Written evidence submitted by Sense about Science (COM0095)
Background
Sense about Science (www.senseaboutscience.org) is an independent charity that challenges the misrepresentation of science and scientific evidence in public life. We advocate for openness and honesty about research findings, and work to ensure the public interest in sound science and evidence is represented and recognised in public discussion and policy making. We focus on socially and scientifically difficult issues like GM and energy where the evidence is neglected, politicised or misleading. Sense about Science is committed to openness and independence. Sense about Science is a small team working with thousands of supporters, from world-leading researchers to community groups.
Sense about Science was founded in 2001 when media scare stories – from the MMR wars to mobile phones ‘frying your brain’ -- were rife, and public confidence in science was at an all-time low. Scientists were on the fringe of public debates and there was a sense among the research community that reaching out to the public was impossible. Sense about Science was set up to advocate for and support the public interest in sound science, and to encourage scientists to participate in public discussion.
Scientific evidence can be a powerful tool for insight, accountability and change. Yet public life often revolves around claims based on poor or misrepresented evidence: risks are hidden or exaggerated, policies are based on anecdotes instead of analysis, scientific studies are taken out of context or distorted. When evidence is misrepresented, misunderstood or hidden, our ability to make the best decisions for ourselves and society and to hold those in power to account, is diminished. We want a society founded on openness: where those with power – institutions, companies, politicians and government bodies – give a frank account of the evidence behind claims they make in the public realm.
The balance of effort needed to increase public engagement in science by 'new audiences' and by the 'already interested'.
Sense about Science does more in fields where people aren’t traditionally interested in science than anyone else. Work in this field divides into three areas: making science careers achievable to people, which we don’t do but others are working on; making cultural appreciation of science accessible, which we also don’t do but the British Science Association is focused on; and helping people to determine whether evidence supports particular claims, by companies, government and the media, which is what we work on.
People who would not naturally consider themselves interested in science are interested in making informed decisions on issues that matter for them and their families. There is a huge proliferation of news sources, advice columns, campaign websites, and product claims on scientific and medical matters. Alongside that there are media reports of research findings ranging from genetic markers for cancer to the effects of cycle helmets on accident rates, and policy debates involving evidence (or lack of it) about everything from interventions on crime to mitigating climate change. Making sense of this is not easy, whether you are deciding how to feed your family a healthy diet or whether to support a Government policy on energy reform.
Equipping people with the tools of scientific reasoning empowers them to question and filter claims about evidence. We encourage the public to ask how conclusions have been reached, whether there has been a fair test, whether results have been peer reviewed, replicated or challenged. We say that you don’t, for example, have to be an epidemiologist to ask searching questions about the status of claims regarding mobile phones and cancer. When we review the kinds of questions people ask when trying to make sense of claims about research, we see they tend to ask about the status and quality of research, not just the findings themselves. Should we worry? Is it a scare story? What do scientists actually know? Is it a proper study? See Appendix 1 for a slide on the questions people ask us.
Sense about Science worked early on to open up the process of scientific reasoning to the wider public with a guide to peer review called I don’t know what to believe (2005). Many researchers and academic publishers were sceptical. For a start, they didn’t think the public would find the dry academic process of peer review interesting. They also worried that promoting the value of peer review would promote false certainties. We argued that people find the general rule of thumb – that peer reviewed means scrutinized – useful while accepting that mistakes exist. They can understand that one research paper is not the end of the story and that conflicting views coexist and compete. We have had more than 500,000 requests for this guide. It is being used by people and organisations who respond to the public’s questions about research claims, such as patient group helpline operators and press officers. Information about whether findings have been peer reviewed is now sought by journalists, and details of the scientific publication are regularly included in institutions’ press releases and in news reports.
Our Ask for Evidence campaign helps people request for themselves the evidence behind news stories, marketing claims and policies. We developed an online tool at AskforEvidence.org[1] to allow people to easily and quickly ask companies, politicians and NGOs for evidence for their claims. The tool has been used by thousands of people. Tens of thousands of people have visited the website to use the resources collected there on understanding evidence. AskforEvidence.org has grown into a national platform for people to get help with science and evidence questions, and for scientists and scientific organisations to meaningfully engage with the public. Ask for Evidence has shown that an effective and novel way of engaging people in discussions about how science works is by starting with the issues they encounter in their lives.
