Understanding Science Communication: Some Basics

 If you listen to scientists for long, you’ll hear them referring to “the literature” or using terms like “scientific consensus”. “Literature” and “consensus” are fairly common words, but there’s some nuance in the way that scientists use them that can be confusing if you’re not familiar with it. In this post, we’ll define those terms in a way that considers the scientist’s nuance. We’ll also talk about the different forms of scientific literature and briefly discuss the scientific process.

What is “scientific literature”?

Quite broadly (more so than most scientists would define it), scientific literature is anything written about science. However, when scientists use the term, they’re usually referring to a specific subset of scientific literature that includes review articles and original research articles (defined below). So, in order to understand the term “scientific literature” as scientists use it, we’re going to have to define the subsets of that literature. In this section, I’m borrowing heavily from a document created by my colleague, Nathan Mills, that we use to teach our students about the designations of the literature. We can loosely group scientific literature into two categories – primary literature and secondary literature.

Secondary literature

Secondary literature is usually written by a person who did not conduct the original research being communicated. It may or may not undergo the process of peer review (a process I hope to write a whole post on later, but which entails a critical reading by other scientists pre-publication. Publication is largely contingent on the approval of the peer reviewers). Some categories of secondary literature include:

Popular and technical books

These would often fall under the category that I grew up calling “living” books (a term coined, I believe, by the late British educator, Charlotte Mason). These books are engaging, often written by a single author, and capture the excitement of science. Sometimes, they tell the crazy stories of science throughout history, like The Man Who Touched His Own Heart by Rob Dunn. Others try to communicate complex ideas at an accessible level, like Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. Some well-known authors of popular science books include Edward O. Wilson, Rachel Carson, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, and many others.

Popular books have the advantage of being really fun to read. They are a great introduction to a broad area of science or to science in general. They are often written by an expert in the field and are intended to interest, excite, and educate the general population. They do not, however, undergo the process of peer review. They are not intended to deeply contribute to the scaffolding used for experimental design, to communicate specific data, or to be used in the process of decision-making by medical personnel or by scientists. I like to read popular books when I want an engaging introduction to an area of science I’m less familiar with.

Textbooks 

Textbooks span the gamut from technical books which are not peer reviewed to edited books, in which individual chapters are peer reviewed. Textbooks are written by a small handful of experts in the field (one to ten-ish), and summarize the current state of the field. These books often contain helpful images and diagrams to communicate complex topics. The goal of textbooks is primarily to summarize our current understanding of certain areas of science and to provide a solid platform for students and those seeking to gain a technical, factual knowledge of specific areas of science.

Textbooks have the advantage of being concise summaries of the state of the field. They often provide an excellent foundational knowledge of the scientific process and of our current knowledge surrounding scientific phenomena. They may communicate and summarize some specific experimental data, but do not often communicate the entire scientific process for the generation and assessment of those data. I teach from textbooks often, and I like to use them as a quick reference to remind myself of specific well-established rules and facts.

Popular magazines

These include Scientific American, Discover, Smithsonian, etc, and their purpose is to summarize recent research that is interesting to a broad population. Articles do not undergo peer review and are often written by a scientific journalist rather than by a scientist.

I really like to read these articles to grab a quick summary of what’s currently being done in many areas of science. Very often, they’ll link to the original published study, so if I’m intrigued by the topic, it’s easy to dig deeper. However, these articles frequently overstate the findings in the articles they summarize, so it’s good to take them with a large grain of salt.

Review articles

Review articles are generally written by a very small number of invited top experts in a specific subset of science, and summarize the current data and theory in that area. Review articles undergo rigorous peer review and are published in peer reviewed journals.

Review articles are an excellent way to get a detailed “lay of the land” for a specific area of science. I just skimmed one the other day summarizing our current understanding of the contributions of calcium ions to mitochondrial function. I heavily utilize review articles when I am delving into an area of science that’s less familiar to me than my own specific area of expertise. Review articles reference a large number of original research articles and serve as a crucial launchpad as I survey the field and select key studies to read as I begin my exploration.

Primary literature

Original research articles

These articles are the “bread and butter” of scientific literature, because theoretical framework, experimental design, and results are communicated by the scientists who conducted the experiments. They are rigorously peer reviewed, and focus on the investigation of a very specific question in a specific subset of science. They typically contain an abstract which briefly summarizes the article, an introductory section which briefly summarizes the field prior to the conducting of the study and sets up the framework for the question addressed by the experiments communicated in the article, a materials and methods section which communicates the research methods used to address the question, a results section which reports the data obtained from the experiments, a discussion section in which the results are interpreted and placed into the larger framework provided in the introduction, and a literature cited section in which any referenced publication is listed with a complete citation.

Reading original research articles is the only way to really dig deeply into the rationale, experimental design, and conclusions surrounding a specific scientific question. All good scientists consult original research articles regularly during the course of their career.

The “downside” to original research articles is that they are written to a specific audience: other research scientists in the same field. To read, understand, and critically and accurately assess an original research article requires practice, dedication, focus, and training. Most lay people will not find original research articles to be accessible and will become bored, confused, and frustrated while reading them.

So, who do I trust?

Many people are currently struggling to decide who to trust when it comes to scientific and medical information. The advent of social media has resulted in ease of access to information, but has also led to information fatigue. It’s helpful if you know a scientist (like yours truly) who can quickly assess a source for you and let you know if it’s a good one or not. I assess original research articles on a one-by-one basis – do their questions make sense given the background they provide? Did they set up appropriate experiments to address their questions? Did they use the appropriate statistical analyses to assess their data? Do the data actually say what the authors say they say?

While a few will have the interest and motivation to develop their ability to read and assess original research, many don’t have time or energy to do so and need to rely on information that comes in the form of secondary scientific literature, often at the level of popular magazines, op-eds, or even blog posts. So, what then? A good rule of thumb if your goal is to make decisions based on the best information available is to follow and read sources that fall in line with current “scientific consensus,” which we’ll address next. It’s certainly ok to read things that challenge current scientific consensus, but following scientific consensus is most likely to put you in line with the best information currently available.

What is “scientific consensus”?

I read a blog post last year that, in an attempt to disparage scientists working on SARS-CoV-2, defined scientific consensus as synonymous with a “vote” or a “popularity contest”. This couldn’t be further from the truth, but it seems to be a relatively popular opinion among non-scientists.

So, if “scientific consensus” isn’t the same thing as a vote or a popularity contest, what is it? Scientific consensus is reached when multiple, independent experiments result in an accumulation of data that consistently support a common conclusion. There’s no governing body of scientists that sits down and calls a vote on whether or not we’re going to adopt a conclusion as fact. When scientists talk about scientific consensus, we mean that a large body of literature exists which supports a given conclusion. The larger the body of literature and the more rigorous the experimentation, the stronger the consensus.

Scientific consensus does not reflect the whole truth of what is happening in the physical or natural world around us. If it did, we wouldn’t need to continue conducting research because we would know everything there is to know about the world in which we live. However, those who wish to challenge scientific consensus should do so with sound experimental evidence. If the challenging hypotheses are correct, they will ultimately be supported by a plurality of well-conducted studies and scientific consensus will shift to reflect updated knowledge.

I know I hit you with a lot of information at once in this blog post. Comment below and ask questions you have about the things in this post or let me know what you’d like to hear about next.