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Chris Mooney has explained about the need for science communication, or as he calls it, Sci Comm Training.
Science needs both to create new knowledge and also to disseminate it effectively so that that knowledge has an impact–so that it changes the world in a positive way. Why on earth would these two important ends be set in opposition to each other?
Yes of course it does, but disseminating knowledge is not necessarily the same thing as “framing,” nor does it necessarily need to know about “framing.” Framing is more closely related to public relations and political campaigning than it is to education, and that’s one major reason scientists and fans of science don’t all think Mooney is the ideal person to give “boot camps” in how to disseminate scientific knowledge.
I said something like that, and a bit more, in a comment that I tried to make at The Intersection, thinking perhaps after all this time the ban on me had expired, or rusted, or been lifted. I thought I would see, at any rate. But my comment has not been posted, so clearly the ban is still fresh and vigorous. So I’ll drop it off here.
The problem continues in this post – the “communication” here includes misdescribing at least some of the disagreements around all this.
I, for one, have nothing against “science communication” as such. I do however have doubts that you are the right person to teach science communication, Chris, for the simple reason that you’re not very good at it yourself. That’s not meant as an insult – it’s not a crime not to be good at a particular thing.
One part of being good at communication is surely an ability to predict the effect of your communications on your audience. You don’t seem to have that: you were surprised by the reactions to your “civility” post a year ago. You were surprised by my reaction, for instance – you may remember we had a (reasonably friendly) email exchange about it. It’s odd that you were surprised, and the fact that you were surprised hints to me that you don’t have full control of your communications – you don’t entirely know what you’re doing. This would seem to be a disqualifier for teaching the subject.
You don’t seem to be able to grasp why the concept of “framing” is not welcomed with cries of delight by people whose vocation it is to try to get at the truth. That to me seems to be another disqualifier for teaching communications. Your overall refusal to engage with critics seems like another.
I don’t understand the debate, is the topic about disseminating scientific facts and theories or persuading the public of the virtues of science itself ,or both?
I am also banned there (and no where else) for just asking a question. I guess when ‘framing’ doesn’t work, banning is his next choice.
Some people say Mr. Mooney is inconsistent. I disagree. Isn’t his way of handling criticism and critics fully compatible with framing?
The idea of ‘framing’ is really a bit silly, when you stop to think about it. In the hands of someone like Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet it seems to be a way of staying in control of the argument. If they don’t like the way someone has ‘framed’ something, they call out the home guard.
But clarity, logical consistency, and truth are arguably more important than any amount of ‘framing’. As you say, ‘framing’ seems to be about public relations, but when the PR guy starts to tell others that they need to learn ‘framing’, he’s really saying, ‘I want to be in charge of everyone’s way of speaking.’ Matti K asks: “Isn’t his way of handling criticism and critics [simply by banning them, for example] fully compatible with framing?” I’d say this is just what framing is all about. It’s about fighting on ground of your own choosing. While that may be a good eay of coming out on top — ‘When failure ensues, just refuse to talk with that person’ – it’s not a good way of getting to the truth.
It just doesn’t work that way. Dicussion, dialogue, argument, etc. work best when people are being themselves, and using language as it comes naturally to them. Of course, we don’t want out-and-out abusiveness, in general — though even that has its uses. But the supposition that there is a right way and a wrong way of framing things is simply a way of homogenising discussion, and arguably that’s not the way to get at the truth. It’s a way of pretending you’re right. And you know what? When you’re wrong it’s best if someone tells you straightaway in plain English (or whatever language you’re framing your argument in).
I think framing can be a wonderful rhetorical tool that can and ought to be used in science communication. People need to be shown, first and foremost, why (and how) the subject is salient. The only way to do this is to know your audience, know how their minds work, and to rebuild your rhetoric accordingly. Good teachers do this naturally, and so do good rhetoricians.
However, Eric is correct in pointing out that framing, when distinct from logic, truth, etc., is mere spin. And, of course, mere spin is illegitimate and has no place in science communication. That makes most of Mooney’s polemics unhelpful, leaving his thesis underdeveloped at best.
If we really are interested in framing (and we should be), then it would be better to go back to politically active cognitive scientists who have been pushing for this line of thought for decades. George Lakoff, for instance.
Am I missing something, or is Mooney’s assumption that “new knowledge” will be “positive” really weird?
