Science, politics and PR: I'm a broken record

My science communication posts as a text cloud

I'm going to be away from the blog for a bit, but I saw a great piece from Christie Wilcox at Science Sushi  (via the Scientific American blog network) about scientists and social media.    She struck some themes I know I've mentioned here before... a lot.  Of course, since she's a scientist, she has enormous credibility.  But here's a compilation of what this flack has had to say about this issue, and I think it boils down to this: scientists need to do more and better outreach to non-scientists.  I hope you'll take a look at one or two of these inane rants.

Science has a serious PR problem
Science bloggers discussing scientists discussing science blogs
Orac, mockery, and the absence of outreach
Making science relevant
Science, politics, PR, and social media
Science PR... missing the point
Science needs a strategy
BREAKING: bloggers are misunderstood
So what do you do about it?
My free PR advice to scientists: it's not just about media training
Why science blogs give me hope
Bonnie Tyler's words live on
Ending isolationism in politics, science and social media: the battle for mom
When "rapid response" isn't enough
Science Cheerleader and the brouhaha
Getting serious about climate PR
#scio11: what's next for science online?
Climate change and strategic communications
The Science-to-English dictionary doesn't include the words "fuck off"
#scimom reflections
Beauty pageant contestants vs. science advocates: this isn't helpful
Evolutionary diplomacy
Science has a politics problem
Science has a politics problem, continued
FIRST: "Science is accessible for me."

FIRST: "Science is accessible for me."

If you're a fan of the science blogosphere as I am, you've probably heard about FIRST, a not-for-profit founded by inventor Dean Kamen that inspires young people to get involved with science, technology, engineering and mathematics through participation in robotics competitions.  I first learned about FIRST when I read Sheril Kirshenbaum's interview with Dean Kamen.  There was also an ABC television special about FIRST featuring will.i.am, front man for the Black Eyed Peas. (will.i.am is popular in my house, albeit for a somewhat different reason.)

More than 21,000 high-school-age kids are participating in FIRST this year.  Kids join teams in their hometowns and those teams build working robots that are designed to carry out specific tasks the FIRST leadership develops. The teams score points based on how well the robots meet their tasks, and winning teams get all sorts of perks, such as visiting the White House.

The good folks at FIRST gave me the opportunity to talk with one of those teams who went to DC last year - First Tech Challenge team #3489, a group of four smart, ambitious and engaging students from Coatesville PA and who call themselves "Minds In Gear."  While I thoroughly enjoyed talking with the team about what they were learning, it quickly occurred to me that these young leaders are teaching us all a few things as well. This interview with the team is well worth the 16 minutes and 15 seconds you'll spend listening to it.

I was immediately struck by two things in this interview. First, Sasha Wall discussed the complementary nature FIRST has with her classes:

I use a lot of the leadership skills that I gained in first tech challenge and I apply them in in my classes when we’re doing projects… and I’m able to take my math skills and apply them to building a robot.

Second, as I noted that the team had three young women and one young man, Alex McCabe took a question I asked about female role models in science and just knocked it out of the park.

Establishing female role models in science is so important because you turn on the TV and you see a few poor role models, and if you just pay attention to the media you don’t really get the idea “oh, science is so wonderful, science is ACCESSIBLE for me, and I think that’s really important.

I could try to elaborate on this, but it seems to me Sasha and Alex do quite well speaking for themselves. After the interview the team gave me a live video demonstration of their robot from last year - and I'll just put the rest of the FIRST teams on notice - Minds In Gear will be tough to beat. They invited me to chat with them again once this year's competition is over. I'm already looking forward to it.

So I wrote a piece in PR News...

If you have a subscription you can read it here.

I compared the work of Honda and Toyota as they used social media to launch their most popular models in 2012 - the Honda Civic and the Toyota Camry.  Both companies have had challenges in recent years, and 2012 is an important year for both models.

