Scientific literacy is a difficult idea to pin down.[i] To some people it means having a basic level of scientific understanding, though nobody fully agrees on how much understanding is needed or even which specific ideas should be understood. To others, it is more important to understand the core processes of science, which can be applied to any area of science. Again the problem exists of figuring out exactly which processes are most important (and which are distinctly scientific).[ii]

Even when people disagree about what it means, there is almost always this common thread: scientific literacy somehow involves preparing students and adults for the science they will encounter outside of school, very often in media reports. George DeBoer highlighted this in his history of scientific literacy:

Science education should develop citizens who are able to critically follow reports and discussions about science that appear in the media and who can take part in conversations about science and science-related issues that are part of their daily experience. Individuals should be able to read and understand accounts of scientific discoveries, follow discussions having to do with the ethics of science, and communicate with each other about what has been read or heard. (DeBoer, 2000, p. 592-593)[iii]

Robert Hazen and James Trefil[iv]  put it bluntly in their 1991 book:

“If you can understand the news of the day as it relates to science, if you can take articles with headlines about stem cell research and the greenhouse effect and put them in a meaningful context—in short, if you can treat news about science in the same way that you treat everything else that comes over your horizon, then as far as we are concerned you are scientifically literate.” (p. xii)

There is wide agreement then that engaging with science media is an essential element of scientific literacy. But where do people develop actually develop these abilities? Do these skills receive enough attention in science education? Do people really have the chance to develop them in school before the end of their mandatory science education courses, usually around age 16? While studies in journals like Public Understanding of Science have often asked about adults’ relationship to science media, there are only a few that have stepped back to look at the relationship between those adult skills and the science media skills and knowledge that students develop during their final encounters with formal science education.

One that I often come back to is Stein Dankert Kolsto’s (2001) ‘To trust or not to trust,…’- pupils’ ways of judging information encountered in a socio-scientific issue. In it, Kolsto works with a group of 22 Norwegian Grade 10 students. They were drawn from four different classes and picked for their expressiveness in describing their reasoning and as representing a variety of views. It’s a selective sample but seems reasonably appropriate for exploring a wide range of views among students. This isn’t meant to compare different types of students or test any interventions but just to get a sense of where 16 year olds might stand in their engagement with science media. In particular, they were all taking a course for students not planning to study science any further. So it was very likely their last experience in formal science education.

One thing that sets this study apart from others is Kolsto’s desire to focus his attention to how students deal with a real controversy that they have likely already encountered in the media, rather than presenting them with a new and unknown controversy or one that has been created for classroom purposes. The issue involved a Norwegian company that wanted to upgrade an existing 150kV electrical transmission line to 300kV and later build a second new 300kV line that partially crossed residential areas. The plan had sparking fears of health issues such as a possible rise in childhood Leukemia rates. At the time, early epidemiological studies of high voltage lines were mixed in results and there wasn’t yet a consensus on the effects. Coverage in the media often reported on contradictory findings from different researchers. By interviewing the students after they had read and discussed several media articles on the proposed high voltage lines in class, Kolsto wanted to explore how the students judged the information that they read. How did they make their decisions about supporting or opposing the power lines, and how did they decide which sources of information and which specific claims were trustworthy?

One of main things that Kolsto noticed about their responses was that very few of the students attempted to assess the content of the claims being made by various parties (power companies, citizen groups, epidemiologists, etc.). They rarely used their own scientific knowledge to try to judge if the claims made sense or were congruent with their understanding of electricity and the human body. They spent most of their time concerned with evaluating the sources: were the people or organizations trustworthy? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Prior work by my former colleague Stephen Norris[v] even suggested that students should be encouraged to make judgements in this way because it would be impossible for them to have the specialist knowledge required to truly assess many scientific claims. But it is interesting to note that these students don’t even seem to attempt it, even when they have covered relevant material in their course. To me, it also calls into question why scientific literacy is so often thought of as a body of knowledge that everyone should learn. If people aren’t inclined to use that knowledge when they encounter controversies, maybe that’s not the most useful way think about preparing students for science outside of school. But that’s my conjecture, not something the Kolsto argues.

Kolsto points out that this reliance on evaluating the sources but not the claims can also be a problem. Once a source is accepted as trustworthy, the students were leaving all other judgements up to that source. They effectively treated all trustworthy sources as authorities, even when that may not be appropriate. For example, a researcher may be a very trustworthy source but he or she can maybe only speak authoritatively to some of the elements of the controversy. On the positive side though, almost all of the students were hesitant to give out trusted source status to many of the parties involved, especially those they felt had a vested interest (e.g., the power company and property owners’ groups) and they were most likely to describe scientists and researchers as trustworthy.

Unfortunately, this status also led to biggest challenge that the students faced: what does it mean when researchers (who are trusted sources) disagree? How do you decide which claims to trust then? About half of the students said explicitly that when researchers disagree, it is very difficult to know whom to trust.

so what did the students do? Kolsto found that when they tried to sort of disagreements among scientists, the students’ views were clouded by the way that science appears in schools. In school science, there is almost always a right answer. Even when a teacher lets students debate a solution or an explanation, at some point there is almost always a true answer that the teacher eventually shares or endorses. This is the one that students must then understand for tests and exams. In school science, laboratory activities are also supposed to be definitive. There is most often a correct result, one that illustrates or supports the right explanation that the teacher wants everyone to understand. And while differing results can spark interesting discussions about experimental error, that’s usually where the discussion stops. When everyone is following the same procedure, if you get a different answer from everyone else, the only possible explanation is that something went wrong. School science doesn’t always look like this but, especially in high stakes assessment contexts, it very often does[vi]. And it’s not necessarily always a bad thing, there are many settled and well understood ideas in science that can be well taught with strategies like this. The problem is that it gives students a very poor foundation for understanding science that isn’t settled yet.

The effects of “right answer” science teaching were clear in the way the students responded to disagreements among researchers. Their only resources for making sense of those disagreements were their school science experiences and their experiences with disagreements in everyday life. As a result, the students tended to see the disagreements as illustrating either incompetence or bias. Either: a) One or the other of the researchers had done their investigations incorrectly or maybe no one had done the “right” experiment because they didn’t know how or b) one or the other of the researchers was personally biased and letting that cloud their results. These are certainly both possible explanations but they ignore the fact that sometimes valid and well-conducted studies disagree, especially when the questions are about health effects that have to be observations. You can’t randomly assign people to live or not live near high voltage lines and experimentally control the voltages they are exposed to. Researchers’ only choice is to observe the health of people who live near and far from these lines. It takes a long time for a balance of evidence to emerge from numerous studies of health effects like this, and there is no definitive experiment that the researchers could or should have conducted to settle the matter and find the right answer.

But the students wanted the teacher and Kolsto to tell them who was right. They wanted to know what the truth really was, and they became suspicious of the various scientists for not knowing how to study the issue properly or for going in with biased preconceptions. One student said, “It is probably because they have made their own opinions. They might have different backgrounds and have come across different information. Maybe they have made up their mind in advance, and then found that their opinion is right and taken that as a starting point” (p. 884)

What made it especially difficult is that the students felt they had no way of knowing which researchers were highly biased and which were not. They wanted the researchers to be mostly neutral and objective, but they had few tools for figuring out which ones were. They did look for information about the background of the researchers (such as their area of specialty), which is a very good beginning strategy. As one student said, “I have more confidence in those who have put more work into the subject, researchers and people who have worked on it” (p. 895). They also, however, tended to be swayed by the claims that included the most numbers. It’s good that they were looking for supported evidence but this is also a strategy that can be manipulated if the audience isn’t careful about assessing the meaning of the numbers. And as Kolsto found, the students tended not to apply their understanding to assess the evidence provided by any of the parties. They didn’t evaluate the evidence and numbers but were still swayed when more were given.

Possibly more serious was their tendency to believe the more dire warnings. Researchers that claimed more serious effects were more often believed. If that’s the case, it’s easy to see how health scares (e.g., vaccines and autism) can quickly gather steam. One student said “In my opinion, they [the politicians] should listen to those [researchers] who say it’s dangerous. Because if you do something about it, and it is not dangerous, then there is no problem. But if it is dangerous, and they don’t do anything, then it will have harmful consequences” (p. 892). And while this might make some sense, it’s easy to miss out on weighing the costs of doing something when there is no risk. The risks of doing something about vaccines (e.g., encouraging people not to vaccinate their kids) have been severe, such as outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases. Paying too much attention to dire interpretations (of flawed research in that case) has had severe consequences.

Overall Kolsto’s exploration showed some promising signs, such as students wanting to distinguish between trustworthy sources with expertise in the relevant field. These were overwhelmed though by the lack of resources that they had for following through on those good intentions. And because they lacked an understanding of the role of legitimate disagreement in science and abilities to dig into the content of the claims themselves, they had to fall back on superficial judgements. Students were swayed by the presentation of numbers and by those who made more worrisome claims. They thought that disagreeing scientists must either be personally biased or incompetent. And they tended to categorize expertise dichotomously: someone was either an expert to be believed or not, without noting that most experts have very small areas of deep expertise and varying degrees of expertise in other areas. Kolsto noticed though that the students felt that they were being very careful and critical in making up their minds. About half of the students made direct statements about the importance of autonomy in decision making, that one had to listen to both sides and then think for themselves.

And that was the main problem that Kolsto was left with. Students seemed to be leaving their compulsory science education with good and valuable ideas about what they should do when the encountered science in the media, but have few deeper skills to actually follow through.

