The rhetoric of breakthroughs in the
communication of science
António
Fernando Cascais
Communication Sciences Department,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
There is a controversy in the
practice of science communication where it is commonplace to claim that the
presentation of scientific results is more important than the explanation of
the scientific process. In this article I elaborate the idea of a “rhetoric of
breakthroughs” which consists of:
a)
representing
scientific activity by its products;
b)
confining the
scientific processes to the attainment of final and cumulative results;
c)
exclusively
isolating the results which are evaluated a
posteriori as being successful applications (breakthroughs).
What is here implied may lead to:
a)
Ignoring the fact
that scientific activity is a process which is preceded by the compliance with a priori criteria of methodological
rigour in the investigation and progresses in a non-linear, erratic and
unpredictable way. In other words, the intrinsic revisability of all scientific
knowledge and the historicity inherent is downgraded compared to following
cognitive interests, which vary in time and in space, to the point that they
become incompatible or mutually exclusive.
b)
Dismissing the
influence of productive error in making decisions and scientific choices, in
such a manner that the success in the attainment of results is derived from the
rigour in methodological conception.
This implies the necessary elimination of everything else (the
rationally unexplainable, the statistically exceptional) that exceeds the
domain of rigour delimited by method and regarded as its illegitimate
by-product, rather than the mark of its limits.
c)
Provoking an
effect of censorship over the process of production of scientific knowledge:
whether as a producer of risk, in the sense that it promotes the illusion of controlled
techno scientific risk; whether as a producer of means, in the sense that it
integrates purposes (those intended at first to be attained) with results
(those actually attained at the end of the process), defining retrospectively
the former by the latter and exclusively identifying as results of the
scientific process those which are evaluated as being positive, excluding those
results that are fortuitous, unexpected or adverse.
The rhetoric of breakthroughs is
not restricted to the media, but they undoubtedly supply its most significant
examples: “For most people, the reality of science is what they read in the
press. They understand science less through direct experience or past education
than through the filter of journalistic language and imagery.” (Nelkin, 1995:
2-3). According to Nelkin, in science communication, and particularly in
medical and biological sciences communication, which have a strong emotional
repercussion on the public because they are closer to the dramatic facts of
daily live, it is frequent that imagery substitutes contents. News focus is
seen as more important than scientific and technological competition between
individuals, institutions and countries, and investigation is overshadowed by a
series of spectacular events described with hyperboles that take aim mostly at
the rising of expectations and the public’s interest. These fickle descriptions, however, quickly cease to be promoted
just to be deplored, whenever expectations are frustrated, so that “(t)he
images of science and technology in the press (...) are often shifting,
reflecting current fashions and prevailing fears. Today’s exaggerated promises
– of new fixes, new devices, new cures – become tomorrow’s sensationalized
problems” (Nelkin, 1995: 63).
In
order to have a thorough and fruitful comprehension of what signifies the
rhetoric of breakthroughs, it is indispensable to situate it in a broader
hermeneutic context comprising the dynamics of techno science and the rhetoric
of science, which precedes science communication itself.
The logotechnical condition of modern
knowledge
The rhetoric of breakthroughs is
akin to the submission of scientific rigour to technological efficacy that
characterizes modern science. The will
to fully describe reality and thus to elaborate an ontology has been abandoned.
Instead, this is now being deduced from the efficacy in manipulating technique,
which implies that the current scientific descriptions of the state of affairs
are descriptions of the effects of the very techno scientific modification over
the state of affairs. This is what onto technology consists of, it can only be
seen as theory of reality as far as it is a theory of modified reality and it
can only be seen as a description of the state of affairs as far as it is a
theory of the transforming action over such state of affairs. More explicitly:
modern science is science because it performs, in such a manner that wherein
the old contemplative scientia found
its correlate in the stability of contemplated reality, techno science finds
its correlate in the plasticity of the objects to be manipulated.
From this point of view, we are, in
fact, moving towards the accomplishment of the Baconian dream of a nature more
perfect than itself and, in consequence, we are also about to place our hope on
the reliable artefact, which is a product of techno science. What nature
doesn’t do, or does wrongly, we shall do better instead. The techno scientific
efficacy comes from this manner of embodying a new secularized providence that
runs on a “see and believe” regime, in which the techno scientific results take
over the role of ancient prodigies, to the extent that progress on a practical
level is no longer equated with progress on a theoretical level (Sanitt, 2000:
74). In other words, the ancient naturalistic fallacy, revealed since David
Hume to G.E. Moore, has been replaced by a new artificiality fallacy: only what
is techno scientifically possible is truly real, only what is possible exists
in fact.
