bryant 2003 pus in australia

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Australian Society for Parasitology Address

Does Australia need a more effective policy of science communication?

Chris Bryant*

Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

Received 4 November 2002; accepted 9 December 2002

About 20 years ago, ABC television was filming a news

item, about anthelminthic resistance, in my laboratory. We

had gone to great lengths to establish, for the film crew, live

Haemonchus contortus in a maintenance medium in a glass

chamber in the laboratory. The worms were satisfyingly

active and the camera came right up close. When the

programme went to air, the worms filled the television

screen. The next day, there were headlines in the paper.

“‘Giant worms threaten wool industry’ says ANU aca-

demic”. Then the telephone rang hot with reporters wanting

confirmation of the story and with my colleagues – some of

whom are sitting in this room – having a field day at my

expense.

I tell this story because it was a failure in sciencecommunication and it was my fault. Had I thought a bit

more carefully I would have put a 5-cent piece in the tank so

that the viewers could judge the true size of the worms.

Professor Trounson’s recent stem cell gaffe is another,

potentially costly, failure in science communication. It was

a failure in science communication because a scientist

underestimated the capacity of his audience to find out the

truth. Trounson made the error of mistaking condescension

for simplification.

And finally, an article in the Canberra Times on

September 17 reported an Adelaide University study that

showed Australians spend about $2.3 billion per year onalternative medicines and therapies. This sum, according to

Professor Alastair McLennan, is four times as much as that

spent on proven therapies. Sixty per cent of women and 44%

of men now use alternative therapies. Even allowing for the

few alternative remedies that are effective, this is failure of

science communication on a gigantic scale.

If one is supposed to be an advocate for communication,

it is always a good idea to let people know what you are

talking about so I’ll start with a definition. I define science

communication as

the processes by which the scientific culture and its

knowledge become incorporated into the common

culture.

This immediately raises a number of questions. The

first, and most important, is what are these processes? I

hope that I will have answered that question by the end of

this talk.

Second, what is the culture of science? The answer is, of

course, that there are several cultures of science that havebeen defined by the philosophers of science. Of these, I

prefer the simple conclusion of Feyerabend (1993): that

science is what scientists do and even though we might pay

lip service to Popper’s scientific method of falsification, I

doubt whether more than a few of us deliberately set out to

falsify our ideas. Good ideas are usually so hard won that we

cling to them until we are forced to abandon them.

And what is the wider community? Well, one thing we

know about it is that it is not homogeneous. Nationally, we

have many communities, each bringing different intellectual

baggage to their understanding of science and therefore

creating in their collective minds a view of science that is

different from that of the communicator.

The same is true for individuals. I must not expect, if I try

to explain electron transport in tapeworms, that my

listeners’ mental pictures of the mechanism will be the

same as mine. They will construct their own understandings

in the light of what is already in their minds. This process is

called constructivism, and is poorly appreciated by many

scientists, most of whom adhere to the conduit metaphor of

communication – the idea that knowledge flows, like water

down a pipe, from one brain to another without undergoing

change. It is inherent in phrases like ‘getting the message

across’.

0020-7519/03/$30.00

doi:10.1016/S0020-7519(03)00004-3

International Journal for Parasitology 33 (2003) 357–361

www.parasitology-online.com

* Tel.: þ61-6-249-4815; fax: þ61-6-249-4950.

E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Bryant).

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/PARA

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/PARA



A good example of the conduit metaphor in operation can

be found in the conversation about the benefits of

immunisation that a colleague had with an eminent

immunologist at ANU. He was upset by the poor

immunisation rates in the community. “Look”, he said,

getting out some elegant epidemiological graphs, “just show

them these. How can they fail to understand?”How indeed! Epidemiological graphs pale into insignif-

icance for a mother who is about to have her baby

perforated and loaded with antigen. For her, other,

immediate issues are more important and science commu-

nicators must win both her heart and her mind in order to

change her attitude. She must understand the importance of

immunisation and be confident that her decision to

immunise will benefit her child. The ‘anti-immunisation

lobby’ understands this well.

