The New Art of Old Public Science Communication

The Science Slam

Miira B. Hill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000548167
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Théorie sociale

This book investigates the phenomenon of science communication events, as spectacles for legitimising and communicating science to the public. With attention to events such as 'Science Slam', where scientists are asked to present their knowledge in new ways and speak to an audience of laymen, the author examines the participants' use of stylistic devices borrowed from other events in order to address a diverse audience in a competitive environment. With attention to the performative appearance of scientists on stage and the manner in which contemporary public performing scientists present, problematise, and communicate knowledge, the author considers the justifications offered by participants in terms of legitimacy and expectations. Illustrating the crucial role of bodies, techniques, visuals, and objects in the communicative construction of (scientific) reality, The New Art of Old Public Science Communication: The Science Slam sheds new light on the construction of improved science communication. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in science communication, the sociology of science and technology, and the sociology of knowledge.

1 The Difficulty of Communicating Science to the Public

DOI: 10.4324/9781003172635-1

The communication of knowledge has an important role in contemporary, knowledge-based societies. The dominance of knowledge in various industries has resulted in a strong societal shift towards, and interest in, scientific knowledge. In these societies, where knowledge plays an important role, the pressure on science¹ to produce knowledge with non-scientific and economic relevance has grown. This development has several consequences. One such consequence is the need to communicate different types of knowledge to different areas of society. This leads naturally to an increase in communication, which creates a need for knowledge to be translated between scientific and non-scientific fields (transdisciplinary).

This communication is not without issue, and one such problem with communicating scientific knowledge is the expectation that the public have a right to be informed of all scientific developments. Early critics of this problem called the gap between the scientific community and the public a ‘gulf of incomprehensibility’ (Shapin 1990, 994). This gulf, for them, was proof of the misleading effects scientific discourse can have when extended to the public. By trying to communicate scientific knowledge effectively to a non-scientific audience, scientists will always fall short of the perceived responsibility they have to relate their knowledge to society.

There are further problems caused by this gap, such as legitimacy. Many scientists today feel like they have to legitimise or justify their research, not only to their own community and the wider public, but also to scientists in other fields of scientific research. This leads to many scientists feeling pressured to present their findings in a plausible and simple way to the general public (cf. Hill 2015), and to scientists of other disciplines, in order to legitimise their research (Wilke, Lettkemann, and Knoblauch, 2018; Wilke and Lettkemann 2018).

These issues of communication and legitimacy are deeply connected. In a society where knowledge plays an important role, the institutional pressure placed on scientists to produce knowledge with interdisciplinary or non-scientific relevance has grown in recent years (Hill 2017a). This trend is exemplified by the growing number of science festivals, science magazines, science cafés, citizens science programmes, public science communication events, and transdisciplinary Science Slams. My use of the term science communication in this book refers to the communicative action of scientists. More specifically, when scholars or scientists talk to each other or to a non-academic using any knowledge they call their ‘scientific expertise’ (insofar as this reference is essential to the form of communication), I call this science communication. The new genre called the Science Slam ‘is a 10-minute oral presentation, in which presenters try to interest their audience, make their talk intelligible and try to establish a slam atmosphere’ (interview with Alexander Deppert, 2014). The Science Slam should be understood as an institutionalised genre of communicative action.

The events mentioned above are the result of a recent requirement for communication about knowledge in society. As Knoblauch commented ‘the less knowledge is shared, the more needs to be communicated’ (Knoblauch 2008a). The rise of a ‘Kommunikationsgesellschaft’ [which loosely translates into English as ‘communication society’] (Knoblauch 2017, 329–377) is defined increasingly by the invention of new forms of communication and communicative genres. As Knoblauch argues, communication culture creates an order which no longer substantiates faith in substantive truth but replaces many written explanations with visual principles. These developments can especially be recognised in transdisciplinary contexts. The growing practices of visual conventions are, to a greater extent, producing legitimacy performatively.

