COMM 164 MT 2

Fiske and Dupree (Trust in Scientists)

-Expertise is a prerequisite for communicator credibility, entailing the knowledge and ability to be accurate -trust is also essential to communicator credibility -audience views trustworthiness as the motivation to be truthful -Perception of scientist, like other social perceptions, involves inferring both their apparent Intent (warmth) and capability (competence -Communicator credibility needs to address both expertise and trustworthiness: Scientists have earned their audience's respect, but not necessarily their trust Public Beliefs and Affect -Scientists and the public are isolatied from one another: inhabit distinct information environments -Despite scientific consensus on climate change, the public is of two minds ---->How can science communicators reconcile the gap between public ambivalence and scientific consensus? -Scientist may misunderstand the sources of lay belief -The public's issue with science is not necessarily ignorance -different lay people hold different models of science -Potential divides between scientist and public are not merely about shared knowledge -Attitudes are evaluations that include both cognition (beliefs) and affect (feelings) -When attitudes do tilt towards emphasizing either cognition of affect, persuasion is more effective when it matches the type of attitude Communicator Credibility -Perceived expertise entails the knowledge and ability to be accurate -audiences are operating on automatic are more likely to agree with experts -however, expertise can also trigger closer scrutiny -Other feature of communicator credibility is trust -audience judge's communicator's trustworthiness as their motivation to be truthful -trust makes audience believe in message's validity. -People trust similar others -People trust the sincerity of persistent minorities Identifying who to trust -People's social interactions are ruled by a known set of five repeatedly cited and supported core motive that together sketch some main drivers of social behavior, including trust -Most central is the motivation for belonging to a stable set of face-to-face interactions -on the cognitive side: people need to acquire socially shared understanding and some sense of control (see some contingency between what they do and what to expect in return) -Communicator expertise contributes to these two cognitively oriented motives by providing valid information about consensus beliefs (socially shared understanding) and about social norms. -On the affective side there ae two other core motives: people adapt better to group life when they have self-esteem adequate to maintain participation in the group and when their default motive is to trust their own group members. -Systematic principles: people decide quickly another's apparent intent which once determine, prompts decision on whether the other is competent to act on those intents What about Scientists as Communicators? -Perception of scientists, like other social perception, presumably involves inferring intent (warmth) as well as capability (competence), given this context these perceptions may help understand how th epublic responds to science communicators. -risk inherent in being enviable: schadenfreude (glee at misfortune experienced by these groups) -Therefore even if a scientist is respected as competent they may not be trusted as warm and their intent may not be trusted -Science communication could be less at risk of envy than other scientists and researchers scientists whose job involves teaching and communicating may seem warmer and more trustworthy, seeming to show worth intentions Climate Scientists' Presumed Agenda -For the most part distrust of climate scientists run low, but not at the floor of the scale, and responses varu -Slight distrust may seem to contradict earlier data that scientists seem less warm than others, however this is open to interpretation -climate scientists may be viewed more positively than general scientists -climate scientists here are viewed distinct from others so absolute results may differ from relative ones -scale of distrust, not trust, and people tend to avoid rating other people negatively as individuals -seven items on the scale differ from two items on the scale -Although scientific communicators may stress persuasion, deliberation word be better. communicating uncertainty is essential to building credibility and trust best predicts attention paid to scientific experts

Dornan (Science and the Media)

-central assumption is that a scientifically informed public is a prerequisite for effective functioning of a democratic society -based on three central premises: knowledge is simply good in and of itself; people will be able yo make more intelligent consumer choices if they are more knowledgeable about science; the very structure of a democratic society depends upon the existence of an enlightened citizenry -little evidence to suggest individual's habits of consumption are influenced by their technical sophisticationscience is of little relevance to the ethical, moral, or political problems posed by social organizations and if crucial social questions did depend on scientific pronouncement, the wealth of contradictory claims would overwhelm the audience -assumed not established that lay knowledge is less sophisticated -what would constitue as adequate public literacy is unclear -assumption that American public is suspicious of science is not confirmed -dominant concern has served to