing and presentations with excellent visuals. Cutting-edge social media skills are essential for scientists to add impact to and reach to their work. These skills should be provided to mid-career and senior scientists, but ideally should become part of the training of graduate students and researchers at the beginning of their careers.
3.       Recognition and reward
It is no longer enough to reward academic outputs only. We should encourage scientists to become visible on public platforms, especially popular online platforms, where they are much more likely to get attention from policy makers, business leaders and journalists. When assessing researchers’ performance, their contribution towards and impact on policy formulation and public debates should also be considered. This will require universities (and other research organisations) to change the way the beans are counted and come up with novel ways that will incentivise public engagement and recognise it as a form of scholarship. In addition to financial support, universities should also consider awards and prizes to recognise, profile and celebrate the achievements of scientists who walk the extra mile to make their research visible and accessible to the public. With reward and recognition for public engagement, it will, over time, become part of the institutional culture at research organisations.

The involvement of research-active scientists is a critical ingredient in initiating and sustaining a successful public science engagement campaign. The time has come for policymakers, science funders and research managers to recognise this, and to re-think the way they reward scientists for visible and active participation in public life. With the appropriate support mechanisms and the right incentives in place, scientists will begin to see a call from a journalist as an opportunity, rather than an interruption.

Marina Joubert 
SKYPE: marina.joubert.za1

From: astronet-bounces at mail.saasta.ac.za [mailto:astronet-bounces at mail.saasta.ac.za] On Behalf Of Sam Rametse
Sent: 11 December 2015 08:03
To: astronet at mail.saasta.ac.za
Subject: [AstroNet] Academics: forget about public engagement, stay in your ivory towers

Morning everyone, 

Here is an interesting article on some academics’ s view of public engagement. See if you are in agreement

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/dec/10/academics-forget-about-public-engagement-stay-in-your-ivory-towers?CMP=share_btn_tw

Academics are constantly encouraged to engage with the public more often, but this advice ignores the way that specialised knowledge already affects civic life. Specialisation has social importance, but often only after decades of work.

It is time for us to reassess what we mean by public scholarship. We must recognise the value of the esoteric knowledge, technical vocabulary and expert histories that academics produce.

Those who call for academics to publicise their work often place importance on making complex research more accessible to general audiences. Some scholars insist that groundbreaking humanities research is ignored because academics don’t publicise it properly. Others assume that academics don’t want to leave their ivory towers because they are more comfortable there or might be afraid to speak in public.
This attitude towards public engagement presents it as an intrinsic virtue, while perpetuating the idea that professors are brainy introverts unable or afraid to talk to people outside their sphere of expertise. In fact, the opposite is true. The work of an academic is to talk about ideas – in lectures, class discussions, academic conferences and student meetings. For many, it’s one of the job’s greatest pleasures.
But we need to recognise that popularising research isn’t the only way to make a social impact. One example of this is the history of sexuality studies in relation to the gay rights campaign in the US.
Queer theory emerged in the 1980s with the goal of overturning the 1986 US supreme court decision in Bowers v Hardwick, which upheld the criminalisation of sodomy. Chief Justice Warren Burger claimed that the ruling had “millennia of moral teaching” supporting it.

When the supreme court reversed this decision in 2003, the majority cited decades of scholarship demonstrating the inaccuracy of Burger’s claim. The meticulous research of queer theorists and historians only became central to the judicial process years after the research was completed.

It would have been difficult to know in 1986 what effect publicity would have on academic debates about the “homo-hetero binary” or the gay subcultures of early-20th-century New York. But this disciplinary framework enabled a massive national transformation decades later.

Whether our research eventually appears in judicial opinions or not, academics are forced to confront questions of relevance. North Carolina State University, where I work, was founded in 1887 as a “land-grant institution” dedicated to expanding higher education in “agriculture and the mechanic arts”. Its concern with relevant knowledge is made explicit in its motto: Think and Do.

I often contemplate how my research could aid a university like my own. Right now, I am investigating 18th-century British authors who wrote poetry and plays in colonial cities and outposts stationed around India, Sumatra and Singapore. Many of these authors haven’t been read since they appeared in print during the 1790s.

I see the value in recovering colonial writers who are not readily remembered. But I realise that the public could think the authors I study are unread for a reason. To them, knowing how white men published poems in 1790s Bombay seems irrelevant.

I could explain that my research builds on themes that are important to our modern society, such as the possibilities or failures of cross-cultural dialogue, the relationship between corporations and social communities and the sharp tongue of satire in political discourse.

But as a scholar, I can’t predict which, if any, of these themes will be influential in the coming decades. Engaging the public is important, but we should not assume that what will be integral to future society is the same as what can be made popular or immediately understandable now.

Humanists like myself are regularly forced to consider what the public wants. We are told to imagine their desires and to conjure ways to fulfil them. This is an important strategy that every academic should pursue.

But we must be allowed to resist this impulse, too. We can’t anticipate what intellectual discoveries will become essential answers to the public’s future questions. We don’t always know what form public scholarship should take.

So academics, stay in your offices. Write books that few people will read. The results might be more significant than any of us first recognise.

Best Regards

  _____  

[i] Marina Joubert is a researcher at Stellenbosch University, currently doing her PhD in science communication focused on the factors that mobilise and motivates South African scientists towards public engagement. Email her at marinajoubert at sun.ac.za
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