A new problem has arisen that no public engagement in science professionals are tackling. This is the rise of rumours online. Teachers, parents and helpline workers have been contacting us with concerns about a rise in rumours and misleading claims circulated by teenagers on Facebook and other social networks. These have included extreme diets, conspiracies about the origin of HIV, unfounded claims about food packaging causing cancer and inaccurate stories about a wide range of subjects from fluoride to dyslexia to how to get high on household products and so on. There wasn't anything at hand to help teenagers respond to someone circulating or using misleading material online. Critical thinking is a central life skill, but it is not systematically taught in secondary schools. We're working with scouts and guides groups and charities such as BEAT, ChildLine and the Teenage Cancer Trust to develop a social media campaign to encourage critical thinking in the same places that children encounter misinformation. We have produced a unique lesson plan for 13 to 16 year olds to protect themselves from misinformation and develop the skills they need to critically assess claims.
Any further steps needed by the media and broadcasters to improve the quality, accessibility and balance of their science coverage; and science coverage in broadcasters' programme-making.
Conflicts of interest
The media could do more to popularise understanding of the research contract and governance, and also of the need to research bias rather than allege it. Researchers who work in partnership with or advise corporations have been caricatured and sometimes attacked in the media for having vested interests and the conclusions of their research dismissed. To give just one example, in 2015 food researchers at Oxford University were attacked in the media and in specialist press because their research institute had partnered with a food company. The research produced by this group was dismissed in media reports as “biased”. No consideration was given to the quality of the research or the robustness of the evidence produced. There is too much reliance on a narrow definition of vested interest to determine the validity of a claim. This is a poor guide to scientific validity for the public.
In contrast to this, areas of research where bias does exist have been given very little media attention. Three decades ago clinical researchers suspected that the reporting of results from clinical trials was biased. Since then researchers have thoroughly and systematically investigated this, including in systematic reviews commissioned by the NIHR. We now know that over the last few decades clinical trials funded by industry which showed positive results were twice as likely to be published as trials with negative results[2]. The suspected bias has been confirmed and quantified but it took a large public campaign, AllTrials, for the media to report it.
Uncertainty and trust
Better communication of uncertainty in science is necessary to improve the quality, accessibility and balance of science coverage. Climate scientists, epidemiologists and geologists tell us about a common problem with talking about uncertainty. Researchers use uncertainty to express how confident they are in results or to describe the boundaries of what is known and unknown but in everyday language uncertainty is heard as ‘unreliable.’ Researchers, worried about being misunderstood, stay silent about uncertainty and the media does not cover it. If people are discouraged by the idea of uncertainty then we miss out on important discussions: about weighing up the risks and benefits of new treatments, what action to take mitigate the impact of earthquakes, or how individuals and governments should act in response to sudden changes in temperature or the latest pandemic flu. When we produced Making Sense of Uncertainty in 2013 we say the damaging effect of this on public discussion. There had been so little debate about the development of climate models, for example, that researchers had been unable to follow each other’s adjustments. Researchers are also tempted to withdraw from seeking nuance or debating detail, leaving uncertainty to be ‘uncovered’ later and exploited by groups who want to show up ‘lying’ scientists.
We have seen that it is possible to frame an issue so that the evidence and the uncertainty is something people can get hold of: by putting the uncertainty out there first and guiding people through what it means. Some of the public discussions we’ve managed to have on charged subjects such as nuclear, GM, crime and drugs in recent years have shown that we can have nuanced discussions, even if politicians and commentators lag behind.
During the 12 years Sense about Science has existed, many people – scientists and policy makers among them – have asked us, “how do you gain public trust?” Onora O’Neil, one of our founding trustees, has the best answer to this: by being trustworthy. This includes being open and honest about evidence and uncertainties, what we know and don’t know, even if it makes for a difficult discussion.
The extent to which public dialogue and consultation is being effectively used by Government in science and technology areas of policy-making.
