cc  >> Danielle Broussard: Good  evening everyone, welcome to our  third lecture in the University  Forum series, "Communicating  Controversial Science."  As I told you before, this  series is sponsored by the  division of continuing studies,  and organized by the department  of life science communication.  I'm Dominique Broussard, an  associate professor in the  department of life science  communication.  Tonight, speaking for us we have  Matthew Nisbet, an assistant  professor in the School of  Communication at American  University in Washington DC.  As a social scientists, as I  told you tonight, we will have  the perspective of social  scientist.  He studies strategic  communication in policy making  and public affairs, focusing on  controversies surrounding  science, the environment, and  public health.  He's the author of more than two  dozen journal articles and book  chapters on that matter, and his  current research on climate  change, I think he's gonna focus  mainly on this tonight, is  founded by the Robert Wood  Johnson Foundation where he is a  health policy investigator.  He has also worked as a  consultant to the National  Academies, the Corporation for  Public Broadcasting, the Center  for Disease Control, the  National Science Foundation,  among other leading science  organizations.  I should mention that Matt's  talk tonight is co-sponsored by  the Robert and Jean Holtz Center  for Science and Technology  Studies, so we thank them for  their support, and Matt will be  speaking on the topic, "What's  Next for Science Communication:  Promising Directions and --  Destructions."  (applause)  >> Matthew Nisbet: I want to  thank Dominique for the  invitation to speak to you  tonight.  It's a great opportunity for me  to talk to you and then have a  conversation afterwards to get  your ideas and your input and  your comments on the ideas and  the research that I'll be  talking about.  Tonight, with kind of a diverse  audience here tonight, one of  the things I'm gonna talk about,  or focus on, is really things  that have been happening over  the last couple of years, as  both the scientific community,  government agencies, and also  environmental advocates,  political advocates, start to  think about, and journalists,  start to think about science  communication in new ways. 

 In part, as I'll talk about,  many practitioners in science  communication are catching up a  little bit with where scholars  and researchers in the feudal  science communication have been  focusing on over the last 20  years, and it's a really  interesting trend that's  happening in terms of kind of  the diffusion of knowledge from  the research and the field of  science communication and  related fields, out into the  practice of science  communication and also science  journalism.  So I'm gonna review a little bit  of history tonight, I'm gonna  talk about where we've come from  in terms of dominant models that  we've traditionally thought  about science communication, to  innovations that started to  happen over the last ten or 15  years, to recent discussions or  the relevance of research in the  area of framing, one of the  areas I've worked on, and  Dominique has worked on, and  Deitram --, one of the  professors in life sciences,  who's in the back, has also  worked on, and other people in  the room.  And then I'm also gonna talk  about what this research means  for innovations in public  engagement and the current  challenges that we face in  actually getting science-related  information out to the public by  way of traditional mechanisms  through journalism.  The real distress to the news  industry and what it means for  new types of partnerships in the  role of universities, university  scientists, government agencies  and foundations in providing  sources of news to the public.  And as a place to start, with  some of you in the audience of,  some of you are very familiar  with this, others of you have  probably heard of this idea, but  really the traditional model in  science communication is what  scholars refer to as the  "deficit model," and there's a  number of different reasons why  scholars derive this traditional  model as the deficit model, but  in part this traditional model  inherently defines the challenge  of science communication or  opposition or controversies over  science-related issues as a  matter of public ignorance.  Or irrational beliefs, as I'll  talk about, in particular  related to religion.  And as part of this model,  science literacy is conceived as  the antidote.  The solution to controversies  over science is to pump more  information out to the public,  if we fill in the gaps, if we  fill in the deficits in public  knowledge about an issue, then  controversies are likely to go  away, and the public is likely  to view these controversies as  scientists do or as government  agencies and other experts might  view these issues.  And as part of the deficit  model, another part of this  model is that there was a point  in the past when the public was  more engaged with science and  was more scientifically  literate, and more appreciative  of science.  And often this point in the past  in American history is pointed  to as the years just after the  launch of Sputnik in 1957, up  through the Apollo moon landing  in the late 1960s, this is often  referred to rhetorically as sort  of the golden age of science  literacy and public engagement. 

 And you'll often hear, in some  cases scientists, some cases  government officials talked  about, what we really need when  it comes to the public  understanding of science is  another Sputnik type moment.  Other parts of the deficit model  assume that policy actions are  simply a product of sound  science, that science alone,  what science points to as a  promising avenue of research  such as stem cell research, or  that science points to as a  problem, such as human-induced  climate change, that science  alone should compel, and does  compel action and policy  debates, or public action.  And a lot of this discussion  came up during the Bush  administration and the  opposition to Bush  administration decisions on the  part of many advocates and some  scientists, which I'll talk  about some more later in  tonight's talk.  So as an overall strategy based  on these assumptions, there'll  always be a traditional focus on  formal education in science, but  really from an informal aspect  of learning and communication, a  focus on getting more  information out to the public by  way of traditional outlets,  popular science outlets such as  magazines, such as Scientific  American, documentaries such as  PBS Nova, the really good  science section of papers like  the New York Times.  Traditional science sections in  local newspapers, which I'll  talk about later, is quickly, or  has disappeared.  And as an icon of this model,  Carl Sagan is often referred to  as a great popularizer of  science, and rhetorically you'll  hear that what we really need,  not only do we need another  Sputnik type moment, but we need  more Carl Sagans, and if we only  had more Carl Sagans, then we  would have fewer controversies  and debates or opposition,  public opposition to science.  Now there are a number of  different problems with the  deficit model, and some of you  are very familiar with it,  others of you might notice right  away, if you're not familiar  with the deficit model, what  these problems might be.  And one of the problems is that  the deficit model doesn't really  fit well with what we know from  about 60 or 70 years of public  opinion research and work across  different disciplines including  communication, social  psychology, and political  science, about the nature of  audiences.  Now social psychologists like to  refer to every individual as  being a cognitive miser.  Instead of having the motivation  or the ability to be fully  informed about an issue, almost  everyone engages in some type of  heuristic processing about  complex issues. 

 Especially when they're not  highly motivated to pay  attention to that issue.  And we see this over and over  again in political campaigns,  many of you are familiar with  type of heuristics, information  shortcuts that the audiences and  the political candidates played  on in the 2008 debate, focusing  not on the substance of policy  issues themselves, but rather on  the personal characteristics or  flaws of different candidates,  using strategically placed  messages to activate those  heuristics and those information  shortcuts among the audience.  And we have a hold of literature  and political communication and  other fields that have looked at  the miserly nature of the public  going back 60 years to the early  work by Paul Lazzerfeld and his  collaborators up through modern  day work in political  communication and political  science and other fields, and  also journalists and political  consultants write about the same  research and apply the same  research in thinking about  effective public engagement and  the context of elections, or  traditional policy debates over  issues such as abortion.  One of the things I will argue  tonight is that in many cases,  when an issue related to science  becomes controversial, when it  moves beyond the traditional  audience for science, and gets  widespread attention among the  American public or any public,  there's nothing essentially  different from a science debate  such as climate change from  traditional political debates  over issues such as abortion or  the type of communication that  goes on during elections.  And the other problem with the  deficit model is it doesn't fit  nearly well with kind of the  real nature of our modern day  media system, and here's an  interesting example, that Markus  Prior, political scientist at  Princeton uses in his book, the  "Post-Broadcast Democracy."  If you were a student, or if  you were watching TV in 1985 and  you came home after school or  after work to watch TV at 6:00  and you wanted to turn on TV at  6:00, you really only had four  choices available to you.  All four of those choices of the  traditional broadcast networks  or PBS involve some element of  news.  You had the national news  broadcasts or the local news  broadcast, and at least in the  national news broadcast you had  some steady level of information  about science, the environment,  or public health.  But if you sat down to watch TV  in 2009 at 6:00 or 6:30 when the  national broadcast news might  come on, if you lack the  motivation or the preference to  pay close attention to public  affairs and science content, you  can very easily select yourself  out of that audience group, and  pay attention to info-tainment,  entertainment, or in some cases,  your ideologically preferred  source of news, whether it's Fox  news or MSNBC, or somewhere in  between.  When you go online now to find  information, the great paradox  in today's media world is that  we have more quality sources of  information about science  available to us at any time in  history, yet, simply the  availability of information  about science does not mean that  audiences will use it.  If they lack the motivation or  preference for information, even  if they have high levels of  education, even if you're  logging on to read the New York  Times each day, if you lack a  preference for science content  at that Web site, it's very easy  for yourself to select yourself  out of that science section of  the New York Times. 