“They wanted to listen to the disinterested and neutral researchers, but few of them expressed any ideas as to who that might be. They wanted to trust those risk estimates that several researchers agreed upon, but they did not indicate how they were to judge the level of agreement….The pupils’ basic problem, disagreement among the researchers, was not resolved by their analyses.” (p. 897)

And further, it was something that seemed to frustrate the students.

Kolsto acknowledges, and I agree with him, that it’s very hard to draw any firm recommendations from a small exploratory study like this. But he says that if there is one idea that should come out of it, it’s that students need much more exposure to real inconclusive and controversial science, not just contrived examples where the teacher has a right answer in mind. These students have learned that scientists can be biased, that they should be careful of information from sources that have vested interests (e.g., the power company), that they should look for agreement among scientists, but they are at a loss for what to do when there legitimately isn’t an agreement yet or, importantly, when science news is presented in a way that suggests that there isn’t agreement. Kolsto argues, and here I agree too, that there still needs to be more emphasis on the social processes of science in school, not just that scientists work together but exactly what that means. Before leaving compulsory science education, students need a much better understanding of how scientific consensus happens, how ideas go from contested and tentative to sometimes firm and widely supported and how arguments and disagreement can be an important part of getting to that place. They also need better ideas of where to look or whom to ask when media reports make it difficult to see where general agreement is. Kolsto’s study illustrates some very promising steps that have been made to helping students (and the adults they will become) to thoughtfully and critically engage with science media, but it also illustrates where more work needs to be done. There is a lot of agreement that skillfully navigating scientific news and controversies is very important, but I think it’s pretty clear that it still needs a lot more attention in school science and beyond if those visions of scientific literacy are ever to be realized.

Kolsto, S.D. (2001). ‘To trust or not to trust …’: Pupils’ ways of judging information encountered in a socio-scientific issue International Journal of Science Education, 23 (9), 877-901 DOI: 10.1080/09500690010016102

Many times during talks about social media in science, I’ve argued that there is a lot of room for researchers to be more open about the research process. Following along with Rosie Redfield as she blogged her lab’s attempts to grow the GFAJ-1 bacterium of arsenic life fame and publish the results was a fascinating window into how a university research lab works. I’m really excited about the possibilities that openness like that offers to high school students and anyone with an interest in science. It’s a first-hand opportunity to learn about the real day-to-day work of scientists in a way almost not possible before blogs and social media.

Setting a terrible example, though, I’ve never done anything like this myself. I’ve blogged about my own research occasionally but only after everything was completed and the paper published. It’s time to do something about that. There are lots of legitimate reasons why researchers in some fields can’t share their day-to-day work, but my field isn’t like that. We’re not dealing with patents and owned intellectual property or working on a topic where there is fierce competition to be the first to report a result. Our work in science education is highly contextual. No one else’s study, even on the same topic, is going to be the same as mine. More than likely it would help the field to have someone else ask the same questions, rather than having the potential to hurt my work or career.

So, taking a step towards making what I say personal, I’ve embarked on a really exciting project with David Ng at the University of British Columbia. While chatting at Science Online 2013, David and I found we had a common interest in creativity and science. We were both excited by the how students’ experiences in school science could be enhanced by encounters with creativity. David’s work at the Michael Smith Laboratories includes running a great program called the Science Creative Literary Symposia where students in Grades 5-7 (age 10-12) get to play around with both laboratory work and creative writing. We’ve been wondering what we could do if we joined forces.

So I present Adventures in the Science and Creativity Venn. David and I are going to share our discussions and our work as we look for ways to study and learn from the students in his programs. Our first task is seeking funding and we’ll be blogging our drafts, our questions and our struggles as we put together our first grant application for the project.

Ever want to know more about how science education research happens or about how people like David and I from different backgrounds come together on an interdisciplinary project? Then pull up a chair and watch as we try to figure it out. Comments, suggestions, and helpful hints always welcome too!

A tiny explosion happened in the online science communication world yesterday. Popular Science.com announced that they will be closing off opportunities to post comments on their news stories: no more public comment spaces. Why? They argue that uncivil commenters have an overly negative effect on readers, so negative that it isn’t worth maintaining the comment spaces. They make some scary claims too about a small number of negative commenters poisoning the way readers perceive the stories and about a war waged on expertise. They use an New York Times Op-Ed written by Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele to back up those claims.

I must, however, respectfully disagree.

Of course, the site is theirs. And as is true for any publication or online space: your house, your rules. So, really, they can do whatever they like with their comment section. More worrying to me was the series of tweets and facebook posts I saw from friends and fellow science communicators saying that more publications should do the same.

There are two main reasons why I’d like to suggest caution. 1. The evidence for the poison effect of uncivil comments isn’t nearly as damning as their quotes suggest, and 2. There is a lot of potential good in comment sections and removing them ignores those possibilities and sends some fairly negative messages about science communication.

First, it’s important to take a look at the study that they rely on as their justification:

The quotes used in PopSci’s post are from an Op-Ed piece written by two of the four authors of a study called “The ‘‘Nasty Effect:’’ Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies“, forthcoming from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The authors had 1183 adults read a blog post about risks and benefits related to nanotechnology. Some read a version that had uncivil comments (including, for example, personal attacks and name calling) and some read a version that had only civil comments in the comments section. They measured several characteristics of the participants in relation to the topic, such as their familiarity with nanotechnology, their confidence in their knowledge, and their prior support for the technologies. They also measured other characteristics such as readers’ usual reading behaviours, their religiousness, their age and their gender. The researchers  used all of these variables (including which version of the comments the participants saw) to figure out which ones would explain how the readers would rate the risks of nanotechnology after reading the blog post and comments.  I have a few minor quibbles with the methods but they are on the level of things I’d like to chat with the authors about over coffee, not things that jeopardize the results. The major problem I have is with the large gap between the way the results are presented in the Op-Ed (and then taken up by PopSci) and how they actually appear in the study.

The first glaring issue is that even all of the variables put together (from age to prior beliefs, up to and including the civility of the comments) seem to have a small effect on the readers. All of these things put together only explain 17% of the differences in readers’ responses. So, 83% of what influenced the way readers responded to the article had nothing to do with any of things the researchers measured, including the civility of the comments. Following directly from that, it would be tough to tell from the Op-Ed that the civility of the comments had NO SIGNIFICANT DIRECT EFFECT on readers’ perceptions of nanotechnology. Here it is straight from the paper: “Our findings did not demonstrate a significant direct relationship between exposure to incivility and risk perceptions. Thus, our first hypothesis was not supported.” (p. 8).

The things that did have an impact weren’t too surprising. Readers who were familiar with nanotechnology and who already supported nanotechnology tended to perceive lower risks than those who weren’t familiar and those who went in not supporting the technologies. These factors explained more of the readers’ perceptions than any others, and they support decades of work that prior beliefs are one of the largest factors in how readers (both adults and students) interpret what they read (for example, this study by Stephen Norris and Linda Phillips)

So where in the world do the dire and scary quotes come from? The last piece of the analysis looked for interaction effects. That’s where even if something doesn’t have an effect on the whole group we can sometimes find that it does have an influence on some people in the group in a unique way. They found two very small interaction effects. First, when they looked just at the group who read the uncivil comments, those who already supported nanotechnology expressed even lower risk than they did in the civil comment group and those who already didn’t support it, expressed even higher risks. So among those who already held strong views, the uncivil comments tended to polarize them a bit further. They found a similar relationship around religiousness, although I think it’s harder to explain this one. The authors seem to have come in with the assumption that religious people would generally perceive higher risk than those who are less religious. In the overall sample this didn’t come through though. Risk assessments were evenly spread among people with all religiousness scores. The only difference was that when the comments were uncivil the religiousness factor then (and only then) acted in the way they expected. So highly religious people reading uncivil comments expressed higher risk and vice versa. Both effects were very small though, increasing or decreasing risk perceptions by 1-2%.*

So, in sum, the uncivil comments seemed to slightly heighten the views that people already had, and when we divide them by religion they tended to react slightly differently to the uncivil comments. But both of these effects together explained a whopping 1% of the differences in readers’ risk assessments. So almost all of the factors that influenced of how the readers reacted had nothing to do with the civility of the comments, nothing at all.  I didn’t find any support in the actual study for claims that  people’s views become “much more polarized” when uncivil comments were read.

Does that seem like solid evidence for publications to decide to do away with commenting all together? I don’t think so.

Second, I want to turn my attention to the potential problems with removing comment sections.

In addition to being on shaky justification grounds, I also see a serious problem with the gut and knee-jerk reaction to remove all comments. I know we’ve all been there, reading a perfectly great article about science and then having our faith in humanity shattered by the comments. I totally understand the impulse to say, “Ya, these guys have it right and maybe science communication would be better if more publications did this.”** And I want to clearly say that I’m generally in favour of strong moderating policies. Even if they don’t really change people’s minds about the risks of nanotechnology, I have no problem at all with the idea that uncivil comments may be undesirable for many other reasons. My issue is with the idea of doing away with the incivility by doing away with the comments all together.

A few years ago I completed a study of comments left in response to health stories in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. My study was about how commenters claimed expertise not about risk perceptions but I think there’s a piece of it that might be valuable to look at. For the study, I gathered all of the comments posted on four health stories one week after the stories had been published. For the analysis, I was only interested in comments where the commenters related their expertise or inexpertise in some way that was related to their scientific experience or their experience with the health condition in question. This basically meant all on-topic and civil comments. So my faithful undergrad assistant that summer had the joyous task of reading all the comments first and removing the off-topic and uncivil ones. You may wonder what was left. It turned out there was a lot left and a lot of important and valuable comments at that. Extensive contributions were made by parents, patients and people with medical expertise. Questions were asked and clear thoughtful answers were often given. The comments including a long discussion of whether it is possible for scent to trigger severe peanut allergies with clear explanatory answers from commenters with medical expertise, for example:

The chemicals that are responsible for the odor and flavor of peanuts are called pyrazines. Pyrazines are volatile organic compounds and have no protein structure, and as far as I know they can not cause allergic reactions, they only cause odors and flavors. For anaphylactic shock to occur (from nuts) there has to protein which triggers the reaction, this, possibly can be air born.

