Barriers to Scicomm

Question 1

What are the 8 barriers to effective science communication?

Answer 1

Mechanical
Prejudice and expectations
Cognitive bias
Logical Fallacies
Cognitive dissonance and rationalization
Limits of worry and compassion
Fake News

Question 2

What is a brief explanation of mechanical barriers, and provide examples.

Answer 2

• external factors/influences that may make communication difficult
• e.g. loud construction, language barrier, cost/affordability

Question 3

What is a brief explanation of the barrier prejudice and expectations and provide examples

Answer 3

• pre-existing ideas/attitudes that cause audience to jump to conclusions
  e. g. mistrust, perceived gov’t or other influence, political/religious beliefs, bigotry, racism, sexism

Question 4

What are some approaches/solutions to deal with prejudice and expectations in science communication?

Answer 4

• build a rapport
• be honest about affiliations and feelings
• be sensitive
• catch audience off guard with unexpected answers

Question 5

Briefly explain what cognitive bias is and provide examples

Answer 5

• subconscious errors in rational judgement that the brain makes when it tries to simplify
• e.g. confirmation, sampling, egocentric, survivorship, memory, social biases

Question 6

_____ bias occurs when the brain looks for and favours information that supports what you already believe or want to believe

Answer 6

Confirmation

Question 7

______ bias occurs when you examine only a small or non-representative sample

Answer 7

Sampling

Question 8

_____ bias occurs when you give more value to your own ideas and experiences than those of others

Answer 8

Egocentric

Question 9

_____ bias occurs when you only examine individuals that survived some selection process

Answer 9

Survivorship

Question 10

_____ bias occurs when we incorrectly remember information or misattribute a memory

Answer 10

Memory

Question 11

What are different examples of social biases?

Answer 11

• attribution biases: more likely to blame behaviours on internal factors than external factors
• conformity biases: people more likely to believe/behave the way others do/is accepted
• ingroup biases: preferential treatment to those in our own social group

Question 12

What are the main strategies of debiasing?

Answer 12

• incentives
• nudges: present info in a way that may elicit desired behaviour
• training

Question 13

Briefly explain what logical fallacies are in terms of being a barrier to science communication and provide examples

Answer 13

• intentional or unintentional flaws or errors in reasoning

- e.g. causation and correlation, comparing two things that shouldn’t logically be, absence of proof proves the opposite

Question 14

Briefly explain what cognitive dissonance is and provide an example

Answer 14

• uncomfortable state of holding two contradicting ideas or opinions
• e.g. people that love birds but allow their cats to roam free outside

Question 15

What are the 4 strategies to address/resolve dissonance?

Answer 15

1. change one of dissonant thoughts
2. change behaviour that contributes to dissonance
3. add new thoughts to rationalize
4. trivialize dissonance

Question 16

What is single-action bias?

Answer 16

• bias that causes people to perform single small action to reduce worry/make them feel better instead of making broad behavioural changes
• occurs with limits of worry and compassion

Question 17

______ is unintentionally false info that is not meant to cause harm, and _______ is deliberately misleading/false info meant to manipulate/cause harm

Answer 17

1. misinformation

2. disinformation