Failures in science communication are apparent all over

the world. The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the

United States has been conducting surveys for more than 20

years (National Science Foundation, 2002). A consistent

90% of adults sampled have always claimed to be interested

in science and technology. Unfortunately, this is not

reflected in surveys of reader preferences for news articles

– only 2% of the stories that were followed by this public

concerned science or science-related stories. And, in 2001

only 15% of respondents to the NSF survey described

themselves as well informed on science and innovation

while 35% described themselves as poorly informed. This

appears to be part of a downward trend. Further, half the

respondents did not know that the earliest humans lived long

after dinosaurs, that it takes the Earth 1 year to go around the

sun, that electrons are smaller than atoms and thatantibiotics do not kill viruses.

But, you have to ask, does it matter? Not knowing any of

these things is not going to affect the way we live our daily

lives – even the misinformation about antibiotics should not

matter as long as their prescription is in the hands of the

medical professionals, who, we assume, do understand

about them. And does it really matter if someone thinks the

sun goes round the Earth? The Earth will continue to go

round the sun, whatever people think.

There have been many surveys like this. If you ask so-

called science questions of the public then, unless they get

them all right, the conclusion must be that they don’t know

as much as they should. It is a deficit model designed –

advertently or inadvertently – to paint a picture of the

public as lacking in knowledge.

A famous questionnaire administered to the British

public purported to assess its scientific knowledge (Durant

et al., 1989). The British public did not do well and the

results were published in Nature with much tearing of hair.

Now, we have been running workshops for scientists for

some years and, as part of the workshops, we have given this

same questionnaire to the attendees. We have found that

there is no significant difference between the overall scores

of the scientists and the public. Some questions might be

answered better, others not so well. All that these

questionnaires do is demonstrate that the knowledge of

each person is uneven and idiosyncratic.

Much more worrying is the NSF finding that most

Americans, Canadians, and Europeans gave the incorrect

answer (true) to the statement:

Ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes, while geneti-

cally modified tomatoes do.

Here is something that will impinge on their daily lives.

But, to put it in perspective, is this any more worrying than

the following statement attributed to Lasch (1995) and

quoted in Prelli (2001):

A sizeable majority (of Americans) believe that Israel is

an Arab nation.

Neither, apparently, do they have a clear understanding

of how their own government works. So, as Prelli remarks:

“if the American public cannot grasp these essentials,

why should we expect that science literacy campaigns

could elevate their comprehension of arcane technical

nomenclatures and complex principles of science?”

Genetic engineering has been an object lesson in how not

to communicate. As the NSF reports, a majority of

Americans have never agreed that the benefits of geneticengineering outweighed the harmful results. In 2001, only

40% of those surveyed thought that the benefits outweighed

the harmful results, a drop of almost 10% in 15 years. Yet

61% of respondents reported that they supported genetically

modified food production. Further, only 50% of Americans,

38% of Europeans and 50% of Canadians consider that

genetic engineering will improve their way of life, while the

percentages of those who think it will make things worse are

29, 31 and 40%, respectively.

If I have seemed to berate the Americans, it is only

because they have done the surveying. The situation is not

very different in Europe. A conference, organised by the

European Life Sciences Group and entitled Life Sciences

Communication in the Media, took place in Brussels on July

9, 2002. Scientists had an opportunity to discuss their

difficulties with journalists. They deplored the tendency for

scientific developments to make the headlines only if

associated either with a ‘breakthrough’ or with a con-

troversy. In particular they deplored the fact that, to make

science seem ‘sexy’, it was necessary to represent it as an

adversarial system. No wonder, they said, scientists are

viewed with suspicion.

What became clear was the deep misunderstanding,

suspicion and hostility directed at innovative products based

C. Bryant / International Journal for Parasitology 33 (2003) 357–361358



on recombinant DNA technology – affecting, for instance,

GM foods and crops (though not, notably, the development

of new medical drugs and treatments).

The move against GM foods is particularly severe in the

United Kingdom and is the source of Prime Minister Blair’s

dilemma when he became the first ever ruling Prime

Minister to address the Royal Society, on May 28, 2002. In aspeech entitled Science Matters (Blair, 2002) he made a

number of important points. He said it was time to end the

air of suspicion and mistrust – and the ensuing ignorance –

that sometimes surrounds the work of cutting-edge

scientists. And he wants to persuade more young people

to take up mathematics, physics and engineering at school

and university, and undertook to increase investment in

research and development.

These are all admirable objectives. But – and this is

where he got into trouble with scientists and science

communicators – he also promised to break down the anti-

science fashion in Britain and claimed he would never give

way to misguided protesters who stood in the way of

medical and economic advance.