advance an essentially positivist oortrayal of science as heroic, apolitical, and inherently good Transmission -dominant concern is journalistic coverage -studies limit attentiion to press and documentary accounts -goal of fiction is not to impart substansive knowledge of science -fiction is neither constrained nor guided by canons of objective representation -Scientists as initial source, journalists as intermediaries, lay public as purely recipents -task of science communication is to transmit as much info as possible with maximum fidelity -drives inquiry towards examining the operation and interaction of the various elements in the process -establishes scientist as hierarchially dominant -scientist as ultimate arbiter of adequacy of science coverage Accuracy -in general scientists reported disatisfaction with accuracy of science reported -results showed markedly higher incidence of error in science stories than straight stories -coverage tend to be hysterical and carried fear arousing headlines -both studies proclaim judgements on what press should be -science is rightfully dominant authority over adequacy of press coverage on any issue where science is covered. Sensationalism and Translation -no suggestion any interest is served by distortions characteristic of popular science:no bias -translation: while science emerges from context of specialized knowledge and are couched in equally specialized vocab, successful popularization demands thye are recast in vernacular and their comprehension requires minimal reference to external knowledge -how to translate scientific work into lay idiom without corrupting it -sensationalism: attributed to science works so simplified it doesn't do justice to the work it represents, as well as work that abandons the goal of undistorted communication to tell a flamboyant story -less difficult journalism=more reader enjoyment -possible to present science in a variety of styles and differences in style have different measurable effects on lay people -simplified science enjoyed at all levels of readerships -charge of sensationalism from view of what should have been adopted; making the media researchers the arbiters of press accuracy Strategies and Tactics - Journalists should be better schooled in the field of science -scientists should be trained on how to communicate with journalists -scientists are encouraged to bypass journalist by addressing the lay community directly Deference -Reservation that the campaign for reform has had the effect of rendering the press overly compliant to the scientific estate Goodfield: -take small number of carefully selected journalists into the fold, isolate them from outside source, and stand in judgement of their ability to reproduce scientist's own understandings of the proceedings -Journalists just as intimidated by science as lay people, so focus their coverage on mainstream science -inexperienced journalists are unlikely to embark on an investigative venture not volunteered by the scientific community -the press is complicit in the advancement and protection of the scientific estate -fault science journalism relative to standard journalistic practices -proper relationship between press and its object of coverage has been aborogated. Distinterest -how to produce writing that while true to science is sufficiently arresting to capture widespread audience attention -Solution to prommote investigation -Number of advantages: -diverts attention from sensational to promote inquiry -journalists presumably come close to capturing joy of scientists themselves -journalist acquires narrative element to capture reader interest -works to further the narrative that the scientist who makes contact with the media does so out of motives of self-romotion -science-as-investigation stories serve to portray science in far too successful and reliable light -cheapens science by portraying it as series of breakthroughs The Dominant Concern, Reconsidered -discourse dominated by relatievly small group of research, oftena ttached to a department in which science communication is a concern -allied withe efforts of scientific community to engineer dutiful coverage and create a public that will concede to science's claim on rational authority -dominant perspective has promolgulated view of science that sees the enterprise purely in the guise of objective inquiry -dominant concern is limited and repetitive and performs ideological labor

Bauer (The Evolution of the Public Understanding of Science)

Part 1: Evolution of public understanding of science Phase 1: Scientific Literacy -Attributes a knowledge deficit to the public -Plays into technocratic ideals among decision makers: an ignorant public is not qualified to make decisions -Four elements: knowledge of basic textbook facts of science, understanding of methods such as probability reasoning and experimental design, an appreciation for the positive outcome of science and technology for science, the rejection of superstitious beliefs such as numerology Criticism -The measurement of factual knowledge is key problem of this paradigm -Science is methods not fact: should be taken into account -Different cultures and contexts have different science bases: hard to have universal idea of science literacy Phase 2:Public Understanding of Science -Diagnosis is of public deficit -However attitudes are now emphasized: public does not show enough support for science -Research agenda shifts from knowledge to attitude -Threshold limit to continuum: One is