Given the recent posts about mainstream media as the conduit between scientific research and the general public, I thought these two articles might be of interest to our class. “The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing” by Victoria Clayton adds another layer to the class discussions about science literacy among the general public: not only is there a lack of understanding of scientific vocabulary or certain topics but how academics (and not just scientists!) write about their work adds to the barriers to the publics’ understanding of research. The second article, “Where Science Meets Magic” by Julie Beck, contains an interview with science journalist Matt Kaplan about his book published this week, Science of the Magical: From the Holy Grail to Love Potions to Super Powers.

These two articles address two central issues explored in Science Forward: how does the general public get access to scientific research? What are some of the barriers to their understanding of scientific research? 

Clayton’s article describes the problem of “needlessly complex writing” in academia that has “become something of a protected tradition.” She quotes several academics and discusses various initiatives intended to rectify this problem. One particularly interesting issue that her article raises is the conflict between open-access resources and academics’ language – while the former grants public access to the materials (usually behind paywalls) it is researchers’ language acting as as a linguistic paywall that prevents people from understanding their work:

“Some research funders, such as National Institutes of Health and The Wellcome Trust, have mandated in recent years that studies they finance be published in open-access journals, but they’ve given little attention to ensuring those studies include accessible writing. “NIH has no policies for grantees that dictate the style of writing they use in their research publications,” a spokesperson told me in an emailed statement. “We do advise applicants about the importance of using plain language in sections of the application that, if funded, will become public on theRePORT website.”

So even if the general public has access to the latest research, how can they understand it? Is it the job of the NIH to edit submissions for more accessible language or should that be the responsibility of the researchers? 

In the interview with Matt Kaplan about his book, Julie Beck highlights his source for quotes, The Lord of the Rings rather than scientists. Kaplan’s choice serves as a rhetorical framing device for the book’s overall argument: science and magic aren’t so far apart. While Kaplan’s book seems to be more about science history than scientific research, his approach seems like an effective means to increase the general public’s interest in scientific research. Here is an excerpt from their interview:

Beck: A number of the different things that you talk about in the book I kind of thought about as “close but no cigar,” where people kind of got the effects of something right, but got the causes wrong. Like with the Egyptians’ eyeliner, which they thought had healing powers bestowed by the god Horus, and it turned out it was helping activate their immune system, but they didn’t know why. In that way, can magic kind of be a step towards scientific understanding?

….

Another example of what I was thinking about from the book is how in the 13th century, people knew that breathing in the breath of a sick person would make you sick, and so then there were the old men who were like, “Let me just breathe the breath of young girls and it’ll make me young again.” It’s a step, but just the wrong step.

Kaplan: That’s the problem with magic, because when you use mythology and magic to explain the inexplicable, you end up in situations where you do things like that.

Beck: Right, that surprises me zero percent.

Kaplan: And to some extent you do have these things giving birth to science. I think a lot of the fascination with the philosopher’s stone, this stone of immortality, and seeking to find it and distilling it from different compounds, in many ways gave birth to what eventually became chemistry.

Do books like Kaplan’s serve as an important “middle step,” translating scientific research into more accessible language for the general public? If so, would a book like Kaplan’s be more likely to stimulate interest in the history of science rather than scientific disciplines like geology, biology, and chemistry?