In comparing the two I used data from Social EQ, a model developed by my company, APCO Worldwide. Social EQ's model uses opinion research to help determine what "Social Informants" - that's the name we give to those uber-users of social media who influence the online discussions the rest of us have all the time - consider to be an effective social media presence for a company or organization.  Since the Social EQ team already reviewed the 40 "Most Admired" companies as rated by Fortune Magazine, we already had a good snapshot of Honda and Toyota.

Both companies basically got middling reviews when compared to the other most admired companies.  They both have decent, easy-to-find online content, but Social Informants want more direct access to the people who work there when they have questions or feedback.  I notice that both companies are trying to do just that, but in different ways.  Honda is trying to strengthen its reputation with its customers by starting a grassroots-y YouTube-driven original music video contest.   Toyota is rolling out the model - quite literally - via webcast and trying more direct outreach to leading voices in different online communities, like my good pal Tim Hurst at Earth & Industry.

The Social Informants initially gave Honda a slight edge over Toyota when the Social EQ team did their research, but I have to say I like what Toyota did with the Camry a bit more than what Honda did.  Honda was creative and fun, but Toyota was more direct and did a good job identifying online community leaders.  Bottom line I think both companies deserve credit for trying new things but I think Toyota closed their social media gap with Honda a bit here.

The Jobs Speech

It was too long, but it was clear, simple, and with a direct message.  The bill is bipartisan, it's all about jobs - solid name "American Jobs Act" - and Congress should pass it now.  Not bad.

And thanks again to Wordle, which comes through when even Cliff's Notes is too much...

Science has a politics problem, continued

Gerty-Z and Blue in Texas have some great comments on my previous post.  They ask the most important question about the "politics problem" facing science today - what do you do about it?  Scientists, like the rest of us, are extraordinarily busy and can't always just drop what they're doing to jump into politics. Blue suggested I augment the post to include links to jobs in "science and public policy."

Well, Sheril has those links at her blog. But I'm not talking about policy; I'm talking about politics. The two terms are related, but definitely not the same thing.  I've said this before about particular scientific issues:

The problem is simple: those who support the status quo have a coherent, coordinated, and well-funded communications strategy. Those who support real change (and sound science) do not.

The model for political success is out there.  Scientists, collectively, need to do what other special interests do - unite, pool resources, and develop a coordinated, long-term strategic campaign that includes lobbying, contributing to political campaigns, grassroots organizing, and media relations.  That's what the energy industry does.  That's what the health care industry does.  That's what the financial services industry does.  These industries achieve success despite having countless members who are simply too busy with their real lives to lobby or go on television or knock on doors. 

They succeed because they delegate communications and political strategy to experts in THOSE fields.  They don't simply leave it to their "professional" organizations. They retain PR and lobbying shops like my company or my competitors. We develop strategies and test messages. We leverage our relationships in politics and media to get our clients' priorities in front of the right people.  We build alliances with other influential groups and people.  We do real outreach to both "opinion elites" and the general public through advertising, social media, and PR. We keep clients focused and disciplined.

And we win.  It doesn't happen overnight, but we win.

And so advocates of science face another set of challenges.  The first is coming to some kind of consensus that this is actually a worthwhile approach.  The second is developing a comprehensive strategy that acknowledges there is no "silver bullet" but many steps are necessary.  The third is marshaling the resources - money, time, leadership. The fourth is maintaining enough discipline to stay "on message" and remain united in a goal.

I know there are a lot of groups out there already working on this sort of thing - AAAS, NCSE, UCC, and so on. Those are good organizations run by good, smart people.  But they don't coordinate efforts enough, they don't work a lot with firms like mine, and they don't spend the money it takes to be successful.

I read about a new "science PAC" being formed, and that's a good start, but the only organization I actually saw referred to as a "PAC" wasn't a PAC at all - it was a 501c3 non-profit.  Those organizations have significant restrictions on lobbying activity and don't contribute to campaigns.