not literate of illiterate but more or less knowledgeable and the correlation between attitude and knowledge becomes the focus -But, no evidence that more knowledge drives more positive attitudes -Social psychology identifies knowledge as not a driver of attitudes but a quality index: attitudes, positive or negative, that are based in knowledge are held up more strongly and thus resistant to change -Realist and rationalist agenda: -Realist: attitudes arise from information processing with a rationalist core---->if people have all the information, they will be more supportive of science. Battle for public minds is a battle for minds with more information and correct statistical reasoning (risk perception) -Rationalist: attitudes are emotional relations with the world---->understand emotions with the logic of advertisement. Battle for public minds is a battle for hearts. Attract public attention by "sexing up" evidence Criticism -focus on the deficit model of knowledge and attitudes: more knowledge does not necessarily mean more positive attitudes. The public deficit model is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the public, a-priori deficient, cannot be trusted and that mistrust is paid back in kind, negative attitudes act as confirmation for scientists about public deficit Phase 3: Science in-and-of Society -Reversed deficit idea: not with public but with scientific Institutions and actors who have lost the trust of the public -Science and technology stand in relation to society -A crisis of trust indicates a breach of contract that needs patching up -False conceptions of the public operate among scientists and policy making i.e deficit concepts of the public; and these misguide communication efforts and interventions and alienate public further. -Aim is to change science policy -Often ends up as political consultancy: advice offered on how to build public trust; event making is advocated -Events are costly and require know how to organize, left in the hands of private "angels" who are the go-betweens between a disenchanted public and institutions of science, industry and policy making. -Ethos of public participation soon complimented by ethos of evaluation: what do this events bring (effectiveness)? what is their value for money (efficiency)? Are there any unintended consequences to be addressed? Criticism -Ironically, to evaluate means a return to traditional ideas of public literacy of science research, running the risk of re-inventing the wheel of literacy, attitudes, interests, and media attention for the evaluation of public deliberation Part 2: evidence of change in public understanding -Two kinds of data streams: evidence for changes in public attention to science taken in mass media monitoring over time and large scale comparisons for scientific literacy, attitudes, and interest, across very different contexts and over time, from 1989 to 2005 in Europe 1. evidence for changes in public attention to science taken in mass media monitoring over time -The flow of science in British news and probably elsewhere is not constant -the evaluation tone of science news is equally not constant -negative news is not an expression of anti-science complex (general news and genetic news) -contrary to assumptions of a natural cycle of public attention, science news does not move from initially negative news and public outcry to more considerate and positive news with time----->initial hype gives way to more considered coverage 2. Industrial and Post Industrial PUS -Post industrial model of PUS: as a society moves long the axial transition from industrial to post industrial and knowledge intensive economy, the distribution and relation between people's knowledge, interests and attitudes to science fall differently -Familiarity may breed positive attitudes in the context of a developing and industrial society but in the knowledge-intensive post-industrial context this is no longer the case, rather familiarity may breed some contempt -The more knowledgeable people are the less they are inclined to ideological views of science; they assume a more utilitarian assessment 3. Changes across Europe: 1989 to 2005 -Data integration carries enormous potential to create indicators of cultural, inter-generational dynamics -the dynamics are likely to be different in different context which suggests tapping into a 'scientific culture' with specific dynamics to be explained -knowledge is overall increasing across generations in all contexts; while the literacy of different generations rank differently across various countries -Interest is converging across generations. Some countries show secular decline while others secular increase in scientific interest -Attitudes too science shows very diverse inter-generational dynamics in different countries Mapping to societal conversations of science: distances and topography -the public understanding of science has a double nature. It is on one hand a field of activity of outreach from science to the public. On the other hand, PUS is a small field of social scientific research full of common sense speculations -Sociology of knowledge: making of a scientific fact (fleck) -Suggested image of concentric spheres of science. -Core-periphery model of science: esoteric center of scientific activity is surrounded by concentric exoteric of public communication, such as handbooks, textbooks, popular science production, mass media coverage of science, and everyday conversations -As we move from esoteric to exoteric, things get more simplified, more concrete, and more certain in judgement -Scientists depend on these exoteric circles not only for social legitimacy but epistemic reassurance. Public communication is the elixir of science and cannot be dismissed at which. It is a crucial feature of its operations and condition of continuity