Without really expecting a reply, I left this comment at Discovery:
And Mooney seems to mean spin rather than educational “framing” – which Neil Tyson explained (without using the word “framing”) as combining the facts with sensitivity to the audience, when he was urging Dawkins to pay more heed to being persuasive. Now maybe Mooney doesn’t mean that – but I don’t think one can tell that from either of those two posts. He should do a better job of framing his own framing, perhaps.
I think that the word ‘framing’ is misleading. It was intended, at the start, I think, as a quasi-technical word, to refer to a very simple fact. If you want to be understood by someone, you have to use language they can understand. So, as you say, Ophelia, or as Tyson said, you have to combine “the facts with sensitivity to the audience.”
Now, I may have this all back to front, but, to my way of thinking, this is not framing, in a strict sense. This is just the substance of rhetoric. Benjamin calls framing a tool of rhetoric. I think it is rhetoric, or that’s what it would have been, if it hadn’t got caught up in the religion-atheist fire fight. Framing, then, as I understand it, became just spin, and that’s the way its exponents are reading it. It’s the way you spin something, not so that it can be understood — that’s simply a matter of common sense and art (and as we know, Dawkins is a master of that art, and makes it look so damned easy too) – but so that what you say will be acceptable to any audience.
That’s what Chris Mooney has been belly-aching about, that the “New Atheists” are too in your face, too strident, too shrill, etc. But clearly, Dawkins, for instance, wasn’t too shrill or strident or in your face for a lot of people, because the book sold in the millions! Clearly there was a fit between what he wanted to say and the audience he wanted to say it to. But Mooney’s objections kept coming on more strongly. So, he isn’t talking about rhetoric. He’s talking about spin, pure and simple. And the kind of spin he’s suggesting is that, in trying to pitch science to the public (in general) we should make very sure we don’t offend the religious in particular, because that’s the public we want to reach. So you have to spin science so it doesn’t look threatening to religion, which will leave us all sounding like Karl Giberson.
Perhaps this is clearer if you take your next post, where you mention that you think you are reasonable and yet your post has been moderated away. (It’s a new kind of ‘now you see it now you don’t’.) Well, quite clearly, you haven’t spun your thoughtful, rational post in the right way. Framing in Mooney’s world is not about rhetoric; it’s about spin.
I can’t speak for Mooney, or what he means by framing. Maybe he means spin when he should mean rhetoric, or maybe he means rhetoric but takes so much contentious stuff for granted that it seems like he means spin. I suspect the latter.
It’s more instructive to look to the researchers who have done the relevant investigations and learn from their insights. The idea of “frames” and “slots” had wide currency about a quarter century ago in cognitive science, and a tremendously interesting body of literature has grown up around that and also moved beyond it. Meanwhile, the current trend in the study of science education (from what I can see) is an emphasis upon interaction and argument in the classroom, and not cultural polemics. Mooney and Kirshenbaum are not helpful in telling us how to have productive debates, because a) they don’t know how, and b) their purpose in Unscientific America was to concentrate on how scientists can become better cultural icons, stronger McScientists.
Yet framing is a red herring. PZ Myers has a fantastic aptitude for framing. He is just a damn good writer; funny, engaging, heartfelt, and so on. There is absolutely no dispute as to whether or not he knows how to frame his message to his audience. When I pressed Mooney on this, he seemed to be willing to admit that Myers is an effective framer relative to his own audience. But Mooney condemns Myers for other reasons, namely by asserting that Myers hasn’t got the right audience in mind. This is an interesting thought, but it is not the same worry as the one we might have about framing.
[…] Scientists Or Policymakers? Posted by bensix under Scepticism, Science Leave a Comment Via B2DaW, Chris Mooney reflects on science and PR… Science needs both to create new knowledge […]
That’s a great point, Ben.
Mooney is fundamentally political, in a particularly narrow sense. He’s interested in political tactics – it’s as if he really wants to be James Carville. He’s interested in Big Tent stuff. Maybe it’s Obama he wants to be.
But what he doesn’t seem to get is that if PZ and everyone like him switched from framing well for their/our particular audience to framing well for the largest possible number of people – they/we would no longer frame as well for their/our particular audience. You can’t do both. You can’t eliminate particularities and intensities in order to appeal to the lowest commond denominator while still appealing to people who want particularities and intensities. You just can’t. If you dumb down, then you lose part of your audience or market or constituency, and unless you’re just plain after numbers, as in votes or dollars, you’re losing the part of your audience that you least want to lose. You gain quantity at the expense of quality. Mooney seems to be just after votes, yet he’s not running for anything.