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Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines
Scientists are trained to be skeptical and not overstate the existing evidence. This cautiousness is a valuable asset when working in scientific research, where the goal is the pursuit of knowledge and truth. It becomes a handicap when scientists are asked to communicate to the public about pressing...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Ltd.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9756549/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34446317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.08.037 |
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author | Dudley, Matthew Z. Bernier, Roger Brewer, Janesse Salmon, Daniel A. |
author_facet | Dudley, Matthew Z. Bernier, Roger Brewer, Janesse Salmon, Daniel A. |
author_sort | Dudley, Matthew Z. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Scientists are trained to be skeptical and not overstate the existing evidence. This cautiousness is a valuable asset when working in scientific research, where the goal is the pursuit of knowledge and truth. It becomes a handicap when scientists are asked to communicate to the public about pressing topics such as COVID-19 vaccines. Often in such contexts, immediate recommendations are sought, and decisions must be made even when complete evidence is lacking. For scientists to be effective public communicators, they must adjust their mindset and embrace brevity, clarity, and other principles of effective communication. Focusing messages on what is known fosters public confidence in taking needed actions, whereas focusing on what is still unknown fosters inaction and seeds doubt. The implementation of principles of effective communication does not inherently conflict with maintaining scientific accuracy and acknowledging uncertainty, but it does require additional care, effort, and training. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9756549 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-97565492022-12-16 Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines Dudley, Matthew Z. Bernier, Roger Brewer, Janesse Salmon, Daniel A. Vaccine Commentary Scientists are trained to be skeptical and not overstate the existing evidence. This cautiousness is a valuable asset when working in scientific research, where the goal is the pursuit of knowledge and truth. It becomes a handicap when scientists are asked to communicate to the public about pressing topics such as COVID-19 vaccines. Often in such contexts, immediate recommendations are sought, and decisions must be made even when complete evidence is lacking. For scientists to be effective public communicators, they must adjust their mindset and embrace brevity, clarity, and other principles of effective communication. Focusing messages on what is known fosters public confidence in taking needed actions, whereas focusing on what is still unknown fosters inaction and seeds doubt. The implementation of principles of effective communication does not inherently conflict with maintaining scientific accuracy and acknowledging uncertainty, but it does require additional care, effort, and training. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-09-15 2021-08-19 /pmc/articles/PMC9756549/ /pubmed/34446317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.08.037 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Commentary Dudley, Matthew Z. Bernier, Roger Brewer, Janesse Salmon, Daniel A. Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines |
title | Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines |
title_full | Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines |
title_fullStr | Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines |
title_full_unstemmed | Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines |
title_short | Walking the Tightrope: Reevaluating science communication in the era of COVID-19 vaccines |
title_sort | walking the tightrope: reevaluating science communication in the era of covid-19 vaccines |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9756549/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34446317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.08.037 |
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