The big question: How to engage scientists with the public?

There is a lot of focus on the question of how to engage the public with science. However, recent research suggests that focus is also needed on the question of how to engage scientists with the public.

The research, ‘How scientists view the public, the media and the political process’, was published in September. The research combines a wide range of existing studies on scientists’ views, and integrates two new studies, one with a representative sample of scientists in the UK, and the other with members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and considers a number of studies into scientists’ views on public engagement. The results are mixed. The research suggests that scientists often view engagement as chiefly about dissemination rather than dialogue and, although they are supportive of public engagement in general, they are often motivated by increasing citizen knowledge or combating the public’s unfounded fears about science. Research by the Royal Society showed that, when asked what engagement means, just 12% of scientists indicated it meant listening to or attempting to understand the views of the public.

This suggests that while science engagement has made great progress, attention still needs to be paid to combating the ‘deficit model’ of engagement.

Another finding of the report is that scientists often do not see personal benefits for investing in public engagement activities. This raises a challenging point. Some argue that because the public pays for most science research, scientists are accountable to the public and, therefore, they have a duty to listen to the public’s concerns. Instilling a sense of duty in scientists to engage with the public is a long-term culture shift that needs to take place. However, while these are strong motivations for many scientists, they do not appeal to more self-interested incentives. Demonstrating to scientists the personal benefits of public engagement is also important. This could mean using the stories of scientists who have found citizens’ perspectives useful in throwing new light on their own research, an approach that the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement has taken to inspire senior managers in universities to create more engagement-friendly universities. It could also mean highlighting the importance of public opinion in science policy and, therefore, the danger of ignoring the public’s views if scientists want their research to have policy influence.

As the Sciencewise-ERC paper on ‘The Use of Experts in Public Dialogue’ suggests, one barrier to scientists’ participation may be that engagement is not yet consistently rewarded in career advancement in the same way that other activities are. In the highly competitive science profession, this too needs to be tackled if science engagement is to become core to the scientific career, and not an optional add-on.