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Personal politics in science communication

Can science communicators be apolitical and effective?

In mid-February famed evolutionary biologist and science communicator Professor Richard Dawkins was once again the centre of a virtual maelstrom, after tweeting that theoretically selective breeding would work for humans. The tweet was met with both unwavering support for Dawkins’ seemingly factual analysis, and outcries over his supposed endorsement of eugenics. A strong dichotomy in opinion typical of most scientific “hot-takes” on social media that is, as John Nerst breaks down on his blog Everything Studies, largely due to cognitive decoupling.

Decoupling is the process of unpacking a question in isolation. To quote Nerst, this is “a necessary practice in science which works by isolating variables, teasing out causality, and formalising and operationalising claims into carefully delineated hypotheses”. Like Dawkins, Nerst, and many of my fellow scientists, I am a high-decoupler. However, Nerst stresses that rather than a natural behaviour, decoupling is a learned behaviour ingrained in scientist’s training and that society is overwhelmingly comprised of low-decouplers. Nowhere is this more evident to me than amongst my friends.

For context, nearly all of them come from a humanities background. Their interests, ranging from education to legal philosophy, are about as diverse as their thought patterns and I would be lying if I said I completely understood any of them. All of them are political and outspoken. None of them are high-decouplers. How they see they world confuses me, and how they tackle problems frustrates me. Endlessly. Yet the experience of being a high-decoupler so deeply immersed in a group of low-decouplers has profoundly altered how I approach both my science and science communication.

Several years ago if you had asked me if I believe science is apolitical, the answer would have been a confident yes. This is a common viewpoint amongst many of the most prominent science communicators. However, in my own journey of learning and unlearning I have realised that this particular sect of science communicators share a number of traits with me that I believe plays the largest role in our ability to decouple. We are largely white, heterosexual, cisgendered, and male. In other words, the most represented and glorified demographic in science’s history.

To be apolitical is in itself an act of political privilege, and science does not exist in a vacuum. It has, and always will be, a product of the society in which the experimentation occurs. In 2018 National Geographic dedicated their April edition to exploring the concept of race and the historical role the magazine had played in race relations. In her forward, Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg stated “to rise above the racism of the past, we must acknowledge it”. I firmly believe that this applies not just to race, but to all the cogs and levers of the political machinery that shapes our society. This is because it not only has a historical influence on the scientific establishment, but continues to influence science today. A sentiment that is better conveyed in this editorial of the Annals of Human Genetics on topical ethical issues in the publication of human genetics research.

As a biologist, I still agree with Dawkins’ stance that we cannot view ourselves as separate from the animal kingdom when we are another strand in the web of life. However, I must recognise the privilege of my demographic never having been marginalised or seen as sub-human; something my ancestors routinely inflicted on others. Again quoting Nerst, “to a low-decoupler, high-decouplers’ ability to fence off any threatening implications looks like a lack of empathy for those threatened”. I would take this one step further and say it is far easier to decouple a morally deplorable hypothetical, like the question of selectively breeding human beings, if your ancestors weren’t the subjects of such violent and very real experimentation. The language we choose when talking about scientific concepts with a violent history influences how our audience connects and interprets our message. I believe high-decouplers like Dawkins, who fail to acknowledge how their position of both historical and contemporary privilege allows them to perceive science as apolitical, alienate the public.

Science communication can only be effective when we connect with our audience. This is not to say that we can only communicate with those who share a similar political alignment. Rather, when framing our message we must be mindful of how differing political standpoints influence how the message will be received. In order to connect we need to understand the personal politics of ourselves and our audience, and this requires us to introspect the political machinery that has shaped what we believe can be decoupled.

Posted on by michellebeeslaar · 2 Comments

Freedom or Fallacy: A collage of South African perspectives. Where are we 26 years later?

Annually since 1995, we commemorate Freedom Day which marks the first South African non-racial, democratic elections held on 27 February 1994. The first democratic president, President Nelson Mandela is quoted as saying ‘for to be free is not merely to cast off one’s own chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others’. In 2018 in an article for the Sowetan Live, Prince Mashele, urged South Africans to reevaluate what the day means in their own words, within their own communities and without the influence of political rhetoric. Last year, our country celebrated 25 years of political freedom. As we go into the next chapter, it would be amiss to this generation and the next, not to assess in an iterative, non-partisan and fair manner, the progress made to the upfront acknowledged challenges of inequality, poverty and unemployment. 