There were patients challenging wrongful assumptions made in the way the reporter described a condition:

While I agree that a more thorough study needs to be done, I am more disturbed by the severe misunderstanding of what ADHD is. It is a neurological disorder where a person is unable to filter out distractions, usually has a lack of inhibitions, exhibits jumpy thoughts, ha s a hard time concentrating and finishing tasks, and may fidgit. It is not a made up reason for drug companies to sell drugs, nor is it due to a lack of “fatherly” affection. …I both have  ADHD and have taught children with ADHD. It is a truly mixed blessing, the worst part being the ignorance and cruelty of people who assume you are just lazy, had bad parents, stupid, and duped.

Commenters also challenged each other for evidence of the claims they made in their comments:

Dr. T, Can you at least post a link or another source that backs up your story? An anonymous quote saying ‘this is just plain wrong’ really doesn’t persuade anyone.”

To which Dr. T responded: “You’re quite right. The British Medical Journal has been running a series of interesting comments under the heading For and Against: Are the dangers of childhood food allergy exaggerated?
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/75”.

Similarly, Esther Laslo from the Israel Institute of Technology and her colleagues studied the comment sections of Israeli newspaper articles that addressed ethical issues in science. Not only did they find the comment sections to be rich and valuable, they noted that the most fruitful discussions and interactions were initiated by topics raised in the comments, not in the articles themselves.

There are often calls in popular science publications for people outside of traditional scientific communities to become more interested and engaged in science. Comment spaces are a real and viable place for that to happen.

At their best they can be a place for different types of people to actually hear from each other and for people who usually don’t have much of a voice in science conversations to actually have one. How often in everyday interaction does a patient get to challenge a doctor for evidence of his claims? Ed Yong even facilitated a collaboration between a scientist and a farmer through the comment section of his blog.

And like any actual place of conversation, they also fall victim to domination by extreme voices and need to be well managed. Town hall meetings and public consultations are a great example, and they’ve often been a focus of research in public understanding of science (see, for example, James Wilsdon and Rebecca Willis’s book See through Science: Why public engagement needs to move upstream). When they’re good, they’re fascinating and offer real insight that the panel members or politicians could never have fully appreciated without opening the floor to members of the public or a particular community. The can provide access and a voice for people to actively influence science and technology as it affects their lives and communities. At their worst they can be reactionary shout-fests of frustration to all involved. But I don’t see many tweets or posts saying that no one should have them any more. The problem isn’t the idea of a town hall or public consultation but a recognition that they really have to be thoughtful and well planned to be successful.

But back to the idea of engagement. How are people supposed to do that if the very venues for that engagement, which are unprecedentedly afforded by online science communication, are closed? The message then becomes “Well we didn’t really mean for people to be engaged, we just want you to listen to us more.” This is a return largely to outdated models of science communication where the sole purpose is to push scientific information out to people for their ready and unquestioning uptake. If science is truly about discussion of evidence and a willingness to be open to new findings, then the public cannot be left out of that process.

What does it also say about people with expertise in scientific topics? Their justification claims that there is a decades long war against expertise, but this choice also contributes that war. A no-commenting policy is also a no-experts-commenting policy. I often comment on news stories related to science education, sometimes to answer questions that I see in the comments and often to try to counter misunderstandings that I think the media pieces sometimes perpetuate. Instead of a place to engage in conversation and even clarify or correct media stories, the message to people with expertise is “Hey now, leave the communication up to us writers, we have it all under control and don’t need your input.” I have no desire to start a scientists vs. science writers thing here, and I think online spaces have gone a long way to helping everyone involved in those debates see how they can work together. I’m just saying that’s another message that’s embedded in saying no comments allowed. That’s especially troubling when it comes to new technologies, where there are serious and evidence-based disagreements and discussions to be had about risk. I’m pretty uncomfortable giving back complete control to how those risks are presented in a forum where no expert has a space to disagree with what PopSci or another venue says. I really want the opportunity to comment on science education stories because I think I have something to contribute to the conversation that may be missing from the stories as written. There are likely scientists and engineers (and science writers!) who feel the same way. What a no-commenting stance like PopSci’s says to me is that they don’t need or want those contributions associated with their articles.

I totally understand the feelings that people have in relation to comments, but I really don’t think the answer is to get rid of them all together. The incivility, first, doesn’t seem to have nearly the dire effect that PopSci seems to think it does in terms of influencing readers’ perceptions. Comments are often annoying and frustrating (sometimes even heartbreaking) but readers are still making up their minds based on other factors. So the benefits PopSci is hoping for are unlikely to be realized. Second, getting rid of comments to get rid of the incivility seems like a serious baby meet bathwater situation. Instead of looking for better ways to manage, guide, moderate or selectively publish comments we lose all of the potential benefits for real engagement.

Yes, comments can be highly uncivil and polarized. Should we encourage popular science publications to find better ways to foster civil discussions? Absolutely. But give up and stop comment spaces all together? Please, I really hope not.

__________________________________

*The authors don’t discuss effect sizes but from the regression coefficients it looks like being 1 pt more religious on a scale of 1-10 and finding yourself reading the uncivil comments seems to add to the risk you perceive by .07/5. In other words, it increases the risk you perceive by 1.4%, a very small amount. Similarly, being 1 pt more in favour of nanotech (also on a scale of 1-10) and then finding yourself reading the uncivil comments seems to decrease the risk you perceive by .09/5, or 1.8%. That hardly supports what is said in the Op-Ed “Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.”

Also, I might be doing some of the mental math wrong but the table of results actually says there’s negative relationship between religiousness and risk in the uncivil condition, which would actually mean that more religious people see nanotechnology as less risky when they read uncivil comments. It also says there’s a positive relationship between prior support and risk, so people in the uncivil condition actually perceive slightly higher risk than they would have otherwise. I’ve gone with what they’ve reported in the text in case the sign error is mine and not theirs.

** This is a paraphrase of an actual tweet I saw a friend post, but I’d rather not call out anyone specifically. That’s not the point of this post. And, as I said, I completely understand the impulse.

Diving headlong into motherhood this year has meant less blogging (obvious to anyone who subscribes here…), but it has also made me think a lot more about the scientific life that I would hope for my new daughter and girls like her. Currently her research interests include ceiling fans, her toes, her soother, the dogs and the penguins at the Calgary Zoo. But should she be interested in pursuing science as a career, what would I want her to know?

Despite tremendous change in science over the past decades, making a scientific life is still difficult for many women. There are strong institutional and personal biases in place, chilly climates, difficult job structures and sometimes daily aggressions that women face. If my daughter were heading off to grad school (rather than daycare) in the near future, I would want her to know this up front but also know that women find many different ways to follow their scientific passions. Some do it by finding ways to succeed in the academic system and others make completely new career paths for themselves. Anthropologist Jessica Brinkworth and I are working on just the kind of book that I would want to give my daughter as she packed her bags to head off for her first fieldwork or her first position in a lab, a book of stories of what women have faced in their careers and how they’ve made a scientific life work, inside or outside of academia. We’re hoping to provide support, hope and the closest thing to mentoring that a book could offer.

The full call for papers in below. If you have a story to share of how you live your scientific life, please consider sharing it with us or passing this on to anyone who might have something to share.

Women in Science: Call for personal experience essays
“Surviving the Sexodus: Practical advice from women in science”
Edited book, 2016 (tentative)

Many young women dream of a life in science, inspired by the opportunity for a meaningful and rewarding career involving curiosity, passion, mentorship and discovery. Indeed, a desire to reap such rewards can help explain the representation of women in the early stages of some scientific careers (e.g. graduate enrollment), especially in biological and life sciences. Women are, however, very underrepresented in senior research positions. It is fair to say that the proportion of women employed at the senior research level does not nearly reflect the numbers of women who initially express interest in science career.

The reasons behind women staying in science, progressing through the academic/corporate hierarchy or leaving science entirely are complex, but we likely can all point to pivotal moments and challenges that we faced over the course of our experience with the scientific lifestyle. For some of us, these are singular standout moments, for others it is the accumulation of small aggressions that wear us down. Whether it be low pay, long work hours, the pressures of publish or perish, loss of potential retirement fund years, new career interests, spousal career conflict, change in family arrangements or responsibilities, difficult job searches, bullying, harassment or exclusion, there are a myriad of reasons that
women are not proportionally represented in science jobs. Those of us that have worked in science have, however, found one way or another to deal with these challenges and have something valuable to share with our peers and those who are coming up behind us.

The aim of this book is to present the shared wisdom of women who have worked in science to girls and women contemplating or actively pursuing scientific careers. We are collecting personal essays describing the challenges, large and small, experienced by women over the course of education and career development and the strategies they developed to cope and move forward, including finding other avenues for their scientific passions. The overall goal is to provide a collection of relatable stories that can offer support and hope to those at all stages of pursuing a career in science.

If you are interested in participating, please send an email with a provisional subject/title by September 10th, 2014 to Jessica Brinkworth and Marie-Claire Shanahan at jfbrinkworth@gmail.com and mcshanah@ucalgary.ca. Provisional abstracts (250-500 words) are due to us by September 30th, 2014. Essays will be approximately 1500-5000 words long and can include images if desired. The suggested topics below are a guideline only. We are willing to consider any essay that describes challenges and negative experiences and specific strategies and coping mechanisms that you used, even if it changed the direction of your work or life.

