CHE: My Life as A Cautionary Tale (Salaita)

[fast_and_bulbous]

No it isn't, but saying "Trust me, I'm an expert" is demagoguery. The kind of moralizing that religious leaders have been castigated for is no more appropriate when done by an "academic" if uninformed action is valued over informed discussion, including differing points of view. Taking the example of climate change, there are all kinds of issues associated with it that have varying amounts of data to support; getting more people to understand and accept the well-established matters is much more worthwhile than getting a few wide-eyed zealots who accept any warning as apocalyptic fact.

My field is atmospheric science. I gave up several years ago trying to patiently inform random internet people of the very basic physics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It was about as effective as pissing into a hurricane. Heck, you can go back to some of my first posts on the old forum to see my failed attempts with Smart Academic Types. If you can't get people to just understand basic models, there is no point trying to get them to understand the subtle uncertainties, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, etc. that come after that basic understanding.

I keep reading op ed pieces etc. that scientists should become activists. Have fun with that, give your Ted talks, I'm out. Once you cross that line it's not about science anymore, it's just debate class.

The real problem, in my opinion, is lousy science literacy and a stunning lack of critical thinking skills, combined with the rise of social media with all of its bubbles and feedback loops.

I've long come to the conclusion that humans will always choose the shredder as the option even when there is another option. So, away we go. I'll do my thing, which is really about sharing my excitement about science and hence getting (mostly young) people excited about science and the scientific process, but no way am I going to try to "persuade" anyone about the effects of anthropogenic climate change.

These are great examples--of what doesn't work well. The first step is to understand the mechanisms underlying policy change and see where intervention has the potential to change the outcome. Accosting random people with facts is the social-change equivalent of pissing into a hurricane, where cooling the surface of the Atlantic is the necessary mechanism.  Figuring that out is a science, but most natural scientists are loath to look at it that way.

You also have to know your audience, their priorities and worldview and have a message that fits. "Trust me, I'm an expert" is rarely that message. Many academics treat a public audience like undergraduates (or like undergraduates but dumb). That is generally ineffective.

Doing the activism part is hard, but there is a science to it. You are often up against well-funded experts at playing that game, so it is worth getting the basics right.

Maybe this deserves another thread, apologies if this is straying too far from the Salaita issue. I will just say this: I am NOT cut out for the whole persuasion thing. My first instinct when coming upon blatant misinformation from bad actors or far-gone bubbleheads is a string of expletives and ad hominem... which plays into the hands of the "well-funded experts playing the game" - the game being Divide and Conquer. So I just try to provide good examples of good science and hope that my own approach, which includes a lot of enthusiasm tempered with informed skepticism about my own research results, gets people to see how critical thought works, at least for me.

In the classroom it's one thing; I'm not going to "debate" climate change with undergraduates in an atmospheric radiation class. As you say, what works in the classroom does not translate to the rest of the world. All I see these days are people lobbing 'fact bombs' at one another, further dividing. If I had the stomach for it I'd consider politics but I'd rather just do science and make it as appealing/understandable/exciting as I can to an audience that is interested. In my case it's not Facebook or Twitter, but YouTube. I am all about YouTube and growing an audience and engaging them in the comments and in the videos themselves.

Maybe if Salaita had done a video saying those things he would have not posted it after some more careful consideration.