Ideas about public dialog and science engagement have become too precious when really there is no one size fits all response to questions that involve evidence and decisions. That some attempts to tackle discussions such as organ retention or vaccines have been ineffective does not mean that the idea of imparting knowledge is wrong. It depends on what you are trying to achieve. Sometimes people want expertise, sometimes they need help making sense of a news article on the HPV vaccine, sometimes they want accountability for how a decision has been reached and sometimes they want to have a say. Facts and information sometimes change things and sometimes they don’t. Just because knowledge – or lack of it – doesn’t account for everything people think, doesn’t mean you’re wrong to tell people what you know. After all we as a society choose to pay for expertise, in the form of the education and research that give rise to it. It makes a mockery of democratic debate not to use it. And we should use knowledge, and argue about it, any way we like.
Public discussion is messy and unplanned
Rothamsted Research planted a trial crop of genetically modified wheat and a protest group threatened to destroy it. The researchers decided to respond publicly to the threat and pressed for discussion rather than destruction in every way they could – an open letter, a video appeal, publicity, discussion in the press and on television. The public, media and commentators responded with support. Local people wrote to the protest group. Thousands posted comments on a petition, expressing different views about GM but unanimous in support of the researchers and the research. Many of these people asked questions about the research and the researchers took the time to answer them directly, even the very rude ones. The protest did not materialize on the day and the researchers were able to complete their experiment and publish the results.
The scientists’ response was against the advice of their funders, government officials and government accredited public dialog facilitators who told the researchers they risked setting the GM debate back by 10 years if they engaged with the protest group. It was as though official support of public engagement was limited to activities fully planned and approved by civil servants. When in reality discussion – the kind that actual people want to have – is messy, contradictory, unplanned and often inconvenient.
Public led, expert fed
Public dialogue isn’t a safe space only filled with approved questions. In our experience, people say ‘surely man-made chemicals in breast tissue cause cancer?’, not ‘run me through the periodic table again’. There’s an unmet need to provide for this kind of real public discussion. We have developed a novel approach (which grew out of our experience supporting the Rothamsted researchers) called public led, expert fed. Researchers extend an open invitation to the public to put any question or comment on research to them and the researchers answer these directly. We now host two panels of researchers from plant science and from energy research. The panels are supported by more than 50 leading UK research institutes and funders. The public led expert fed approach effectively cuts through polarized debates as discussion is set by the questions people have and shows the willingness and openness of the researchers to respond directly.
The strategies and actions being taken by Government to foster public engagement and trust of science more widely, and high quality reporting of science in the media.
Conflicts of interest
The government could do more to popularise understanding of the research contract and governance, and also of the need to research bias rather than allege it. As we set out earlier, researchers who work in partnership with or advise corporations have been caricatured and attacked in the media for having vested interests and the conclusions of their research dismissed. This government encourages academic-corporate research partnerships. Yet it stays silent when researchers who have worked with or alongside industry are attacked. The government must do a lot more to support these researchers. It must work to help the public understand research contracts and governance and why a blanket approach to dismissing vested interests is a poor guide to scientific validity.
Uncertainty and trust
Policy makers can do more to help the public understanding of science by being open about uncertainty. Policy makers tend to shy away from this discussions about what we know and what we don’t know when developing policy but they are among the best placed people to set out for the public that we do often have enough information to make a decision or take action (operational knowledge). When it comes to making policy the question that is often asked, ‘are you certain?’ would be much better replaced by asking ‘do we know enough?’ or, in some cases, ‘what’s the best decision based on the information we have?’ There isn’t a single answer for all policy decisions; we look for more certainty to make some decisions than other. However, policy makers should be able to be more open and honest about scientific uncertainty, while still being confident about the appropriate actions to be taken.
During the 12 years Sense about Science has existed, many people – scientists and policy makers among them – have asked us, “how do you gain public trust?” Onora O’Neil, one of our founding trustees, has the best answer to this: by being trustworthy. This includes being open and honest about evidence and uncertainties, what we know and don’t know, even if it makes for a difficult discussion.
We would be pleased to provide more to the committee on any of the above points.
April 2016
Appendix 1: What people ask about
