I reviewed a book proposal last week. Nothing is remarkable about that, but there was a section in one of the sample chapters on ‘Knowing your audience’. One of the points it made was that people have a story, their own internal narrative against which all external events are measured, and into which all stimuli must be assimilated if they are to make sense.
This is pretty much why Sarah Palin said what she did, and why the usual suspects got so upset about it: she was playing true to type and understanding the isolationist leanings of the Republican faithful, and being criticized by those who have the stage instruction “Be scandalized by anything that could possibly be an attack on science” hard-wired into their DNA.
It makes me think that Palin is perhaps the better communicator: she knew her audience, while her critics fail to understand what they have to do to reach those same people.
We’ve seen this before (and please, can we forget about Sarah bloody Palin come Tuesday?), in different contexts.
When someone (anyone: I’m not pointing fingers. This time) says that religion is superstition, or that faith is believing something untrue, then not only are they displaying a breath-taking ignorance but also failing to communicate with those very people they need to reach. They are not taking into account the internal narrative.
We are, in many cases, dealing with rational people, who have had an experience (or a series of them) that makes sense. That can be explained if certain assumptions are true. Who would claim that their faith is based on evidence. Failure to understand that, to grasp that they have a totally internally consistent story (a ‘worldview’, if you must), results in a failure to understand them and ultimately a failure to communicate. These are not, on the whole, people who deliberately set out to destroy science (and in fact many of them have a great deal of respect for science; they just fail to understand how it works).
You are then viewed as arrogant, as condescending, as ignorant and irrelevant (see Jenny’s comment.) And that’s before they start to feel that you’re threatening the most important thing in their life. (You might think that this serves them right, and it’s their own lookout, and we’ll have a good laugh at their expense. Sadly, if you do think that it proves my point somewhat).
Equally, many religious people (I use the term broadly) fail to understand the nature of scientific enquiry, let alone what drives scientists. They do not realize, for example, that I do science because I like to find out how things work. That when I sit in a seminar and see the F-type ATPase and think to myself ‘How the fuck did that evolve?’ I don’t say ‘God did it’. I say ‘Let’s find out’. If God did do it, I want to know “how”:http://tinyurl.com/5wqca8.
Just as they don’t understand the scientific method (and why should they?), these are people who do not understand the scientist’s inner narrative. Indeed, looking around, they might be forgiven for thinking that scientists exist to disprove faith in God.
But maybe if they understood my inner narrative, and I theirs, we could have some meaningful discussions.
Hear hear. For me the whole thing about the Palin issue is that she (probably) isn’t anti-science, it just has a much lower priority for her than other topics. I doubt she put much research into fruit flies, she asked her staff to find her a good example that was easy to mock, and they went to a source that argues against pork (in government spending, not pig derivatives of course) and found one. After all it was only a throw-away line.
I was also amused by the way so few people bothered to check the story to find out that it wasn’t about Drosophila, and ended up giving totally spurious counter-arguments. Well, spurious unless olive oil can be used to treat Down’s syndrome.
Great post, Richard. Maybe we just need more venues where scientists and people of faith can mingle, chat and share a few beverages (whichever the faiths permit). It’s difficult to know someone’s narrative if you don’t ever interact socially.
Richard – many religious people (I use the term broadly) fail to understand the nature of scientific enquiry
To be fair, I think you could make this statement with the word ‘religious’ removed (and replace ‘God did it’ with ‘nature did it’ further on) and it would still be true. I’m increasingly of the opinion that many people lose their sense of wonder/delight in finding out at puberty, probably because of peer pressure, resulting in that lack of the kind of response you mention.
I’d have to agree with Brian. Many people don’t understandd the science thing, and they don’t want to. I’ve also thought that something happens to kids around puberty (evidence: dealing with enthusiastic school children aged 8-11, dealing with sulky, can’t be bothered teenagers aged 13-17) that results in less wonder and delight in discovery.
Good post. I’d suggest that the certain people who have an extreme view on the nature of science and religion provide us with the rather more comfortable middle ground of reason to occupy. Without the extreme minority opinion, many things that we take for granted would not be available to us.
The nature of good scientific communication is to engage with people in a way that lets them build connections into their own cognative framework. We shouldn’t seek to alienate people by being extreme, nor should we seek to lessen scientific enquiry and science in general to make it more palatable for those with less openminded points of view.
