The third essay written amid the epidemic. I’ll say it again: things are tense, so please be cautious about sharing this among friends.
From science popularization to public understanding of science to science communication, people in philosophy of science and technology have been talking about this for at least twenty years. The most traditional “deficit model” has long been widely questioned, but to this day, science communication and its significance still have by no means truly taken root in people’s minds.
Simply put, the “deficit model” says that scientists possess scientific knowledge while the public lacks scientific knowledge, so science popularization is nothing more than scientists, from a position of superiority, transmitting scientific knowledge to the public. But in the international academic community, the narrowness of traditional “science popularization” has long become a consensus. We believe that the public is by no means entirely passive and ignorant, that scientists are not always up on a pedestal, and that science communication is not a one-way transmission from top to bottom or from center to margin, but an interactive communicative activity taking place among scientists, governments, enterprises, and the public in various industries. What is “communicated” is far more than written scientific knowledge, and it is not necessarily the case that only scientists can best understand science.
In science communication (or “scientific exchange”), the public are not merely recipients of information; they can likewise, and should likewise, speak in their own voices from their own positions, exerting positive influence on scientific research or placing limits on it.
These words are easy to say, but in real-world contexts, not only scientists but also many science communicators find it very difficult truly to respect the voices of the public. For the public’s voice often appears as obvious “rumors,” and the scientist’s immediate reaction is “rumor suppression.” The kinder ones patiently help the public explain technical knowledge; the nastier ones ridicule and look down on the public. Because that is indeed the case: when it comes to specialized fields, the public’s opinions often contain mistake upon mistake, childish or even absurd.
Even in this epidemic, many people have already begun to reflect on their attitude toward “rumors,” but in the field of science communication, the traditional model still reigns supreme.
Scientists are best at stressing rigor, objectivity, and addressing matters on their own merits, so they are the least able to tolerate the public’s “rumors.” But if we require the public to speak with the same rigor and objectivity as professionals, how could their level possibly compare with that of professionals? Thus, it seems that only professional voices can exert a positive influence on professionals, while the public’s voice will never have positive significance.
So-called rumors are, from the outset, the counterpart to official pronouncements; they are a way of generating folk voices. Otherwise, how can the public speak? Do the statements of a few “representatives of public opinion” count as folk discourse? But so-called representatives of public opinion often are closer to elites or experts than to the public. Only “rumors” are the truly representative mode of public speech, and one can even omit the “one of.” This is no exception in the scientific realm. If one wishes to respect the voices of the public, professionals must respect rumors and learn certain appropriate methods for responding to the constructive force contained in rumors.
“Constructive” often becomes part of an accusation. For example: “All you do is complain; could you at least offer some constructive suggestions?” But “constructive” should not originally be a requirement of the speaker; it should be a requirement of the listener. For instance, a diner complains: “Too salty!” If the chef hears this and uses less salt the next time, then the constructive quality of that complaint has been realized; if the chef hears it and remains unmoved, then its constructiveness has not been realized. The very same sentence can be constructive or not constructive, and that does not depend on whether the speaker knows the steps of cooking, much less on whether the speaker can meticulously and specifically instruct the chef in how to cook; rather, it depends on what the chef hears in it.
Complaints, panic, anxiety, suspicion, and paranoia—these are all common modes of speech among the public. These emotions are like the body’s pain and itching: although unpleasant, and when excessive even highly destructive, in many cases they are a necessary part of the body’s overall health. When feeling unwell, before rushing to stop the pain or itching, it is best first to get to the root of the matter and look for the source. (Sometimes sensation can be mistaken—for instance, heart disease may present as shoulder pain. If at that point you laugh and mock the pain for getting it wrong, or loudly defend the shoulder by saying nothing is wrong with it, that would be foolish.)
For example, recently there has been a great deal of folk discussion about the Wuhan virus institute, including several issues: 1. Was the report on the epidemic delayed; was there any informed concealment? 2. Was the institute director’s rise to power suspicious; was there nepotism? 3. By forcefully promoting Shuanghuanglian, was there a violation of research ethics or a conflict of interest? 4. Having studied bats, did this virus come from an experimental leak?
In the eyes of professionals, the above questions are independent of one another, and especially point 4 is unrelated to the first three and is also the most absurd. Even if the Wuhan virus institute had all sorts of other problems, rumor number 4 would still be ridiculous. I have already seen many rational friends, in various ways, accuse the public of confusing things, of not understanding basic scientific common sense, and of lumping unrelated matters together.