The Times newspaper, on May 29, reported that

“the Prime Minister is privately furious at the actions of

protesters which have resulted in work being held up on

research into genetically modified foods, and at disrup-

tion that could threaten a neurological research project in

Cambridge aimed at helping sufferers of Alzheimer’s

disease. He is angry over the regular description of GM

foods as ‘Frankenstein foods’, and at the way science was

blamed for the BSE emergency. ‘BSE was not caused bybad science but by bad practices’.”

The problem for Blair is that he defined science in terms

of political positions and the economy. The address caused a

great flutter on the Internet, with reputable scientists

pointing out that because they had misgivings about GM

foods they were not antiscience. As one anonymous

contributor remarked,

“so far as he (Blair) is concerned if you worry about GM

foods and the government’s cavalier approach to the

planting and dissemination of GM organisms, you are

anti science. On the contrary, you can be a scientist,

support animal experimentation where it is of real benefit

to humanity and still oppose the planting of more GM

crops.”

However, in September, The Economist (reported in the

Weekend Australian on August 31, 2002) ferreted out what

is likely to be the real reason for Blair’s conversion. During

his trip to India last year, the Indians were apparently very

pleased that Britain was having trouble with GM crops

because they saw it as an opportunity to take the initiative

and develop their own capability and become world leaders

in genetic engineering. The Green Lobby has, in fact, won

the GM crop debate in the UK and is winning in Western

Europe. In the UK, once on a par with the Americans in this

area, field trials are down to four in 2002 from a peak of 37

in 1995.

How did things get into this critical state? I think thehistory of science communication in the UK in the last 30

years explains much. In 1971, the Duke of Edinburgh and

80 different organisations set up the Standing Conference

on Schools Science and Technology. It defined its mission

to “excite young people about science, technology,

industry and engineering” and “to influence the teaching

of science in ways which will appeal to young people aged

5–18”. In this way, it claimed, it “will motivate more of

them to aim for worthwhile careers in industry as scientists

and engineers”.

Three further tiers of organisation were set in place.

Science and Technology Regional Organisations (45 in the

whole of the UK) were established “to stimulate curriculum

change, to motivate young people and to encourage

education-industry partnerships”. Prominent among their

efforts are activities such as young engineers’ clubs,

prestigious awards for science projects, and making

available industry-related resources for science teaching in

schools and colleges. They also have a public advisory

function.

Within each regional organisation, Science Engineering

and Technology Networks (SETNETs) - scientists some-

times seem to suffer from malignant acronymia – were

established. Their objectives include the development of a

framework of policy and collaboration within whichexisting centres systems services and schemes can work

more effectively; enhancement of the teaching and learning

of engineering and related subjects; and putting the focus on

science, mathematics and technology as key curriculum

subjects. A key objective is to promote good experience of

industry.

And each SETNET has a SETPoint to provide a ‘one-

stop shop’ for information about science, engineering,

technology and mathematics. Its aim is to encourage

cooperation between young scientists and the community,

to encourage greater publicity for success stories from

teachers and students and to act as a focus for distribution

and collection of information for students, teachers and

business by reviewing local activities and organising

seminars and meetings.

This whole organisation – four layers – is to be

applauded and the efforts of its members to enhance the

public understanding of science is to be admired. But what

have been the outcomes of all this activity? Since 1971, the

start of this movement, a number of important statements

about science and science communication have been made

in the UK. Here are some recent ones.

In 1995, the Wolfendale Report of the Royal Society

(Wolfendale, 1995) stated that:

C. Bryant / International Journal for Parasitology 33 (2003) 357–361 359



“In a changing world, the maintenance of research

support, and hopefully its enhancement, and also the

increased take-up of science and engineering subjects by

people of all ages, will depend on public appreciation of

science and engineering and their practitioners.”

On February 23, 2000, the British House of Lordspublished the findings of a Select Committee on Science and

Society (House of Lords, 2000). The report begins by stating

that “society’s relationship with science is in a critical

phase”, citing recent developments in biotechnology and the

mad cow disease disaster as eroding public confidence and

creating public unease. The overall findings of the

Committee focused on the imperative for science commu-

nicators to build bridges between science and the public. It

included recommendations for major funding to support the

activities of bodies concerned with the public understanding

of science, bodies such as the Committee on the Public

Understanding of Science (COPUS) and the British

Association for the Advancement of Science.

