Trustworthy Scientific Writing

A fairly recent publication in the American Sociological Review sheds light on this topic of scientific literacy, and provides another reason for us - as scientists, writers, and citizens - to be concerned about the public's knowledge and trust in the field of science.  In "Politicization of Science in the Public Shere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010," Gordon Gauchat details a research project which aimed to detail the reasons for the American public's trust (and distrust) of science and science writing. Gauchat's goal was to test the theory that in recent decades, public mistrust of science has increased. Through examining results from the 1974-2010 General Social Survey, he found that the theory of declining trust seems to be false. In reality, the level of trust in science has generally remained steady in most political  and social groups, save the conservatives and the very religious. 

The groups who had a distrust in scientific findings in the seventies are the same groups who still do today, with the politically conservative being those with the most growth in their uneasiness, compared to liberals and moderates. The most startling idea about these findings is that those who have had the most notable decline in trust of science are among the most educated people in the nation. What this means for the science writer is that we must write to do more than simply inform and educate. We cannot simply aim to educate the public, but rather foster a sense of yearning, in order to make citizens want to learn more about what they are reading, to make them believe what we write. 

Scientific writing is just that, scientific, meaning that it is based in evidence and research, which needs to be included in scientific publications. When writing, authors need to be conscious of the fact that there are many skeptics in the United States who will be reading their work, and questioning its validity. The resulting work needs to have a good deal of concrete evidence and reliable sources to quell the minds of these educated skeptics. The idea is not to use fluffy persuasive jargon that we learn in high school writing classes, but to use evidence based research to describe the scientific findings and be persuasive enough to properly reach the skeptical audiences. The writings must also be from unbiased standpoints, and tell more than one side of the story, when possible. They should not be attacking, but address opposing viewpoints in order to reach a broader audience. Only when scientific writing is as objective as it is informative, reaching a broad audience of educated Americans, can we have a successfully scientifically literate public to promote a more educated and unbiased democracy.