We are sensitive to concerns about privacy and will work with authors to ensure that their stories can be conveyed fairly while preserving their personal and professional security.

Please forward this call for essays to anyone you think might be interested in participating in such a project. We are seeking authors from a broad variety of fields and backgrounds.

The publication timeline is as follows:

September 10^th 2014 – subject/title due
September 30^th 2014 – abstract due
June 10^th 2015– essays for review due
September 10^th, 2015 – revised essays due

Hope to hear from you,

Jessica Brinkworth
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology (starting 2015)
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois, USA

Marie-Claire Shanahan
Associate Professor
Research Chair in Science Education and Public Engagement
Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Potential starting areas for essay topics include, but are not limited to:

Real life
Starting a family early or late career
Real life interruptions of science career
On being an adult student in grad school
Finding work life balance
Mixing family and field work
Mental or physical illness

My friends are buying apartments and I’m pipetting for my dissertation at 3 am
The wrong mentor
Poorly funded grad programs
The wrong program
Being interested in another life completely
When your advisor doesn’t make tenure, or leaves

Underrepresented
Being an ethnic minority in science
Being LGBTIA in science
Being alternatively abled in science

Pocketbooks and suitcases
Personal financial challenges during study/career
Life of the scientific spouse
Working in a place where you do not speak the language
Working in another country/culture

Thievery, loss and recourse
Not making tenure/losing tenure
Failed job searches
Loss of funding
On getting scooped

Over the line
Bullying
Infantilization
Harassment
Racism
Sexism
Wrongful dismissal
When a mentor can’t seem to keep their nose out of your personal life

When we quit and where we go
The decision to leave academia
The decision to leave science
Adjuncting for life
Returning to academia

When a CNN article titled “The Myth about Women in Science” came crawling across my feed, I have to admit that I wasn’t optimistic. I wondered what could possibly count as “THE Myth about Women in Science”. Maybe that women and girls have lesser skills in mathematics and spatial reasoning? That is truly a myth about women in science but I couldn’t see why it would be news as it’s been widely disputed.

A quick skim of the article resulted in a briskly raised eye brow. The myth apparently is this: women are less likely to be hired than equally qualified men when they apply for tenure track position. The authors (Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci, both of Cornell University) claim that this misunderstanding is the major cause of women’s underrepresentation in scientific careers.

“The prevailing wisdom is that sexist hiring in academic science roadblocks women’s careers before they even start.” It is?

“Many female graduate students worry that hiring bias is inevitable.” They do?
Certainly, hiring bias is an issue discussed in relation to women’s careers in STEM areas, but it is nowhere near the top of the list of barriers and obstacles that come up frequently. Bullying, aggression, withholding of resources, stereotype threat and imposter syndrome: sure. Hiring bias, “meh, not so much”, to put it colloquially. To put this in context, Jessica Brinkworth and I recently solicited personal essays of women’s experiences in science. We asked all of the potential authors to specifically describe obstacles they had faced and how they tried to address them to move forward or move on. This included women who persevered on the tenure track and those who chose other scientific lives. We received over a hundred submissions and not a single one was about hiring bias. There were essays about mental health, about struggling to raise a family, about sexual harassment and assault, about bullying and even having a job offer rescinded due to pregnancy. But not one women mentioned even being worried about hiring bias.[i] I’m not saying it doesn’t exist or isn’t an issue,  but to say that it’s the “prevailing wisdom” on why women are underrepresented in science is a big stretch.

The study they are describing was published this week in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. In it, Williams and Ceci contacted several hundred science professors (faculty members in biology, economics, psychology, engineering) and asked them to rank three made-up candidates for a hypothetical job in their department. The professors were asked to make that decision based on narrative descriptions of the candidates’ research accomplishments and the impressions they made on the hiring committee. The candidates always included: two top candidates (one male, one female) and a third slightly weaker candidate (always male). The two top candidates were paired in 20 difference combinations to experimentally test whether factors such as their marital status would make a difference. Based on professors’ rankings, Ceci and Ryan suggest that there is actually a preference for women candidates and that it can be as strong as 2:1.

As you can probably see, this design presents some real challenges. Ranking candidates on a narrative description does not replicate how actual hiring happens (although the authors do try to address this with a small follow-up study based on applicant CVs). But hypothetical hiring is not real hiring. It’s easy to say you that you would make what could be seen as the socially acceptable choice, but when asked to really devote resources to a candidate and make them your department colleague, many other factors (including biases) would come into play. (Physicist Dr. Skyskull addresses this with some wit in what he calls “A one-act play about a study in hiring practices in STEM”). These, and several other methodological issues, have been discussed by others such as sociologist Zuleyka Zevallos, marine scientist Claire Griffin, and philosopher Helen De Cruz.

But from my corner of the world as a science educator, the way the study is justified and how its implications are explained are what interest me the most. The way that issues about women in science are discussed in public spaces, such as in schools, around the dinner table and in media outlets is one very important factor in women and girls choosing and then persisting in scientific careers. We are all influenced by what our parents, friends, teachers, role models and colleagues say about what it means to be women in science. So presenting findings in a prominent mass audience media space like CNN and saying that “THE myth” of women in science is untrue is bound to influence those conversations.

So, the part I want to dig into is the support they provide for the major claims they make about why this study is important. The reasoning goes like this: this experiment found that women are ranked higher in hypothetical hiring therefore any differences in women’s representation in research positions is due to women choosing not to apply for those jobs in the first place. In particular they say if women were less afraid of hiring bias, they would apply for tenure track jobs in greater numbers and this part of the problem would be solved. From the CNN article, they conclude “The low numbers of women in math-based fields of science do not result from sexist hiring, but rather from women’s lower rates of choosing to enter math-based fields in the first place, due to sex differences in preferred careers and perhaps to lack of female role models and mentors.” This reasoning is not confined to the media summary though and is presented in the published study as well. They are actually even more blunt there in identifying hiring bias as the major issue: “The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring” (p. 1). And they conclude the paper with this: “We hope the discovery of an overall 2:1 preference for hiring women over otherwise identical men will help counter self-handicapping and opting-out by talented women at the point of entry to the STEM professoriate, and suggest that female” (p. 6).

My problem is the evidence they provide for these claims, which is weak at best.

In the article, they cite four studies to support their claim that fears about hiring bias are prevalent and could be a major reason for underrepresentation of women.

The first is a study by Sheltzer & Smith (2014) published in the same journal and titled “Elite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women”. This study uses publicly available data about junior scientists (graduate students and postdocs) employed in elite labs scientific labs. They find a gender gap in the labs but are very clear that bias is only one possible explanation: “Thus, one cause of the leaky pipeline in biomedical research may be the exclusion of women, or their self-selected absence, from certain high-achieving laboratories.” In fact, they cite a wide variety of factors that impact hiring gaps including societal expectations related to which partner should move to benefit the other’s career, self-chosen and socially implied ideals of work-family balance, and biases that preferentially provide access to scientific resources (mentoring, supplies, public visibility). They say explicitly “Notably, our current data do not show conscious bias on the part of male PIs who employ few female graduate students and postdocs. It may be the case that women apply less frequently to laboratories with elite male PIs” (p. 10110) . So, that study is not making the claim that Williams and Ceci say it is, they are merely noting that for many different reasons, women a less represented in elite labs something that likely impacts their future career prospects.

Ok, next up is a report from the American Association of University Women (Hill, Corbett & Rose, 2010) titled Why so Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

This report is not about hiring bias. With chapters on topics such as “Spatial skills”, “Self-Assessment” and “The College Student Experience”, it’s a summary report on the immense variety of factors that impact girls and women at all points in the science career journey. When it does come to talk about hiring, it actually quotes a study with the same findings that Ceci and Williams are saying should come as a shock: “Although recent research found that when women do apply for STEM faculty positions at major research universities they are more likely than men to be hired, smaller percentages of qualified women apply for these positions in the first place (National Research Council, 2009).” Williams and Ceci cite this same NRC report in their conclusion as something that supports their findings. So Hill, Corbett and Rose (2010) does not address hiring bias except to cite a report that Williams and Ceci say shows no anti-women bias. This report does not support their claim that hiring bias is a major explanatory factor used to explain gender gaps.

Next!

The third piece of evidence they provide is Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering from the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering (National Academies Press, 2007). This report does make an unsupported claim in the document summary the women are less likely to be hired. But a deeper look into the documents shows that the chapter on hiring related bias instead looks at gaps between the available talent pool and those who are hired. The report explains those gaps with a long list of challenges that impact productivity (such as access to resources and mentoring) and with the usual list of reasons that women self-select out of tenure-track jobs (from work-life balance to poor working environments). Except for a brief mention in the summary, this document makes no claims that hiring bias is even present let alone that it is a major factor in women’s underrepresentation.

And finally, the fourth piece that they cite to support these claims is the American Association of University Professors Gender Equity Indicators 2006 (West & Curtiss, 2006). This report is mostly a summary of statistical representation of women in various positions. It suggests that there is a mismatch between those who are hired (especially at research universities) and the presumed talent pool of doctoral students. There is no data collected to explain the mismatch. Discrimination is mentioned as a possibility but it is not clear if this means that women leave because of discrimination they experience in the workplace or if they are discriminated against during the hiring process. And again, this is only one small part of a larger analysis of issues related to tenure, promotion and graduate school persistence. So to say that it supports claims that hiring bias is the major explanation seems unrealistic.