Gregory & Miller (Popularization, Public Understanding, and the Public Sphere)

Popularization: Why and For Whom? -Attitudes towards popularization in the scientific community has varied -Rise of public understanding of science movement in the 1980's brought an expression of positive attitudes towards popularization activity by scientists. -despite high levels of approval within scientific community, popularization is still not seen by many academic institutions as something to be encouraged or rewarded -Changing motives of popularizers and the oscillating attitudes of the scientific community leave a legacy of confusion and ambivalence: scientists raised inn one tradition or a particular political or social environment may spend most of their careers in circumstances where different rules apply. -Popularization exaggerates and highlights tensions in the scientific self-image: science is neutral but concerned, commonsense but special, democratic but authoritative. -Scientific community exerts a powerful system of social control over members who popularize. -According to scientific tradition, the scientist-popularizer should follow certain rule, among which are that one should only popularize when their productive research life is over; act only to improve the public image of science, especially where funding may result, avoid extreme changes of opinion, first establish reputation, only popularize after knowledge has been conceptualized and documented. -Rules of appropriate behavior in regard to popularization are used self-servingly: stressed by those who want to limit or criticize another's behavior and ignored by the same with regard to own behavior. -Seen as damaging to own's career but a tool of advancement for other's career: seems to magnify career successes and failures. -Some scientists associate popularization with either willfully or inadvertently wrong science -"Visible scientists" reported no adverse effects on their scientific careers from their popularization; but they all held tenured positions prior to visibility and visibility brought them more money -Reported that penalties were more social and personal -Visible scientists shared certain characteristics required by media that emphasize news value and reliability of sources. -Contradictions and tensions in the scientific community's attitudes to popularization remain: visible scientists can be rejected by their colleagues irrespective of good practice or the validity of their ideas; and even successful, persistent popularizers are critical of mass media (complain of sensationalism, inaccuracy and oversimplification) -Mass media serves many of the same purposes for scientists as they do for other individuals: the promotion of a personality, idea, or cause, a few minutes of fame, money, and entertainment can all be achieved through media activity -Scientist-popularizers receive pleasure and a sense of dute from the altruistic act of sharing their knowledge; despite its public relations function, popularization has retained historical association with liberal agenda -informal communications just as important as formal communication and scientists thoughts are not divisible into distinct categories of public and private; instead a continuum of relative privacy -Popularization is part of the making of scientific knowledge, as well as sharing. -Scientists who popularize are doing science in public -Science that is done is unlike science done with technical media -rhetorical traditions of academic science serve particular purposes for the scientific community; proclaim objectivity and hypothetico-deductivist, science's special province, disappear in popular communications and therefore describe a very different type of science. -For this an other reasons, the scientific community has long maintained the separateness12w of the two form of communication and the two communities they reach; popularization itself is a means of maintaining this -Popularization of science has repeatedly become an issue of social and political concern -Scientists use popular accounts for social and political purposes within the scientific community as well as yo reach patrons and the public; thus it is a means of internal and interdisciplinary communication. Communication with closer colleagues via the public media can reinforce allegiances and convert opponents -Converting opponents is a difficult task, which is why popular media is used for this purpose; they allow for simplified account that might be more easily understood and therefore are likely to attract more followers -Popularization, if it is persuasive can be means to power, however if all popularization is "tainted" then it can also be a way of losing credibility -Scientist often turn to popularization when their institutional links are weak (when they retire or support an unpopular idea) and use it to resolve conceptual controversies because popular media communicates more quickly than technical media -Popularization as means of security and reward -Used to define boundaries of a new field -autobiographical popularization: science defining itself in public -Popularization to emphasize difference between