We’ve all seen Flock of Dodos, right? Very good demonstration of this ‘charisma vs. facts’ thing.
I sat right next to someone deeply religous for several years in my previous job who would not accept any scientific argument for anything (climate change being the big one, my input on that as an oceanographer being whole-handedly dismissed). At first I tried, then gave up. Funny thing is, he’s smart and I really like him as a person, but even that didn’t make a difference. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of venues to mingle – although those would help (if ‘everyday life’ doesn’t provide enough opportunities). Not sure what the solution might be, either.
Brian – are you saying we’re stuck in a pre-adolescent phase? 🙂
@Katherine: dealing with sulky, can’t be bothered teenagers aged 13-17
I’ve given talks on Antarctic research to US high school students and was amazed at the reaction – from disgruntled/forced to sit there by their teachers to engaged and asking questions. I had a very rewarding topic, though, and lots of cool pictures. We just can’t give up!
@Steffi: No, we can’t give up! Working with schools is one of my favorite bits of my job, one that I don’t get to do often enough. It is hard to find a way to get their attention and break through that disgruntled outershell. Once you manage it though, well worth it. And if it is Antarctic versus chemistry, well I’d take the Antarctic myself anyday!
One of my favourite talks was for a large group of boyscouts. The parents were there, too – giving me the excellent opportunity to squeeze in some education on that end as well. Fascinating was that most of the children (7-10 yr old) seemed to have a slightly better grasp of things than their parents – and then to observe the parents getting engaged, so as not to be outdone by their kids.
So maybe that’s the strategy: teach kids – but have the parents there, too.
Maybe the solution is simply that we have to agree to disagree: is anyone really going to change anyone’s minds on the sci/religious divide?
Maybe we just need more venues where scientists and people of faith can mingle, chat and share a few beverage
You can make HWMNBN and his acolytes drink, but you can’t lead them to water. Possibly.
Jenny – I don’t think there really is an overall science/religious divide – just between the two extremes, while most of us fall somewhere in the middle (as Katherine mentioned as well).
The reason we should not agree to disagree (or simpler: keep publicly disagreeing) is because we have to keep those others in the middle engaged and at least seeing and understanding both sides.. and that not everyone has strict either/or opinions on this.
I happen to think that this talk of ‘sides’ is unhelpful.
I agree with Steffi that we need to engage for the reason she states. The only thing I’d add is that we should try and do it civilly and with respect, otherwise we find we’ve just alienated half the moderates who we’ve just insulted (e.g. certain people who get involved in the ID/creationist debates, and then gratuitously insult anyone religious. That’s how to lose your target audience!).
I see nothing wrong with calling a side a side. If there is a palpable division in ideology that pretty much anyone can detect without too much trouble, then it is disingenuous to pretend that there is not. Deciding to call it something else won’t change the underlying structure.
@Richard – talking about ‘sides’ isn’t helpful. But it is a convenient way for people to pitch a ‘them and us’ arguement. If we consider religious beliefs and lack thereof to be a spectrum from one extreme to another, then sides seems rather pointless. We observe equal fervour in both the religious and atheist camps. But we should also consider that religious belief has little or no impact on a persons ability to do science (with the exception of a few specific subfields and specialties). You can be scientific and religious with no real detriment to either. Whether the motive is a more fulfilling explaination of the wonders of God’s universe, or a more sufficient understanding of the processes at work in our universe, the end is all that matters: science for the benefit of the planet.
What I’m getting at, Jenny, is that thinking of the issue in terms of ‘sides’ means you’ve already lost.
Sides exist, in terms of atheist vs faithful. No argument. But Katherine has the right idea when she says we should also consider that religious belief has little or no impact on a persons ability to do science.
Much of the conflict is a result, I’ll readily admit, of fundamentalists failing to understand their own beliefs.
I don’t think there really is an overall science/religious divide – just between the two extremes
I feel very strongly that the unreasonable demands of the moderates should be kept in check.
