Make Them Laugh or They'll Kill You
I've been thinking about this principle for a while, and I wanted to talk about it in the context of research.
Take the example of climate change. There are whole centers created in order to communicate climate change in such a way that it changes people's behavior. Telling people that they are making the world a worse place for themselves and their children, building the mounting evidence of the truth that climate change is caused by human activity, it is not enough. It is not enough, to tell the logical truth. It is either eclipsed by some other more attractive idea (regaining your coal jobs), or it is easy to ignore. People don't want to be scolded, and just flat out telling someone the "truth" feels like you are scolding them when they don't agree. At some point, I don't think you can blame us. We simply don't pay as much attention to things that are not glamorous (like Taylor Swift's legs) or funny, even if not paying attention means killing the planet.
Not only is telling the truth in an engaging way necessary for the truth to remain in our attention, I'll argue that it is our ethical responsibility to be engaging and easy to understand. I think the Ghost Map gives a great example of this. Shown below, the Ghost Map communicates the truth that the water pump of Broad Street was the source of a cholera outbreak. The bars represent the number of deaths at each address, and the germ-like shape represents the area where the Broad Street pump was the nearest pump to reach on foot. Imagine if the researchers involved had not used this map, communicated this truth clearly. Might that lack of communication have prolonged the presence of Cholera in London? This is just one example that convinces me that scientists have a responsiblity to tell the truth, and to tell it in an easy to interpret, engaging way.
The traditional scientist might think that this aspect of communication is not their problem. Why should scientists appeal to the animalistic, overly emotional, short attention spans of people? People should be able to train their attention on scientist's work. It isn't scientist's fault that people don't mobilize to fight climate change, it's the fault of the people who simply don't listen. I can imagine that some scientists think this way, but all of that is bunk if the quote at the beginning is taken to be true.
To go a little deeper, how can we say that the truth and the way that we tell it are separable? From a positivist perspective, the two are different. There is the truth, and then there is what you say and feel about it. But from a constructivist sense, the two are not separated. The Ghost Map that those researchers created was the truth, and it shone through, it caught on. Telling the story of Cholera on Broad street using just a numerical table does not seem particularly truthful to me because it would not communicate the truth of the source of the epidemic to a layperson.
And following that, how can we say that the truth and the emotions it inspires are separable? If we tell someone that they are contributing to climate change and they understand, feel a little guilty, worried or embolded, and change their behaviors, has the truth not been communicated? If we present climate change as a shift of a few degrees Celsius due to CO2 rising in the Anthropocene, and no-one bats an eye because they do not understand, maybe from our perspective we have told the "truth", but have we really? If no-one is reacting to climate change, do they really know the truth? If it is told in a language that we cannot understand, or that is difficult to engage with, is it really the truth?
All told, I think that even deeper underneath a researcher's ethical obligation to tell the truth in an engaging way, is a researcher's obligation to understand emotions - others' and their own. Researchers are responsible for telling the truth, and the truth is not just logical, it is emotional as well. Researchers are not just responsible for making arguments that fit in another person's logic, they are responsible for the emotions they will generate with the truths that they tell.
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." - George Bernard ShawIt is obviously relevant because research is about discovering the truth and telling it to people. However, as the quote claims, just telling the truth is not enough.
Take the example of climate change. There are whole centers created in order to communicate climate change in such a way that it changes people's behavior. Telling people that they are making the world a worse place for themselves and their children, building the mounting evidence of the truth that climate change is caused by human activity, it is not enough. It is not enough, to tell the logical truth. It is either eclipsed by some other more attractive idea (regaining your coal jobs), or it is easy to ignore. People don't want to be scolded, and just flat out telling someone the "truth" feels like you are scolding them when they don't agree. At some point, I don't think you can blame us. We simply don't pay as much attention to things that are not glamorous (like Taylor Swift's legs) or funny, even if not paying attention means killing the planet.