It so happens that the increasing
dependence on sophisticated high-tech science, which is, at the same time,
extremely expensive and subjected to regulation, and also the need of financing
has taken scientists to privilege such a strategy of communication that
emphasizes the accomplishments and the safety of the processes that attain
results: “The media can play an important role in enhancing public
understanding, but they frequently failed to do so. (…) but too often science
in the press is more a subject for consumption than for public scrutiny, more a
source of entertainment than of information (…) Too often the coverage is
promotional and uncritical, encouraging apathy, a sense of impotence, and the
ubiquitous tendency to defer to expertise. Focusing on individual
accomplishments and dramatic or controversial events, journalists convey little
about the sociology of science, the structure of scientific institutions, or
the daily routines of research. We read about the results of research and the
stories of success, but not about the process, the dead ends, the wrong turns.
Who discovered what is more newsworthy than what was discovered or how”
(Nelkin, 1995:162). What is, in fact, encouraged by science communication that
privileges results is what Pierre Bourdieu (1997) called Fast Thinking and Sanitt (2000) the Eureka effect, against which the very professionals of
communication find themselves at times handicapped and helpless: “While most
journalists try to avoid a sensationalist and titillating style, they do tend
to magnify events and to overestimate if not sensationalize their significance.
Research applications, after all, make better copy than qualifications.
‘Revolutionary breakthroughs’ are more exciting than ‘recent findings’. And
controversies are more newsworthy than routine events” (Nelkin, 1995:112-113).
The Rhetoric of Breakthroughs in the context
of Rhetoric of Science
Having contextualized the rhetoric
of breakthroughs in the characteristics of modern techno science, one should
now put it in connection with the rhetoric of science which precedes it and is
intrinsic to the very scientific discourse, as in Alan Gross: “We can argue
that scientific knowledge is not special, but social; the result not of
revelation, but of persuasion” (Gross, 1996:20). Rhetoric would then be coextensive
to all scientific discourse, in such a way that: “A complete rhetoric of
science must avoid this accusation: after analysis, something unrhetorical
remains, a hard ‘scientific core’” (Gross, 1996:33). Gross states that, from a
rhetorical point of view, the scientific discovery should rightly be described
as invention: “To call scientific theories inventions, therefore, is to
challenge the intellectual privilege and authority of science. Discovery is an
honorific, not a descriptive term (…) The term invention, on the other hand, captures the historically contingent
and radically uncertain character of all scientific claims, even the most
successful. If scientific theories are discoveries, their unfailing
obsolescence is difficult to explain; if these theories are rhetorical
inventions, no explanation of their radical vulnerability is necessary” (Gross,
1996:7).
In
scientific rationality, logos, ethos and pathos are indissolubly bonded: “…ethos, pathos and logos are naturally present in
scientific texts: as a fully human enterprise, science can constrain, but
hardly eliminate, the full range of persuasive choices on the part of its
participants” (Gross, 1996:16). As a matter of fact, “(s)cientists are not
persuaded by logos alone; science is
no exception to the rule that the persuasive effect of authority, of ethos,
weighs heavily” (Gross, 1996:12). Therefore: “From a rhetorical point of view,
the high esteem bestowed upon science gives its communications a built-in ethos
of especial intensity” (Gross, 1996:21). In turn, science is not indifferent to
pathos: “…tropes like irony and
hyperbole do appear regularly in scientific reports, belying the alleged
reportorial nature of these texts…” (Gross, 1996:18), in such a way that
“(e)motional appeals are clearly present in the social interactions of which
science is the product” (Gross, 1996:14). The rhetoric of breakthroughs
repeats, on the scope of science communication, the articulation between logos, ethos and pathos, already
existing in the rhetoric of the very scientific discourse.
The Rhetoric of Breakthroughs in the context of Scientific (Il)literacy
The rhetoric of breakthroughs
should not be fundamentally understood as a problem of the public, but as a
problem of science writers, above all.
More than being just derived from the public’s scientific illiteracy,
the rhetoric of breakthroughs is common not only to professional science
writers that do not belong to the community of peer scientists, but also to
scientists that, whether as a parallel career, whether as a mundane appearance
beyond the academy, become science writers.
Surprisingly
enough, the rhetoric of breakthroughs prevails, with amazing frequency, in the
official events of public policies for the promotion of scientific culture,
organized with scientist’s cooperation and sealed on high profile decision
instances. Without being unavoidable, the rhetoric of breakthroughs regards the
way the scientific activity is represented by the share of public not initiated
in scientific methodology and by scientists themselves, when they become the
first public of their own science writing. When undertaking science writing,
scientists begin to pour onto science the mundane view in which are expressed
the values, motives and expectations (negative or positive) of the social
world, which they address.
