Scientists and creative professionals may have more common ground after all, argued a man who has worked in both fields.
Biologist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson urged the science community to embrace the mass media as a tool to communicate at a lecture in the Memorial Union’s Pima Auditorium Thursday afternoon.
The talk, “Don’t be such a Scientist!,” was a Darwin Distinguished Lecture and part of a series of events in the ongoing Darwinfest, an ASU celebration of the life, ideas and spirit of Charles Darwin.
“How can we get more people interested in science?” Olson asked a crowd of about 45. “The answer is through mass media. It’s powerfully important.”
After earning his doctorate from Harvard and a stint as a professor, Olson attended film school at the University of Southern California. Two of his films, “A Flock of Dodos” and “Sizzle,” which highlight intelligent design and global warming, respectively, were screened to audiences on campus this week.
Olson described his films as intentionally lacking “too much information” and incorporating humor to appeal to a broader audience.
“The whole field of global warming is characterized by too much information. We needed to do something lighter,” he said.
The dilemma filmmakers face when addressing a scientific topic, Olson said, is whether to produce a work that is accurate but not popular, or something popular with errors.
Olson emphasized the importance of storytelling in today’s society.
“Scientists need to look to the knowledge in the world of storytelling and mass media,” Olson said. Drawing on such expertise will “make you a better communicator.”
By incorporating a storytelling structure in communicating their findings, scientists will more effectively explain complex information to the lay population and generate interest, Olson said.
“For scientists, half of the job is doing science, and the other half of the job is communicating,” Olson said.
If they don’t do it, someone else will, he added, as seen in the sheer rise of science-related content on the Internet.
“We’re at a revolutionary point in science communication,” he said. “We have all these blogs that have cropped up and YouTube and a whole new voice emerging. It’s interesting because it’s such a raw, unfiltered voice.”
Olson drew parallels between storytelling and scientific writing. The three acts in the interpreting of a story in a film are similar to the stages of producing a scientific research paper, he said.
“The first act is like the intro, the second act the findings and results and the third act is like the discussion.”
A challenge that scientists face in the process is being tethered to a notion of objectivity.
“As a scientist, you’re told to be objectivist, but when you sit down to write a paper you can’t include everything,” Olson said.
The reality is that the majority of the public does not share the same level of knowledge and understanding with scientists, Olson said.
Steve Ibach, a biochemistry junior, agreed with Olson’s message.
“It’s so true that all science stuff on TV like PBS doesn’t entertain you; it just gives you information,” Ibach said.
He thinks that the science community should more actively engage laypeople via the mass media.
“It’s important to have more humor and emotional connection to the audience, not just pure facts,” Ibach said. “If you don’t have a message to communicate that people can understand your funding may get cut, especially in this economic strain.”
Event organizer Margaret Coulombe, a media relations specialist for the School of Life Sciences, said she thinks Olson’s message will resonate within the science community.
“Scientists here especially are aware of the need and are interested in doing those things better,” she said. “The whole idea of Darwin is to bring new ideas and ways of approaching science to morph the future.
It’s about carrying the torch forward.”
Reach the reporter at julia.guzy@asu.edu