 So inherently there's the  problem of choice when thinking  about the deficit model, and  deficit model doesn't fit very  well with the nature of  audiences or the nature of our  modern day media system.  The deficit model also doesn't  fit very well with what we know  from history in terms of talking  about a golden age, wanting to  return to a point in the past  when the public was appreciative  and knowledgeable about science.  In fact, the very first public  opinion surveys about public  attitudes about science were  taken just after Sputnik and  what we find was, by today's, by  deficit model standards, the  public did not have very high  levels of knowledge about  science, so according to these  surveys, only 12% of the public  understood the scientific  approach or method, on basic  questions tapping knowledge of  polio, fluoridation,  radioactivity, and space  satellites, only one in six  could answer all four questions  correctly.  Only 38% knew that the moon was  smaller than the earth and only  4% could correctly indicate the  distance in miles between the  moon and the earth.  But despite low levels of  science literacy by deficit  model standards, despite low  levels of knowledge about  science, there was still  overwhelmingly strong support  and optimism about science  generally.  So when asked in the late 1950s  to agree or disagree, "is  science making our lives  healthier, easier, more  comfortable?"  Despite a public that scored  low in scientific literacy, 92%    agreed with that statement.  When asked "one of the best  things about science is that it  is the main reason for our rapid  progress," 87% agreed with that  statement.  And when asked to agree or  disagree, "one of the bad  effects of science is that it  breaks down people's ideas of  right and wrong," only 25% of  Americans agreed with that  statement, despite having low  levels of science literacy.  So to know science back in the  1960s was not necessarily, was  not a necessary condition to  support and to admire science.  And then finally, when asked  about the significance of  Sputnik, back in the late 1950s,  the public did not see it as a  major scientific advancement,  but rather sought within the  frame of reference, and I'll  talk about framing in a little  bit, as a matter of national  security and international  competitiveness. 

 When asked, "when looking to the  future, what would you say is  the real meaning of Sputnik to  us here in America?"  close to 60% of respondents  said "falling behind Russia," or  as a national security issue,  and less than 20% saw it in  terms of scientific advancement  or scientific progress.  Today, things are a little  different.  You have increasing levels of  education, so levels of  education from the 1950s and  1960s through today have grown  tremendously, where you have now  roughly more than about 25% of  Americans with a four-year  college degree, compared to less  than 10% or roughly 10% in the  1950s and 1960s, yet despite  historical availability of good  information about science,  available online, through cable  news or other sources, and  increasing levels of overall  levels of education, the public  still scores relatively low in  standard measures of  understanding the basic facts of  science.  And this is from the National  Science Foundation's science  indicator survey report, we're  on a scale from, twelve  questions, you can see over time  that the mean number of correct  answers has remained roughly the  same over time, roughly about  six out of 12 true or false  questions in the national  science indicator's surveys that  are taken every two years.  Yet despite low levels of  science literacy among today's  public, there remains deep  public optimism and trust in  science, and again, this is from  the National Science  Foundation's science indicator's  report, more than 70% of all  American adults believe that the  benefits of scientific research  outweigh the harmful results.  More than 85% of Americans agree  that even if it brings no  immediate benefit, scientific  research that advances the  frontiers of knowledge is  necessary and should be  supported by the federal  government.  And on climate change, stem cell  research, and food  biotechnology, Americans believe  scientists hold greater  expertise, are less  self-interested, and should have  greater say in decisions than  industry leaders, elected  officials, or religious leaders.  And among institutions, only the  military has greater trust than  science, and over time, almost  every other institution,  including the media, Congress,  the presidency, and religious  institutions and corporations  have seen dramatic loss in  public trust, whereas trust in  public science has remained high  and stable over the last 20  years.  So what about the claims of a  rising tide of anti-science,  what about this idea that  there's a dangerous divide  between the public and the  science, and that there's a loss  of appreciation for science in  the American public and what  this means for public engagement  and communication.  Well, there are a few basic  principles that I'm gonna  elaborate on tonight, but these  are take-away principles that  I'd like for you to take away  from this talk. 

 One is that science literacy is  important, and obviously  investment in formal education  remains important, but the focus  on science literacy alone as  part of a public engagement  process, when American adults  have finished their formal  education, and to simply focus  on knowledge as the outcome and  filling in the deficits in  knowledge is the outcome of  public engagement is actually a  distraction.  Science literacy has very little  to do with public support,  trust, or perceptions, or  references to science.  And I'll show you this on both  climate change and stem cell  research tonight.  Scientific organizations enjoy  almost unrivaled respect,  authority, and hold great  communication capital, but they  need to use this communication  capital both wisely and  effectively, in part, using it  wisely and effectively is  understanding the relevant  research in the area and for  researchers to work with  scientists in applying that  research.  And other professionals such as  journalists.  When engaging with the public,  one of the outcomes or the focus  of engagement should be to  emphasize dialogue, citizen  participation in decision  making, common values and  personal relevance, rather than  making it easy for people to  reinterpret science in terms of  conflict, complexity, or  uncertainty, and I'll talk about  that specifically on climate  change and evolution tonight.  And finally, when values are not  communicated, when a policy  debate is simply argued as a  matter of sound science, it  actually turns scientific  expertise and evidence into just  another political resource for  contending interest groups to  use in a scientific debate such  as that over climate change, and  actually might undermine the  authority of science, leading to  both distortion and to hype of  scientific evidence, and I'll  talk about that on a couple  different cases tonight, both on  stem cell research and on  climate change.  Okay, so where have we come?  In the early 1990s, there was  what I like to kind of joke  about, was kind of a paradigm  sheep, or a paradigm shift in  how both researchers and  practitioners in public  engagement started to think  about science communication.  The shift was from a focus  exclusively on science literacy  to considering other dimensions  or outcomes that might matter to  how the public makes up their  minds about expert information  and expert institutions.  Focusing on the role of social  identity, trust, and  relationships with different  members of the public, and  especially with stakeholders. 

 And Bryan Wynne, a sociologist,  a physicist turned sociologist  in the UK, wrote a seminal  paper, published a seminal paper  in the early 1990s looking at  how sheep farmers in England  reacted to government advice  about bringing their sheep to  harvest, given the risk of  contamination from fallout from  the Chernobyl nuclear disaster  in the late 1980s.  And what Bryan Wynne suggested  was what he called the uptake  and influence of expert  science-related knowledge, how  the public would respond to the  information provided by experts,  did not necessary turn on public  ignorance or lack of knowledge,  but rather this expert  information was filtered or  mediated by three key variables.  One was the social relationship,  and the social identity of that  particular public, in this case  the sheep farmers, their  identity, they perceived a  threat to the government advice  that suddenly their livelihood  was in jeopardy.  There was also an existing level  of distrust among the sheep  farmers, going back to a 1950s  fire at a local nuclear power  plant where they always believed  that the government was not  transparent or forthcoming about  the fallout from that fire and  the risks associated with that.  So that relevant historical  event shaped their  interpretation of government  advice and the later event of  Chernobyl.  And this social identity and the  existing networks and  relationships that the sheep  farmers in this area had with  government institutions shaped  the perceived trust,  credibility, and feelings of  alienation that the sheep  farmers might have relative to  government scientists.  And also, the sheep farmers had  their own localized knowledge,  and practical reasoning,  conventional wisdom that they  also drew upon in understanding  the local soil and their own  livelihood.  And for example, they believe  that their advice on how to take  samples from sheep were ignored  by the government scientists,  and when the government  scientists tried to corral the  sheep and take samples, the  sheep ended up kicking them in  the face, kicking mud all over  the scientists, and the sheep  farmers observed this as a very  messy process, so it underscored  the uncertainty and fueled the  distrust that they might have in  the device that ultimately the  government scientists might come  back to them based on that data  gathering process.  So based on this famous case  study and other research that  Wynne has done with colleagues,  especially on the debate over  genetically modified food in the  United Kingdom and in other  countries of Europe, Wynne and  his colleagues have argued for a  common set of criteria, these  are a set of heuristics that the  miserly public, almost  conventional wisdom type  principles, that the public  might ask of government  agencies, university scientists,  and experts when judging the  advice that they're given.  And to use a contemporary  example that's very salient now,  let's consider, for example, in  a place like Madison, Wisconsin,  another city of the Midwest, how  the public is likely to react to  advice about clean energy  technology and the potential for  economic growth after the event  of the debate over corn-based  ethanol. 