The crisis caused by legitimacy and communication in modern society, where knowledge is of utmost importance, has worsened in the last couple of years. In 2016, ‘post-truth’² became the International Word of the Year in the Oxford English Dictionary after both Brexit and the US election campaign arguably showed that the American and UK public were more influenced by emotional narratives and alternative facts than by boring truths. In addition to showing us how knowledge can be manipulated, the US Election showed how communicating science is a problem, even when it comes to celebrity figures. The challenge that scientists face in trying to get the public to believe certain scientific truths is just as difficult as the challenge many experts faced when having to inform Donald Trump, the former American President, about the intricacies of political relations and world events. While scientists face highly complex issues, advisors to the then president had to deal with a man who has an attention span of about 30 seconds.³ Trump’s advisors, knowledgeable about politics and the American Government and aware of the historical relevance and significance of this knowledge, had to present to a man who only wanted to be entertained by brief descriptions, impressive graphics and in finding out how this information would benefit him. At the centre of the Western World, there was a powerful white man in charge—the President of the United States—who denied certain scientific truths and was uninterested in many crucial realms of knowledge. What scientific texts refer to as ‘the man in the street’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967), has been replaced today with the ‘President of the United States’. Either way, the techniques used by advisors to communicate effectively with the President, and the methods scientists use to communicate effectively with the public, will have a great impact on history. As Hannah Arendts (2017) studies on totalitarianism show, very simple things—like an unwillingness to think, irresponsibility, and a lack of empathy—can become a breeding ground for extreme and evil systems. One could say that the developments in US Politics since November 2016 have much more in common with the Science Slam than one might first think. In both cases, the central goal seems to be to replace boredom with entertainment.

However, this book does not seek to equate Science Slams with interactions with Donald Trump. Instead, this book asks how challenges in communicating and legitimising science in the public are addressed today. I would like to find out how, and why, communicative actions are developed, before turning to assess the uncertain relationship between science and the public. Finally, I wish to evaluate what we can legitimately call science in this context. I will suggest that new approaches of communicating science in lecture-based events can be seen as an alternative way of communicating and legitimising science because they are an attempt to integrate science into the lives of the public. Arguably, the new approaches of communicating science offer an opportunity for the observation of contemporary communication and legitimisation practices. I will discuss to what extent these challenges are reflected in Science Slams, before considering what solutions Science Slams may offer. I wish to answer the question: ‘how can scientists today present their scientific findings to a non-academic audience, and how can they make this knowledge relevant to this audience?’ The contextualisation of science in a post-truth society, I argue, should draw attention to important issues, and to sensitive topics involved in communication today.

As I have already established, entertainment and the avoidance of boredom seem to be important in modern society. As experiences and communication become more central, the staging of the self becomes increasingly important (Soeffner 2001). In this world, the success of an individual’s Science Slam can decide whether an individual receives financial support for their post-doc.⁴ It is important, therefore, to ask critically what consequences this has for the members of society. While the intellectual public sphere was traditionally led by the universal intellectual, in late modernity he is increasingly being replaced by experts (cf. Pfadenhauer 2010; Eyal and Buchholz 2010). I am assuming that in a time where there are fewer ‘universal’ thinkers and more experts in specialised fields of knowledge (differentiation), authors of knowledge become more important in public science communication. Even though economic support for scientists is mostly independent from science that is shared with the general public, there is a need for visibility in order to generate trust. Scientists are, therefore, required to share their scientific work with the public in order to stay visible and so the public is satisfied that the scientist is an authority on their subject. It is, in other words, a ‘regime of visibility’ (Bucher 2012, 1165). As part of their professional duties, scientists are required to produce novel ideas or ways of presenting their research when presenting their work in public (Schnettler and Knoblauch 2007, 270). New forms of communication might have consequences for knowledge itself. This is perhaps most evident in translation processes, in which a shift from text-based communication to visual-based communication may take place.⁵

Obviously, communicating knowledge to an audience requires high standards. Both in and outside of academia, people question how visual-based communication may change or limit the contents or specific interpretation that the author wishes this knowledge to convey. Communication in this way is often assumed to be in service of some kind of external logic, and so aesthetic forms of knowledge are seen as having a greater purpose. Thus, knowledge communication increasingly relies on new information, new communication technology, and new media, the likes of which are continually being developed. New developments and events in public science communication can be understood as a manifestation of society’s dedication to the principle of efficiency through a focus on the aesthetics of communication (Schnettler and Knoblauch 2007, 271).

