The Philosophy of Science Communication
Postdoctoral researcher Brianne Suldovsky forged a future putting fact before faith
By David Sims
Had high school senior Brianne Suldovsky not encountered the novel “Sophie’s World” in her Advance Placement English class, she likely would not be heading off to the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center for a postdoctoral fellowship in the Science of Science Communication.
The book details events as a 14-year-old Norwegian girl corresponds with a middle-aged philosopher who introduces her to philosophical thinking and the history of philosophy, and it ultimately led Suldovsky to challenge the fundamentalist faith she had grown up with in northern Idaho and utterly changed her world view.
“It was my first exposure to ideas that competed with my religion — ideas about where we come from, how the world works, why we’re here, and how to decide what’s ethical and moral,” Suldovsky recalls. “There were a couple of months where I really struggled with my faith and tried to understand how to incorporate these competing philosophical ideas, that in some cases seemed like much better ideas to me.”
She met with her pastor who encouraged her just to keep the faith, but the philosophical tenets held fast and guided the way to Suldovsky’s future academic career.
“At the University of Idaho I majored in philosophy because I loved it and double majored in communication because I wanted a job,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’ve always held onto my love of philosophy and how we can use philosophical concepts to improve communication, particularly when communicating about science with the public.”
Which is how, after a few years and a stopover at the Washington State University as a master’s student, Suldovsky ended up at UMaine and the Mitchell Center where she did doctoral work as part of the Sustainability Solutions Initiative and, most recently, the Mitchell Center’s New England Sustainability Consortium (NEST) project.
For her dissertation work, Suldovsky used her background in philosophical concepts and communication techniques to study how researchers communicated about their science with stakeholder partners, and how that communication related to their philosophical beliefs.
“There are many different ways to communicate about science with the public,” Suldovsky says. “You can simply give the public information, you can allow them to provide feedback and listen to what they have to say, or you can work with them to actually produce knowledge.”
Each science communication model has its strengths, weaknesses, and relative success rates but unfortunately, she adds, “we don’t currently know when it’s best to use which approach. For my research, I use philosophy to try and figure out how and when these communication models are used and, eventually, how they can be used most effectively.”
Regardless of which communication model or approach is taken, Suldovsky notes just how difficult it can be to figure out where people are coming from, or what the foundation of their beliefs are — beliefs that can be held onto tightly and make constructive dialogue and progress difficult.
“Peoples’ philosophical perceptions are formed in really complicated ways and it can be very hard to understand what those beliefs are and where they are coming from, which makes studying these beliefs rather difficult,” she says.
In her philosophical approach to science communication and deciphering people’s perceptions, she explores how three different types of philosophical beliefs relate to science communication: epistemology, or the study of knowledge; ontology, or the study of what the world is and how we understand it; and axiology, or the philosophy of values.
“I’m really interested in those three because we all make assumptions about what the world is, what knowledge is, and what we value, but we often don’t know how to articulate those or even how to reflect upon them,” Suldovsky says, “and these assumptions can have a huge impact on science communication processes and outcomes.”
Researchers, for example, typically hold that science and the scientific method is simply the best way to understand the world but plenty of people think otherwise, and this can make constructive communication difficult at best.
For example, Suldovsky points out, she has friends who refuse to vaccinate their children based simply on fear and and a lack of trust in vaccination science. They have access to scientific information via the Internet or medical professionals, but still refuse to trust those sources.
“So it’s not necessarily a lack of information that causes the disconnect,” Suldovsky says. “It’s really complicated and interesting to try to tease out what philosophical beliefs are impacting peoples’ understanding and behaviors so we can try to mobilize those factors and perhaps move them toward a more scientific way of approaching the world.”
Using philosophy isn’t just about understanding perceptions and beliefs of the public, but also scientists themselves. She adds, “With the knowledge co-production approach, for example, sometimes it means taking science ‘off of its pedestal’ to begin a dialogue with people with other belief perceptions. And this can be a difficult thing to ask researchers to do because they’re trained to produce knowledge using the scientific method, and it can be hard for them to come to the table and put science’s authority aside in an effort to work with people.”
Bringing a variety of voices and viewpoints to the table has been what Suldovsky has enjoyed most during her time at the Mitchell Center, which defines its mission as stakeholder-engaged, solutions-driven, interdisciplinary research. Having had the opportunity to work with everyone from biophysical scientists, psychologists, sociologists, hydrologists, and a diverse group of stakeholders has deeply broadened her perspective on societal problems, and solutions.
“If I hadn’t had to opportunity to be part of the Mitchell Center’s work I would probably assume everything is a communication problem and would not be able to take a step back and see the whole picture.” She adds, “I don’t think I would have had a shot at a place like the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center if I hadn’t worked on these large, impressive projects that the Mitchell Center makes possible.”