In an effort to explain what exactly skepchick.org was to three young female science communication students from the Canberra based Shell Questacon Science Circus, I described the stereotype of a skeptic as middle aged, male and unfortunately often described as cynical and pessimistic. Admittedly, I should have expected the giggles that followed. In spite of the few wisps of grey creeping in, I can hardly middle aged at a sprightly twenty-nine; but then again, with the eldest of the three being a mere twenty-four (and the youngest a comparable infant at twenty-one), I can see how I might start to fit my own described cliché, at least in their eyes. But cynical and pessimistic? Come on!

Natasha Verniquet, Kathryn Edmondson and Suzannah Lyons are three of the sixteen-member Shell Questacon Science Circus team who tour rural and regional Australia aiming to transform the way most people perceive science, managing it through a range of school shows and a travelling exhibition containing interactive displays and dramatic presentations. Like their colleagues, these three hope to finish the year with skills enabling them to explain and excite the general public on scientific issues. Because the program also functions as a science communications scholarship thanks to the Australian National University, each year sees a new troupe of post-graduate students come through. Most intakes have seen a strong female dominance, and this year is no different with only seven unfortunate lads providing the needed testosterone (in itself a marked improvement on previous numbers).

It has to be asked then; why the bias? Are women more interested in communicating science to the general public? Can it be generalised that males are more concerned with ‘doing’ science than making Joe Average aware of what science is all about? If skepticism is seen as a masculine endeavour, how is it that science communications appears to be so, well, feminine? Are they two sides of the same coin, or is there something more to it?

After a particularly gruelling day entertaining school-children in regional New South Wales, I asked Natasha, Suzannah and Kathryn to have a chat with me over coffee (ok, so I bullied them into it and had to bribe them a little with lamingtons) and discuss their thoughts on what science communications is to them and the place skepticism might have in it.

Science communications is many things to many people, something so broad that even those who study it adopt different angles on its exact nature. In principle it could be described as being any form of media which endeavours to both inform and promote science to either the general public or a specific sub-group. However, this now requires a working definition of the term ‘science’, which as I found out, is easier said than done.

Mike: Why do you think it is important that science is communicated to the public?
Natasha: Well, I think that everything should be communicated. I think that law should be communicated a lot better than it is to the general public, because it is something that is hard to understand. So I think science is just one of many things that should be communicated.
Suzzanah: I think that in an increasingly technological world, we are using more and more things that we don’t have to understand how they work in order to use them; we should still have some understanding of the science behind them…and not just something that we just use.

M: So, then, in you view, how would you define science?
N: I think science is almost an abstract idea, where it happens whether we class it as science or not. Like, I think baking a cake is science, because there are chemical reactions in there, making the cake rise, and an apple biodegrading is science.

M: So the natural rules that dictate such things you would call ‘science’, while our labelling of it is only a sub-section of it?
N: Well, if somebody was watching it, recording it, observing it and coming out with a conclusion about that apple biodegrading, then other people would class that as science. But I guess I class something as science regardless of whether somebody is watching it or not.
S: So if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, you would still call it science?
N: Yeah.
S: Yeah, I guess I take a more anthropocentric view. My views are probably a lot more influenced by my father, who is a scientist, and so I think I see it much more about the experiments and discovering. Like he’s currently doing an experiment where he’s bombing Perth (laughs). Quite safely. He’s setting off tracer gas bombs to figure out what would happen if there was a biological attack over an urban area. So I’ve always seen it as about ideas and the experimental approach, because I’ve had the exposure to somebody doing that.
Kat: I’m the opposite to you, Tash, as science to me is about critical thinking and a way of approaching problems. I think you can have a scientific approach to anything in the world and science is used to describe what you would talk about as being science, that it is a process and not that which is being described.
S: Can I just say that, well, that makes it sound as if we are the only ones who do science, and that makes me feel rather arrogant.
T: Yeah, that’s what I don’t like about it, because that means we go out to these schools with the sense of, ‘you don’t do science, we do science because we know the process’, and that’s what makes us scientists.
K: I agree with that point of view, Tash, but I think we can just as well point out that they have scientific reasoning. Couldn’t you see it as a spectrum? Where they do a lot of science, but a scientist is a person whose job it is to do science?
S: I suppose it’s the public’s perception that it isn’t a spectrum, that it is just the scientists (who do science).
K: Do you think maybe we should be communicating that better?
S: Yeah. Certainly.

M: Do you think there is a bias in the perception of science being a male dominated area?
S: I guess it depends on what science you’re talking about…whether it’s hard science or not. Like, I did a chem’ degree, and I did it with all male academics… So, yes. I think there is, particularly in the harder sciences like chemistry, physics, and subjects like that.
K: I think it is changing. Like, I don’t know how it is in Australia, but in France in biology subjects the guys are all jealous because the subjects all contain something like two-thirds girls.
S: I also had a rather positive experience working for a mining company in the environmental side of things where all the new employers were all women which was fantastic.
K: We were talking about this before, about the social perception, regarding that terrible new show… what’s it called? Clever? Where, it seems that if you want a credible scientist, it’s always a man.
T: I still think that if you were a science teacher and you wanted to bring a scientist into the classroom who the kids would believe, it wouldn’t matter if it was male or female.
S: But a lot of the more prominent science communicators are male. Look at Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki, Adam Spencer, Ruben Meerman (Australian science communicators)…
T: But I think that the majority of high positions are run by men still. So, going into universities and having the higher positions run by men…it doesn’t matter if it’s science or arts, there’s still that higher male ratio.

