Good science, bad communication

Public policy in democracies is Pinformed and driven by anothe combination of expert opinion, inclinations of politicians (who may not know much about the issues) and by public opinion, since that may translate into votes.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

Public opinion, in turn, is shaped by media reportage and social media content.

When the issue is scientific, there's a big problem: The media has little understanding of science, and social media visibility is driven by controversy and sensational misinformation, rather than facts. Also scientists-the experts in this case are often terrible at communication.

This triptych of misunderstandings and ignorance has been visible for decades with climate change, resulting in poor global policymaking. More dramatically, we've seen millions of unnecessary deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic due to poor policy responses and misinformation.

The author is the CEO of Science Media Centre, a charitable institution set up to bridge this communication gap. The SMC's mission involves getting scientists to do media better, and in practice it also involves inducing government PR machinery to be more transparent, since a large proportion of science funding comes from the government.

Over a period of 20-odd years, author Fiona Fox has been backstage during controversies surrounding hot-button issues such as climate change, Covid, animal research, genetically modified foods, hybrid embryos, vaccines, chronic fatigue syndrome, nuclear power, and other sciency stuff.