scientific and lay communities Models of Communication -Simple linear models of the communication process are common in the science comm lit. Based oon mechanical "Sender-transmitter-receiver" model, they place science and the public at opposite ends of the trajectory with journalists and other mediators somewhere in between. -Scientists see popularizations as inferior to technical accounts so while communications flow in both directions, the "public" end is "downstream" and the "scientific" end is "upstream" -The model also allows scientists to see popular communications as separate from scientific communication -The dominant model of popularization because most popularizers tend to behave as though they believe this is how it works -Linear model is a one dimensional version of the two dimensional diffusion model of popularization, in which the scientific community emits info to be received by the public -Diffusion model is essentially a model in which science communication is intended to be purely persuasive -Diffusion model, like the dominant linear model, has "top down" communication in which information that is meaningful in the scientific context in which it originated is likely to arrive in an entirely different lay or public context, in which people are unlikely to accommodate it without substantial interpretation and adjustsment. -While linear and diffusion models have some explanatory power on a gross level, the contribute little to an understanding of the complex communication systems in which scientists routinely engage -A model that offers a more integrated approach to communications and their interactions without privileging any media is the "web model", in which technical and popular media interact incomplex ways, informing and referring to each other. -sits well with idea of communication networks, a communication network model might consider the boundaries of science not as fences between different domains of cultural or intellectual activity, but as limits of open territories which may overlap with other domains, and which are themselves superposed on the culture as a whole. These territories consist of community which define themselves through communication. -thus, a community is defined by communication between its members and its membership is contingent on the sending and receiving of communications -In this model, the popular and scientific become part of the same communication system and the communicators are in the same community. A communication network model allows popularization to be considered not as something peripheral to scientific activity or deviant but as an integral function of normal scientific life. Understanding the Public Understanding of Science -What constitutes a reasonable level of literacy? -What the public knows and understands and how this might relate to their attitudes to science are a difficult phenomena to access -Measures of public understanding of science really tend to measure the extent to which the public think like scientists, which since they are not trained scientists, is not much -Difference between thinking is interpreted as ignorance and it is this ignorance surveys highlight -Surveys offer less insight into the way in which the public understands science and give weight to a "deficit model" -critics of deficit: follows prescriptive and top-down view -Like the dominant model of popularization, the deficit model locates knowledge and expertise soley with the scientists and keeps them at the top of the heap -Knowing a lot of science is not the same as understanding science -When crisis erupts in the public sphere, the public is invariably confronted with scientific experts who draw different conclusions from the same "facts" -Pseudo and para scientists use scientific methods to produce their effects or arrive at their prediction -To know what claims to believe: understanding how science as a practice and an institution really work to generate knowledge, critically looking at individual cases of how scientific investigations are conducted and scientific decisions are made criticism: -In order to understand how science works, one must understand quite a lot of science. -Understanding science as an institution could help the public differentiate between reliable and unreliable knowledge: professional aspects of science that, in the end, generate reliable knowledge; science-in-the-making seen as reliable knowledge being made. -Concept of science literacy is a myth, even modest criterions put science literacy beyond the reach of the most educated individuals thus the notion of developing a significant scientific literacy in the general public is little more than a romantic idea. Strategies: -Give up on concept of bringing all American citizens to an elementary understanding of the concept of science, instead direct resources at top 20% of science students (20% would allow society as a whole to function at a workable level) -neutral science courts: making the use of scientists to assess claims on behalf of less scientifically knowledgeable peers. -science explains unfamiliar in terms of the familiar Criticism of strategies -elitism -front line science today becomes common sense tomorrow Understanding the Public -Different conceptions of "the public" lead to different strategies for public understanding of science, just like "understanding" -Often, though, conceptions of understanding and public are black boxed to alleviate the need to decipher them or are assessed through a