And in reference to the impact of hiring bias, absolutely no evidence is provided that hiring bias is a major fear among young female scientists or that it even one of the reasons women choose not to apply for tenure track jobs. None. For the record, studies that do ask them what they fear and what they experience instead highlight bullying, sexual harassment, and hostile environments. (And this is not even to touch on the fact that this study treats fears and experiences of bias as homogenous among all women, including presumably women of colour, women with disabilities, LGBT women,…)

To their credit, the question of whether bias is really prominent as an explanation is something Ceci and Williams address in the supplementary materials published alongside their study. But I don’t think the answer is very compelling because, as above, most of the support they cite isn’t actually about hiring bias or includes hiring bias as only one small factor. For example:

“Psychological research has shown that most people–even those who explicitly and sincerely avow egalitarian views–hold what have been described as implicit biases … There are countless situations in which such mechanisms are triggered: classroom situations, hiring committees, refereeing of papers for journals, distribution of departmental tasks (research, teaching, admin.) etc.” Oct. 2, 2010 at http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/implicit-biases-1.html

“It is now recognized that (sex) biases function at many levels within science including funding allocation, employment, publication, and general research directions” (Lortie et al., 2007, p. 1247).

“Research has pointed to (sex) bias in peer review and hiring. For example, a female postdoctoral applicant had to…publish at least three more papers in a prestigious science journal or an additional 20 papers in lesser-known specialty journals to be judged as productive as a male applicant…The systematic underrating of female applicants could help explain the lower success rate of female scientists in achieving high academic ranks” (American Association of University Women: Hill, Corbett, & Rose, 2010, p. 24).

Huh, the way this is quoted in the supplementary materials excludes the important information that this quote is from a study of bias in peer review during funding applications not hiring. The actual quote is “Research has also pointed to bias in peer review (Wenneras & Wold, 1997) and hiring (Steinpreis et al., 1999; Trix & Psenka, 2003). For example, Wenneras and Wold found that a female postdoctoral applicant had to be significantly more productive…” Wenneras and Wold were looking and postdoctoral funding applications to the Swedish Medical Research Council. And for the record, Trix and Psenka (2003) is a study of the discrepancies in the reference letters that male and female scientists receive. It too is not a study of hiring bias of the type that Ceci and Williams have examined.

A few of the quotes they provide due refer to one study of hiring bias that they directly refute as inappropriate because it is not about faculty hiring (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). It’s about hiring a hypothetical laboratory manager. And that’s a fair point about that study really but the authors of that study are clear that the impact is on students and not faculty hiring, an appropriate interpretation of the data I think. But saying that some people have cited a single study that you disagree with isn’t enough evidence to say to CNN that the prevailing wisdom is that hiring bias in the main factor in underrepresentation.

Okay, at this point, it’s probably important to ask if this level of scrutiny is really valuable. How much does it matter that they haven’t supported this argument very well. It’s the data they collected that matters, right? Well no, actually. The data is interesting (even if a bit flawed) and it’s something that will help focus attention on more salient issues. That is important and I’m glad someone is doing experimental research on hiring bias. The problem is the way they are talking about and promoting the study, especially in public venues. As I said earlier, a huge influence on girls and women in science (and all people in science really) is what the important people in their lives think about their participation in science. If parents and peers value science and express confidence in girls’ abilities, they are far more likely to persevere. The social support they receive during times of difficulty is essential. Without much evidence that this is major obstacle, this study adds a strong voice to the public conversation about science that says: “Guess what, no bias in science! Just choose to apply to tenure track jobs!” The framing of the CNN piece (and even the study) is: “That thing about women in science struggling to get jobs, totally a myth.”

The implication then is that women are at fault if they experience bias or discrimination or bullying or harassment or withholding of resources. I think, and I’ll be clear that I’m speculating here, that promoting studies like this by saying that there are simple and clear reasons for women’s underrepresentation and suggesting that they’ve been solved will actually have the opposite effect from I think Williams and Ceci intend, causing women to blame themselves when they experience bias and discrimination. Blaming themselves and receiving less support from family and friends who may now doubt the challenges they face could turn more women aware from science critical junctures such as job application.

So I would ask us all to take care in how we share this story and how we talk about it. Potentially interesting, sure, but also potentially damaging when presented as something that it isn’t.

Further reading and references:

Bevan, V., & Learmonth, M. (2012). ” I Wouldn’t Say it’s Sexism, Except That… It’s All These Little Subtle Things”: Healthcare Scientists’ Accounts of Gender in Healthcare Science Laboratories. Social studies of science, 0306312712460606.

Clancy, K. B., Nelson, R. G., Rutherford, J. N., & Hinde, K. (2014). Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE): trainees report harassment and assault. PloS one, 9(7), e102172.

Johnson-Bailey, J. (2014). Academic Incivility and Bullying as a Gendered and Racialized Phenomena. Adult Learning, 1045159514558414.

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(41), 16474-16479.

Simpson, R., & Cohen, C. (2004). Dangerous work: The gendered nature of bullying in the context of higher education. Gender, Work & Organization, 11(2), 163-186.

Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (2001). Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Women, science, and technology. Routledge, 46-52.

[i] Jessica recently presented a summary of the project motivations and submissions: Brinkworth, J.F., & Shanahan, M.-C. (2015, March). Surviving the Sexodus Project: How STEM Women Approach Career Challenges. Presentation at the American Association of Anatomists, Boston, MA. And we are embarking on a related research project: more on that soon!

A few months ago I wrote a blog post in response to Williams and Ceci’s paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: National hiring experiments reveal 2: 1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. I was concerned about the way that the findings were interpreted, generalized and compared to the wider literature. In the media comments that followed their piece, Williams and Ceci were very clear, however, that they felt that critics of the paper were being unfair and unscholarly. I didn’t agree and I wanted to ensure that genuine scholarly concerns were discussed not only in a blogged and public venue but also through traditional channels. So I wrote a letter to the editor, expressing the concerns raised in my blog post.

I think Rosie Redfield’s dual work in criticizing NASA’s arsenic life paper both on her blog and through a letter to Science, for example, is a very important model. High visibility science, reported in large media venues, often doesn’t receive public critique. People may write letters to the editor or complain to each other at conferences, but too often that critique is not available to most of the people who have read about a story in the news. Or it is only available so long after the initial results are reported that it has little impact on how that science is understood publicly. As I’ve written before, the back channels of criticism of cold fusion were quickly refuting the findings, but those of us reading about it on the sidelines were left out of that conversation for a long time. Blogged commentary and social media responses are a very important way of making all of science–including the messy processes that go into building scientific consensus about a topic–available.

The editors of PNAS weren’t entirely moved by my letter and declined to publish it. The letter and the editor’s comment are below. Even though it wasn’t published, I’m still happy to have worked to express my concerns both publicly here and through the more formal channels of the journal. This is an important model for scholarly critique, and I would do it again in heartbeat.

Editor’s Remarks to Author:
While interesting we do not feel this adds weight to the discussion.

Lack of hiring bias in STEM? Interpretive caution needed

The recent article by Williams and Ceci [1] addresses an important issue: identifying precisely where women leave or are shut out of scientific careers. The results of their study suggest that when hypothetical faculty candidates are identical except for gender, women may be favored at the point of hiring. Within the constraints of experimental research of this type, their study addresses a meaningful and specific literature gap. In a context like this, however, where findings will contribute (and are explicitly intended to contribute) to public discourse and policy making, the interpretations of the evidence and the implications that are drawn are of at least equal importance. So it is especially troubling that, in this article, the interpretations stretch well beyond the experimental evidence.

The experiment is framed with two base assumptions: that hiring bias is the most prominent explanation for women’s underrepresentation and that fear of hiring bias is a key motivator for women to withdraw from seeking tenure-track positions; neither is compellingly supported. On the latter assumption, no evidence is provided that hiring bias is a central worry for women despite claims such as “One reason (for fewer applicants) may be omnipresent discouraging messages about sexism in hiring”. In reference to the former claim (“The underrepresentation of women…is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring”) the evidence provided is contradictory and weak. Of all of the literature they cite in support of this claim only one study [2] examines this type of hiring bias. Sheltzer and Smith [3], for example, examined the employees of elite labs and found fewer women employed there. They, however, are appropriately tentative in their interpretation saying explicitly that they have no evidence to suggest or negate hiring bias and they propose multifactorial explanations for their observations. Similarly, the 2010 American Association of University Women report “Why so Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” [4] is used to support the claim that “numerous blue ribbon panels … have concluded that implicit, and sometimes explicit, attitudes pervade the hiring process“; but on hiring bias, which it addresses only briefly, the report references the same National Research Council (2010) report that the authors cite to support their own findings. This report concludes that women declining to apply for tenure track jobs is a more pressing issue than bias at the point of hiring.

Gender-based hiring bias, as a factor isolated from the many other day-to-day experiences that influence women’s participation and progression, is not the dominant explanation for women’s underrepresentation in the literature. That hiring bias may not (under experimental conditions) be a barrier to women on the tenure track is therefore just one of many contributions to understanding a complex phenomenon. There is little to support the far-reaching conclusion that, as a result of these findings, this “is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science”. A great deal more nuance and tentativeness in interpretation would have been appropriate.

[1] Williams WM, Ceci SJ (2015) National hiring experiments reveal 2: 1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(17): 5360-5365.

[2] Moss-Racusin CA, Dovidio JF, Brescoll VL, Graham MJ, Handelsman J (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(41): 16474-16479.

[3] Sheltzer JM, Smith JC (2014) Elite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111(28):10107–10112.

[4] Hill C, Corbett C, St. Rose A (2010) Why so Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (American Association of University Women, Washington, DC).

[5] National Research Council (2010) Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty (National Academies Press, Washington, DC).

