Understanding how scientists understand science by listening to them talk about their science
Awareness of how using metaphors correlates with how people think and act has grown in recent decades. Metaphors are when we use personal, concrete experiences (source domain) to make sense of abstract ideas (target domain). For instance, research shows that people having read news about violent crime as either a "monster attacking" or "virus infecting" showed significant differences in the way they chose to address the crime problem. Cancer patients "waging war" against cancer had worse health outcomes than others not using such a metaphor. The conduit metaphor for communication–where ideas are objects (the takeaway points of a lecture), words are containers for those objects (putting your thoughts into words), and communication is a conduit for those words (delivering a lecture)–influences how we reason about communication and therefore impacts how we communicate. Importantly, metaphors highlight certain aspects of the target domain and hide certain aspects. Oftentimes we are not aware of the influence of what is highlighted or hidden. This can be problematic, causing us to behave or reason in ways that are not reliable or constructive.
Having investigated how students think about science via the metaphors they use when talking about it, Glenn found students used many colonial/extractive metaphors in their descriptions. Metaphors like "data mining", "discovering", "exploring", "conquering the unknown", etc. stuck out as indicative of many descriptions of Western science. The investigators began wondering if the use of such metaphors could influence how scientists did science and taught about science. In this age of anti-colonialism and sustainability, it seemed important to expose such problematic paradigms reinforced by such metaphors, such that investigating their use and impact has become our focus.
We would like to investigate x different questions related to the above.
1. How do scientists talk about science and how do they describe their own scientific ventures?
2. How do scientists teach about science and scientific ventures?
3. What metaphors do scientists use when describing science and what are the implications for how they participate in the scientific venture?
We would like to see how often scientists use colonial/extraction metaphors and how that might impact how they think about the role of science in society and how they approach science in their labs and their classrooms.
To accomplish our goals, we would like to interview volunteer scientists.
Participants will be recruited through purposive sampling. We will identify potential participants based on their expertise and affiliation within the scientific departments of the University of Calgary, Boston University, and the American University of Beirut. Recruitment will take place through the following steps: 1) Departmental Outreach: We will contact the chairs or administrators of specific academic departments related to scientific disciplines (e.g., biology, physics, chemistry) via email. The email will include a brief introduction to the study and a request to circulate the recruitment information to faculty members and researchers. 2) Direct Email to Scientists: Individual scientists will also be contacted directly via email. Their contact information will be obtained from publicly available department websites or professional directories. Emails will include an invitation to participate, along with details about the study, participation expectations, and the voluntary nature of the study.
All recruitment emails will emphasize that participation in the study is entirely voluntary. We will outline the process for opting out and ensure that scientists feel no obligation to participate. Participants will also be informed that their responses will be kept confidential and their identity anonymized in the study’s final reports. Also, a follow-up email will be sent two weeks after the initial contact if no response is received. This email will gently remind potential participants of the study and encourage participation without coercion.
There would be two different interviews, one where they spend time describing what they do as scientists, how they accomplish science in their lab, and recounting scientific progress they have made in the past. The second would be asking more direct questions about them describing how science progresses in general, about the nature of knowledge, and how they portray science to their students. We would also like to observe the scientists teaching a class to see how they present science to students.
We will then take all these data–scientists' descriptions of them doing science, scientists describing how science (in general) gets done, how they perceive their presentation of science to students, and how they present science to students–and try to correlate what scientists say in interviews and teach about science and the metaphors they use for science to see if there is a correlation, to try and understand what role the metaphors they use might influence or reinforce their thoughts and actions.
The two interviews could last an hour or more each, as we want to collect as much descriptive data as possible. Classroom observations would be only a class period or two, depending on the amount of data collected in each.
Before any observation session, all participating scientists will provide consent, and their identities will be recorded. Non-participants (e.g., students, lab assistants, or other colleagues) will not be included in the data collection process. We will confirm who the participants are before each observation session to avoid the unintentional inclusion of non-participants. Observations will take place only in settings where we can reasonably control who is being observed (e.g., closed lab environments, and classes). Public spaces will be avoided to ensure compliance with ethical guidelines. Also, we will notify all individuals present in the setting that observations are being conducted and will state that only those who have consented to participate will be observed. Additionally, verbal reminders will be given at the start of any group activities or meetings to inform individuals that only those who have opted into the study will be observed. During the observation process, no identifying information of non-participants will be recorded. All data collected will be anonymized to ensure that non-participants are not included in the dataset. If non-participant comments are accidentally observed, these will be excluded from the data analysis.
Research is currently underway. Please stand by.
References
