Back to 2006 SMITH CONSERVATION FELLOWS

Up to Table of Contents

Ahead to ANNOUNCEMENTS

COMMUNICATION AND LEADERSHIP TO IMPROVE SCIENTIFIC LITERACY

Confronted with issues ranging from local land use to global climate change, decision makers at all levels are making choices that will affect the fate of the planet's natural resources for centuries to come. Scientists can play an important role by serving as sources of the best scientific knowledge available to inform these decisions. For many scientists, however, talking with non-scientists about the relevance of their work proves to be a challenge.

"Public dialogue and policy decisions, especially those on critical environmental and health issues, should be informed by the most accurate and current scientific understanding," says Jane Lubchenco, Distinguished Professor of Zoology at Oregon State University and a leader in the movement to infuse good science into public understanding and policy making. "Academic scientists--whose research generates much of the new knowledge--have not historically been very adept at communicating with non-scientific audiences."

For scientists, conservation practitioners, and researchers both inside and outside of academia, the issue of communicating science to non-scientists is more complicated than simply learning to translate scientific language into non-technical terms. There are basic differences in the way scientists and non-scientists approach a problem. For example, scientists typically are most comfortable with a communication pattern that begins with background about why a particular topic was studied, followed by the research methods and ending with the conclusions. Statistics, levels of certainty, assumptions, and alternate explanations are explored in detail.

In contrast, most non-scientists, such as policy makers and journalists, want to know the conclusions first, followed by the relevance of the information to impending decisions or their daily lives. They seek definitive answers and practical information, not equivocal statements and speculation.

In addition to this difference in approach to communication, consider the tight deadlines, short time frames for action, and various interests competing for attention that are common in the worlds of policy makers and journalists. It is no surprise that many researchers and conservation practitioners struggle with communicating complex environmental issues to non-scientists.

Training programs that provide opportunities to practice communication skills can help ease this struggle significantly. By learning how to frame scientific messages differently for different target audiences, scientists and practitioners can become much more effective in conveying the relevance of their work to people outside of the scientific community.

One program that includes such training is the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program. Designed specifically for mid-career academic environmental scientists, the fellowship program provides opportunities to acquire and use leadership, communication, and outreach skills to inform decision making on environmental issues. It also aims to create scientific leaders in public communication and promote changes in academic culture so that outreach to non-scientific audiences becomes recognized as an important part of a scientist's job.

"The Leopold Leadership Program fills a unique niche in teaching academic environmental scientists how to share their science in ways that are understandable and relevant as well as accurate," says Lubchenco, program founder and co-chair.

Several SCB members are among the 100 Leopold Leadership Fellows who have participated in the training since the first cohort was trained in 1999. SCB Past President Dee Boersma, Professor and Acting Chair in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington, was a Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2000. She has served on the boards of many non-profit organizations and governmental scientific committees and has interacted extensively with journalists concerning her research on Magellanic penguins in Argentina. Boersma says the program "opened my eyes to where scientific knowledge is needed, how it can be presented to be more useful, and how it can be used by decision makers.

"If scientists don't speak, others will attempt to speak for them, and they may not do so accurately. We owe the public and science a fair appraisal of what is known and what isn't," Boersma says.

Paul Beier, Professor at Northern Arizona University and SCB Secretary, was a Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2005. "Despite our marvelous education and research skills, most scientists and professors are surprisingly ineffective in talking with reporters, policy makers and other interested individuals," says Beier, whose work includes collaborating with government officials and nongovernmental organizations on developing wildlife corridors. He credits the program with providing "the skills and attitudes needed to transform a conservation scientist into a conservation practitioner."

The Leopold Leadership Program, in collaboration with Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea (COMPASS; www.CompassOnline.org), is sponsoring a plenary session and a concurrent session at SCB's 2006 annual meeting. Both sessions will focus on how scientists and conservation practitioners can interact with journalists to improve communication about science.

The Aldo Leopold Leadership Program is based at the Stanford Institute for the Environment and is funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The program is led by co-chairs Pamela Matson, Jane Lubchenco, and Diana Wall and Executive Director Debbie Drake Dunne. For more information, visit www.leopoldleadership.org.

Cynthia Barakatt
Director of Training and Fellowships
Aldo Leopold Leadership Program

Back to 2006 SMITH CONSERVATION FELLOWS

Up to Table of Contents

Ahead to ANNOUNCEMENTS