In 1992, many museum-goers falsely believed that a hole in the ozone layer was responsible for global warming, according to a survey by the American Museum of Natural History. According to Andrew Revkin, a blogger for The New York Times, many people still believe this is true.
Looking to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the public, two Dartmouth professors are leading an effort designed to put scientists in direct contact with adults at rural libraries.
Physics and astronomy professor Marcelo Gleiser and mathematics professor Daniel Rockmore have secured a National Science Foundation grant for their initiative "Pushing the Limits: Building Capacity to Enhance Public Understanding of Math and Science Through Rural Libraries," Gleiser and Rockmore told The Dartmouth.
The effort is meant both to ensure interaction between scientists and people in rural areas and to strengthen librarians' ability to promote science education, according Gleiser and Rockmore.
There is no shortage of people in the scientific community who would be willing to engage with the public at libraries, according to Rockmore. The program will also seek to ensure a long-term presence by focusing on training librarians to advertise events and find informative materials, he said.
"This is going to be about giving [librarians] the equipment and confidence to host science activities in their libraries," he said.
"Pushing the Limits" will focus on four topics: immortality and the limits of sustaining life, the limits on inhabiting certain environments, human control over nature and human knowledge.
Adults will convene at their local libraries over the course of four evenings devoted to science, Rockmore said. As part of each session, patrons will be asked to read a book before attending and will watch videos at the library, followed by a discussion guided by local scientists. The videos are produced specifically for the occasion by Dawson Media Group, according to Rockmore.
"The videos are meant to be engaging they're not didactic," he said.
The evening programs will begin in 20 libraries and expand to 100 over the grant's four-year duration. It has not yet been decided which libraries will participate, Rockmore said.
At its core, the effort addresses the lack of communication between scientists and humans on a personal level, according to Gleiser.
"Part of the effort of the grant is to humanize science to give science a human face," Gleiser said.
One of the reasons the professors formed the program was to fight the public's inclination to view scientists as aloof, according to Gleiser.
"There is a lack of awareness of how science works," Revkin said. "Science is all about disagreement. For the average person, disagreement means there's conflict."
Individuals unfamiliar with science tend to reduce complex scientific challenges to a single question, Revkin said in an interview, citing global warming as an example. Rather than simply questioning whether warming is human-induced, the public should also consider the point at which warming becomes detrimental, as well as the potential severity of its impact, he said.
A decline in properly-trained science journalists has also contributed to a lack of public understanding, he said.
"Journalistic craving for balance can distort a story away from where the actual consensus on science is," Revkin, an environmental reporter for The Times for 15 years, said.
The initiative developed by Gleiser and Rockmore takes a different approach to bringing science to the public, attempting to fill the gap in science education that exists in most of the nation's libraries, Rockmore said.
There have previously been no concerted efforts in the United States to emphasize science in libraries, according to Timothy Owens, president of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries.
"[Libraries are a] perfectly neutral space with lots of resources that provide a great environment to encourage exploration of different ideas," Owens said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
