Get to Work—for Real—on Communicating Basic Science

The inherent difficulty of communicating about science may be even greater for basic science

Basic scientists and their supporting institutions seek not only to understand the wonder of life, the Earth, and the universe, but also to share it, discuss it, and even explore it with others. Communicating about basic science to other scientists, policy makers, decision leaders, and members of the public is an essential part of the scientific process and is critical to ensuring U.S. competitiveness on the global stage.

In short, the science isn’t done until the results are shared broadly and publicly. However, despite the $80 billion in U.S. federal support for basic science and historically broad public support for this funding, there is very little guidance on how best to communicate about basic science.

Public conversations about science – in new and legacy media and in the marketplace of ideas – are usually a very small slice of the research that taxpayer dollars support. At the risk of generalizing, these conversations are overwhelmingly about the applications of science and technology for politically or socially contested topics like mitigating climate change, addressing vaccine hesitancy, reinforcing the safety of GMO foods, or driving other social behaviors. To be sure, these are vital conversations. But our nation’s scientists do so much more. That’s especially true of the scientists working on the basic research that underpins the countless applications of scientific results. People from all walks of life deserve to be able to know, and to engage with, the whole story of science.

Why can’t we engage the public on basic science topics like quantum mechanics, high energy physics, and materials science? It’s complicated. Some experts say it’s because basic science cannot spark public interest because it isn’t relevant to everyday life. Others say it’s not important to discuss basic research separately from applications. The underlying problem is that we have hardly any data to support either of these options, or any others.

By contrast, we know a fair bit about how to communicate scientific risk and uncertainty in the context of socially charged discussions – we’ve invested a lot of resources in understanding how this kind of communication works. We know a lot less about what the public wants to hear about basic science, where they go to find it, or how they engage with it once they hear it or read about it. We haven’t committed the same kind of social science research to understand these parts of science communications.

The magnitude of that knowledge gap wasn’t fully clear until the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and The Kavli Foundation created the Science Public Engagement Partnership (SciPEP). SciPEP is a unique public-private collaboration to ensure that basic science engagement is supported, sustainable, and effective. In its inaugural year, SciPEP began to uncover what we do and do not understand about effectively communicating basic science through two important landscape papersand a conference, Communicating the Future: Engaging the Public in Basic Research.

For the DOE Office of Science, Communicating the Future also served as a Basic Research Needs (BRN) workshop. DOE uses the BRN process to identify gaps in scientific knowledge and propose ways to address them; this is the first time we've applied this approach to public engagement with science! You can read the observations and recommendations from the resulting BRN report here. Now we want to hear what you, the science communications community broadly – researchers, social scientists, writers, storytellers, and the leadership of research organizations – think about it.

As you’ll note from our report, both the challenges and the opportunities for public engagement with basic research are timely. Basic science didn’t create viruses, but it’s at the heart of how we respond to the challenge of global pandemics. Basic science didn’t create global warming, but it underlies how we understand and respond to a rapidly changing climate. We need your help to actively conceptualize, pursue, and exchange research on communicating basic science and the best practices this research points to. And we need the full range of voices, perspectives, and backgrounds to engage the diverse American public and global stakeholders in the processes of discovery that will continue to transform our world.

The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website.

Author Credit: Rick Borchelt is Director of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Keegan Sawyer is Project Director, Public Engagement (Contractor) in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, [email protected].