Abstract
At least two research traditions have direct relevance to the ethics of communicating science: journalism and media ethics, on the one hand (since much science communication takes place through mass media), and the ethics of science and engineering, on the other. Oddly, neither tradition quite captures what the ethics of science communication might be about, a topic that has received scant attention. Work on professional ethics (whether journalistic or scientific) tends to revolve around case studies of professional practice. This emphasis has particular value from a practitioner perspective but tends to address narrow issues (it is not okay to bribe sources or to falsify data) rather than broader ones (what principles should guide the strategic decisions of science communicators?).
At the broader scale, worries that persuasive power may interfere with expert advice go as far back as Plato’s Gorgias. We now face additional concerns about the disappearance into the technocratic sphere of decisions that, one might argue, ought to be made through public deliberation—a trend that may only be hastened by research-based campaigns to promote science or to adjust risk perceptions to match expert views. Scientists—and especially the institutional representatives who publicize their work, as well as the journalists who report it—face structural pressures to exaggerate the importance of research results. Attention to such ethical issues has been largely absent in studies of science, health, and risk communication. As a recent review noted, even as “science communication has been made the object of increasing political and academic attention,” the topic “has gone almost unnoticed as an area of serious, ethical concern” (Meyer & Sandøe, 2012, p. 174).
Both scholars and practitioners of science communication are motivated by the conviction that more public knowledge of science is a good thing, an argument we can hardly disagree with. Yet the promotion of science and science literacy by any means and to any end seems problematic, both from an ethical point of view and from a strategic point of view. If the overarching goal is to promote informed democratic discussion of science and science policy, knowledge is a good thing, but propaganda is a bad one. When does “selling science” (to adopt here Dorothy Nelkin’s well-known phrasing; 1995) become “manufacturing” propaganda (Herman & Chomsky, 1988)?
In this issue, Marjorie Kruvand’s article looks through the lens of journalistic sourcing to consider media representations of ethicists (as opposed to ethics itself), asking how and why bioethicist Arthur Caplan has become so prominent in media accounts. The answer lies partly in the nature of news routines but also in Caplan’s awareness of those routines and his ability to take advantage of them to get his points across. Like the media-savvy “visible scientists” Rae Goodell (1977) described, this “visible ethicist” speaks publicly on many kinds of bioethical questions, glossing over (for uncritical media consumers) the range of multiple perspectives on ethical issues that exist even among experts.
Michael Dahlstrom and Shirley Ho focus on the ethical considerations surrounding the use of narrative in messages. These are processed faster, remembered better, and more engaging than other forms of messages. They offer an effective way to bridge the world of science and that of ordinary experience. But narratives do not make explicit the assumptions and evidence on which they rely, and perhaps they are best used to persuade in those cases when there is widespread consensus about the values at stake, these authors conclude.
Finally, philosopher Paul Thompson explores the troubled boundary between expert and ordinary conceptions of risk, arguing that in the vernacular, to call something a risk is to invite serious consideration of what to do about it—that is, risk communication is inevitably a call to action. But when is this justified? Two broad frameworks familiar to ethicists provide partial answers: a utilitarian approach that evaluates action, including communication actions, by the benefits produced, and a Kantian approach that evaluates action by whether it respects people’s autonomy in empowering their decision making. Sometimes the two paths lead to the same result; other times they do not.
We do not mean to suggest that these articles provide many of the answers; all primarily raise questions instead. We hope to see more analysis of the ethics of science communication in the pages of this journal—and elsewhere—in the future.