After the Fact(S)
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AFTER THE FACT(S) COMMUNICATING ABOUT SCIENTIFIC COMPLEXITY, RISK, AND UNCERTAINTY IN AOTEAROA BY MAX SOAR A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Victoria University of Wellington 2020 Abstract This thesis draws on social constructivist theories of scientific knowledge to analyse the public engagement practices of a cohort of scientist-communicators in Aotearoa as they represent scientific complexity, risk, and uncertainty in public. Through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, this thesis demonstrates that participants think defensively about the publics they communicate to, drawing boundaries between science and publics that minimise exposure of the elements of scientific knowledge they perceive might undermine scientific authority. Such boundary-work often demarcates public engagement from scientific knowledge production, constructing public engagement as a subjective process applied to scientific knowledge after the fact. These science-communicators also work to overcome these very same boundaries by making science more accessible and democratic. Such tensions suggest that participants not only socially construct science, but also contribute to the social construction of public engagement with science as they work to transform systemic and cultural barriers acting to entrench science as an inaccessible, exclusive, and unilateral arbiter of knowledge. In doing so, participants found that presenting a more accurate, complex picture of science—with all its uncertainties and failures—had not undermined public confidence in science. Instead, complexity, risk and uncertainty could become transparent elements of scientific knowledge production, thereby open to public scrutiny and definition. Participants’ representations of complexity, risk, and uncertainty were influenced by accessible, local publications, and economic and institutional conditions, but rarely by established public engagement scholarship. I would like to express my gratitude to Te Pūnaha Matatini for funding this work and providing a welcoming space for a new researcher; to my participants for generously sharing their time and knowledge; to my parents for their constant support; to my academic parents, Rebecca and Nayantara, for their advice and mentoring; to Navana and Zoe for lifting my spirits; to my cat, Goose, for keeping me humble; and finally, to my partner of eight years, Ash, for ensuring all punctuation was appropriately curly. Contents Section I: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Understanding scientific knowledge: social construction and public engagement ......................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 The constructivist approach to science and society ................................................................ 8 1.2 A constructivist approach to complexity, risk, and uncertainty ............................................ 11 1.2.1 Complexity ................................................................................................................ 12 1.2.2 Risk ........................................................................................................................... 17 1.2.3 Uncertainty ................................................................................................................ 21 1.2.4 Conceptualising complexity, risk and uncertainty .................................................... 26 1.3 Methodology and scope ........................................................................................................ 28 1.3.1 Participants ................................................................................................................ 28 1.3.2 Research design......................................................................................................... 29 1.3.3 Methodology ............................................................................................................. 32 1.3.4 Key themes and chapter outlines............................................................................... 33 Background .................................................................................................... 35 2.1 Participants ............................................................................................................................ 35 2.2 Public scientists, generalist science communicators and Paul Callaghan ............................. 40 2.3 Communicating science in neoliberal institutions ................................................................ 41 2.4 Social media and social networks ......................................................................................... 47 2.5 Growing into science communication ................................................................................... 49 Section II: Results .................................................................................................................... 55 Constructing complexity, risk, and uncertainty ............................................. 55 3.1 Constructing complexity and risk ......................................................................................... 57 3.2 Constructing uncertainty to (dis)incentivise action ............................................................... 63 3.3 Ethical and moral decision making ....................................................................................... 68 3.4 A reductionist influence ........................................................................................................ 72 Defensiveness: constructing publics .............................................................. 75 4.1 Misinterpretation ................................................................................................................... 75 4.2 Dismissing evidence: values, perceptions and subjectivities ................................................ 78 4.3 Misuse: complexity and uncertainty undermining authority ................................................ 85 4.4 Defensiveness within the academy ....................................................................................... 88 4.5 Constructing publics ............................................................................................................. 93 Transforming a scientistic status quo ............................................................. 99 5.1 Public science, public funding: a sense of responsibility .................................................... 100 5.2 Expanding boundaries and challenging scientific norms of ‘objectivity’ ........................... 106 5.3 Telling a story, specifying the unknown ............................................................................. 113 Section III: Discussion ........................................................................................................... 119 Defensiveness and transformation: tensions in public engagement ............ 119 6.1 The influence of A Matter of Fact ...................................................................................... 120 6.2 A commercial imperative .................................................................................................... 124 6.3 Comparison with PES literature .......................................................................................... 127 1.3.1 Limitations .............................................................................................................. 129 6.4 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 129 Epilogue ....................................................................................................... 135 References ...................................................................................................................... 138 Appendix 1: Interview guide ............................................................................................. 146 Notes: 1. I have endeavoured to exclusively use gender neutral language throughout this thesis. It would be impractical to obtain the preferred pronouns of everyone mentioned or cited so, in order to avoid making assumptions and to maintain consistency, I opted to use the singular ‘they’ throughout. 2. I use the terms ‘Aotearoa’ and ‘New Zealand’ interchangeably throughout this thesis. I prefer to use the te reo Māori name Aotearoa, though in some circumstances—for example, discussing the policies of New Zealand’s colonial government—it felt misplaced. In addition, the concatenation ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’ is a compromise I choose to avoid. It preserves the colonial name appending ‘Aotearoa’ in a tokenistic manner. Section I: Introduction Public truths cannot be dictated…neither by a pure, all-knowing science nor unilaterally from the throne of power. Science and democracy, at their best, are modest enterprises because both are mistrustful of their own authority. Each gain by making their doubts explicit. (Jasanoff, 2017) 1 Understanding scientific knowledge: social construction and public engagement In 2014, the journal Public Understanding of Science released a retrospective special edition reflecting on 20 years of research in the field. This issue focused on the discipline’s development from researching ‘public understanding’