Noelle Aarts en Lotte Krabbenborg. This opinion column has appeared previously (in Dutch) in De Volkskrant. Photo: Maria Lupan via Unsplash
Last week, minister Robbert Dijkgraaf announced that the Netherlands will establish a national centre for scientific communication. This is very good news, especially in view of the need to adjust the position of science in society. This need has arisen because of recent feelings among members of society as well as scientists that the relationship between science and the public has become somewhat tense and needs to be overhauled.
Although recent research by the Rathenau Institute shows that the Dutch actually have more confidence in science than they did three years ago, something unusual is still going on. For example, we have noticed that groups of citizens will readily call scientific facts into question if they sense that those ideas are being used to promote certain values (such as with COVID-19 and the idea that health is important than freedom); to champion certain interests (like those of pharmaceutical companies); or to support certain policy preferences (wearing masks or not). In some cases, researchers have even been threatened with violence.
Developments like this cannot be curbed with mere statements of scientific facts.
Living laboratories
In order to ensure confidence in science, scientific practices must be better embedded within societal contexts. To achieve this, dialogue with members of society must take place during all phases of the research process. This is in fact already happening in many settings. For example, we have the National Research Agenda, which is composed of research projects on themes that have been suggested by citizens. There is the growing popularity of citizen science, in which members of the public are invited to participate in research, for example by counting birds or performing soil experiments. And then, there are the immensely popular living laboratories, where scientists collaborate with the public and stakeholder organisations like non-governmental organizations, in performing research that contributes to the solution of complex problems like climate change or loss of biodiversity.
These initiatives have given birth to such terms as transdisciplinary research, knowledge integration and co-creation. The basic principle of this research is that societal stakeholders, since they come from different contexts, can contribute other types of knowledge and therefore other ideas about both problems and solutions.
Interests
Experience shows that communication between scientists and societal stakeholders, including the general public in such contexts is not always smooth. Societal stakeholders have other priorities and experiences, asks different questions, and sometimes simply disagrees with scientists’ analyses. For them, it is important that scientists take their experiences seriously and are willing to listen to public opinion.
If we hope to preserve confidence in science and make it function optimally in societal contexts, we must acknowledge how important it is to support the goal of balanced interaction between science and society at all levels and in all phases of research. This is especially true of communications where listening skills are required. Decades ago, David Bohm, a theoretical physicist and specialist in dialogue, regretfully observed, “If scientists could engage in a dialogue, that would be a radical revolution in science – in the very nature of science.”
The national centre for scientific communication being created by our minister can play a key role in this endeavour, provided it is based on a wide-ranging concept of scientific communication. If scientists want to communicate effectively with society, careful construction of their message is not enough; they must also examine the dynamics of societal patterns and engage societal stakeholders in discussion.