 So those of you familiar with  the debate over corn-based  ethanol, this was almost hyped  as a revolutionary technological  development, where we were gonna  offset greenhouse gas emissions  by subsidizing petroleum based  fuel with corn-based ethanol.  It was gonna grow the economy in  the Midwest and help us solve  the problem of greenhouse gas  emissions.  But subsequent studies put a  damper on that hype, showing  that in fact, actually, the  production and the use of  corn-based ethanol might  actually produce a greater  amount of greenhouse gas  emissions than petroleum-based  gas.  Many politicians, including John  McCain, I'm sorry, many  politicians including both  Democrats and Republicans backed  off corn-based ethanol, which  they were originally promoting  as of the 2007, 2008 election  cycle.  But today we're talking about  green jobs, and the potential  for green jobs to restart the  economy and investment in clean  energy technology.  We're also talking about a whole  host of different types of clean  energy technology such as wind,  solar, and other sources of  biomass fuel, so how is the  public likely now to react, what  kind of questions are they  likely to ask when expert  institutions such as the  National Academies, who I'm  working with now on designing an  energy communication campaign,  how are they likely to react to  the advice of expert  institutions on what to do and  how to invest and how to make  sense of expert advice on  energy.  One thing that Wynne suggests is  that the public is likely to  ask, does expert knowledge work?  Do predictions fail?  In the case of GMOs, the public  in the UK were drawing on the  heuristic that the government  had told them in the mad cow  disease debate, that it was safe  to eat beef.  That was a relevant fact or  historical event that then  shaped their reception and their  interpretation of the advice  given on GMO foods, whether it  was safe or not.  On energy in certain situations,  certain engaged and attentive  publics are likely to question  the advice and potentially  perceived hype over green jobs  and clean energy technology  without more information, and  the biodiesel debate is likely  to be a relevant historical  example that they're likely to  draw upon.  Do expert claims pay attention  to other available knowledge?  In the sheep farmer's example  that Wynne look at and the  Chernobyl fallout, sheep  farmers' advice were not taken  by scientists in terms of soil  samples or how to take samples  from sheep. 

 This led to alienation and to  distrust.  When engaging the public in the  Midwest and other cities across  the country on energy, there are  a lot of things that experts  don't know about what might be  viable solutions in terms of how  cities can adapt to climate  change or increase energy  conservation.  A lot of that innovation might  be bottom up, there might be  practices that are going on at  the community level or among  citizens that can inform expert  knowledge.  So experts should listen to the  public and be open to the public  about their sharing of their own  experience and their own  localized knowledge and what  might work, specifically in  adapting advice to a regional  area.  Are experts open to criticism?  Is there admission of errors or  oversights?  When a university or the  National Academies might be  communicating about energy  technology, do they have a  response ready in talking about  the perceived hype of corn-based  ethanol, for example.  And then finally, what are the  social/institutional  affiliations of experts?  And is there a historical track  records of trustworthiness and  affiliation with industry?  In a recent article on nature  biotechnology with several  colleagues who suggested that  the biggest threat to public  trust and perception of science  and the biggest challenge in  science communication is the  increase in privatization of  research at public universities  and at private universities, and  on energy technology, this is  particularly salient in terms of  private public partnerships  especially when thinking about  nuclear energy or new  technologies related to coal, or  any type of industry  partnership.  And then finally, what issues  overlap or connect to lay  experience?  So in the case obviously  biodiesel matters, in the UK on  GM foods, the debate over mad  cow disease was also a  heuristic, a relevant historical  example that was in recent  short-term memory that the  public was likely to judge  subsequent expert advice even  though it was a new issue.  So Wynne and colleagues  suggested that the best way,  given that these are sort of  mental rules of thumb that the  public is likely to apply to  making sense of expert advice  and expert institutions, they  recommend that the best way to  engage the public is not through  a transmission model of  communication, as is the popular  science model of getting more  information out to the public by  way of really good newspaper  coverage at newspapers or, say,  documentary television on BBC or  PBS, but rather to engage in  two-way interaction between  scientists and citizens.  To actually engage in  conversations and dialogue,  where there's the sharing of  information and the  understanding of where different  stakeholders are coming from on  these different types of issues,  and they've developed different  models for doing this.  They're often called "consensus  conferences," "deliberative  forums," "citizen juries," or  even more informally,  "scientific cafes."  And the focus here is actual  participation, that citizen  input matters and especially on  an issue such as energy  technology or on nanotechnology,  for example. 

 On how this technology is  actually developed in the  pipeline and then regulated and  implemented at the national  level, or at the community  level.  And there's also an emphasis on  learning from localized sources  of knowledge, so there's a lot  of innovation that's going on  across communities across the  United States and across the  world on adapting to climate  change, for example, or on  energy technology or  conservation or efficiency,  these are things that experts  should pay attention to and they  can in part discover best  practices for regional or  community adaptation through the  process of public forums, town  meetings, and listening to  various stakeholders.  And finally, what research shows  over and over again across  different types of studies is  that when participants in these  public forums that come away  feeling like they've been  listened to, they have a higher  level of sense of efficacy that  government officials or  scientists have been responsive  to their concerns.  They have a higher level of  trust, they have a feeling, a  sense of involvement, and they  have a perception that any final  decision was inherently fair.  So these are all very positive  outcomes of what's called the  public engagement model of  science communication, a use of  public forums, town meetings,  and other types of engagement  models for exchanging and  dialogue in two-way information  as a part of science  communication, but there are  also obviously, with any type of  communication process, there are  limitations and tradeoffs.  One is that as critics such as  Bryan Wynne have argued, that  despite widespread use of public  forums, in many cases, despite  this new format for  communication, there is still a  default on the part of  government organizers and many  scientists to deficit model  assumptions and goals.  That public forums are  considered, the outcome of these  forums is not focusing on trust  and dialogue, but rather  information dissemination and  how much the public is learning  about the technical aspects of  science.  And they also argue that if  participants' decisions and  input are not formally  incorporated into policy, then  these public engagement  initiatives are just another  form of public relations and  persuasion.  And then finally, as -- has  shown in some of his research  and some of the research I've  done on who was likely to turn  out to public forums on stem  cell research and others have  found, on public deliberation in  general, as you might expect,  these public forums have  difficulty in reaching a wider  audience about the scientific  topic that people are most  likely to turn out to any public  forum, such as a talk like this,  unless you're required to as  part of your class, are the  people who are already engaged,  already interested, and already  knowledgeable, and sometimes  opinion-intense about a topic.  So as a complement to the public  engagement model, with several  colleagues over the last couple  years, I've drawn upon relevant  research in the social sciences  and tried to apply and  popularize some of this research  in the area of framing, in  articles in the journal  "Science" and a follow-up series  of letters with -- in the  scientist magazine and more  recently in the journal  "Environment" focusing on  climate change, and most  recently with several colleagues  in the journal "Nature,  Biotechnology" and a commentary  focusing on new directions in  science communication. 