The Seven Wonderers of Beakerhead (Photo courtesy of Raj Bhardwaj @RajBhardwajMD, used with permission)

In the warm glow of vintage stage lights, with a full house packed into worn leather and velour seats, a woman approaches the mic almost tentatively. “I used to be a dancer”, she says, “and I would probably be a lot more comfortable on this stage if I were dancing”[i]. It wasn’t a typical opening line for a science talk.

The Seven Wonderers of Beakerhead, hosted at Calgary’s Royal Canadian Legion No. 1 on September 15, was definitely not what you might expect from an evening of science talks–even I got more than I expected. The event was part of Beakerhead, Calgary’s science, art, and engineering extravaganza (they call it a “smash up” rather than a festival). The seven wonderers were seven experienced science communicators and journalists there to share their personal stories of curiosity and wonder.

Torah Kachur, science columnist at CBC Radio, opened the night sharing her realization that her grandfather had pioneered the life-saving cardiac surgery that her newborn daughter needed. Rose Eveleth, host and producer of Meanwhile in the Future, took us on a fast-paced ride to meet the scientific mentors in her life, a journey the climaxed in a dark alley in Costa Rica faced with how to answer the question: “You’re a scientist, right?”. The crowd laughed along with her and experienced for themselves what her research mentor meant when he said, “You know, not everyone has to be a scientist. You’re really good at talking to people, you should be a journalist”.

Nadia Drake, the former dancer and now science reporter for Wired, National Geographic and others, followed Rose and spoke earnestly about her first encounter with mountain lions and the difficult struggles she saw them face once she joined a research team tagging and tracking the animals. Raj Bhardwaj, a physician and CBC health columnist, was up next with a humorous tale of an awkward ER conversation (“Actually doc, you’re not going to believe this but…”) that served a rich background to explore the responsibilities that doctors have for really listening to their patients, understanding that medicine “is not about fixing bodies, it’s about communication”.

The second half kept us all laughing, with science comedian Sarah Chow sharing some of the difficult tasks she’d been given by her production company (Find out something interesting we can do about breakfast foods, now!) and Jennifer Gardy, regular guest host of The Nature of Things, sharing her acquired wisdom about TV documentary work through humourous lists, such of rejected names for The Nature of Things (“This Hour has 22 Beavers”) and unsuitable documentary titles (“Inside animal colons!” and “Myth or Science: Pants”). John Rennie, a former standup comedian and past editor-in-chief of Scientific American, wrapped the night in a scientific bow with a tale of trying to master his fear of bugs by eating them. Spoiler, this did not go well.

The evening was a great fun, but I think there was more to it than that. There was a lot more comedy than in a typical night of scientific talks, but to me the star of the show was narrative: the story telling form. All of the Wonderers spoke from personal experience and shared something that had directly happened to them, along with the self-doubt, surprises and self-reflection that come along with human experiences. And in doing that, using the narrative form, they said things about science that almost no research talk ever could.

Thinking about narrative as a valuable tool for science writing, science communication and science education is not by any means a new idea. Story Collider, for example, makes a thought provoking podcast and regular event out of it. I even tried my hand at organizing a science and story-telling event in Edmonton a few years ago. Colleagues of mine in science education have also studied how stories about science might help students to be more interested and understand scientific concepts better.[ii] The usual story about narrative in science is that it represents a familiar kind of writing and speaking so it can make science more accessible and hold a reader or audience members’ attention better than a plain explanation. Most often it’s seen as a pedagogical or communications tool, a way of connecting ideas in a more engaging way.

Tonight something else really struck me, and I thought about science narratives in a way that I hadn’t before. In my own research I’m often interested in how people find or make places for themselves in science or, on the other hand, distance themselves from it or are excluded, maybe feeling like they just aren’t the right kind of people to participate or be welcomed. Doing that kind of research means spending a lot of time thinking about how to help people articulate the relationships they have with scientific communities and concepts.

What made me so excited about these stories was how well they accomplished that difficult task and expressed very different relationships to science. In both Nadia Drake’s cougar story and Raj Bhardwaj’s ER story there was responsibility and respect. In both of those stories, being a part of science and medicine was both an honour and a duty. There was a passion and love for science in Rose’s story and a struggle about maybe not being up to the task, good enough to really be a scientist. Sarah on the other hand owned the science in her story. She told us that one of her main motivations was protecting science from the way it was often misconstrued in media headlines. And John joked about his place in science, said he was being entirely non-scientific in his fears and set himself up as maybe being different from the entomologists who were organizing the event. He was a guest into that world in his story.

What I loved about the stories was that science became a character in some way in all of them: they protected it, they loved it, it excluded them, scared them and sometimes embarrassed them. That complex relationship to science is something that is often unspoken and hidden, especially from students.

Everyone who took the stage would, I think, be considered an insider to science. Some have graduate degrees, others have come to it later or from other backgrounds but all are now deeply immersed in it in some way. Young students often think that there are only two relationships you can have with science—in or out. You’re scientific or you’re not. I love the idea that, through stories, students might be able to see more clearly the complex relationships people have with science. Maybe they could even be able to think more explicitly about their relationship to science through telling stories like this, to see the insider in their outsider stories and vice versa. [iii]

So, I want to say a big thanks to the Seven Wonderers of Beakerhead. The evening will definitely stick with me and not just for the mental image of John Rennie trying to decide whether to eat a cockroach head or back end first.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

[i] All of the quotes from that night were hand written, which is to say scrawled as quickly as I could into my notebook as the speakers told their stories. I’ve written them here as quotes but they are only my best attempt at recreating of the words of the speakers as they spoke.

[ii] For example:

Avraamidou, L., & Osborne, J. (2009). The role of narrative in communicating science. International Journal of Science Education, 31(12), 1683-1707. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09500690802380695

Norris, S. P., Guilbert, S. M., Smith, M. L., Hakimelahi, S., & Phillips, L. M. (2005). A theoretical framework for narrative explanation in science. Science Education, 89(4), 535-563. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.20063/abstract

[iii] The idea of using narrative as a tool for research and understanding also isn’t new. Narrative researchers, like Jean Clandinin, have pioneered methods for understanding all kinds of experiences by the stories that people tell. In science education, John Wallace and William Louden’s book Teachers’ Learning: Stories of Science Education opens with a really thoughtful history and framework for narrative as a research method and its relationship to science and scientific practice. What I’d personally never quite made the connection to before was the value in making science a character with a place in the story.

[Correction: The title of this post has been changed. The title had been “Why do we always have to say she’s a good mom too?” I had meant that title to reflect the historical trend in reporting on women scientists, but in email correspondence from Feb. 23 Ivan Semeniuk has rightly pointed out that the title implied that he had reported on Kaspi as a “good mom”. While he writes about her family, that is not a claim that he makes in his story. I apologize for this implication and have reverted to what was the original draft title of the post.]

This week, Canadian astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, one of the country’s highest scientific honours. Her work on neutron stars is exciting and important. The way Canadian media have covered the story is important though too, illustrating two polar opposite approaches.

I first read about her honour in an online piece from the CBC, written by Emily Chung: “Victoria Kaspi, neutron star researcher at McGill, wins $1M Herzberg medal”. I was impressed. It isn’t a typical inspiring woman-in-science story. It is a straight forward account of a highly acclaimed scientist. The only mention of her femininity is to state that she is the first woman to win the prize. The rest of piece dives into the complexity of her work, her career path as scientist, and why she is so deserving of the honour.

Only one other national outlet has so far covered the story, and the contrast is startling. Ivan Semeniuk’s piece for the Globe and Mail, “McGill astrophysicist is first woman to win Canada’s top science award” takes the perspective that the award is important precisely because she is a woman.

It is not news to say that women and men, particularly scientists, are treated differently in media coverage. Marcel LaFollette’s review of American popular magazine profiles from 1910-1955 paints a clear picture, where women are profiled as women first and scientists second. She wrote, “Through their language and ideas, magazine biographers echoed such attitudes by asserting that women–even women who were successful scientists—were still more fulfilled through marriage and motherhood than through research” (p. 256-266). LaFollette describes the Saturday Evening Post as “relentless” in their efforts to describe Marie Curie as devoted to her family and husband. And hitting close to home for me, University of Toronto Astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg, a full professor and internationally recognized specialist in globular clusters, was described by American Magazine as a “housewife”. “Even if her mind is in the sky, Dr. Hogg keeps her feet on the ground. She runs the house for her husband and three kids, collects stamps, makes bedspreads.”

More recently, Orly Shacher (2000) focused on the “Scientists at Work” columns in the New York Times for 1996 and 1997: 30 profiles in all, 6 of women. She found the same common theme. The men were presented as scientists. Biographical details, such as spouses, were mentioned briefly if at all. Hobbies were described in ways that complemented the scientific work, such highlighting the nuclear activism of an atomic physicist. In contrast, the journalists seemed to include excruciating details of struggles of women in science in a way that suggested that there was a need to justify the inclusion of women beyond their professional performance. She proposed that these profiles leave the reader to conclude that to profile a women, there must be a women-in-science story there, not just a story of a scientist who happens to be a women. As she argues, the female profiles exhibit a particular kind of tokenism, where women are presented as symbols rather than as individuals. They are glorified as exceptions and lauded for overcoming hardship but that’s the only reason their story is deemed to be worth telling.

Scientists themselves have expressed frustration with constantly being presented as special cases and as the human face of science, not a scientists. Mwenya Chimba and Jenny Kitzinger (2009) gathered feedback from 86 prominent women scientists in the UK and many expressed conflicting emotions, saying they were pleased to be able to tell their stories but frustrated that they were only ever presented in that light. “One explained that whenever she made a public statement it was characterize as: ‘female scientist says x, y and z…[but] why should the fact that I am a female make any difference whatsoever?'” As Chimba and Kitzinger conclude, the problem isn’t sharing inspiring stories about women in science and taking opportunities to humanize science by sharing personal stories of these women. These are important things to write about. The problem is that it is overwhelmingly women who are cast in this way and it’s often the only story ever told about them, leaving men to continue to be cast as the objective and authoritative voices of science.