It was an extraordinary document, given that the broad

base of practising scientists did not hold communication in

high esteem. The Select Committee recommended that all

scientists include training in communication and understand

the social context of their research.

The connotations of ‘knowledge’ and ‘comprehension of

facts’ implicit in the public understanding of science is,

according to the Select Committee, problematic. Consider

these two sections:

3.9. Despite all this activity and commitment, we havebeen told from several quarters that the expression

‘public understanding of science’ may not be the most

appropriate label. Sir Robert May called it a “rather

backward-looking vision” (Q 28). It is argued that the

words imply a condescending assumption that any

difficulties in the relationship between science and

society are due entirely to ignorance and misunderstand-

ing on the part of the public; and that, with enough

public-understanding activity, the public can be brought

to greater knowledge, whereupon all will be well. This

approach is felt by many of our witnesses to be

inadequate; the British Council went so far as to call it“outmoded and potentially disastrous” (p. 140).

3.11. It is therefore increasingly important that non-

experts should be able to understand aspects of science

and technology which touch their lives. It is also

increasingly important that scientists should seek to

understand the impact of their work and its possible

applications on society and public opinion.

The Report goes on to urge a new term to replace the

backward looking vision of ‘the public understanding of

science’. This was not well received by those in the UK who

had been committed to the public understanding of science.

Understandably, they considered that their efforts had in

some way been demeaned.

As a measure of the state of disarray that the science

communication world in the UK is in, let us look at the

plight of COPUS. COPUS was established about 16 yearsago, in response to calls for greater public understanding of

science, by the Royal Society, the Royal Institute and the

British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dame Bridget Ogilvie – formerly the guiding light of the

Wellcome Foundation and an Australian by birth, whose

work on immunity to nematodes many members will

remember – resigned as Chair of COPUS in June. She

said “I am highly embarrassed by the total paralysis shown

so clearly by the last two meetings of COPUS council. As

things stand, it is pointless to continue”. An observer at the

House of Commons Science and Technology Select

Committee in July 2002 reported that the mess appeared

to be extensive. The Royal Society had failed to defend the

past or present any coherent vision for the future.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Science

and Technology tabled its third report at the same meeting

(House of Commons, 2002). The report focuses on senior

school science. The Committee concludes that assessment at

GCSE is based on rote learning of irrelevant facts. Further, it

stated that the curriculum fails to inspire students to continue

with science and has made of practical work a tedious and

dull activity. Science teaching, the Committee complained,

neglects contemporary science and lacks flexibility and,

discourages students from thinking for themselves. This

highly critical report concludes that poor laboratory facilitiesand a shortage of technicians prevent exciting practical work

from being carried out. It called on the government to invest

in laboratory refurbishment and to address the appalling pay

and conditions of service for technicians.

Dr Ian Gibson MP, the Chairman of the Committee, said:

“School science can be so boring it puts young people off

science for life. GCSE science students have to cram in

so many facts that they have no time to explore

interesting ideas, and slog through practical exercises

which are completely pointless. This is a disaster. We

need to encourage a new generation of young scientists

and to ensure that the rest of the population has a sound

understanding of scientific principles.”

So, where did it all go wrong? I think the problem has its

roots in a failure to understand the difference between the

‘public understanding of science’ and the ‘public awareness

of science’. I have already defined science communication

as ‘the processes by which the scientific culture and its

knowledge become incorporated into the common culture’.

Now I want to go further and talk about those processes, as I

promised to do at the beginning of this address. I will not use

C. Bryant / International Journal for Parasitology 33 (2003) 357–361360



the acronym ‘PUS’. Somebody once remarked that only a

scientist could have come up with an acronym that had such

unlovely connotations.

The public understanding of science differs from the

public awareness of science in that it most usually concerns

that part of the public already committed to the philosophies

of science, having been entrained by formal means. It ismost often seen in the membership of non-professional

science-based societies (gemmology or bird watching, for

example), the attendees of public lectures or adult education

courses and in the enhancement, by professional scientists,

of learning opportunities for those pursuing a formal

education in science.

This, I think, describes the thrust of the greatest part of

science communication in the UK very well. As you see,

most of the effort is directed towards those who already have

an interest in science. This is obviously very important,

because it is from these groups that professional scientists,

engineers and technicians will be recruited.

