Framing Science
cmooney | May 23, 2007There's not a one size fits all approach to getting a message across that resonates with the public and policymakers. The idea is to 'Frame Science' in a language that turns people on with the goal of engaging a targeted audience to think and care about a critical issue. The magic recipe is in finding the right "Frame" that fits.
As scientists, our first step is choosing content carefully and presenting it from a united academic stance. Too often we are at odds over the nuances of one concept. We have been trained to be critical, seeking the holes in others' research by pointing out…
cmooney | May 23, 2007That's right, I said it.
Dare I broach the topic sans Chris? Is it fair to discuss Framing when he's not here at The Intersection to reply? I think YES. Just be aware everything that follows is 'according to Sheril' and none of this necessarily reflects the opinions of our two favorite Framers. That said, I'll forge on..
Unless you've fallen off the blogosphere since April, you're likely familiar with the concept of Framing Science which Mooney and Nisbet recently published an article about in the journal Science. My perspective, although similar in many respects, has been influenced…
nisbetmc | May 17, 2007
In a segment from the recent Frontline special "Hot Politics," GOP pollster Frank Luntz explains his 1997/1998 memo that became the playbook for how conservatives like President Bush and Senator James Inhofe redefined climate change as really a matter of "scientific uncertainty" and "unfair economic burden." We detail the strategy and its impact on public opinion in our Framing Science thesis and in our talks as part of the Speaking Science 2.0 national tour.
Below you can watch a clip of Senator Inhofe's appearance on Fox & Friends the week of the release of this year's first IPCC…
nisbetmc | May 17, 2007On May 3, former House Science Committee chair Sherwood Boehlert gave the distinguished AAAS Carey Lecture. It recently came to our attention that Boehlert spent a significant chunk of the speech commenting on our Framing Science thesis published at Science and elaborated upon at the Washington Post.
We've now posted a reply to Boehlert over at "Speaking Science 2.0." Check it out. We've both long admired Boehlert's work and his ideas, and see it as a terrific opportunity to further push discussion along.
cmooney | May 17, 2007On May 3, former House Science Committee chair Sherwood Boehlert gave the distinguished AAAS Carey Lecture (PDF). It recently came to our attention that Boehlert spent a significant chunk of the talk commenting on the Nisbet-Mooney "framing science" article in Science.
We've now posted a reply to Boehlert over at "Speaking Science 2.0." Check it out.
cmooney | May 16, 2007
A wonderful documentary -- and one that has a lot to say about the critical importance of science communication -- has finally made the big time.
Ignore everything the Discovery Institute is saying about it, by the way--the formerly terrifying think tank of yore has now been reduced to complaining over a funny movie that in many ways goes just as hard on scientists as it does on the ID folks.
nisbetmc | May 16, 2007Monday evening at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Chris Mooney and I gave our first DC-area Speaking Science 2.0 presentation. We have details as pictures over at our new Speaking Science Web site. Inspired by Al Gore, Chris and I have also bought emission credits to off-set the plane travel that comes with our tour.
Our next inside-the-Beltway talk will be Tues. June 19 at the Center for American Progress, where we expect a very large crowd. On Monday, June 4 we will be taking the train up to Manhattan, speaking at the New York Academy of Sciences (…
cmooney | May 15, 2007The latest stop of the Mooney-Nisbet show (or Nisbet-Mooney show) wasn't a stop at all--it was right here at home in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. We were glad to see some familiar faces in the audience, including ScienceBlogs' own Jason Rosenhouse. His post on the event is here.
Meanwhile, our own report (including some pictures) is here.
Finally, in other news, I'm close to being able to announce who my guest blogger (or bloggers) are going to be.....
cmooney | May 12, 2007
Over at Speaking Science 2.0, we've just put up pictures from the first joint Mooney-Nisbet talk, at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City. Click on over there and check it out.
Our next talk, open to the public: Monday May 14th, 5 pm, Washington D.C. at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Details here.
nisbetmc | May 9, 2007How do you activate an otherwise disinterested Republican base on the issue of global warming? As we argued in our Policy Forum article at Science, two possible frames are to recast the issue as really a matter of moral duty or alternatively as an issue that might promote increased profits from new technologies.
In recent weeks a new frame strategy has emerged and it involves re-focusing attention to the issue around dimensions of national security. Again, advocates need to be careful here. The national security frame borders on a lot of the interpretations that have previously been…
nisbetmc | May 8, 2007
On Monday, we will be doing our first Speaking Science 2.0 presentation for the DC-area community as part of the annual meetings of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The talk is open to the public, so we hope several inside-the-Beltway readers are able to make it out. (It follows the inaugural presentation we will be giving at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City on Thursday night of this week.)