Sociological Perspectives on Science and Its Worldly Demands

This new representation of science is in direct opposition to the classical view of the responsibilities that scientists should have. In the early 20th century, the sociologist Max Weber claimed that scientists should be characterised mainly by their devotion to serve science (Weber [1919] 1992, 15). Weber wanted scientists to have deep passion for their research and be isolated from other societal influences.⁶ He claimed that there was a kind of academic asceticism in which bodily excesses, experience, and the focus on one’s own personality were condemned. Weber also wanted to distance the labour of scientists’ work from non-scientific activities and duties (for example, binge drinking or political and economic activities). Weber’s arguments raised serious questions about scientists’ relationships with the public. Despite acknowledging the role that inspiration and creativity play in scientific work, Weber firmly believed that scientific work should occur at a distance, away from practical, worldly pleasures and concerns. The state that Weber described as ‘dignified loneliness in the service of science’, is often criticised today and viewed as snobby, self-involved behaviour, far removed from reality. Critical terms like ‘science in an ivory tower’ or ‘science ghetto’ (Rössner 1992, 7) demonstrate a strong opposition to the Weberian ideal.

The large institutes of medicine or natural science are ‘state capitalist’ enterprises, which cannot be managed without very considerable funds. Here we encounter the same condition that is found wherever capitalist enterprise comes into operation: the ‘separation of the worker from his means of production’ …. As with all capitalist and at the same time bureaucratized enterprises, there are indubitable advantages in all this. But the ‘spirit’ that rules in these affairs is different from the historical atmosphere of the German university. An extraordinarily wide gulf, externally and internally, exists between the chief of these large, capitalist, university enterprises and the usual full professor of the old style. This contrast also holds for the inner attitude, a matter that I shall not go into here. Inwardly as well as externally, the old university constitution has become fictitious.

(Weber 1977, 131)

As we see in this quotation, even in Weber’s own time, science had become involved in public life. Weber seems to lament the disappearance of the old, historic atmosphere of German universities, the ‘old university constitution has become fictitious’. Much later, Gibbons et al. (1994) described this development as Mode 2 of knowledge production. Yet, with the shift towards transdisciplinary research, science has become more open to outside influences even from those not considered to be ‘properly scientific’. As a result of this new way there is a requirement to produce certain types of knowledge, and to also make knowledge more robust, so it can stand up to society. Knowledge has to become more heterogenic, non-hierarchical, transdisciplinary, and above all, useful for society. Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) argued that Mode 2 was actually the starting point of science, before the academic institutionalisation of the 19th century took place. The emergence of the knowledge society was characterised, among other things, by a dominant reference to methodically gained knowledge, which was connected to the ideal of objectivity. According to Daston (2001) the ideal of autonomous neutral science (independent from the cultural context) emerged quite late in the post-war period. Since the mid-19th century, ‘mechanical objectivity’ has become central in science. Mechanical objectivity aims to eliminate all forms of human intervention in nature; either through the use of machines or through the mechanisation of scientific procedures (cf. Daston 2001, 153). Today, scholars accept that we live in a time of entrepreneurial science (Etzkowitz 1998). In the United States, at least, an increasing number of scientists have left their ‘ivory towers’ to become more involved in work in industrial settings. Etzkowitz argues that these scientists combine both the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of profit. In addition to this, the need for financial support outside academia has grown, and universities frequently compete against each other for funding. In this transdisciplinary area, the utilisation of scientific research for commercial gain becomes more likely. As Etzkowitz states,

Entrepreneurial scientists’ research is typically at the frontiers of science and leads to theoretical and methodological advance as well as invention of devices.

(Etzkowitz 1998, 826)

With this external focus, an innovative society (Hutter et al. 2011) has become, in a way, a part of the university. Living in an innovative society means that there is an expectation that social science must produce novel ideas and, as a result of this, many scientists today believe that the advancement of knowledge occurs through innovation. Business-like activities have challenged the traditional, monk-like existence of researchers (Etzkowitz 1998), and entrepreneurial scientists are constantly moving back and forth between industry and university. As Daston and Galison (200...