For example, the one I reposted today, where “Sai Xiansheng,” in grief and indignation, said:
“The result of scientists’ research conducted under stringent safety conditions is to prove that coronaviruses carried by wild bats are very likely to accumulate mutations and once again acquire the ability to infect human beings. Ironically, this line of research, which should have received sufficient attention, not only failed to prevent the new epidemic, but was instead distorted by conspiracy theorists in the new epidemic into the chief culprit behind the ‘leaked virus.’”
Indeed, in the face of absurd rumors, scientists feel very aggrieved. But beyond making a few individual scientists feel aggrieved, how much harm does the spread of this sort of rumor actually do? If its harm is not great, then letting the rumor fly a little longer, using this opportunity to carry out more science communication and to open up more reflection and self-examination, may also be a good thing.
For example, how exactly are the so-called stringent safety conditions operated, and how are they ensured? This is not only a question of scientific knowledge, but also an institutional question.
At the level of scientific knowledge, modern science is highly specialized, with each discipline clearly bounded and each study strictly controlling its boundary conditions: Wang Yanyi is Wang Yanyi, and Shi Zhengli is Shi Zhengli. It is of course unreasonable for us to lump together several questions with different boundaries. But outside knowledge, at the level of social relations and political institutions, and at the levels of economy and culture, the boundaries are often not so clear-cut.
Before rushing to debunk rumor number 4, we might as well ask: when the public lumps several issues together, is it really entirely without reason?
If point 1 is true, and indeed some researchers learned of the epidemic earlier than the public but only thought about submitting papers and did not make it public, then this proves that they value private honor more and lack public awareness. Even if we were to excuse the scientists—after all, their power is limited, and even if they reported it first, they still could not have reported it because there are political disciplines and superiors keeping watch over them—then the conclusion we can at least draw is this: scientists’ activities are not free, but may be controlled and silenced.
If point 2 is true, and nepotism did indeed exist, and virtue did not match position, then this shows that the organization and selection system of the scientific community is questionable. After all, birds of a feather flock together; if there is one corrupt person in an institution, then obviously it is more likely that there are more who are corrupt as well, and peer review becomes harder to trust too.
If point 3 is true, then this shows that research activities are not completely constrained by the so-called scientific method; double-blind experiments, Phase I, II, and III clinical trials, and some of the scientific community’s recognized principles and procedural rules can all be disregarded, and scientists may do absurd and laughable things for the sake of profit.
Then, if the first three points are true, do they really have nothing to do with point 4? If a research institution can be manipulated and silenced, how can we believe its public statements? If peer review fails and research rules are not observed, how can we believe that the so-called “stringent safety conditions” can be effective?
Scientists, thinking in the “disciplinary division” mode of modern science, believe that science should remain science, and that problems arising in other links are not the scientists’ concern. So when the public lumps scientific questions together with questions of ethics, politics, economics, and so on, scientists feel aggrieved and think the public is really foolish—having heard some bizarre Indian paper that they don’t even understand, they just speak nonsense. But the problem is this: when the public would rather believe a flimsy article than the scientists’ own solemn oaths upon their lives, is that really only the public’s fault? When the public lumps Wang Yanyi and Shi Zhengli together, is it really just public ignorance?
When we advocate that the public should “trust experts” and “revere science,” we are likewise lumping the entire scientific community together. Scientists themselves do not carefully tell the public whether to trust Wang Yanyi or Shi Zhengli. Whether to revere the Wuhan virus institute or the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. In extolling science, scientists themselves often “lump together” the various sciences and the various people doing them. So how can we then require the public to distinguish so finely when questioning science?
The key is that in this respect, the public is sometimes genuinely smarter than scientists. I still remember that when the public worried about the dangers of chemical plants and nuclear power stations, scientists and “science popularizers” often worked hard to answer questions, explaining to the public the so-called “stringent safety conditions.” But when chemical plants really exploded and nuclear power stations really leaked, the science popularizers fell silent. Or they would stagger back up again and continue explaining: what went wrong was the managers, not science. Science itself is safe; scientists’ designs are reliable; it was just a lapse in management, and so on. But nuclear radiation does not speak politics with us; nuclear radiation that leaks because of a manager’s mistake will not be any gentler than nuclear radiation that leaks because of a scientific mistake. And the public cares about nuclear radiation, not scientific knowledge. In this sense, they have every right to “lump together” science and politics, and they must “lump them together” as well.
This is similar now: the target of the public’s suspicion and anxiety is not “scientific knowledge” separated off from other fields such as politics and economics, but the whole “lumped-together” research activity. And to respond to the public, it is far from enough merely to stand inside the realm of scientific knowledge.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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