 The relevancy in a lot of the  work in social sciences and  communication on framing to  public engagement in science.  And this is an example that --  likes to use in his talks, and I  give him full credit for taking  this example from Daniel -- his  speech for winning the Nobel  prize in economics for his  research on decision making  under uncertainty, and Daniel --  in his research subjects and his  experiments, he showed them this  figure on the screen, which  inherently might look like an  ambiguous stimulus to, might  have trouble making sense of  what this figure might be, but  if I set the context or  perception around that ambiguous  stimulus as an "A" and a "C"  it's very clear that that  ambiguous stimulus is now the  letter "B."  But if I change the context or  perception for that ambiguous  stimulus from letters to  numbers, and I set around that  stimulus a "12" and a "14," what  is now very clearly to you a "B"  now looks like a "13."  And as -- likes to say, you  can think of science as the  ultimate ambiguous stimulus.  The public is likely not to know  what to make sense of a complex  uncertain issue, especially when  it becomes politically  controversial and often  polarized, and they're gonna  draw readily upon their own  predispositions, their social  identity, their partisanship,  their ideology, their religious  background, in combination with  the frame of reference that  they're most readily available  to by way of their preferred  media source, or in some cases,  and also their interpersonal  conversations, often with  like-minded others.  One of the examples that I often  like to use, I was looking at  polling trends on stem cell  research for a paper actually  when I was working on my  dissertation at Cornell, and I  ran across these interesting  findings, the classic example of  question wording effects in  survey questions, but it's a  dramatic example of how  perception of a scientific  topic, in this case stem cell  research, in 2001 when it's very  new for the public, is strongly  context-dependent.  So the juvenile diabetes  research foundation asked this  survey question in 2001 where  they define stem cell research  as "stem cells from excess human  embryos," and this research  could lead to cures for diseases  such as diabetes, Parkinson's,  Alzheimer's, cancer, heart  disease, arthritis, burns, or  spinal cord problems.  As I'll talk about in a second,  this is an example of what I  call the social progress frame.  Not surprisingly, when you set  this context or perception for  stem cell research, you have  over 60% of the American public  in 2001 for this very new and  somewhat ambiguous topic, 65%  saying you should fund embryonic  stem cell research.  But around the same time, the  National Conference of Catholic  Bishops commissioned their own  nationally-representative  survey.  In the context of the survey  question, they set a very  different context for  perception.  They focused on the moral  dimensions of stem cell  research, using language that  connected it to the familiar  issue, and the strongly-held  opinion issue of abortion. 

 They talked about experiments  using stem cells from human  embryos, the live embryos would  be destroyed in the first week  of development.  Do you support or oppose using  your federal tax dollars for  such experiments?  Not surprisingly, you get the  exact opposite result in this  nationally-representative  survey.  Now 75% of American say you  should not fund embryonic stem  cell research.  So you can't avoid framing as  part of the communication  process, classically defined  in the field of sociology and  adopted in communication, you  can think about frames  as organizing central ideas  on an issue.  They endow certain dimensions of  a complex topic with greater  apparent relevance than the same  dimensions might appear under an  alternative frame.  And partly what frames do, when  you frame something in  conversation or in the media,  you communicate why an issue  might be a problem, who or what  might be responsible, and what  should be done.  And as I'll show you with a lot  of different examples, frames,  this underlying latent meanings,  the selective interpretation, is  often communicated in shorthand  by catch phrases, slogans,  historical references, cartoons,  and images.  You can't avoid framing as  part of the human communication  process or as part of the  science communication process.  Strategists in policy debates  over science use frames to  define issues in ways that fit  their policy and political  goals.  Journalists use frames to  organize stories and appeal to  intended audiences. 

 And this is why you often see  science journalists frame  stories very differently from  political journalists, they're  coming to it from a different  background, and they're writing  for slightly different  audiences.  Citizens use frames as  information shortcuts to make  sense of complex topics and to  articulate their opinions, often  in the absence of knowledge.  And they're most likely to  accept those frames, media  frames, that fit with their  interpretive schema often based  on personal experience, social  identity, ideology, even  scientists use frames to  communicate to non-specialists  in other fields, craft grant  proposals, write popular books,  make PowerPoint slides like  these, and talk to journalists,  and one of the things I'll argue  tonight is, ethically remaining  true to the accuracy to what is  accurate science, oftentimes  when an issue in science becomes  politically relevant and spills  out to wider audiences,  scientists, while remaining true  to what is conventionally known  about a scientific topic and  with certain ethical guidelines  in mind, have to switch the  frame of reference for new  audiences in order to be  successful with public  engagement.  Framing is also not just a  psychological process but also a  sociological process, and I, for  students in the class, I  strongly recommend William  Gamson's book, "Talking  Politics," but you see this  process play out in everyday  life, and on cable news and talk  radio all the time.  Bill O'Reilly opens every show  with his so-called talking  points.  This is where he takes a salient  issue in the news and he  provides frame devices, talking  points, for his like-minded  audience to come away from that  issue, condensed down its  complexity, and then turned to  other people and have  conversations about that topic,  often without a lot of knowledge  about it.  And you can see Ann Coulter, for  example, writing books such as  "How to Talk to a Liberal (If  You Must)" again providing  talking points, condensing down  the complexity of policy issues,  into ready-made sound bytes, and  conversational tools that  resonate and actually reinforce  the ideology of their audience.  You see scientists that are  turned as pundits, such as  Richard Dawkins, doing the same  thing, perhaps at a little bit  more of a complex level in his  book "The God Delusion."  But for his like-minded  audience, of people questioning  religion or strongly committed  atheists already, he condenses  down the complexity of arguments  against religion into ready-made  talking points that then help  atheists and people skeptical of  religion express their opinion  and what they perceive as the  scientific argument against God,  and I'll come back to that.  So where to start when making  sense of science policy debates  and thinking about the frames  that might apply.  I've argued in several articles,  drawing upon past research that  there's a deductive source, a  typology of consistent frames  that appear to apply over and  over again across policy  debates. 

 This was first observed by  William Gamson and Andre  Modigliani in a paper in the  American Journal of Sociology,  in 1980s, looking at the  historic debate over nuclear  energy in the United States.  It was applied by researchers a  the Lenin School of Economics in  a series of studies, journal  articles and edited books  looking at biotechnology in  Europe, I actually applied this  in my master's thesis, under the  supervision of Bruce Lindstein  at Cornell University, published  in "Science Communication,"  using the same typology to look  at biotechnology in the United  States.  And in book chapters and  different articles, I've argued  that this typology applies not  only to biotechnology and  nuclear energy, but as I talked  about tonight, also climate  change and evolution, I would  argue it's a place to start when  thinking about almost any  science-related issue.  This is what the typology looks  like, and the first two frames,  the first two latent meanings  are probably familiar to you.  In the post-World War II era,  science has been promoted  historically as fundamentally  boiled down to a matter of  social progress, improving our  life and solving problems, or as  a matter of economic development  and competitiveness, either at  the local, national, or global  level.  Oftentimes when science is  needed to be dramatized in  different ways, either opposed  or promoted, as I'll talk about  on climate change, it's  redefined as a Pandora's box of  unlimited disaster, a  Frankenstein's monster of  runaway science, or on stem cell  research for example, it's been  redefined as a matter of  morality and ethics,  fundamentally a question of  right or wrong,  crossing/respecting boundaries,  or on climate change, redefined  as a matter of inherently  scientific uncertainty, what is  known or unknown, evoking or  undermining consensus,  references to sound science or  the authority of peer review.  Oftentimes, in a recent movie,  "Food Inc" for example, food  biotechnology is boiled down  simply to a matter of public  accountability.  Is science responsive to the  public, is this private science  or science in the public  interest?  And there's two other frames  that are often applied, and this  is a third way, alternative  path, -- is reframed, for  example, food biotechnology as a  third way to deal with climate  change, the -- sustainability,  company and a lot of their  corporate advertising.  And then finally there's even a  journalist-derived frame that  often political journalists and  pundits apply, -- from the  substance of any scientific  topic, will cover a science  debate such as stem cell  research or climate change, like  they cover an election or debate  over abortion, focusing narrowly  on the issue as a game among  elites, a battle of groups or  personalities, and the tactics  that they're using, and this is  often where you see a lot of  false balance occurring in  coverage of science.  So finally before moving to two  case studies that I think make  this research on framing  apparent and talking about how  to apply it, I've been asked by  critics of some of my research  in blogs and also in letters  subsequently to "Science," to  think about the ethics of how  scientists and science  organizations can apply framing  in public engagement. 