Richard wrote a nice article. Sitting here in the middle of the US with a number of co-workers similar to Steffi’s example above (smart but wedded to dogma), my prinicipal concern is that people vote and engage in civic action in democracies, and these actions influence things like education standards and science research funding. So engagement is necessary, and finding common ground where possible is always a good idea. Beyond that, honestly presenting multiple views and the consequences of those views when discussing an issue seems like a good strategy – especially when reaching out to a wider audience. If you can summarize the viewpoint of someone you disagree with such that they concur, you can begin a reasonable discussion of why you think it’s not the best approach. We’ve had way too many scare tactics and distortions from two of the three sides engaging in these debates. (The third side is the actual correct answer – which only I know.)
Thanks to everyone for being calm, rational, and saying nice things about this entry.
@James: If you can summarize the viewpoint of someone you disagree with such that they concur
that’s a bloody good point. Actually being able to articulate someone else’s PoV is a very valuable skill. If they agree with your summary of their position then you’ve made a huge step, and can actually start to engage with salient points rather than strawmen or misrepresentations.
Thanks Richard. I’ve seen debates in my own controversial area (nuclear power) run this way, with each speaker having to start by summarizing what the opponent just said. Seems to produce the results you’ve mentioned.
Articulating that someone else’s viewpoint may be valid is a pretty standard debating technique, usually used before ripping the viewpoint to shreds, in a calm, polite way of course…
Can science really stop asking questions before it discounts religion? We use the current scientific method to ask “Why does an observation we have made in the natural world/universe occur?”.
This leads us to ask more questions, generally about mechanisms at lower organisational levels than we started at, descending into a downward organisational spiral until physicists become involved (being at the bottom of the
evolutionaryorganisational tree) and we’re left with not much left to explain, except what happened before bangs were big. And if we manage to figure that out, or at least come up with a testable hypothesis, we then have to ask how can superstition or religion fit in to a universe that has already been explained in the absence of supernatural forces? At the moment, I think this makes it rather awkward to reconcile your scientific and religious beliefs if you have to stop asking scientific questions when it becomes uncomfortable.So, can we clarify what is actually worth debating between scientists and religiousists? People here are being very calm about accepting that different world views can co-exist and we have to spread the love before gently persuading people that they’re wrong one way or the other, but I think they’re avoiding a rather large, disbelieving elephant in the room.
Venues to talk/interact – anyone up for this conference?
Is the Embryo Sacrosanct? Multi-Faith Perspectives
Could be very interesting – if you go, please report back.
Mike, it sounds like you’re describing a God of the gaps
(I have nothing useful to contribute other than linking to wikipedia.)
@ Mike: physicists become involved (being at the bottom of the evolutionary organisational tree)
No. Physicists are above marketing droids, personnel managers (sorry, I am obliged to say ‘human resources’), estate agents and used-car salesmen.
we then have to ask how can superstition or religion fit in to a universe that has already been explained in the absence of supernatural forces
No, we don’t, and that’s exactly the point that HWMNBN and his legions of the undead fail to understand.
Eva, thanks for the link. That’s what I was getting at. Nice to know it’s got a name.
Henry:
I’m not sure if this is a fair point or not0, I stopped reading Dawkins years ago, his writing was stupefyingly boring, so I don’t know how he classifies delusions. I shall try to clarify what I meant by saying: science that is not principally interested in human cultural phenomena has little to say about religious experiences (unless you want to boil it down to some brainbox chemistry/physiology, which would lead to some pretty interesting experiments1), and religions probably don’t have many useful things to say about science. Hmmm,[0] contradicts this a bit. Bugger.
So, if we don’t have much to say to each other about these things, let’s just talk about politics, sport, and what was on TV last night, like
the great unwashedcivilised peopleses.0 Why should we stop asking these questions? We are entitled to ask why people behave in a certain way, and reactions to religious experiences are behaviour. We like to explain why organisms behave in all sorts of interesting ways, so why stop at religious behaviour?
1 Now, does this sort of electric shock/bash on the bonce give you the same feeling as your Jesus dream last night? No? How about this one…
I think it’s perfectly valid to ask such behavioural questions.
I actually have a fair bit to say related to this (about explanations, really), but it’s gonna take another blog entry. Sorry.
Looking forward to read that, Richard. I was kinda tempted to do something similar as I was writing the above, but think I’d get tied up in all sorts of uncomfortable knots. I’ll chicken out and leave it in your
stigmatadcapable hands.On the interaction above between Steffi and Katherine about children’s enthusiasm: I agree. Young children have inquiring minds and are fascinated by everything, in other words they are natural scientists. It is lovely.