In online science writing circles, the remedy is sometimes referred to as the Finkbeiner test. Science journalist Christie Ashwanden coined it while describing her colleague’s (Ann Finkbeiner’s) frustration with having to write endless inspiring woman-in-science stories instead of science stories about women. It is meant to guide writers in talking about high profile scientists in venues where their work should be taking centre stage. Passing the test means refraining from mentioning: The fact that she’s a woman, Her husband’s job, Her child care arrangements, How she nurtures her underlings, How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field, How she’s such a role model for other women, How she’s the “first woman to…”

Emily Chung’s CBC piece about Kaspi and the Herzberg medal is exactly this. Except for mentioning that Kaspi is the first woman to receive the prize, absolutely every remaining word of the story is about her as a scientist.”Much of her research has been on pulsars, a special kind of neutron star that spins at enormous speeds while beaming out radio waves that can be detected in rhythmic pulses on Earth.” “Kaspi’s research has had ‘major impacts in the field of astrophysics,’ NSERC says.”

Chung writes in a way that humanizes Kaspi, but when she does so she humanizes her as a scientist: as someone who was surprised and thrilled to receive a prestigious honour, even as a Star Trek fan. From Chung’s description, I have no idea if Kaspi has children, what her husband does (if she has one) or how she manages her work-life balance. It’s just a story about a great scientist who does world-renowned work on “zombie stars”. And who doesn’t like the sound of that?

Semeniuk’s treatment in the Globe and Mail could hardly be more different. It is the epitome of an inspiring woman-in-science story. Instead of leading with the research, the second sentence goes directly into framing Kaspi as a role model and someone who has struggled and won as a woman in science. “Victoria Kaspi, director of the McGill Space Institute, is the first woman to claim the prestigious award in its 25-year history, a startling reminder of the overwhelming gender imbalance that persists at the highest levels of Canadian academia.” The next two paragraphs aren’t even about Kaspi, but instead about how this honour “signals to girls and young women that science is exciting and it’s possible to achieve the highest honour”, in words of Mario Pinto, President of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council who administers the award. Kaspi’s research then receives several solid paragraphs, before sliding into some strange attention to the hominess of the décor of her research facility and then the seemingly inevitable paragraph about her husband, his job, their children and how busy her life is. (Which I’m honestly sure it is.) All this before capping off the near Finkbeiner clean-sweep with a description her attention to gender issues as a mentor.

The deliberate choice to frame this as an inspiring woman-in-science story is highlighted by the fact that Semeniuk himself covered last year’s male winner. That Kaspi is female is not what made this newsworthy, the prize itself is. Last year’s profile of Dalhousie University chemist Axel Becke is all business, opening with an anecdote about convincing a colleague about the value of his new analysis methods over lunch and going on to describe the immense impact of his work. The only personal details are in a short paragraph about how he came to Canada from Germany as a child, details that are also included in the piece on Kaspi. He isn’t framed as a role model and his accomplishments as a potential family man are completely absent.

Now I don’t want to fault Semeniuk for drawing attention to gender imbalance. And if these details are important to Kaspi’s own story as a scientist, then she should tell them as often and as loudly as she wants. But for writers like Semeniuk, I would argue that taking the focus away from her scientific accomplishments may instead reinforce the stereotypes he might have hoped to break. Write a great piece on the under representation of women in the upper levels of Canadian science departments for tomorrow’s paper. I would absolutely love to read it. But by turning Kaspi’s award into an inspiring woman-in-science story it becomes just one more example that no matter how high the honour, the fact that a woman can do that and also manage her home life is why we should admire her. Rather than signalling to girls that science is attainable, the never ending repetition of this style of story (for more than a century now) sends the same messages as those examples studied by LaFollette and Shacher: 1) Women have to be a particular type of super woman to be worthwhile, not only as scientists but accomplished as wives and mothers and 2) A woman’s story in science is only worth telling if it’s an inspiring woman-in-science story and not just because she does outstanding work. By using a style that highlights elements of tokenism (Look! A successful woman! A role model!) the place of women as irregular participants in science is reinforced, not challenged.

February 29, 2016: Ivan Semeniuk has kindly provided a response. His correspondence and my reply can be found in this post: Herzberg medal coverage follow up.

References

On February 18, I wrote about two pieces of national coverage of the Herzberg medal, won this year by Victoria Kaspi. She is the first woman to do so, and the two pieces approached this element of the story very differently. One (written by Emily Chung for CBC) reported that fact briefly but focused solely on her award-winning research. The other (written by Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail) made the breaking of a gender barrier a central part of the story along with the research that had earned her the award. As a reader, they both struck me very differently, and I wanted to explore why. While it is very important to bring attention to gender issues in science, I felt that writing the prize announcement as a gender in science story shared some resemblance to a pattern Shachar (2000) identified in scientist profiles in the New York Times: the “inspiring woman in science” story which often emphasizes how a woman has overcome challenges (such as those related to family care) and acts as a role model, for example. I argued that it is a format that can have the unintended consequence of reinforcing the perception of women as irregular participants in science.

After my post went up, Ivan Semeniuk contacted me to ask if I would be willing to post a response from him explaining some of the editorial decisions that went into the piece. I said, yes of course. Through our correspondence he expressed concern about the original title of the post. As a result, I have changed the title of that original post and added a correction at the top.

His response follows (including that concern). It is presented in full as it was sent to me, and I have in turn responded below. My original post was written from my perspective as a science educator with a strong concern for how media messages about women in science impact girls and young women. It is interesting and helpful to me to learn more about the decisions that went into framing the article, and I can appreciate the very different perspective of a journalist and editorial team from my own perspective outside of that world. I really appreciate that he took the time to engage with me and provide these details. I do want to make clear from the outset, however, that my first post was not meant as an accusation of an individual writer with a bias problem. As reiterated above, my interest was in making sense of two very different approaches to the story from the perspective of a few studies that have examined how women scientists are presented in the media.

In her blog post, originally titled “Why do we always have to say she’s a good mom too?” Marie-Claire Shanahan seems to suggest that a journalist who reports on gender imbalance is reinforcing gender imbalance. This is flawed premise and must be rejected. To do otherwise would be a setback to efforts to improve gender equality in Canadian research institutions.

Like Marie-Claire Shanahan, I agree that it would be cause for concern if a profile of a prominent Canadian researcher on the occasion of her winning a major professional award were to dwell on her parenting and other gender-related qualities instead of her contributions as a scientist.

But I emphatically disagree that this description bears any resemblance to my recent profile of astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi who this month became the first woman to win the Herzberg Gold medal. Although a blog post is not required to meet the standards of academic rigour or journalistic accountability, I am dismayed to see such a careless and misinformed characterization of my work.

Dr. Shanahan compares my story in unfavourable terms to one by Emily Chung which appeared on the CBC Technology & Science website. In contrast to my story, she writes, the CBC piece is “a straightforward account of a highly acclaimed scientist” because it makes only a passing mention of that fact Dr. Kaspi is the first woman to win the medal.

Emily Chung is an excellent science journalist and a friend. I admire her work. But in this instance, our stories about Dr. Kaspi are not comparable in scope or depth — a fact that Dr. Shanahan manages to overlook entirely.

The CBC story devotes about 650 words to its description of Dr. Kaspi and her research accomplishments. It quotes one person — Dr. Kaspi herself — before moving on to another prize-winner.

In contrast, my profile of Dr. Kaspi runs over 1000 words and draws on multiple sources including colleagues and peers, some (but not all) of whom are quoted directly. My reporting included spending two mornings with Dr. Kapsi and her team at the McGill Space Institute in Montreal and a review of her published work. It’s clear my piece was designed from the outset to be a larger story than the CBC item. It presents a fuller portrayal of Dr. Kaspi that includes both professional and personal details.

Contrary to Dr. Shanahan’s assertions, it’s clear that my piece, just like the CBC story, “dives into the complexity of [Dr. Kaspi’s] work, her career path as scientist, and why she is so deserving of the honour.” But because my story is longer, it also has the space to do something more.

That something more is an exploration of why Dr. Kaspi is the first woman to win Canada’s top science prize. For my assigning editor, Christine Brousseau, and me, this is what made the story a contender for front page treatment by The Globe and Mail. (It did appear on the front page in most print editions.)

It is stunning — one might say appalling — to realize that it has taken until 2016 for a female researcher in Canada to earn this recognition. We chose to draw attention to this because of its broader significance as an indicator of gender imbalance in Canada’s research enterprise. Anyone who does not understand why this is an important issue for our country has not been paying attention.

In newspaper writing, the mechanics of a front page-style story requires that the most salient information — the stuff that makes the case for why the reader should pay attention — is typically delivered within the first 150 words. This is deliberate, in order to convey that information “before the turn”, when the story goes from the front page to an interior page. My story obeys this rule when it first states that Dr. Kaspi has won the prize, along with who she is, and then makes note of the historic circumstances of this particular award.

The very next thing my story does is ask why it has taken so long for a Canadian woman to be recognized in this way. The answer, in part, is that very few full professors at Canadian universities who receive federal funding for scientific research are women. This points to the broader significance of Dr. Kaspi’s achievement and, from The Globe and Mail’s perspective, makes this a national story rather than simply a science story. To write it differently would be to bury the lede — a mistake my editors would quickly have remedied had I chosen to do so.