 How is this different from what  they refer to as "spin"?  And in a forthcoming book  chapter and in other places I've  written I've focused on four key  principles to think about how  science organizations and  scientists, you can't avoid  framing as part of the science  communication process, but how  can you use it ethically,   successfully, and effectively?  One key principle is to use  framing to actually promote and  emphasize dialogue, to go beyond  polarization to promote  consensus, or at least respect  or actually recognize also  differences in opinion to  promote two-way interaction and  participation among citizens.  Actually in some cases,  motivating or growing the  audience for science.  The second principle is to  emphasize the values that guide  and relate to policy decisions,  in any science-related policy  debate, there is a first premise  that is provided by science,  science points to the promise of  stem cell research, or points to  the problem of climate change.  It doesn't tell us necessarily  what to do about it, often the  debates about what to do about  stem cell research, how to  regulate it, how to fund it,  fundamentally come down to  questions about values, and I'll  show you how both Obama and Bush  have argued around not the first  premise but the second premise  of how to apply values in  deciding the collective choices  about stem cell research.  Third, and probably most  importantly, always emphasize  accuracy and remain true to what  is conventionally known about a  scientific topic and avoid  either distortion or hype.  And finally, avoid using framing  as a scientist or science  organization or as a science  journalist to denigrate,  stereotype, or attack a  particular social group or for  partisan and electoral gains.  And I'll come back to these.  So, the stem cell debate.  Conventionally, opponents of  embryonic stem cell research  including the former Bush  administration, have narrowly  focused on stem cell research as  a matter of morality.  George Bush's first national  address to the country in 2001,  August 2001, it was hyped by the  media as perhaps the most  important decision of his  presidency, seems kind of odd to  think about that, but this was  before 9/11. 

 In his address to the American  public, he argued that "my  position on these issues is  shaped by deeply held beliefs.  I'm a strong supporter of  science and technology," he  believes in science as progress,  "and believe that they have the  potential for incredible good,  to improve life, to save lives,  to conquer disease."  So he acknowledges the social  progress frame, but he argues,  "I also believe human life is a  sacred gift from our creator."  He takes a religious dimension  and focusing on morality.  "I worry about a culture that  devalues life and believe as  your president I have an  important obligation to foster  and encourage respect for life  in America and throughout the  world," and this fundamentally  became the second premise, the  values basis for his compromised  position on stem cell research  and how he framed ultimately his  decision.  Later when he vetoed legislation  twice coming out of Congress, he  focused again on the second  premise, and making a policy  decision focusing again on the  moral question.  He posed at this press  conference vetoing legislation  coming out of Congress with  so-called "snowflake babies."  These are babies that were  born from adopted embryos from  in vitro fertilization clinics,  and posing with these babies, he  argued in the press conference,  "This bill would support the  taking of innocent human life.  Each of these human embryos is a  unique human life with inherent  dignity," like a snowflake, "and  matchless value.  These boys and girls are not  spare parts."  Later in 2007, with the stem  cell reprogramming discovery  from here at the University of  Wisconsin, the White House  issued a statement, again  underscoring the moral dimension  of this issue, defining stem  cell research in the moral  frame, but also focusing on IPS  as a third way that's  accountable to the public.  So in a statement from the White  House, the statement read, "By  avoiding techniques that destroy  life, while vigorously  supporting alternative  approaches, President Bush is  encouraging scientific  advancement within ethical  boundaries," so a combination of  IPS providing a third way that's  within ethical boundaries.  "The president believes medical  problems can be solved without  compromising either the high  aims of science or the sanctity  of human life."  William Huriburt, his White  House bioethics advisor,  followed up with this statement.  IPS "allows research to move  forward with social consensus,"  arguing the public  accountability frame. 

 This is something that a strong  majority of the public can agree  with, and we can move forward  with scientific research that  has a strong social consensus.  So how would stem cell advocates  historically frame the stem cell  debate?  Well, they had two alternative  frames that they focus on,  arguing for the expansion of  stem cell research, and this is  being captured somewhat  ironically by the actor Brad  Pitt during the 2004 California  proposition campaign.  Where as a spokesperson for the  campaign, he was trained to  deliver two frames over and over  again.  That focused on the social  progress and economic  competitiveness dimensions of  this issue.  When appearing on the Today show  and asked by Katie Couric,  "Brad, why do you support this  research?"  He said, "Katie, one is the  extraordinary opportunity we  have here to eradicate these  diseases that are plaguing our  friends and families, diseases  like Alzheimer's, MS, and  diabetes."  Social progress frame.  Second, he then moved to the  economic competitiveness frame.  "Our scientists are not going  into this field because there's  not adequate funding, there's  not adequate resources.  Or if they are, we're losing  them to other countries like  Singapore."  And then, importantly, Katie  Couric said, "Brad, tell us  about your next movie," he  didn't get off topic, he came  back to the same economic  development frame, and said,  "Katie, I just want to say that  I think it's a mistake to look  at this as just a cost.  We should be looking at this as  an investment for our economy."  So this is a strong example of  taking the complexity of stem  cell research and boiling it  down for the public around just  two dimensions that they can  probably relate to and strongly  agree with.  Stem cell research as a matter  of social progress, and stem  cell research as a matter of  growing the economy. 

 The second major frame of  advocates is that starting  around 2004 in the election  campaign, and in 2006 again,  they started to use stem cell  research on the Democratic side  as a wedge issue, to drive a  perceptional wedge, so to speak,  between moderate independents  and moderate Republicans, who  stem cell research might appeal  to them on social progress and  economic grounds, and their  conservative counterparts in the  party.  And John Edwards and John Kerry  on the campaign trail used the  social progress frame, engaging,  in fact, actually hype about the  research, going way beyond the  probable timeline for when  therapies might be available.  John Edwards saying on the  campaign trail at one point, "If  we do the work that we can do in  this country, the work that  we'll do when John Kerry is  president, people like  Christopher Reeve are going to  walk, get up out of that  wheelchair and walk again."  And then my friend Chris  Mooney in a book that came out  in 2005, titled "The Republican  War on Science," argued the  public accountability frame,  that the Bush administration was  trading ideology for science and  that this was fundamentally  wrong.  And this became actually a  battle cry of Democrats and  liberals during the 2006 and  2008 elections, in fact, Hillary  Clinton, on the anniversary of  Sputnik, promised to end the war  on science, this is a great  example of a frame device.  Even Barack Obama, in announcing  his scientific advisors before  his inauguration, talked about  how he is going to restore  science to its rightful place in  the United States.  Not surprisingly, if you set the  perception of this issue as a  partisan one, the partisan  public will follow along, so  what you see starting as of  2004, when Democrats started to  use stem cell research as a  wedge issue, and you saw more  and more of this public  accountability frame, the focus  on politicization on the part of  the Bush administration, you see  a widening gap in perceptions of  the issue among Democrats and  Republicans about favoring of  research.  You see this over and over again  in several different polls.  Finally, what's interesting is  that Barack Obama used, adhered  closely to the standard framing  playbook, that social progress  and economic development frame,  and issue in his decision, once  he took office, in his speech on  stem cell research.  But what's important in applying  the second premise, his values  basis, for why he decided to  expand funding, he would suggest  or recommend to the NAH for  recommendations of expanding  funding, he used the same focus  on his own religious values, but  coming to a different outcome.  So in opening his speech he  noted the social progress  dimension of this research. 

 "At this moment, the full  promise of stem cell research  remains unknown, it should not  be overstated," so he doesn't  engage in hype.  "But they have the potential to  help us understand and possibly  cure some of our most  devastating diseases and  conditions."  Then like Brad Pitt he focused  on the economic competitiveness  frame.  "Some of our best scientists  leave for other countries that  will sponsor their work," such  as Singapore as Brad Pitt  mentioned.  And those countries may surge  ahead of ours in the advances  that transform our lives.  But then importantly, just like  George Bush, he turned to his  own personal religious beliefs  to argue the second premise for  why this research should move  forward.  "As a person of faith, I believe  we are called to care for each  other and work to ease human  suffering.  I believe we have been given the  capacity and will to pursue this  research."  And then finally, the second  justification for moving forward  was a public accountability  frame, citing what his selective  interpretation of polls, that a  strong "majority of Americans  from across the political  spectrum, and of all backgrounds  and beliefs, have come to a  consensus," like William  Huriburt mentioned, Bush's  bioethics advisor, but in the  opposite direction, "that we  should pursue this research.  That the potential it offers is  great, and with proper  guidelines and strict oversight,  the perils can be avoided."  So in this case you can see  how framing applies to stem cell  research, and I'll come back to  this in thinking about the  ethics of this case in a moment,  but I want to show you briefly  how it also applies to the case  of climate change.  One of the interesting things in  2007 after Al Gore shared the  Nobel peace prize with the IPCC  scientists for his work related  to "An Inconvenient Truth" and  for the scientists that worked  as part of the IPCC reports  conventional wisdom was that the  public finally got it on climate  change in the United States, and  it was up to policy makers to  make the hard choices now and  respond to public input.  But what we see in public  opinion still today is what I  call "two Americas" of global  warming perceptions. 

