Effective communication of scientific information is essential to dissemination of scientific knowledge to the public. I remember watching shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Cyberchase, which really instilled a love and fascination of science from an early age. The information presented in those shows had a lot of complicated information behind them, but it was explained in a very simple manner. It’s this distillation of concept that’s so important to spreading scientific knowledge, and that’s why I found “Framing Science” so interesting. As I learned in Seminar 1, our own perceptions and biases naturally influence what meaning we receive. Our political and religious identities inevitably influence our scientific identity as well. The average person will not be able to understand a scientific paper, but they will learn from any summary made from a common source such as a newspaper or a magazine.

It’s this third, or fourth, or fifth-hand science learning that really worries me. There are often so many levels of abstraction between the informal science learner and the source of information when learning in a casual setting. People who learn their information from content aggregators like Reddit, Facebook, and Tumblr, unless they’re connected to specialized scientific communities, may not be getting truly accurate information. What scientific information they may be getting may be skewed and skewed again by incorrect interpretations of data and conclusion. The clearest direction of a solution I can think of is on both ends of the process. The scientist who makes the discovery should take the time to explain it in an easy to understand way. The learner should be skeptical of any claims made by second/third/fourth hand sources, and do their best to learn from the source itself or trustworthy sources.