personal lens. -In everyday language the word "public" is often accompanied by positive, active connotation wherein democratic citizens debate topics of the day and arrive at decisions by force of democratic argument. -Authority was maintained as show of publicity just as much as show of force -Authority was increasingly confronted during the French Revolution which resulted in the outcome of bringing together in public the critical facilities of private citizens, creating the public sphere -The notion of public here was of active, independent, and responsible citizens, with power, wealth, and influence, armed with the latest information and debating the conditions of their social existence and interest. A consensous for the common good emerges from the battle of individual wits -Many proponents of public see their activity in that light, providing relevant, often vital information so that informed citizens can discuss matters in which science comes to play and arrive at a democratic consensus on the way forward. -Alongside the worth attributes associated with "public" are the less highly regarded ones of "mass" communications - "mass" carries with it connotations of a large number of people, widely dispersed and heterogenous to the point of having little in common, this hardly interacting with one another at all, other than their common point of contact with media communicqation -anything produced for "mass" consumption is something to be looked down on, maybe even produce "mass hysteria" and "mass movements" which are to be feared -Mass culture is dished out via the mass media to a diffuse, disorganized mass audience that is more susceptible to emotion than to reason -Mass media draw eyes and ears of the public but deny them the opportunity to retort leading to a "re-feudalization" of the public sphere, where even public debates of crucial policy questions are reduced to a level of entertainment. Criticism: -Various scientific establishments have been to involved with this mesmerizing aspect of public understanding, in which the masses are awd into passivity and unquestioning support for science by the sheer brilliance of modern research, and too little involved with the active, empowering side of this project -the top-down deficit model of public understanding of science, which is generally followed by scientists, is further criticized for its naive portrayal of the public, viewing them as passive recipients of info, taking no account of how the info they receive will react with pre-existing attitudes and knowledge and ignoring any demands they may have for what they learn to be relevant to their individual situations -What is required is for scientists to view the public not as a lumpen mass, but as specific groups of active and thoughtful citizens. -Conceptualizing the public remains a challenge: requires degree of reflexivity and degree of objectivity as public is not only ourselves but not us. -The field is narrowed when public becomes lay people, but is shadowed again when asking who qualifies as a lay person. -Dividing line between "expert" and "layperson" is flexible and dynamic. -Laypeople's understanding often remains limited to the context it was produced and is not transferred to other situations -Public knowledge (lay expertise) tends to be specific or concrete rather than general or abstract Trust in the Public Sphere -Popularization is a tool that could and should be used to keep science in check. -rare example of call from within scientific community for popularization of science as watchdog -Lack of trust, rather than understanding, that leads to more fear----> not frightened of science in general buut some specific fears. -Very difficult to define public, however, whatever scientists think the public is, they believe the public does not trust science -Science communicators have difficult task of inferring about the public based on only our knowledge of them. -The media can know very little about the audience and so they use strategies that reach everyone; they get attention, arouse interest and stir emotion, strategies which often require sensationalism -Factual knowledge is barely communicable let alone digestible in these circumstances -What public can do, through their engagement of mass media, is demonstrate what is acceptable; take a moral stance on science -Trust as an alternative to public understanding -trust is a process of absence or invisibility, if things are transparent we don't need trust -but public cannot see intricacies of science -feature of our culture that we ignore most of what goes around us due to influx of constant stimuli, so we've developed a system called "civil inattention"----->Most of the time the public pays science civil inattention: scientists are allowed to go on and do what they do, in the public's peripheral vision, if perceived at all. The public do not need to know about science when they trust it. But when the trust breaks down, civil inattention does too and incites a need to know and understand science

Montgomery (The cult of Jargon)