 Over the last four years in  fact, actually, see an  increasing divide between  Democrats and Republicans and  how they view the causes of  climate change and their links  to human activities over the  last few years, since the  release of "An Inconvenient  Truth" in 2006, and this divide  is greatest among the college  educated, so the divide among  college educated Republicans and  college educated Democrats and  how they see the causes of  global warming is roughly 50  percentage points.  So what accounts for this  difference in the subjective  perception of climate change  relative to its objective  reality?  One of the answers is that among  respected opinion leaders and  trusted information sources the  issue is being framed very  differently for these two key  segments of the public.  This is a memo that was written  by Frank Lunts, a Republican  pollster who actually used  audience research, focus groups  and polling to come up with  effective frames for some  conservatives to downplay the  urgency and the need for policy  action on climate change.  And the recommendations in his  strategy memo, he first said, he  first argued that conservatives  who want to downplay urgency  should focus on the scientific  uncertainty frame, that the  scientific debate remains open.  And then second, he argued, and  he referred to this as the  "emotional home run," is to  focus on the economic  development frame, in fact the  devastating economic  consequences of any action, in  fact, that any action would be  inherently unfair, because other  countries like India and China  are not playing along.  And if you look at the statement  of leading skeptics of climate  change, such as Senator James  Imhoff from Oklahoma and George  Will the syndicated columnist  from the Washington Post, they  repeat these same frames over  and over again, in fact, James  Imhoff actually suggesting that  the research shows that the  earth is cooling and don't  believe the liberal media, the  far left like the United  Nations, or Hollywood liberals  like Al Gore, as he repeats on  Fox and Friends when he appears.  And George Will, in a little  more sophisticated manner,  continues to argue the  uncertainty of the science and  the devastating economic  consequences of any action in  his syndicated columns at the  Washington Post.  So how have climate advocates  tried to respond to this very  effective framing playbook on  the part of climate skeptics?  Al Gore and his movie  "Inconvenient Truth" focuses  primarily on what I refer to as  a Pandora's box of looming  catastrophe, on climate change.  In fact in the trailer for this  film, the film was advertised as  the scariest movie you will ever  see.  And the poster for the film is a  great example of a frame device  with the image of a hurricane as  the plume coming out of  coal-fired power plant, in terms  of smoke coming from that power  plant. 

 The media picked up on this  Pandora's box frame the same  year with TIME magazine leading  with the tagline "Be worried, be  very worried."  Focusing on the devastating  risk and potential to iconic  images such as the polar bear,  and there's a couple problems  with this frame, as many people  have referenced.  One problem is that the linkages  between climate change and  hurricanes, the -- of  uncertainty around these  linkages are a lot greater than  the general phenomena of human  activity is contributing to  global warming, so they're  easily countered by people like  James Imhoff and people like  George Will as simply Al Gore,  this liberal, engaging in  alarmism, self-serving alarmism.  And the second problem with this  similar fear appeal is it often  probably leads to fatalism, we  know this from a lot of research  in health communication.  Those of you are probably  familiar with the war on drugs,  messages from the 1980s, "this  is your brain, this is your  brain on drugs."  And they crack open the egg  and they put it on a frying pan,  that's an example of a fear  appeal.  The Pandora's box message on  climate change is similar to  saying, "This is your planet,  this is your planet on  greenhouse gases."  It's inherently a compelling  message for some people that  alarms them, but it doesn't  necessarily give them  information about what to do  about this if you're threatened,  it can be overwhelming.  The second frame that advocates  have focused on is a public  accountability frame.  And Chris Mooney in his book  "The Republican War on Science,"  this has become kind of a  catch-all phrase for thinking  about and rallying a liberal  base around claims of  politicization on the part of  Republicans.  And as I mentioned earlier,  Obama has even used this frame  device in talking about  restoring science to its  rightful place.  But in today's political  environment, actually repeating  this frame over and over again  is probably alienating many  members of the Republican  public, who at this time you  actually have to engage on  climate change and mobilize  behind legislation, or at least  collective action and interest  in the issue.  What are some frames that  actually go beyond the existing  polarization on this issue?  One emerging frame focuses on  climate change not as a matter  of uncertainty or devastating  economic impacts, or a matter of  economic catastrophe, but  inherently as a question of  religious and moral duty, and we  see this quite well done in EO  Wilson's book, "The Creation,"  which came out in 2006. 

 He wrote this book as an open  letter to a Southern Baptist  minister, and he argued in this  book, I'm an atheist, and you're  a Southern Baptist minister, we  might disagree on where the  world came from, we might  disagree on evolution, but we  share a common value in  creation.  And can't we leave aside our  small differences and focus on a  common value in thinking about  environmental sustainability.  In doing so with that frame, he  introduces a popular science  about the environment to a  religious audience who may not  otherwise pay attention to a  traditional popular science take  on the environment.  And we see this initially in Al  Gore's new campaign called  Repower America, or the We  Campaign, he focused on the  existential threat to the United  States of climate change,  comparing it to how the country  came together to battle things  such as World War II, recover  from the Great Depression, and  TIME magazine picked up on this  frame in a TIME magazine cover  from two years ago, "How to Win  the War on Global Warming."  Using the metaphor war to  focus on this existential  threat, rather than this eternal  threat of the Republican war on  science.  This frame inherently unifying  us rather than dividing us.  And you can see how several  Evangelical leaders have  responded to this and have tried  to take the initiative in  rallying their public as  stakeholders around this issue.  In an Evangelical call to action  released in 2006, they first  state the first premise related  to climate change, focusing on  the science.  "Human-induced climate change is  real" and "the consequences of  climate change will be  significant."  Recognizing the science.  But they then transition for  their audience into the second  premise, talking about the  Christian moral duty to take  action on this issue, citing  scripture talking about how  "Christians must care about  climate change because we love  God," or "Christians must care  about climate change because we  are called to love our  neighbors, to do unto others as  we would have them do unto us."  And this is a good example of  combining the first premise of  the science with a second  premise about how our values or  social identity might compel us  to take action on an issue, or  why it might be personally  relevant or matter to something  we already care about.  A second relevant frame is  really the dominant frame now  used by the administration and  Tom Friedman had a really good  example of this from a column,  April column in the New York  Times, he actually wrote the  column as a strategy memo to the  administration. 

