Short, yet very insightful, talk with researcher Hans Peter Peters on communicating science to and from the public. He discusses the misconceptions scientists have of the public’s ability to understand science.

Hans also discusses the strategies scientists take to communicate their findings.

What can scientists learn from the public? Science Podcast host Sarah Crespi speaks with social scientist Hans Peter Peters of the Ethics in Neurosciences Research Center in Julich, Germany. Peters gave a talk here today at the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes ScienceNOW) about how scientists in different countries and age groups think about public engagement.

Most interesting (to me) was that there is an emerging awareness among scientists that the public is more open to discussing research from social science (aka the “soft sciences”) vs discussing the hard sciences. Conversely, media and journalists generally cover psychology, education, and economics much differently than they cover climatology, biology, chemistry etc. 

It’s Climate Science Communications Week at Climate Adaptation!  For the entire week of Feb. 18 - 23, I’ll cover how climate change is discussed by the media, scientists, researchers, academics, and politicians. If you have sources or ideas on communicating climate change, send to: http://climateadaptation.tumblr.com/submit