October 12, 2015

Members of Sigma Xi joined science communicators, educators, high school students, and interested citizens from across the country August 10–11 in Durham, North Carolina, for the Communicating Science for Policy Workshop. Hosted by the Institute on Science for Global Policy and organized with Sigma Xi, the workshop focused on finding actionable steps that could improve how science is communicated with the public.

It’s important to share research findings with the broader society so that citizens and policy makers can understand science. It also helps them decide how to appropriately incorporate it into public- and private-sector policies.

Debates, stemming from papers written by three speakers, kicked off the workshop. Each speaker had five minutes to make introductory remarks and then participants debated each speaker’s ideas for approximately 85 minutes.

The first speaker was Arthur Lupia, a professor of political science at University of Michigan. He discussed how science must improve its communication efforts to increase its public value. Liz Neeley, executive director at The Story Collider, argued that training scientists in narrative persuasion and storytelling is an effective way to improve science communication. The final speaker was William Hallman, professor and chair of the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University and chair of the Risk Communication Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He argued that training is needed so the next generation of scientists becomes better communicators and that scientists should be rewarded for effectively communicating with the public.

Next, participants moved to small group discussions to decide what they could and could not agree on as actionable steps to improve effective science communication. The next day, the whole group came back together to build the overall consensus. Debate summaries will be published by the Institute on Science for Global Policy by mid-November.

See a recap of this event on Storify. 

Photo: Liz Neeley, standing, takes her turn on the debate floor during the Communicating Science for Policy workshop.