 This is an excellent example of  framing.  He actually advocated for a  carbon tax.  "We need a price on carbon  because it will stimulate  massive innovation in the next  great global industry, ET,  energy technology.  The scientific research and  innovation needed for America to  dominate ET the way it did IT  could be the foundation for a  second American industrial  revolution, so American economic  renewal is the goal, but  mitigating climate change would  be the great byproduct."  So he compares the energy  technology revolution that he's  arguing for with something  already familiar to the public,  the information technology  revolution that everyone has  benefited from in terms of  economic growth and benefits,  and what you'll see now is that  the so-called "cap and trade"  bill on the part of the  administration is no longer  referred to as a cap and trade  bill, in fact Tom Friedman ended  his column by arguing that the  national security advisor in the  White House should be the top  spokesperson on climate change  because this inherently is a  national security issue, and the  cap and trade bill has been  re-labeled "American Clean  Energy and Security Act," taking  a focus not on the issue as a  pollution problem, as a cap and  trade bill, but rather a clean  energy bill, and a bill about  national security.  And then finally, another  emerging and very important  re-framing of this issue is the  focus on the health consequences  of climate change, and what you  do when you focus on the health  consequences of climate change,  you not only shift the impacts  from animal species, many  Americans care about polar  bears, but not all Americans, is  it a topic they think about or  deeply care about polar bears,  and you shift also the location  of the impacts of climate change  away from the polar regions to  cities and local areas and  regional areas.  And you connect climate change  to issues, public health issues  that the public is already  familiar with.  Such as increased incidence of  asthma, lung disease, allergies,  susceptibility to heat waves,  and you put a public face on the  impacts on climate change.  And recently a Lancet study that  came out a couple months ago  that was a synthesis of the  research in the area, Anthony  Costello, the lead scientist on  the study recognized the  importance and the value of  re-framing climate change as a  public health problem.  He said to the media, "The big  message of this report is that  climate change is a health issue  affecting billions of people,  not just an environmental issue  about polar bears and  deforestation."  And then in the article they  talked about the moral authority  of bringing a new stakeholder  group as communicators to join  scientists on this issue, "a  concerted communication campaign  on the part of heath officials  can create a solidarity and  authority that politicians will  find hard to resist."  One of the examples I use is,  imagine a surgeon general's  report on the health  consequences of climate change,  similar to the surgeon general's  reports on smoking, or for  example, violence on television,  there's a lot of moral authority  when public health professionals  start talking about an issue.  So finally it's important to  remember what might be the  ethics of how science  organizations can apply framing  to public engagement. 

 You can use framing to actually  motivate greater interest, to  grow the audience for science,  and to go beyond polarized views  on the issue.  As EO Wilson did in his book  "The Creation," he focused on  commonly shared values with a  non-traditional public on  climate change, in this case  Evangelicals.  The public health dimensions of  climate change go beyond the  issue as just an environmental  issue, or the partisan divide on  the issue and connects it to a  widely held public interest and  public value in health.  Second, you want to emphasize  values that guide and relate to  policy decisions.  You don't want to describe a  science policy debate as  fundamentally about sound  science.  When you do so, you create the  incentives for actually  distortion or hype about that  science as John Edwards did in  the 2004 election.  Obama's a good example of openly  talking about the values that  compelled his decision on stem  cell research.  You always want to remain true  to what is conventionally known  about a scientific topic and  remain accurate in your  communication, you don't want to  engage in hype or distortion.  And finally, you don't want to  use framing to denigrate,  stereotype, or attack a  particular social group or for  partisan or electoral gains,  this often backfires and I would  argue it's inherently unethical  for a scientist to argue from  his or her authority as a  scientist for partisan purposes,  or for personal beliefs or  philosophical purposes when  applied to religion.  A good example of how framing is  used ethically and effectively  is by the National Academies in  a recent report on the teaching  of evolution in schools. 

 In updating and revising this  report that's been around in two  other editions previous to this  report, instead of relying on  intuition and personal  experience to come up with the  best way to take the complexity  of evolutionary science and  condense it down and to make it  meaningful to a wider audience,  they actually took a scientific  approach to communication and  commissioned audience research,  polling and focus groups to  figure out with frames which  remain true to the underlying  science best connect with a  non-traditional public, and they  write about this in a journal  article in a commentary "Life  Sciences and Education."  One of the interesting things  they found was that they  predicted going into the study  that the focus on the public  accountability message to repeat  for the public the long history  of court cases arguing that  creationism and most recently  intelligent design is not  acceptable for teaching in  public schools would be an  effective line of argument,  effective narrative.  But what they found among the  swing publics in the Midwest and  the South, in particular, was  that the public in general wants  more religion in public schools,  they actually favor school  prayer.  So to start to argue the public  accountability frame in court  cases on the separation of  church and state, people would  actually start to counter argue  against that frame.  But what they did find however,  is to focus on evolutionary  science as important and  relevant in terms of social  progress, in particular, as the  building block for medical and  societal advances.  And based on this research in  structuring the report and also  the press and media work along  this report, when you open up  the report, the first call-out  box for the reader is talking  about relevant and salient  example of evolution in  medicine, talking about this in  bird flu and SARS, most  importantly this might be now  talked about in terms of swine  flu.  In other parts of the report  they talk about other social  progress impacts, such as  evolution in agriculture,  evolution in industry.  Not surprising, the secondary  frame they found most effective  in engaging and communicating  the relevance and importance of  teaching evolution in schools  was to focus on the  long-standing position and to  emphasize the position of the  National Academies that science  and religion are not inherently  in conflict, and as a poll-out  in this report and in the press  work, they feature statements  from scientists who are  religious, underscoring that  they find no conflict between  their personal faith and their  scientific research.  And then also statements from  major religious traditions and  religious leaders arguing the  same thing.  However, the loudest voice on  evolution remains sort of the  polar opposites of the continuum  of perspectives on this issue,  and this was featured most  recently last year in an  anti-evolution, pro-intelligent  design documentary that featured  the actor Ben Stein as sort of a  Michael Moore type character  where he took viewers on a  journey where he uncovered  censorship in science where  scientists who were religious  would not dare to suggest that  we did not all come from  nothingness, as the trailer, and  he argued in the film.  And as a way to underscore his  message, the only scientists  that are interviewed in the film  are outspoken atheist scientists  including Richard Dawkins, who  in the trailer is quoted as  saying, "If people think God is  interesting, the onus is on them  to show that there is anything  there to talk about. 

 Otherwise they should just shut  up about it."  And this film became one of  the top ten grossing public  affairs documentaries of all  time, and perhaps more  impactful, more importantly, it  is reduced down to 20 minute  segments and shown almost as a  powerful political advertisement  to state legislatures who were  considering a so-called  "academic freedom" bill.  Again, the central focus of this  film was on this idea of public  accountability, that scientists  and educators were not allowed  to teach alternatives and that  scientists were actively  censoring rival opinions, and in  anticipation of the release of  this film, the producers  actually released a very  creative and entertaining viral  video where Dawkins was joined  by a rap posse of a so-called  "scientific establishment" of  "New Atheist" writer Sam Harris,  the blogger PZ Meyers, and for  some reason they refer to  Christopher Hitchens both in the  movie and in the viral video as  a scientist, but he's just a  journalist and a commentator.  And PZ Meyers in the movie as  one of the voices of the  scientific establishment,  actually argues deficit model  assumptions in arguing what he  thinks would eventually happen  once the public comes to  understand science and becomes  more scientifically literate.  He argues, "greater science  literacy, which is going to lead  to the erosion of religion, and  then we will get this nice   positive feedback mechanism,  more and more science to replace  religion that will displace more  and more religion, which will  allow more and more science in  and will eventually get to that  point where religion has taken  that appropriate place as a side  dish rather than a main course."  So in this case, outspoken new  atheist scientists are making  the points for the  anti-evolution advocates in this  particular film, and  underscoring their message very  effectively.  Okay, so finally, we can think  about public engagement  exercises at an interpersonal  level or a community level, we  can think about the importance  of thinking about the message  and how to use audience research  for crafting that message and  having it connect to  non-traditional audiences.  In some cases, growing the  audience for science, or making  a complex issue more personally  relevant, or going beyond  polarization thinking about how  to use this ethically, but how  are we gonna actually reach a  wider audience in today's media  world, where the audience has  many, many different  opportunities to engage in  different types of content, and  we have severe distress to the  media industry.  Several suggestions that I've  been working on at different  levels.  One is what I call the "going  broad" strategy.  You're never going to motivate  many audiences to pay attention  to really good science content  that we have out there.  In some cases we have to  incidentally expose them to the  science content, have them bump  into that science content in  places where they're not looking  for it. 

