This month the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment published a special open access issue focused on science communication in environmental controversies. The issue features 6 review articles that address over-arching themes in science communication and public engagement; the role of universities; the role of Federal agencies; the role of individual scientists; the role of advocates; and the role of interface organizations such as cooperative extension offices.

Over the past several years, there has been increasing attention to communication and public engagement at flagship science journals. The special issue of Frontiers represents the most comprehensive discussion and examination to date.

Peter Groffman, a microbiologist at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in upstate New York, served as the guest editor for the special issue.  Last year he teamed with other Cary Institute staff and the editors of Frontiers to host an interdisciplinary conference focused on science communication, with the 6 articles at Frontiers co-authored by participants in the conference.

I was one of several co-authors who had the opportunity to team with Groffman on the "over-arching issues" paper. Titled "Restarting the Conversation: Challenges at the interface between ecology and society," the paper reviews research on how the public and decision-makers learn, form opinions, and reach judgments about complex environmental problems such as climate change. In a table that I put together, the differences between how scientists and communication researchers tend to view these processes are summarized, with assumptions grouped by the "Deficit model" versus the "Public Engagement model."

Groffman reflects on what he learned from the conference in a podcast produced by the Ecological Society of America, explaining the value of applying research from the social sciences to public engagement efforts. Groffman discusses the relevance of framing, the difference between the deficit model and new approaches to engagement, and emphasizes the important emerging role of blogging and social media.  He also responds to some who fear effective communication will mean "dumbing down" information.

As a follow-up, he took time out to answer a few questions that I sent along.  As Groffman notes at the end of the interview, a key next step is to develop the incentives and rewards at universities and institutions that would enable scientists to spend more time and effort on public engagement initiatives, a topic that is discussed in several of the published papers at Frontiers.  Over the next several weeks, I will be posting similar Q&A style interviews with lead authors of the other papers published at Frontiers.

Interview with Peter Groffman, Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies: