Nudging Academic Science into the Public Sphere

If  we want public support for science and science education, we must reach beyond  our campuses.

By Rebecca Jordan

In “Why and How to Be Interdisciplinary,” published in the May–June 2006 issue of Academe, Anne Dalke, Paul Grobstein, and Elizabeth McCormack wrote about the engagement of faculty members in interdisciplinary ventures. In this article, I encourage consideration of the next step: facilitating interaction between academics and the public. My current position as a professor of environmental education explicitly draws this connection, and I have had many discussions with colleagues about how scientists might communicate about their work outside exclusively professional channels. Increasingly, federal granting agencies are asking researchers to describe the social impact of projects they propose, and careers that encourage students to engage in interdisciplinary study are becoming more numerous. Yet many faculty members say that engaging the public in their work would “compromise their objectivity,” or that they simply are “not qualified” to involve the public in their research. 

New Trends 

I suspect, however, that this climate is changing. For example, in a single month last year, I attended three summits convened to explore the issues involved in spanning disciplines and communicating research to students and the public. The first, an institution-wide meeting at Rutgers University, brought together many colleagues in a discussion about how faculty might better work with each other,  our students, and the public to communicate the relevance and applicability of evolutionary theory across disciplines. 

The following week, I attended a multi-university summit convened by the Jane Goodall Institute to bring students and faculty together to discuss how making science more accessible—by, for example, drawing in members of the public through “outreach clubs”—can help to address environmental problems. Similarly, at the Santa Barbara Environmental Studies Summit, the third meeting I attended, we talked about how different constituencies can work together to resolve environmental issues. Junior and senior faculty from disciplines as diverse as history and chemistry sat with students, environmental advocates, and others from outside academia. We explored ways to make research collaborations more effective, techniques to make classes more relevant, and how to deal with issues of promotion and tenure in an interdisciplinary world. 

We also discussed the notion of engaging the public not just to promote science understanding but also to advance the use of science in decision making. It was a pleasure to see an array of social, life, and physical scientists set aside jargon and disciplinary norms to work with members of the public. The conversation flowed, and solutions and future directions were mapped. Questions remained unanswered, for sure, but what endeavor worthy of our effort can be resolved in just days, weeks, or even years? Public engagement in the sciences is a tangled issue. 

The Public and Ecology 

Such conversations need not be restricted to an interdisciplinary milieu. At the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting this past summer, my colleagues and I talked about what citizens should know about a single discipline: ecology. We voiced our concern about the lack of public understanding of our work; some of us even assumed considerable responsibility for this failing. If we as producers of information do little or nothing to ensure that the public receives it, who will? And what are the consequences of this omission? They are costly indeed, according to some in our field: ecological illiteracy, insufficient support for research and education, and the failure of policy makers to use our findings. No doubt researchers in other fields would express similar concerns about public ignorance of their knowledge. 

For me, interacting with colleagues from diverse fields, including education, political science, and psychology, prompted new directions in my thinking, which was previously focused on a single system. Adding nonacademics into the mix provided a source for new meaning and helped guide my work out of isolation. I saw opportunities to address novel problems through use of the scholarly process of systematically gathering evidence and asking questions. 

Broader Considerations 

Someone once asked me why I, considering my pretenure status, insist on focusing on interdisciplinary questions that require considerable public involvement. I have to admit that I have met some steep challenges: public engagement raises questions of subjectivity. For example, I have been asked, “If you allow the public to be involved in your work, doesn’t that promote a view of science as being democratic?” Moreover, my scholarship is often difficult to evaluate outside of disciplinary norms given current institutional structures, and I sometimes find myself less conversant in a matter under discussion in my field than I would like. 

All research involves some subjectivity, of course. Including the public in research does not, however, necessarily lead to science by popular vote or according to the whims of public demand. In my research, I aim to gather evidence and test explanations. Including others in this process does not decrease rigor. Instead, it expands the dialogue and thus the diversity of explanations posed. In what may feel like extreme times in our global society, creative and nontraditional views can push thinking within any disciplinary norm. 

Innovative research questions paired with sound data collection and insightful conclusions draw attention. These standards need not be compromised by consideration of nontraditional scholarship. In addition, because interdisciplinary and publicly relevant work often has implications for traditionally considered disciplines, there are norms by which nontraditional scholarship can and should be considered. 

Given the limitations often experienced by scholars who bridge disciplines and interact with the public, a support structure, in the form of mentors and camaraderie, can be extremely helpful. Mentors should be comfortable with nontraditional scholarship but grounded in the realities of academic life. Interdisciplinary scholars should also seek advice from colleagues who have similar goals and use similar approaches, whether or not they have parallel research interests. 

One need not be an expert on a topic to discuss its relevance and implications. Because academics spend much time developing expertise within a particular domain, they might hesitate to move into other areas. If you join a team of interdisciplinary researchers, however, you will find that not everyone on the team is expert in the same topics. Team members, instead, should seek to achieve an open discourse in which ideas are made comprehensible to colleagues and nonacademics alike. 

I am not advocating a revolution in academic practices, just the admission of a few innovations. I would encourage academics to consider inviting colleagues interested in working between disciplines to address the issue of public disengagement in research. I would hope academics could welcome within the faculty truly interdisciplinary individuals and those interested in issues involving education and the public. A broader acknowledgment of scholarship that tests traditional boundaries but maintains standards of rigor would be welcome. The longer we allow the public to feel distant from the work we do, the lower our chances of ultimately meeting our goals as researchers, whatever they may be. 

Rebecca Jordan is assistant professor of environmental education and citizen science in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University.

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