 And in one case, or repackage it  in a way that's more compelling,  using non-traditional narratives  and storytelling devices, and I  think a good example of this is  the recent movie "Earth" that  came out on Earth Day, which did  fairly well in the box office,  and it takes a Discovery Channel  approach to documentary  filmmaking and storytelling  about science.  In fact, when you look at  audience research on science,  the Discovery Channel, the  Learning Channel, and National  Geographic are by far the  biggest audience for  science-related content and most  diverse, cutting across  ideological background and  levels of education.  CNN, though they've cut their  science division, they've tried  to focus on a similar type of  genre of science content with  their "Planet in Peril" series,  which is similar to Discovery  Channel type content.  What's also important is to  think about how to harness the  creativity of satire and comedy.  Many young people, many people  in this room watch "The Daily  Show" and "The Colbert Report."  How can we effectively use, is  there value in using satire and  comedy in communicating about  science and creating media about  science to reach broader  audiences and make it more  compelling, or at least generate  interest.  And another example is the  science and entertainment  exchange which was launched by  the National Academies where  they're pairing consultants with  major motion picture producers  and television producers to  increase the accuracy and the  level of science content in  popular entertainment affair.  Everything from, and I don't  watch this show, the popular  "Desperate Housewives," to a  movie such as "Watchmen,"  are different examples recently.  And then around moments where  you have a lot of incidental  attention to an aspect of  science, in "Angels and Demons,"  they focus a lot on particle  physics, physicists across the  world actually organized  scientific cafes and a very  elaborate, well-done Web site  where people are doing Google  searches on the film, they might  find something interesting about  the science content they're  incidentally exposed to in that  film, and they stumble across  this really well-done Web site  where they can read more  information about that science  content.  There's always a disadvantage in  going broad, and that's that you  might engage in hype.  And most recently this is a good  example, in the fossil find of  Darwinius masillae, so-called  the "missing link," the "lost  ark of science," or the "holy  grail of science."  There are some interesting  things to like about this fossil  find, it's not normal that you  gain a world attention and a  worldwide audience for a fossil  find. 

 It was released in an  open-access journal that was  supposed to sponsor public  comment.  I was featured in a History  Channel, a BBC channel  documentary that had 2 million  viewers on History Channel  the first time it was shown, and  subsequent viewings, as well.  And immediately with the release  of the scientific study, a  popularized book that was on  bookshelves the same day the  study was out.  And the lead scientist on that  study told the New York Times,  "Any pop band is doing the same  thing.  Any athlete is doing the same  thing.  We have to start thinking the  same way in science."  And in part, he's right.  You have to think about multiple  channels in broadening the  audience across non-traditional  media for science.  But I would suggest this going  broad strategy, both in terms of  strategy and also in terms of  ethics, is probably not  well-suited to publicizing and  informing the public about a  single study, because when you  go this broad around a single  study, you always have the  tendency, as they did, in terms  of the metaphors and the  language they did, in violating  one of the ethical principles I  talked about, and that is  engaging in hype and distortion  about the possible significance  of this one particular study.  Second, while you're going broad  with new forms of science  content, with broader audiences,  you're always gonna have a need  for really deep information  sources for the really engaged  audiences, where they can both  learn about a science topic and  discuss it with other people.  What you see at the New York  Times "Science Times" and the  science section of the  "Guardian," they're taking that  deep content that's always been  a part of the elite media on  science, and they're using it in  new forms online. 

 I think this is an interesting  new world for science  journalists.  For those that are interested in  blogging I strongly suggest  checking out Andrew Revkin's  "dot earth" blog, where he's  really experimenting with new  ways of both covering climate  change on a daily basis,  breaking what he calls the  "tyranny of the news --" not  always covering climate change  as a political moment or the  release of a new scientific  study, but as an ongoing issue  with both depth, but also  engaging in deep conversation  with his readers.  And developing a relationship,  turning up new information among  the comments.  Each one of his posts might have  200 comments from really  informed readers.  And behind the scenes, he sends  out emails to experts, I've been  on these various emails so I  have first-hand knowledge of how  he does it, eliciting input from  experts, and inviting them to  comment in this space, and then  he'll tag and highlight the  comments for his readers,  so he's both engaging a general  audience and an expert audience  in his dialogue of his site.  At the same time at the Guardian  they've moved from a local paper  covering science now to a global  brand covering science.  With a lot of similar  interactivity, not as  well-developed blogs, but what  you see is they're actually  developing other sources of  income to pay for their online  content, selling Amazon.com  type store on science,  reader offers, and actually  posting job ads related to  science for the global audience  that they've developed around  their brand, through taking a  print vehicle and moving it  online.  But most importantly in the  United States where we have  severe distress where you no  longer have local newspapers,  some cities are actually losing  their local newspapers, but most  local newspapers have cut  meaningful coverage of localized  science information.  We need to think about new  models for science journalism.  And I've argued, and I really  think that other people have  obviously talked about this, and  I take this in part from some of  the innovations that have gone  on in the related field of  investigative journalism, is  that the future of science  journalism is really an  open-access participatory forms  of non-profit government  foundation and university-funded  science sites. 

 It will be multi-media,  interactive, and pro-am, meaning  you'll have professionally  produced content in different  forms, but you'll also have  citizen contributors, amateur  contributors, or expert  contributors such as scientists  or students or local citizens  contributing content to that  site.  A lot of it will be  user-generated, interactive with  a lot of comments, there will be  social problem focus with an  emphasis on agenda-setting,  framing, mobilization, and  engagement on issues such as the  health consequences of climate  change, or an issue such as  energy.  In some cases they'll be  internationally focused, in some  cases they'll be nationally  focused, but most importantly I  think in the United States, you  now have major regions of the  country, such as Seattle,  Denver, even San Francisco, that  don't have a local, quality  source of information about how,  for example, climate change is  impacting that region, and it  can be argued that a place like  San Francisco, the bay area,  Denver, Seattle, or Madison,  Wisconsin, that does not have a  quality source of local  information and news about  energy and climate change, is  ill-equipped to adapt to those  challenges and that  fundamentally you have to think  about news as part of the  infrastructure that needs to be  built up for societal adaptation  on climate change.  And then finally, it's not just  about creating the news sources  or the media content, it's  actually about fostering  top-down interventions that  sponsor bottom-up activity among  the public.  And one thing to do in  combination with these new forms  of digital news communities is  to identify and recruit and  actively use opinion leaders  across communities as connectors  and participate in this two-way  flow of information about  science.  So in part, one thing that you  can do, this has been talked  about in marketing and political  communication for several years,  most marketers now actively look  for opinion leaders, these are  people on a particular issue on  a set of issues who are highly  active, very attentive, and very  good at passing on information  to other people and providing  social recommendations.  These people naturally exist,  and what many marketers and  political campaigns have done,  is to identify, recruit, and  then train these opinion leaders  to pass on information to  otherwise inattentive friends  and peers.  So what you can do is you  combine and coordinate  face-to-face interactions with  social media sites, news media,  and paid advertising campaigns,  and importantly, with the advent  of hand-held devices such as the  iPhone, the Obama campaign did  this in the 2008 election, they  had an iPhone app for their  recruited opinion leaders.  Imagine you're having a  conversation with someone about  climate change, you're a  recruited opinion leader on  behalf of the National Academies  for example, to talk about  energy solutions in the  community.  You have an iPhone app while  during that conversation someone  raises a question you don't know  the answer to. 

 You can call up a fact sheet or  you can even flip your iPhone  around and show them a short  little two-minute video about  why energy is relevant to them  and how they can take action, or  how people like them are taking  action in their communities.  And finally, I was talking to  Dominique about this last night,  and this is the idea that I've  talked about for a long time and  I'm trying to find people to  work on -- polls around this, is  that we have many, we're  creating many new sources, if we  invest in digital news  communities about energy, about  climate change, about other  areas of science, we provide  these really good online sources  of information, we need to also  cultivate the audience for these  online sources of information,  and if you think about it, when  a non-major in science takes a  Gen Ed science course, how are  they gonna follow this science  throughout their lives if they  do, once they leave that science  course?  They're gonna follow science  mostly through the media,  through conversations with other  people, but mostly through the  media.  I would argue that every Gen Ed  science course needs a strong  science media literacy  curriculum.  That there should be assigned  popular science readings but  just as importantly, students  should be taught about where to  find quality sources of  information, how to interpret  how the media covers science,  and the relationships between  science and politics and other  social institutions.  And importantly what you're  doing is you're actually  socializing students into  enjoying the really good sources  of science content out there,  and you're helping create the  next generation of so-called  "science citizens," who are  active, attentive, and have the  skills to decode the information  in debates as they play out in  the news media.  Thank you.  (applause)