Understanding Some Aspects Of Science Communication In India
“Not only is it important to ask questions and find the answers, as a scientist I felt obligated to communicate with the world what we were learning.” — Stephen William Hawking, renowned theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
It has been quite some time since I have been drawn towards the domain of Science Communication. I find this field fascinating and its power to spread science-awareness among masses interesting as well as immense! To know more about the growth of this area in context to my country, I recently participated in an online session conducted by the Science Policy Forum, an open collaborative platform jointly established by IndiaBioscience, the DST-centre for policy research (CPR), IISc-Bangalore, and Sustainable Water Future Programme. The aim of this virtual discussion was to highlight the developments and challenges of this interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary discipline in India.
Urgent and Much Needed
Subhra Priyadarshini, Chief Editor of Nature India, spoke about the utmost importance of this field, especially in the present times. Science communication, according to her, is one of the most critical components for India in her transition into the next stage of quality research and innovation.
The three basic tenets on which a new policy is formed in India are evidence-driven, thematic, inclusive, and bottom-up. But, science communication in this country right now lacks most of these components in some way or another. If we are to truly democratize science and its communication, we need transparent and evidence-backed communication.
Ms. Priyadarshini elaborated that for her, communication does not mean a congratulatory and self-propagation propaganda-based discourse that closes its doors to criticism or feedback. Communication means a ‘to-and-fro’ and saying ‘congrats and thanks’ with as much ease as saying ‘sorry, we goofed up but now we have new knowledge about it’. It means accepting the evolving nature of science and the knowledge itself! Also, there is a need for some sort of an advisory body that our politicians and government authorities can consult before making science-based comments or decisions.
Each publically funded scientist should have the training and freedom to speak either by themselves or through their institute communication cells. Only then can the golden era of inclusivity and democracy in science and its communication be truly heralded. Our country should harness the young demographic for communicating science and really shake-up the already existing systems of publicly funded research to be freely available and accessible, most importantly, in regional languages. Another crucial aspect is the creation of core-thematic areas that present urgent science-society links, for instance, climate change, ecology, biodiversity, and other grand challenges that our country faces. Such examples should be viewed as priority-communication areas. Towards the end, Ms. Priyadarshini emphasized that science communication is not an alternate science career anymore, rather, it is a necessary skill for GENnext researchers and scientists.
Open Communication — The Need Of The Hour
Mr. Pallava Bagla, a photojournalist in New Frontiers in Science & Developments, discussed that science communication should get a value in the policy. This field is a necessity and it should be incentivized. As well all can see that the present COVID-19 crisis is forcing our country to have a new science, technology, and innovation policy and effective communication of science is an integral part of it.
Apart from the content, a good piece of communication needs photographs, graphics, animations, short videos, and so forth. In essence, it should be creative and attractive so that it can capture the attention of people successfully. The researchers and scientists should make sincere efforts to try to reach the public and for this, there is a need to look at the vernacular languages that the people of this country understand.
Mr. Bagla concluded with the point that for long the Indian scientists have relied on western journals to publish their works. He feels that the present times offer a great opportunity to India in terms of developing her own low-cost, high-value journals with good quality editing. This will definitely boost efficient peer-to-peer communication between scientists, a component that is eventually vital for their communication with the public.
The Right To Information
Mr. Rajendra S. Kondapalli, filmmaker (Director at Pulse Media Private Limited), started by saying that science communication should be made mandatory for all science projects and programs that we take up in India. It is very significant since as citizens, we all have every right to know the science that is happening in this country. It is a social responsibility of researchers and scientists to communicate and share their works with the common audience.
As a science filmmaker, Mr. Kondapalli strongly feels that a majority of the projects do not have a fund allocation for the communication of their science. There is a need for us to properly address this issue by focusing on having the required outreach programs and other similar activities. It will serve two purposes. Firstly, it will result in the audio-visual documentation of a particular work of science, and secondly, it will help in spreading mass-awareness on a large scale. It would be great to have this practice in the research institutes and organizations of our country, and it should also be inculcated in policy decisions related to science. Having science communication units at these places will help in the generation and spread of authentic information in a manner that is understandable to the public.
Researchers and scientists need to communicate their work among people as a priority, instead of being reluctant to take out time for this task. We should encourage more and more workshops, courses, and other events that would aid us in giving effective science communicators for the country. A lot of science is happening in India, making this field as a good career option — the focus should be to motivate people to work in this area in various formats.
Not Just An Additional Job!
In the words of Dr. TV Venkateswaran, Senior Scientist at Vigyan Prasar, communicating science is not like a translational job, rather, it is a part of the continuum of actually pursuing science. Any science sociologist would tell us that regarding any work of science, there is a context of discovery (descriptive question), followed by a context of justification (normative question), and in the end, there is a context of transmission (communicative question).
Even though the dissemination of science is important, we also need to move towards dialogue. Science influences a lot of decisions that we take in our public lives. Now, what about participation and citizen science? We need things like science clubs where the general public actually participates along with the researchers in understanding and interpreting science.
Since we are living in a techno-science world, the ambivalence aspect is becoming more and more necessary. Vaccines, genetically modified organisms, pandemics like COVID-19, environmental issues, and so on — all these subjects are under question in terms of pseudoscience, fake news, and misinformation. Our science policies should be such that they address such questions as efficiently as possible.
Moreover, the constitution of groups with people of similar interests and common aims regarding science communication is extremely essential for science to progress and seep into this country in the future. Most of the current strategies that we use are anecdotal and prejudiced and are not based on evidence. Furthermore, there is no significant research on science communication. We need to allocate sufficient space and time and create opportunities so that this useful field can flourish.
Communication At Common Sense Level
Dr. E Hemaprabha, a postdoctoral fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, believes that science communication is taking the concepts of science to the common sense level. In this way, a significant number of misconceptions among people can be overcome.
She moved on to discuss that communicating science is not only beneficial for the common people but also for the communicators in numerous ways, and the researchers and scientists need to understand this point. Long story short, it is the duty of science communicators to explain to the public that everything in science is important and matters!
The next section of this session was a question-and-answer round where these people discussed various points raised by the public on various social media platforms and stressed that science communication is not just about marketing science, but it is also about inculcating critical attitudes in the society.
India is on the right track but it still has a long way to go…