The Problem -Reading jargon we can't understand makes us feel isolated and ignored -Science writing has risen to a glorified pre-eminence over all other styles of written communication, having become the model of authoriy and accuracy to which all language turns to for advice -"The common language of science" has evolved to a level where it seems fully absolute, independent, self-justifying, and unassailable as the facts it hopes and claims to transmit -language can be employed as a technology: a device able to contain and transfer knowledge without touching it -Carries on far above the self-interested caprice of the sociopolitical moment, free of ideology, cleansed of moral or emotional origins: such is the rhetorical promise. -drift towards jargonization, the growth of local, specialized lexicons, but more the established even institutional tendency for any ambit of knowledge-production or "expertise" to seek legitimization in a professional voice, one whose status depends most of all on exclusion -While it may not be the cause, sensu stricto, scientific speech has plainly set the functional standards, the very limits for jargonization, meaning not so much the degree of specialization but the discursive strategies involved. Discursive Strategies Insiders & Outsiders - advantage for a language that exalts, reassures all subject inside, rejects and offends those outside -speaking world is surrendered into two: within, the context is literacy and praxus, a cosmic chattering of knowledge, broken and divided yet full of diverse exchanges; outside, one encounters a truly vast and monolithic voice of lush incomprehensibility, a crystalline wall of speech that compels and justifies talk of a "science" in the singular -Whatever benefits this discourse offers to functional communication must be weighed an intractable ability to make knowledge inaccessible. -Discriminatory power of technical language: abke to close out, to awe, intimidate, or jam all other forms of speech with which it comes in contact, this discourse is always fencing an outline around territory (the truth) and lower social status (significance) of its competitors, "lay speech" -The ability of this discourse to defamiliarize and thereby mystify the ordinary -Outsiders have little choice but to be dazzled -The eventual aspect of jargon is its ability to define the active character of specific knowledge, both to condense and compel it and therefore make it in some part functionally inseparable from terminology -technical writing is not merely hardened skin but the substance of scientific erudition -Scientific information is conceived in and through a discourse that has undergone a tremendous amount of compression; it is a language that, over time, has been made superheavy by modes of short-hand condensation, substitution, fusional reduction, and by the elimination of lighter, non-technical gestures of speech. What results; a discourse that is roughly performative, that does not merely articulate knowledge but transacts it as well. -Toning down of the use of technical terminology in scientific discourse invariably means the elimination of detail and subtlety. -In most attempts at low-level vulgarization, technical terms become like remnant islands in a shallow discursive bay-and thereby, in some sense, raised and solidified in prestige. -Such popularization either a routine promise of utopia (the most complex problems explained in simple terms) ir by sensational employ (our economic black hole) has the effect of making more overt a latent dogma in technical language by feeding on its mystical power, serving it as the final word. -Hysterical character of popular usage sometimes produces a deformation, a revealing slippage along the planes of belief inherent within individual scientific language or discipline (linking black holes to deficit promotes notion of disaster or sudden imminent collapse) Who Speaks -how it chooses t speak -grammatical strategy that seeks to depersonalize and objectify all premise -speech that removes itself from any immediate traces of a both private and a social process, any signs of a place and responsibility in culture, the implications of knowledge, the roe of error, and any and all evidence of outside influence. -We are urged to perceive in every field of study only the purged voice of a coherent, harmonious and successful investigation, not the local effort of individual writers, a research team with its complex hierarchy and competitive status, not the larger determinants of scientific production itself, with its varied interests, political motives and connection, social locations, cultural priorities etc -Commanded to see the Truth not knowledge Who Writes -Strategy to make content everything so that write has little choice to become an anonymity -point at which personal style becomes dominant is point of failure -what about speaking it? Speech does not allow variations based upon going ons in a person's head -Writer is debarred more by convention than necessity from using any devices that lead to graciousness in writing -Language is rarely an object for inquiry or experiment, it remains a secondary medium, an application employed according to rules and laws that seek too give it the lithic poise of a solved equation, the finality of a function with all the values plugged in. -tell the greatest truths of the universe without excitement, fear, or wonder is the standard -Natural sciences goal is to give speech to its object, thus there is only one speaker, the scientist -not so in the past: bible, poems reflected in technical writing -Science is communicated to public through speech that appeals to their everyday life or concepts they can understand -Science writing is best when it integrates multiple discourses (politics, history, cultural criticism, art, etc)

Buchi (Theories of the Public Communication of Science

The traditional conception of public communication of science