The public awareness of science, is much harder to

define. According to Gilbert et al. (1999), it is

“a set of attitudes based on beliefs and feelings...Acces-

sing scientific and technological knowledge and a sense

of ownership of that knowledge will impart a confidence

to explore its ramifications. This will lead...to an

evaluation of the status of such knowledge and its

significance for personal, social and economic life.”

What is meant here by ‘awareness’? It goes further than a

mere knowledge that the science exists. It implies that anaffective change has taken place in the observer, that he or

she feels comfortable with science, may even have a sense

of ownership and pride in it. It emphasises the importance of

participation. If science is seen as too hard, if scientists

encourage this view by remaining aloof, then it is not

surprising if people turn away.

It seems to me that the troubles in the UK stem from the

fact that science communicators ignored one of the two

major components of science communication.

On the one hand there is ‘public understanding of

science’; on the other is ‘public awareness of science’. The

first involves science education, both formally and infor-

mally, which leads to a greater level of appreciation of

scientific ideas in the general public. It is relatively easily

measured. ‘Awareness’ is concerned with encouraging the

need to know in the individual or the community, with

creating an affective change, that favours science, in that

individual or community. It is hard to measure, but the best

science communicators are able to engender and nurture

that change. By so doing, they create a community that is as

comfortable with its ‘ownership’ of science as it is

comfortable with its ‘ownership’ of art.

‘Understanding of science’ and ‘awarenessof science’ are

twosides of the same coin. UK neglected awareness andfinds

itself in trouble, in spite of spending AUD $5 billion of

millenniummoney on thedevelopmentof sciencecentres and

similar establishments. The further establishment of a $750

million National Centre for Excellence in Science Teaching

is a recent attempt to redress the balance - but will it address

both understanding and awareness? We do not yet know.

The UK experience may provide an object lesson forAustralia. In Australia, it is rather a case of ‘it’s just as well

that I’m going so slowly as I may be going in the wrong

direction’. Not much has been spent on science communi-

cation, in comparison with other countries. Government

policies have been directed towards ‘understanding’ rather

than ‘awareness’ while in the few years that the Centre for

the Public Awareness of Science has been established we

have created an international reputation in the public

awareness field. Graduates from our programmes are

finding employment nationally and internationally.

Because policy development is in such an embryonic

state in Australia, we do not have huge investment in either

‘understanding’ or ‘awareness’ of science. We are uncom-

mitted to a particular brand of science communication. We

have a good chance, therefore, of not making the mistakes

that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must take

that chance and use it to develop a properly integrated

policy of science communication using a model that

includes both ‘awareness’ and ‘understanding’ in our

thinking. We must involve government, industry, the

education sector, business and the community. We have

the raw material for excellence in this area - we just need the

support and confidence to move rapidly before we are left

behind by the rest of the world.

References

Blair, A., 2002. Science Matters. 10 Downing Street Newsroom, www.pm.

gov.uk/output/Page5044.asp .

Durant, J.R., Evans, G.A., Thomas, G.P., 1989. The public understanding of

science. Nature 340, 11 –14.

Feyerabend, P., 1993. Against Method, 3rd Edition, Norton, New York/

London.

Gilbert, J.K., Stocklmayer, S.M., Garnett, R., 1999. Mental modelling in

science and technology centres: what are visitors really doing? . In:

Stocklmayer, S.M., Hardy, T. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International

Conference on Learning Science in Informal Contexts, Questacon,

Canberra, pp. 16 –32.House of Commons, 2002. Third Report of the Select Committee on

Science and Technology, House of Commons, London.

House of Lords, 2000. Report of the Select Committee on Science and

Society, House of Lords, London.

National Science Foundation, 2002. Division of Science Resources

Statistics, Science and Engineering Indicators – 2002, National Science

Foundation, Arlington, VA, NSB 02-01.

Prelli, L.J., 2001. Topical perspective and the rhetorical grounds of

practical reason in arguments about science. In: Stocklmayer, S.M.,

Gore, M.M., Bryant, C. (Eds.), Science Communication in Theory and

Practice, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 63–81.

Wolfendale, A., 1995. Report of the Committee to Review the Contribution

of Scientists and Engineers the Public Understanding of Science and

Technology, The Royal Society, London.

C. Bryant / International Journal for Parasitology 33 (2003) 357–361 361

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