Not only is telling the truth in an engaging way necessary for the truth to remain in our attention, I'll argue that it is our ethical responsibility to be engaging and easy to understand. I think the Ghost Map gives a great example of this. Shown below, the Ghost Map communicates the truth that the water pump of Broad Street was the source of a cholera outbreak. The bars represent the number of deaths at each address, and the germ-like shape represents the area where the Broad Street pump was the nearest pump to reach on foot. Imagine if the researchers involved had not used this map, communicated this truth clearly. Might that lack of communication have prolonged the presence of Cholera in London? This is just one example that convinces me that scientists have a responsiblity to tell the truth, and to tell it in an easy to interpret, engaging way.
The traditional scientist might think that this aspect of communication is not their problem. Why should scientists appeal to the animalistic, overly emotional, short attention spans of people? People should be able to train their attention on scientist's work. It isn't scientist's fault that people don't mobilize to fight climate change, it's the fault of the people who simply don't listen. I can imagine that some scientists think this way, but all of that is bunk if the quote at the beginning is taken to be true.
To go a little deeper, how can we say that the truth and the way that we tell it are separable? From a positivist perspective, the two are different. There is the truth, and then there is what you say and feel about it. But from a constructivist sense, the two are not separated. The Ghost Map that those researchers created was the truth, and it shone through, it caught on. Telling the story of Cholera on Broad street using just a numerical table does not seem particularly truthful to me because it would not communicate the truth of the source of the epidemic to a layperson.
And following that, how can we say that the truth and the emotions it inspires are separable? If we tell someone that they are contributing to climate change and they understand, feel a little guilty, worried or embolded, and change their behaviors, has the truth not been communicated? If we present climate change as a shift of a few degrees Celsius due to CO2 rising in the Anthropocene, and no-one bats an eye because they do not understand, maybe from our perspective we have told the "truth", but have we really? If no-one is reacting to climate change, do they really know the truth? If it is told in a language that we cannot understand, or that is difficult to engage with, is it really the truth?
All told, I think that even deeper underneath a researcher's ethical obligation to tell the truth in an engaging way, is a researcher's obligation to understand emotions - others' and their own. Researchers are responsible for telling the truth, and the truth is not just logical, it is emotional as well. Researchers are not just responsible for making arguments that fit in another person's logic, they are responsible for the emotions they will generate with the truths that they tell.
I am a fan of this blog post! I have to say I kind of do think that things that are very poorly communicated are not the "truth," and, to engage with people, science (especially climate change science) has to be digestible and understandable.
ReplyDeleteMy other undergrad degree will be in geography, so I am very familiar with the story told in "The Ghost Map." I wanted to study geography because of John Snow's map of the 1854 cholera outbreak, and the possibilities of translating public health research into clear and exciting forms are still emerging and evolving today. The path forward in all scientific fields is clear communication that engages with "regular folks" and people outside the discipline of the communicator/speaker. When I see research presentations on other scientific disciplines outside of environmental engineering, I generally have no idea what 95% of the presenter is discussing. Emotional connections are critical to communication and telling the truth through science.
I totally agree with you here, there is generally pretty terrible science communication going on in academia mainly because there is not a massive emphasis on it in schools generally, and people that are drawn towards science aren't necessarily the best writers or communicators. It is interesting this idea that there is an Ethical Obligation to communicate well to the public. I would certainly assert that if the science is not communicated well there was really no point in doing it at all, the two are linked. But I'm not entirely sure if it is a matter of ethics or not? I do think the issue of climate change is challenging as people are pretty bad at empathizing with their future self or future people in general, and thus even knowing and understanding the risks are unlikely to make major changes. The issue is also that it isn't just scientist communicating, most people aren't reading papers about climate data but instead are getting their information from media outlets, which tend to be bombastic.
ReplyDeleteYour blog seems a bit inspired, and I appreciate it. As a fellow Constructivist, I too believe that Truth. Does not exist in a dichotomy between feelings in fact, but rather a parallel marriage intertwined as if they were a perfect sequence of nucleic amino acids. I hold fast to the idea that this people we need and seek Truth and we must understand is scientist that for many, particularly those with faith, Truth is something that is felt and not always seen. How do I engage naysayers without telling them they're wrong? How do I teach those unwilling to learn?
ReplyDelete