SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY

Sci Ed is a PLOS Blog devoted to "Diverse perspectives on science and medicine". Mike Klymkowsky, professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has recently posted on Sci Ed a very interesting article dedicated to science literacy, "Recognizing scientific literacy & illiteracy".  Inspired by a report of the National Academy “Science Literacy: concepts, contexts, and consequences”,  Professor Klymkowsky  poses a provocative question, "can we recognize a scientifically illiterate person from what they write or say?".  This is a bit mischievous question, because it implicitly suggests that the distinction between scientifically literate and illiterate persons is not that easy.

What makes scientific literacy is not what one knows, but how he knows it. Science – argues Mike Klymkowsky - is more a perspective, than a specific knowledge.   The article lists two main criteria for assessing scientific literacy. First, scientific literacy implies the capacity to understand scientific questions and recognize what an adequate answer should contain (which is not, pay attention, the "right answer" but the "right format of the answer"). 

Second, scientific literacy means the capacity "to recognize the limits of scientific knowledge; this includes an explicit recognition of the tentative nature of science, combined with the fact that some things are, theoretically, unknowable scientifically". Science is made of local perspectives, any perspective that aims to be universal, total, cannot be scientific (which does not imply that it is wrong or false, but it simply means that it belongs to a different register). 

Finally, Mike Klymkowsky addresses an important issue, say, "scientific illiteracy in the scientific community". Paradoxically enough, it is not rare that the very scientific community shows some forms of scientific illiteracy. How could it be possible? Mike Klymkowsky thinks that it is chiefly due to the "highly competitive, litigious, and high stakes environment"  in which most scientists operate. Often this situation leads them to make claims that are over-arching and self-serving. In other words, driven by a too competitive environment, scientists tend to draw unjustified conclusions from their empirical findings to best market their results. 

The article ends posing the question "how to best help our students avoid scientific illiteracy". The conclusion is that there is not a clear answer to this question but to try to establish "a culture of Socratic discourse (as opposed to posturing)". Such a culture could be summarized – per the author - into an ongoing attempt to understand "what a person is saying, what empirical data and assumptions it is based on, and what does it imply and or predict". 

Curiosity and ongoing inquiry could help to prevent scientific illiteracy, yet there are two other aspects of the Socratic approach, which are still more essential to the scientific discourse. They are self-irony and sense of transcendence.  These two elements are strictly interlaced, because they are both rooted in the deep conviction that truth is always a bit beyond the human reach. Socrates is not relativistic – as some commentators have erroneously argued – rather he is aware that humans can get closer to truth only asymptotically. This awareness prevents any form of scientific arrogance, the real origin of scientific illiteracy.

Mandatory Vaccinations

In the Oct 6 issue of the New York Times, Christopher Mele devotes an interesting article to risk communication in emergencies. In a nutshell, his argument is that – if one aims to communicate risks – one needs also to evoke fear. Mele’s point of departure is the recent evacuation of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina residents due to Hurricane Matthew. He reports that “even after all of the best practices in emergency communications are exhausted, 5 percent of the population will most likely remain in harm’s way, experts and researchers said”.  Actually, this figure is likely to be still over optimistic, for instance during 2013 Hurricane Sandy 49% of coastal residents who were under mandatory evacuation did not evacuate.  In 2014, a State University of New Jersey team led Dr. Cara Cuite, carried out a study on “Best Practices in Coastal Storm Risk Communication” concluding that effective communication should “stress the possibility that people who do not evacuate could be killed”.  This is better done by using implicit messages rather than direct, explicit, messages. For instance, if authorities ask people who do not evacuate to fill out a form on how to notify their next of kin, they communicate in a very effective way the actual possibility “that people who do not evacuate could be killed “without the need of warning them explicitly. Another important lesson concerns semantic, say, the specific words chosen to communicate.  In most cases, mandatory evacuation is excluded, since there is no way to enforce it. Yet, experts know very well that “a voluntary evacuation will have a lower rate of compliance than one labeled mandatory”. It is then critical to avoid using the expression “voluntary evacuation” and “make it clear that residents are being ordered to leave, even if no one is going to remove them forcibly from their homes”. 

It is possible to elicit from Mele’s arguments two general rules concerning risk communication, which could be adopted also in other situations, notably in outbreaks. 

First, in contrast to the standard risk communication account, one should focus on emotional responses rather than on mere rationality.  Risk communicators often aim to raise awareness and to provide the public with information, which is in principle laudable and it would be effective in an ideal world, ruled only by rational choices. Unfortunately, very rarely people make choices on a rational basis, even when they pretend doing it.  As a matter of fact, in real life “pure rationality” does not exist, is a fictional concept. Mental processes are an inextricable mix of logic arguments, emotional reactions, implicit and explicit memories, automatisms, conscious and unconscious processes. Very rarely – if ever – an action follows a rational decision; more often the so called “rational decision” is a post-hoc rationalization, used to justify decisions made in more or less irrational ways.  There is little that one could do to prevent this mechanism, notably in emergencies, when people are asked to take quick and momentous decisions. Among emotions, fear plays a pivotal role as one of the basic emotions that drive human behavior. There are two opposite mistakes that one could do in risk communication, over stimulating fear but also over reassuring people. Fear must be fine-tuned.

Second, if being able to deal with emotions is critical in risk communication, this implies that two variables become paramount, timing and words.  Timing is essential because human emotions are continuously fluctuating in each individual and they change over time. The same message could evoke completely different reactions according to the emotional context of the receiver and consequently a message could have very different effects according to the moment in which is delivered. There is not something like “the right message”; rather there is “the right message in the right moment”. Words are also very important. I’m saying “words” and not “contents”, because I’m referring to the very terms used rather than to concepts underlying words.  Words unavoidably evoke specific emotional reactions, which are – be careful – cultural bound and context dependent (say, one should avoid the mistake of thinking that the same words evoke the same reactions always, everywhere and in everybody). The word “mandatory” is a good example. At least in our society, if something is “mandatory”, for most people it is also important, while, if it is “voluntary”, it is not (or less). So to label something as “mandatory” does not imply necessarily that one is going to enforce it compulsorily. The term “mandatory” could be used also to transmit the importance of an action.  This is well illustrated by the wrong (in communication terms) policy to make most vaccinations “voluntary”.  To be sure, in democratic societies it is largely unthinkable to vaccinate compulsory people and notably children, yet the issue at stake is only in part the balance between voluntariness, persuasion, soft coercion, and compulsion. Words chosen by regulators communicate also the importance of a public measure. Health authorities and policy makers should pay more attention to the communicational implications of wording, even when choices seem to concern purely technical and normative aspects.