M: Ok, so now I have to ask you the big question; what is skepticism? If a little kid was to ask ‘what is a skeptic’, what would you say?
T: Well, I think being a skeptic and skepticism are two different things. I would say skepticism is taking something you’ve heard, thinking about it, and taking a process from A to B and coming up with an answer ‘C’. So if you drop something, and it always goes down, and somebody tells you sometimes it goes up, and you think about your past experiences that something always goes down when you drop it. So, skepticism is when you disbelieve in what somebody has to say because in your experience it’s different to your general knowledge.
S: Well, I think a skeptic somebody who doesn’t believe in anything that they can’t prove.
K: For me, it’s more a social thing. For some, they prefer to believe in experiments and facts rather than people.

M: Do you think skepticism is important in today’s world?
S: I think critical thinking is important in today’s world, and questioning things, certainly. I don’t think I’d take it as far as I’d perceive skepticism to take it. I questions things, but I also have faith in things.

M: Can I ask how critical thinking, to you, is different to skepticsim?
S: Because I am willing to believe in things through faith only. Whereas I don’t believe that skeptics would.
K: I think we’re both scared of the word ‘skepticism’, aren’t we?
S: (agrees)
K: It is becoming important as we get more information from more sources, like the internet and we need to understand what we can believe in. But, then again, I don’t think I’d like everybody to be skeptics.
S: Can I just say I think skepticism, or critical thinking, is important, as long as you are prepared to follow things further; you can’t just write things off if you don’t know how something works. I suppose we should be motivated to look beyond that and try to understand.
T: I don’t understand why skepticism would not be (important in today’s world). If skepticism is what I defined it as, then it is something we use all the time, and is important. Even if it’s going back to when people believed the world was flat, and everybody ‘knew’ that as fact, if somebody came up to them and said ‘the world is round’ I would say they were correct in using their skepticism if they thought ‘no, hang on, I know all this stuff that says it’s flat’… I think they’ve still gone through a skeptical process and have come up with a ‘correct’ answer. So I say it is just as relevant now as it was then, because we still don’t ‘know’ a lot of shit…

M: Do you think science communicators should be responsible for making the public more critical in their thinking?
T: No. I think that’s like saying ‘biologists should be teaching a lot about chemistry’ just because the two overlap. I do think critical thinking is something that coincides with science, but… I don’t know. I like going into a kindergarten and singing a song about science, but it’s not really teaching critical thinking…they’ve got something that they can use in critical thinking when somebody comes up and says something contradictory. I’m giving them something to put into their database they can use in their critical thinking.
S: I see science communication more about giving people an awareness. What they do with that is up to them, rather than teaching them a way to think.
K: I think science communicators should be aware of the limitations of what they’re saying, or to say ‘I don’t know’. It’s nice to point out how to science works.

M: Do you think women in general are more or less critical in their thinking than men?
K: I think I have a bias in my population, as a lot of my friends are fairly critical. If they weren’t all that critical, I wouldn’t be hanging around them. So I couldn’t tell.
T: From what I’ve seen, and I might be going out on a limb here, but I think boys are more willing to sit and watch something and then say, ‘oh, so that’s how that works’. While girls don’t seem to mind not seeing how it works, but will work it out in their heads. The boys will watch, while the girls will come up afterwards and ask questions.
K: I don’t know if that’s critical thinking, or just gossip.
T: But that is critical thinking.
K: We think critically all the time. ‘Do you think such-and-such is really going out with him, because in my experience…’ (laughs).

M: Would ever nominate yourself as being a skeptic?
S: No. You know the reason why (referring to her faith).
K: I don’t mind being ‘skeptical’. But I think a skeptic is somebody who applies that all the time, every time, and I’m not entirely sure that I do.
T: I don’t think I’d put myself into the skeptic jar, but if somebody were to call me a skeptic, I might agree, because I believe I do use skepticism to think.

I came away from the interview with the same feeling I always have when I discuss this topic with some people; frustration over competing definitions of the terms ‘critical thinking’, ‘science’ and ‘skepticism’, and the incongruous ways these different viewpoints relate to each other. Natasha, Kathryn and Suzzanah are all highly intelligent and accomplished scientists with diverse fields of expertise; all three have degrees in science, with both Natasha and Suzzanah possessing media backgrounds and Kathryn having studied and worked in France for the past six years. They are passionate about science and are destined to become great communicators.

But what does this say about skepticism and the place it holds in society, when we have problems grasping what the term actually means? Is it always destined to be a dirty word, and if so, should we abandon it in favour of a new one?

I’m still undecided about my own opinion on how skepticism should be promoted. I’m certain studies in science communication would help, however should skepticism and science be bundled together as a package? As Natasha indicated, just because critical thinking is a useful tool in science doesn’t necessarily make it a goal of science communicators to encourage its use amongst.

The communication of science to the public is indeed important for a world becoming more reliant on technology and good information. If the number of related job positions is any form of indicator, it is a field that is not only growing rapidly but is also diversifying to suit a range of community needs and industries. I’m left wondering, however; will there room there in the future for the communication of skepticism as well?

Mike McRae was Victor Frankenstein's original attempt at creating life. Crafted from the scavenged body parts of a scientist, a secondary school teacher, a writer and an artist, he is a mongrel who defies defining. Currently Mike is working as a science communicator in Canberra, Australia, doing his best to fit into human society while encouraging a wary public to be enthusiastic about science and critical thinking. Approach with caution.

ISSUE 5 CREDITS

Skepchick-in-Chief
Rebecca Watson

Managing Editor
Diane Perry

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Chani Overli

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Lynette Davidson, Donna Druchunas, Chris Blohm, Jamila Bey-Greenhouse, Jesús Pineda, Benjamin Radford, Mike McRae, Ed Rabin

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