When assuming the role of science
writers, scientists do not escape from the traps which professional writers are
accustomed to: “Editorial constraints reflect perceptions of the public’s
interests, preferences, and ability to understand complex subjects. Seldom do
journalists or their editors receive systematic feedback from readers. Yet,
based on their readers’ observations, they maintain a set of assumptions about
their readers and viewers that influences the selection and style of science
news” (Nelkin, 1995:112). It is in general language discourse that the rhetoric
of breakthroughs is expressed and, indeed, not in the formal language that
reigns inside the laboratory. By anticipating, imaginably, what might be the forma mentis of the ideal public, in an effort of assimilating it within
a vulgarised discourse, by force of translating into general language the
formal hermetism of scientific language, scientists fell easy prey for their
own representations of science. Representations which they will, in turn,
transmit to the public as if it was science “as it is done”, and not, as would
be desirable, how science is represented by scientists. This also happens in
textbooks elaborated with the cooperation of scientists aiming to initiate in
science a public from which, one day, those who shall thicken the rows of
science will be recruited: “Though the claim is often made, especially by
scientists, that one learns about science, about the scientific approach, about
how to be scientific, through studying the content of science, all the evidence
says otherwise. Through learning textbook science, one is misled about the
nature of scientific activity by learning only about relatively successful
science, the things that have remained within science up to the present. In
scientific texts, one hardly ever encounters the phenomenon of unsuccessful
science, and yet history teaches that the science being done at any given time
will largely be discarded, even in the short space of a few years, as
unsuccessful” (Bauer, 1992: 11).
Scientists do not gain in
objectivity merely by trying to be objective or by talking about the science
they make. Scientist’s view on the science they make becomes suitable to the
public’s eye that consumes it, both converging to a horizon of common
expectations destined to the same social use of science. It is in this sense
that, by studying the rhetoric of science, Alan Gross allows himself to talk
about the scientific article as a myth (Gross, 1996:95) and Sanitt (2000)
reminds us that the making of science is not immune to the prevailing myths and
prejudices in the socio-cultural environment, resembling an idea cherished by
hermeneutics. Nowadays, it is not hard to trip over examples: “In the 1990s
research on embryo cloning, pregnant postmenopausal women and genetically
engineered pigs is drawing readers and selling magazines. And journalists play
up the biggest collider, the newest techniques of bioengineering, and the
riskiest technologies. Indeed, the style of reporting has been remarkably
consistent over time” (Nelkin, 1995:1). Jeanneret (1994 :85) reminds us that, in fact, the languages of
science and that of science communication are much closer than what is usually
believed.
One must say that the very dynamics
of cognitive production derived from techno scientific development produces
illiteracy, regularly segregates it, as the scientific language moves further
away from daily language and unfolds several other hermetisms in each subject.
This would compel us to conclude that the openness of science to other subjects produces its own
closure in new isolated
languages, sometimes to the point of incommensurability. Felt has indicated at
least two reasons which contradict the image of an ´open´ science: “Firstly,
the process of institutionalization, differentiation and specialization of the
scientific system has created even bigger access barriers for those who do not
have formal educational pre-requisites (…) As consequence, there is a feeling of
a bigger distance between the different domains of investigation within the
scientific system, but also of the public in relation to science. Secondly,
although we have witnessed, during the 20th century, the
multiplication of media that opened new spaces where science meets the public
(…), that, paradoxically, did not lead to closeness between science and public,
nor to the birth of what might be called “mise en culture de la science”. On
the contrary, the more sophisticated and denser the exchange of information
became, the people who already had a considerable initial intellectual capital
became ever so privileged – a phenomenon designated as growing disparity of
knowledge” (Felt, 2000 a: 265-266). On this matter, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
(1996: 20-23) has spoken of a cultural paradox that consists of the fact that
the more techno science is disseminated on daily life, the more opaque and
inaccessible their products become to their users, in such a way that the
technical objects omnipresent in the world of today strike us with the same
sense of mystery as black holes in space. This phenomenon is not just concerned
with the relationship between techno science and the public; it is also noticed
in the very core of science, in the relationship between scientists. Indeed,
the hyper-specialization and fragmentation of subjects caused by scientific
development has turned scientists into specialized ignorants who, among
colleagues of different subjects, behave towards one another as the lay public
towards science in general.
Conclusion
What we understand by rhetoric of
breakthroughs must be seen as an effect of censorship due to an illiteracy
naturally segregated by techno scientific dynamics. Those who are not initiated in a specific area of scientific
specialization, and those who are not initiated in the scientific process in
general, tend to transform the products of techno science within their own
representation of the originating process. Incomprehensible, the process can
only be approached by the respective results, being thus ignored as a producer
of possible risks (Beck, 2000). In science communication texts, the rhetoric of
breakthroughs is the reading operator of the scientific process. And the main
consequence to be drawn from such phenomena is that, for being written and
perceived as a producer of results, which without a doubt it is, science
censors its primal and unquestionable nature, that of being a means to an end,
even before it can produce any breakthrough whatsoever.
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