Instead of conveying my evaluation, a purposive selection of societal commentators across professional and personal backgrounds had the blog title put to them and asked to sum up their assessment in a paragraph. The views are their personal reflections and not of their employers, organizations or affiliations. This is South Africa of April 2020. This is South Africa constructively dialoguing.

Cameron Mackenzie, a former Johannesburg city councillor from 2009 and current member of Parliament since 2014 for the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, advances that ‘freedom, unless you know how to use it, is only a word’. He acknowledges the political progress made from the repressive Apartheid state to a constitutional democracy in 1994 however cautions that the current state failure in education and healthcare, amongst others, perpetuates the cycle of freedom not being a lived reality for the majority of South Africans. 

Tessa Dooms is a sociologist, director at Jasoro Consulting, a Nelson Mandela George Washington Fellow with several other professional accolades. She notes that South Africa’s democracy is maturing due to an increased plurality, willingness to challenge and test powerful leaders and institutions. She is mindful that our democracy remains fragile due to the failure to deliver development and transform lives. The result, especially amongst youth,  is a distrust of our democratic leadership and more precarious, democratic processes. She suggests that the next phase must see us building and unleashing the abilities plus agency of young people for political, social and economic development for all. 

According to Russell Rensburg, an expert in healthcare and current director of the Rural Health Advocacy Project, the preamble of the constitution commits us to improving the quality of life for all citizens. He recognizes the significant progress to education and healthcare access but argues that the access is derailed by the quality of services and general commodification of public goods which have delayed the overall realization of freedom. 

Nkanyiso Ngqulunga, a law student and exceptional young contributor to decolonial thought, asserts the question highlights the dichotomy inherited from colonialism and Apartheid. For him, the democratic dispensation is a neo-Apartheid version, still unable to understand or meet the needs of the majority, who remain in permanent dispossession and poverty. He calls for socioeconomic justice premised on an African-based transformational philosophy and spirituality that denounces and breaks away from past crimes against humanity to truly fulfil a clean slate of human rights recognition. 

He is a management consultant but Melusi Maposa prefers to describe himself as someone who knows a little about a lot of things and a lot about a little things. He responds that 26 years it is not a question of freedom or fallacy, rather both. He emphasizes the immense achievements that are often forgotten e.g. 10 million households electrified since 1994 and the millions with never before, access to running water. In the same breath, he talks of the continued gross inequality and widening socioeconomic divide. He urges us to surge ahead to deliver freedom to those who have as yet not fully experienced it for not to do so lies the peril of our nation.  

Mzwandile Manto is a lifelong student of philosophy and an experienced contributor to international public capacity building. He reminds us that freedom is the ability to self-actualize which includes our health and human security. The inability to self-actualize is a failure of political freedom. Our system of so-called proportional representation is representative of the self-limitations we have imposed for freedom to be achieved. He continues that in practice over quarter of a century, these system “representatives” have proven that they are allegiant to their parties not us, the citizens, the electorate who provide them with the mandate to serve. He bluntly states that the majoritianism in place, mocks and bastardises our freedom in the current political system and to be truly free, means to tackle the system first. 

The prolific current events commentator @linley_sa prefers to be engaged through this handle on Twitter. He argues that without human dignity, there can be no freedom. Pronouncing political freedom does not equate to releasing the chains of those that remain modern slaves by virtue of hunger, unemployment and squalor. The only release is true socioeconomic freedom. 

My work particularly with the homeless and un/under employed has set me on a path to advocate for an active citizenry. As Freedom Day 2020 approaches, with COVID19 showing up the fault lines of our grossly inequitable society, I realize that in our eagerness to give up the ghost of Apartheid, we gave too much power to the ANC-led government, a movement I generally support. The power corrupted many of them and in turn our people suffered a new oppression – knowing they had rights but being unable to access them. If COVID19 teaches us anything, let it be that from this, our Freedom Month, we cannot continue business as usual. 

We need to change trajectory, check our ideology and privilege at the door, pragmatically evaluate the last two decades and usher in a new system of governance. I say governance because the time of government being our leaders must be over. We the citizens must take our power back, elect representatives, hold them directly accountable and release them from duty if they do not perform. A new social compact is required, one where equality of opportunity and access to services are not rights in a story told to us in 1999 but a lived reality for all. For me, the answer is that we have political freedom but it is a fallacy as it is limited to a class that simply isn’t reflective of how the majority of South Africans live. My question to you, is simply this, freedom or fallacy: where are we 26 years later?