I know this isn't easy.  But I also know that without a coordinated strategy that combines all these elements we get the status quo - a relatively small group of smart, committed people working hard trying good ideas that don't endure on their own.  We get things like Science Debate. Or a letter signed by a bunch of very smart academics that is good for maybe a news article and won't get far in Congress.  We get Chris Mooney media-training scientists whenever he can, but basically in a defensive posture - "responding" to "crazy questions" as opposed to developing and framing story ideas and firing FIRST, not firing back.  We get phone calls or emails to legislators that get nothing but a "thank you for your comment" response.  We get small-dollar contributions that lack the political impact of "bundling" into recognizable groups.

Meanwhile, the interests who spend money change the rules to preserve their advantage.  They push for laws to create "SuperPAC's" and new organizations that allow them to conceal their true identity.  They write loopholes into ethics laws.  In many cases, they draft legislative language for members of Congress and watch those members file that language verbatim. They hold more fundraisers.

Bottom line: if something is important enough, you spend money and time on it.  If it's not, you just talk about it.

Science has a politics problem

Scientists are understandably upset that presidential candidates (and the President himself) see a political upside to ignoring their work.    And, as scientists often do, they're analyzing this.  Stuff like comparing the brains of liberals and conservatives.

Sure, some liberals are scared of things like genetically modified foods or animal testing, as John Timmer points out.  But to me this is largely a GOP phenomena.  Normally I don't get all that wrapped up in the crazy statements that political candidates make early in the presidential primary; generally these statements are designed simply to get attention and then walked back once the cameras are rolling.   You know, like "social security is a ponzi scheme." Whatever.  

But I hope my scientist friends also look at the "meta-analysis" of this issue coming from noteworthy people in the GOP.  Mike Lofgren, until recently a veteran GOP congressional staffer, wrote a stunningly candid piece for Truth Out that explains how the current "lunatics" leading his party prompted his retirement.  This in particular struck me:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
 A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Get that?  Lofgren, a Republican, is claiming that the GOP strategy is to destroy the government so they can rule it.  And that strategy relies on an ignorant public full of "low information voters."

Of course, implicit in this self-destruct strategy is the willful attacks on any expertise that might save us.   Jonah Goldberg, one of the leading "intellectuals" of the right from his perch at National Review wrote a recent article called "Seduced by the Cult of Experts" where he proudly asserts:

The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The Left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it’s going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don’t have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can.

Outstanding, isn't it? "The Left" has to believe not in the merits of any argument being put forward but in the authority of those making the arguments, because if the rest of us pay attention to things like education or experience we might actually have to accept expensive things like, say, taking the lead out of paint. Thank Heavens markets don't have to worry about such silly things.

Ironically the folks at The Economist have the audacity to suggest otherwise:

...markets reward expertise handsomely. Unemployment rates fall and compensation rises as one obtains more education. Holders of advanced degrees do best in the labour market. Mr Goldberg may not value expertise, but markets do. That doesn't mean, of course, that we should turn over governance of a country and its economy to a Council of Learned Citizens. It does mean, however, that when elected officials are carrying out the important business of government it is a very good idea for those officials to rely on the analysis of experts. It's what the market would do.

To me this is a very simple issue. There's currently a political upside to ignoring science. If you want politicians to accept science, you have to show them the political downside of disregarding it. Scientists don't do that very well.  They don't speak the language politicians understand.  They don't donate money in large amounts.   They don't work with politically-savvy PR firms to develop real strategies and test messages.   They don't conduct outreach on a large scale in the way that critics of science do - ways that would address that "low-information voter" thing.

In this way scientists are no different than any other "special interest."  Most special interests claim not to be "special" at all - rather they feel they are integral to our success as a nation or more.   Scientists could certainly make that claim.  But inside the Beltway, there's a long line of interests all claiming to be central to our mutual prosperity.   Science is at a huge disadvantage because by definition it speaks with several voices, not one.