Then at around age 11 they, still enthusiastic, get stuck into the proscribed way in which science is taught in schools, cue dullesville for many of them. Get real scientists into the schools, such as both of you but anyone who is (or has recently been) a real scientist, enthused by a question, and the students will love it. They will have someting “real” to react to instead of all this manufactured boringness that I see in the textbooks, and which is all geared up to some examination or other. No wonder so many people are turned off science.
Yes. I don’t know what we can do about that, apart from individual tuition but that’s rather inefficient and doesn’t reach enough people.
Make scientists visit local schools in an organised fashion (ie as a standard part of their job) to tell students about science, their research in particular (unless it involves pulling wings off butterflies, but even that can be made defensible if the work is worth it in the scientist’s view).
Here’s a heretical comment: if some of the effort and exhortations and money that is spent on persuading (and forcing) scientists into publishing “open access” research were diverted into this public outreach, how many more members of the public would be genuinely informed about scientific advances? A lot more, I venture to suggest, because a scientist spending an hour or two a week enthusiastically describing her/his research or other aspects of research to a class of 30 students, multiplied up, is probably going to do a lot more to explain the joys and value of science to the world than making incomprehensibly technical, specialist papers available to people who aren’t trained to understand them.
(I think I probably daren’t come back to this conversation now.)
It’s all right Maxine; someone will probably come along and say ‘do both’.
Indeed, but think of the massive efforts that are made towards the goal of making (often incomprehensible) papers generally available (most scientists read them for free anyway), compared with the lack of organised push to a sitting target – school students in enforced science classes. Instead, this type of effort is pretty much left to the individuals concerned, although some research employers do encourage it. Weird or what?
A
woman’sscientists work is never done.Really. I’m gonna spend the next 2 months teaching bemused biology undergrads about ecological models. This is not in my contract and I won’t get paid extra for it until next year at the earliest, when they review my salary scale, then ignore any progress I’ve made.
I agree it’s a laudable idea, but when will I actually have time to publicly outreach? And who will pay for the time I take away from research training how to reach out to school children effectively?
In other words, it’s probably something I would like to do, I don’t want to dismiss the idea, but I’m already working *way* beyond my contracted hours. How can I remain a competitive scientist (and we do need to compete for limited resources: funding, jobs…) and do all this extra outreach work?
I’ve been going to schools and community centres for Let’s Talk Science . They have a program where grad students are being sent out to talk to kids and do some experiments with them. (That is with, not on.) Grad students don’t tend to get thought of as full-fledged “scientists” within the scientific community, but to a 14-year-old someone who is older than 20 and stands in a lab the entire time really is a scientist.
I think Maxine is on to something regarding have scientists visit schools as a scheduled, paid part of their job. (Hopefully those requirements would address Mike’s concern.) Perhaps that could be a condition of government grants? I suspect there will be a few tedious talks, but also some good ones, and any contact can’t hurt. My former company’s most effective ploy to interest students in engineering was to send out a vivacious and visibly pregnant young staffer to speak. That sent a lot of positive messages about the profession.
Sure, we’ll just require the scientists that go out to give talks to always get pregnant first, James…
Well, you do what you gotta do to advance the species, I suppose. (Easy for me to say.)
Eva, I’ve also done experiments with high school kids as part of Let’s Talk Science. I also helped judge a science fair. It was way more fun than I expected, and we got a great response from a class full of 15-16 year-olds. I think they just liked doing something different!
‘Vivacious’ and pregnant?
What century is this?
Well, what I was also going to say before my browser decided to flip out, was that the MRC seemed to be keen to engage. They even sent me on a course. But it’s been a while since I worked for the British Government, Mish Moneypenny.
Actually, James, I was being sarcastic – and am finding out again that it doesn’t seem to work in a virtual discussion.. I don’t think it’s very helpful to make any kind of statement on what the ‘outreachers’ should look or be like.
I’d settle for ‘human’.
Richard: Much of the conflict is a result, I’ll readily admit, of fundamentalists failing to understand their own beliefs.
Boris: Exactly!!
I’m pondering a blog entry on that very point, Boris.
ponder