So what of my previous year’s coverage of chemist Axel Becke, a male researcher who won the Herzberg medal in 2015? Dr. Becke, also an exceptional scientist, broke no gender barriers in winning the medal. My story about him ran 700 words, leaving little room for anything beyond a description of his work. I did not visit him personally. The treatment is different not because of gender bias but because, from a news perspective, it is an altogether different type of story.

It would be a fairer comparison to ask how I covered a female researcher who similarly won an important award but was not the only woman to do so. That was the case last year when Janet Rossant, a senior scientist in developmental and stem cell biology became a Gairdner Award winner. (To be specific: She was the first female Gairdner Wightman Award winner, which is reserved for Canadian researchers, but not the first woman to be named a Gairdner winner overall and so the story did not expand on that.)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/gairdners-honour-researcher-who-went-from-outsider-to-stem-cell-pioneer/article23610112/

My story about Dr. Rossant barely touches on gender or personal matters, except to note that she came to Canada after marrying a Canadian — a relevant piece of information for that particular profile.

A more careful analysis might also look to see if I have written about Dr. Kaspi on other occasions when she was not crossing a significant gender milestone. I have done so, and the result is a gender neutral story about Dr. Kaspi’s work:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/a-stars-spin-opens-an-exotic-window-for-mcgill-university-researcher/article12253160/

To counter the possibility of selection effects on my part, I would also point to my past 10 stories in which a female scientist is featured prominently [see list below]. Only in one case is gender discussed in any significant way – and then only because Canadian anthropologist Marina Elliott was one of a handful of all-female researchers who were physically small enough to squeeze into a cave bearing the fossil remains of a previously undescribed human relative.

My work at The Globe and Mail consistently shows that I am not, as Dr. Shanahan implies, inclined to portray female researches as women first, scientists second. In my previous professional roles as an editor at Nature and New Scientist and as a producer of science television, I can point to scores of additional examples where stories under my direction assumed a gender neutral stance except in cases when gender was an essential element of the story. All of these stories pass the “Finkbeiner test” as reiterated by Dr. Shanahan.

It’s worth noting that the term Finkbeiner test — to the extent that it has relevance here — was not coined in connection with a story where gender actually matters, but in those where it clearly doesn’t. Regardless of what Dr. Shanhan seems to think, Canada’s females scientists are most definitely not living in a world where gender doesn’t matter when it comes to recognition and advancement. And for The Globe and Mail, gender is clearly part of the story when it comes to Dr. Kaspi’s prize. Furthermore, sexual harassment of female researchers has been a pressing issue in astronomy and other science faculties this past year and Dr. Kaspi’s leadership role in her field required that I explore her experiences and attitudes on that score as well.

These are all facts that I feel Dr. Shanahan has overlooked in error. But in one particular detail, I feel her post crosses the boundary from uninformed to misleading.

This is because the title of the blog initially asked: “Why do we always have to say she’s a good mom too?”

The answer is we don’t, and I didn’t.

While my story makes mention of the fact that Dr. Kaspi has three school-age children (in the 20^th paragraph of the piece) it makes no assertions whatsoever about whether Dr. Kaspi is a “good mom”. As a journalist, such a statement would at least require me to interview family members and friends. I did not do so in this case because Dr. Kaspi’s parenting was not the focus of the profile. The title misrepresents my work unfairly and Dr. Shanahan should acknowledge this point for the benefit of her readers.

So why did I mention Dr. Kaspi’s family at all? Because unlike most Herzberg medal winners, Dr. Kaspi is not approaching retirement. She is in the prime of her research career and also running an institute as well as mentoring a large team of graduate students and post docs. It is widely acknowledged that female researchers tend to face more barriers and demands on their time when they are raising families than their male counterparts do specifically because of differences in social expectations related to parenting.

It would have been a disservice to readers of The Globe and Mail for me not to address the significant time pressures that Dr. Kaspi faces in a system that has not yet learned to accommodate senior scientists of the highest rank who also happen to be working mothers.

To my mind, this blog post missed an excellent opportunity to examine the real challenges that journalists face when trying to portray female scientist in a non-patronizing way against the backdrop of a persistently imbalanced system of academic rewards and incentives. Instead it uses a misinterpretation of my story to set up a straw man argument and claims The Globe and Mail is somehow flaunting Dr. Kaspi’s femininity by drawing attention to her barrier breaking accomplishment. This is not just wrong. It is counterproductive in the extreme.

Let’s be clear that there are very few voices in the media paying attention to gender issues in Canadian science. It is imperative that those of us who are doing so not be intimidated or shut down from reporting on these issues because of misperceptions like those presented here.

I sincerely hope that Dr. Shanahan will consider amending her analysis where it concerns my profile of Dr. Kaspi and I encourage her to examine the additional examples of my work listed here.

Scientific knowledge is public knowledge

Speaking at Science March YYC. (Photo by Miwa Takeuchi)

That’s how I opened my speech at the Calgary March for Science. I was honoured to be invited, but for many reasons I thought carefully about whether I wanted to say yes. In the end, that message is what did it for me. Almost all of my teaching, research and writing comes down to a commitment to creating opportunities for access and engagement in science for everyone and a recognition that creating a public scientific culture is essential: culture where where families, communities and popular media discuss scientific issues, value scientific ideas and practices and can contribute to creating the kind of science that they need. The March was a chance to do just that, to be a part of public scientific culture. So I bundled my daughter up in her stroller (they were calling for snow!) and said that I would speak at the March. And after hearing the other speakers share their professional and personal experiences, hearing what the crowd cheered for (yay, science teachers!), and shaking hands with kids who had made their own signs, I am proud to say that I did.

Below you can find a video of all of the talks, including extraordinary science communicator Jay Ingram, web developed and blogger Aurooba Ahmed, and University of Calgary neuroscientist Naweed Syed. And here is the text of speech I had planned. Mostly because of nervousness, I forgot to say some of it, said some things differently, and added some mention of science dogs (because there were so many good dogs there) but this is what I had planned to say. And I’m glad I took the chance to be a part of the public science culture that I talk about in my work. Afterwards, the first thing my daughter said was “Mommy teacher” and that was pretty much the best review of all.

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Hi everyone – I’m Marie-Claire Shanahan and I am incredibly lucky to get to spend every day thinking about and acting to encourage engagement and participation in science. I’m a professor who studies how people of all ages create and become part of scientific communities, I teach future high school science teachers how to design rich learning experiences for their students and I’m a former middle and high school science teacher myself.

The reason that I do all of that, what drives all of it is a simple statement:

Scientific knowledge is public knowledge

It belongs to everyone.

I spend a lot of time working with students in schools. So what does that mean for them that scientific knowledge is public knowledge?

Students deserve opportunities in schools to gain access to scientific knowledge, to learn how to participate in scientific activities and how to use scientific knowledge in their every day lives.

But more than that, when we study the reasons that kids choose to maintain an interest in science or to dismiss and abandon it there is so much more to it than getting good grades or having good science teachers. One of the biggest influences is the value placed on science in families, community culture and popular culture. When it’s clear to kids that science is important, interesting and a valued thing to participate in and to care about, that’s when they stay–and not just to become scientists but to become parents, policy makers, politicians and journalists who care about and value scientific knowledge and practices, even caring enough to question and challenge them sometimes too. And that’s one of the main reasons that I am so pleased to be here today. This is creating public science culture. We are here today saying we care about science, that there are many many different ways to be involved in science and that all kinds of people can participate in and care about it. I’m here because kids deserve communities, families and popular culture stories that value science and their participation in it.

Another major force in supporting and encouraging people to maintain an interest in science is belonging. Students care deeply about whether science is place they feel they belong, that values who they are and the skills and talents that they bring. And sometimes school science can send very rigid messages about who belongs, about who is a science kind of person and for which students there is space to be themselves in science. Science in education settings at all levels need to be places that are for all students – students with disabilities, students of colour, Indigenous students, rural, newcomers, refugees, LGBT students…also creative students, maker students, drama students and political students and for students who begged for a telescope for Christmas (um, me). If science is public knowledge then all of us belong. That means creating spaces in the way we talk about science for students to see themselves and it means working hard to fight discrimination and harassment and drive students out and tell them they don’t belong.

Now so far what I’ve talked about has been my work, work that I’ve been devoted to since I first started visiting elementary schools to do science demos as teenager. But my relationship to public science has also changed dramatically in the past few years. My hilarious, smart and determined daughter also has a rare disease. Her medical care is complex and we need public science in a way I had never experienced before. We need public support and we need stable public funding for basic and applied research contributing to improved care and management, we need research that includes patients and families as knowledgeable participants and collaborators and we need access to that research through open access publications and open science organizations. And she needs a science education that allows her to develop knowledge and skills to understand the medical science that affects her life everyday, to take ownership of it and to advocate for herself on her medical journey. And she needs science education that recognizes that building those abilities in students is every bit as important to science as educating future scientists.

So thank you. This today is public science culture. You are here saying to each other and to anyone who sees this that science is important, science is valued and science belongs to us all. Scientific knowledge is public knowledge and thank you for being here to show that to the city and far beyond.

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And also I want to add a special thanks to my colleagues who came out and encouraged me and even looked after my daughter while I spoke. Thank you a million times Gabriela Alsonso-Yanez, Armando Preciado Babb and Miwa Takeuchi (who also managed to grab a few pics for me, thanks!). And thank you to the organizers, Grand Marshall Chantal Chagnon, and the amazing emcee, Adora Nwofor, who created a positive, welcoming and exciting event. 

PS – the embed on the video isn’t really working, but you can see video if you click.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmarchforscienceyyc%2Fvideos%2F1300338150055337%2F&show_text=0&width=400