"Risk is all about context. The more you take on board the trade-offs that people are making, the more useful the information becomes."

Description

Why do many risk messages fail to connect with audiences? How can communicators avoid oversimplifying complex risk information while still making it accessible to audiences? What does it mean to take a "public-led, expert-fed" approach to science communication?

In this episode Tracey Brown, Director of Sense About Science, talks about the charity's Risk know-how programme that was created to empower people to communicate risk effectively with their communities.

Conversation

The below excerpt has been heavily condensed and edited from the original for the sake of brevity.

Peter: Your take on complexity is a little bit different in the context of risk know-how and risk communication, isn't it?

TB: I think it would be fair to say that one of the challenges people face is that the communication is not complex enough. The big issue is that communication is oversimplified. Because risk is all about context, right? It’s all about context and the more you can take on board the trade-offs that people are actually making in particular contexts, the more useful the information is going to be.

For example, if there is an increased risk of drought, what does that actually mean? If you are a farmer and you're going to sow drought-tolerant crops, that's a definite 30% drop in yield against this very vague-sounding thing of "increased risk." To make that calculation, people need more than just drum banging about how they must do something.

The lack of sophistication in a lot of the risk messaging that people are exposed to is part of the problem. We see it in workplace situations too. People talk in very general terms about the importance of health and safety at work, but to be actionable at the level of factories, plants, and fields, that has to be put into some meaningful context of the risks people currently face.

What do you think causes this excess of simplicity?

I think sometimes it's a laziness about audience. The first thing is to get to grips with where they're coming from and where they are on a question.

We have an approach at Sense about Science that we describe as "public-led expert-fed." The public are interested in experts, but actually familiarise yourself with the question or issue as it's being presented to them and connect to that. So much of science communication is giving people answers to questions they never had.

Taking the time to share with people why something is a question in our society. It might not have occurred to them. People aren't walking around thinking about the dangers of blight in potatoes, for example. So if you come with your amazing technological innovation in the breeding of potatoes, they weren't thinking about something you needed to fix. However, people are open to hearing about problems that are affecting them already.

We see this with "breakthroughs" too. People in patient groups looking for answers from stem cells have been exposed to so many "breakthroughs." When you come with another genuine breakthrough, why not explain why the previous one hasn't resulted in the cures that all the headlines promised? Actually get some context in there. I'm a big fan of understanding context, but that means more work for the agencies and scientists who are communicating.

What’s one piece of advice you’ve been given in your career that you keep coming back to?

There really is one, and it was from the popular psychologist Richard Wiseman, who told me to ask people "what's really troubling you?"

It was in the context of people in my family going to see mediums, and me wondering how to bring the Sense about Science perspective into a very personal environment. He said, ask what's really troubling you? And then you find out that the person didn't really believe in mediums, they just felt really sad and lonely. And that's actually a problem you can tackle with them.

So asking people "what's really going on for you here?" often gets us away from these spats about evidence and into what people are really looking for.

Can you recommend a book that’s inspired you?

Can I recommend two? I'm going to be really greedy. The book that most influenced me was Jacob Bronowski's work on "Science and Human Values," which is from the 1950s. It was about putting people back into the centre of science, and I found it absolutely inspiring. It's probably informed me the most throughout my career.

Eugenia Cheng, though - I really want to put in a piece for her book on "The Art of Logic." I'm really delving into that. It's perhaps a little idealistic, but it's looking at the debates we are facing today and thinking about how to discipline ourselves in the way we argue and debate. I love its idealism.