Here are the details on the AIBS presentation (PDF flyer):
Monday, May 14
5:00 PM-6:00 PM
American Institute of Biological Sciences Annual Meeting
Capital Hilton Hotel
Washington, DC
nisbetmc | May 7, 2007With the semester finally winding down, over the weekend, I updated the tabs "What is Framing?" and "Popular Science vs. Framing." These new sections of my blog explain in detail research on framing and media influence and also present a generalizable typology of frames that re-appear across science debates. Both tabs include bibliographies of recommended literature.
cmooney | May 7, 2007
On April 6, 2007, as many of you already know, my good friend Matthew Nisbet and I published a policy forum article in the journal Science. A week later, we followed up with a somewhat longer commentary in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post. In both articles, we argued that scientists, while always remaining true to the science, should "frame" issues and topics in ways that make them personally relevant to broader audiences.
The response was overwhelming. There was controversy; there were also many endorsements.
Most of all, there were many calls, from bloggers and other commentators…
cmooney | May 4, 2007Last week, it was suggested, ridiculously, that the Nisbet-Mooney "framing science" team might actually be a sleeper cell of crypto-creationists.
Roger Pielke, Jr., who similarly has to deal with repeated charges that he's a conservative or a Republican, has now come to our defense:
Chris, and fellow blogger American University's Matt Nisbet, recently wrote two pieces for Science and The Washington Post, in which they engaged in a little Science Studies 101, pointing out that how issues are framed influences how they are received. Seems pretty straightforward. But in their piece they…
cmooney | April 27, 2007Nisbet has reproduced it but I'll do so here as well. Note that the letter comes from a biologist and a theology professor at the University of Portland:
Science 27 April 2007:Vol. 316. no. 5824, pp. 540 - 542DOI: 10.1126/science.316.5824.540c
LettersScience, Religion, and Climate Change
A moment of agreement has arrived for scientists to join forces with religious groups on issues of climate change. This is signaled by the summary for policy-makers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Fourth Assessment Report, the AAAS Board's consensus statement on climate change, and…
cmooney | April 20, 2007
Yesterday I gave a talk in Melbourne at the Bureau of Meteorology, sponsored by the Melbourne Centre of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. Although in my previous conference talk here I had already raised the subject of framing (see coverage here and here), this time (for the first time) I devoted an entire talk to laying out the arguments that I've been putting forward with the help of Matt Nisbet.
The audience was a small but high caliber group of a few dozen scientists. My impression is that they were extremely receptive, in general, to the message. Some responses to…
clock | April 19, 2007You may be aware that there is a huge discussion about framing science going on in the blogosphere. It has gotten out of hand. But, for those who want to dig in, or want to analyze the posts and comments (that is a lot of data!), here is the comprehensive list of links (excluded are links to Creationists' sites). Most of the posts also have long and interesting comment threads as well, worth reading through:
First, the source metarial, i.e., the stuff that appeared in non-blog media, and some background resources (which, if everyone have read them, would have reduced some of the…
clock | April 17, 2007I guess nobody reads me, and everyone reads PZ, but I am astonished how many people, after my eight lengthy posts on the topic, dozens of posts by others who 'get it' and literally hundreds of comments by people who 'get it', still equate framing with spin.
For instance, in his latest post criticizing Michael Ruse - and I agree with every word of the criticism which Ruse totally deserves - Larry sinks low in the last paragraph, conflates what Ruse does with Mooney/Nisbet stuff (I guess equating all your enemies-du-jour is a 'cool' rhetorical technique these days) and ends the otherwise…
clock | April 15, 2007On Neurophilosopher's blog, I saw this, one of the winning cartoons from the 2006 Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest, drawn by Reva Sharp from Warren, PA (btw, you have only about a month to send in your entries for the 2007 contest):
The image obviously mocks the relationship between the published peer-reviewed papers and the data they are based on, putting a negative spin on the way we all frame our scientific communication for the audience of peers, something that both Orac and I addressed previously.
But the cartoon also depicts how many participants in the debate,…
clock | April 15, 2007In the latest dust-up over framing science, an unfortunate frame is emerging that I want to nip in the bud, that 'appeasers' in the big culture war against religion are the same as 'framers' in the current debate, and likewise that 'anti-framers' and 'vocal atheists' are the same people. It is a result of confusion, and I want to clear it up right now.
You know that I am strongly in the Dawkins/Myers camp in the fight against religion:
Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are changing the landscape of the discourse, forming an environment in which it is possible to talk about atheism and religion on…