What causes this? Over the past decade or so, I have conducted numerous interviews with so-called Internet celebrity scientists. These reasons can be summarized as follows:
First of all, all scientists who are still willing to engage in popular science under the existing system have benefited from it. A small number of people can directly obtain scientific research clues or undertake horizontal projects to obtain scientific research funding;
More people feel the recognition and joy of sharing science with others; Others, like Chen Tongbin, a researcher at the Institute of Geography and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have greatly promoted their own environmental agenda through communication with the media.
Secondly, almost every scientist who is engaged in popular science has more or less a better ability to express or communicate. Some scientists have always liked the creation of text (not limited to popular science texts), and more people have improved their communication skills through engaging in popular science, so they are more willing to do popular science.
Third, while some scientists who have invested heavily in science will complain that the evaluation system is unfair, most have largely acquiesced to the situation. Almost all the scientists interviewed by the author can find a dynamic balance between science popularization and research,
and most of them do not organize their time and energy around the project application. The reason why they do this is that although a small number of researchers choose to maintain the status quo in scientific research,more people believe that many scientific research works can be published by finding and overcoming the shortcomings of existing research, so as to meet the needs of scientific research evaluation, but this kind of scientific research published for publication is at least less interesting than popular science.
The last is the conditions for engaging in science popularization. Although as mentioned above, most scientific research institutions in China are seriously short of full-time science popularization personnel,
scientists who are good at and willing to do science popularization have always obtained or explored various conditions conducive to their science popularization. Some of them rely on the support of the Internet,
especially various emerging networks, while others can still get help from the existing science popularization support system, including science and technology associations at all levels or associations of science and technology writers affiliated with the science and technology association system and various professional associations, as well as social business forces.
Many of the European and American scientists I know have also shared the above-mentioned ways to promote science popularization among Chinese scientists. What they do goes beyond the above analysis,
mainly through dialogue with the public and driving the policy agenda. Many began doing science after Trump took office, either hoping to counter the rising tide of anti-intellectualism in society after Trump took office,
or to actively appeal to the public to embrace a specific science agenda. In the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries, as well as in the United States, the Science Media Center and its American version, Sciline,
have played a large role in this participatory science communication process by organizing dialogues between scientists and the public and the media on sensitive or hot-button issues (including timely responses to media inquiries).
Cultivate and nourish the scientific culture and system of popular science
From the above analysis, we can see that even in the absence of the support of the evaluation system, there are still many scientists willing to invest a lot of energy in science popularization.
If science popularization can complement scientific research, it is undoubtedly the most ideal. But even if this is not the case, all scientists who regularly do science popularization will point out that science popularization is not a waste of scientific research time. Whatever the reason, at least science is not a troublesome thing.
This makes us see that, in addition to more encouraging science popularization in the system, it is equally important to cultivate a culture of friendly science popularization.
It can even be said that if the culture of science popularization cannot be cultivated among scientists, then when the reform of the evaluation system makes science popularization the obligation of the conclusion of scientific research, it may be followed by more perfunctory science popularization.
At the same time, science popularization is hardly independent of the scientific research system. If you chase me to publish papers and apply for projects is the norm of scientific research, if the income of scientists is largely determined by the number of papers and research projects converted into "work points",
if scientific research units have no funds to hire full-time science popularization propagandists, it may be difficult to encourage scientists to devote themselves to real science popularization by relying solely on the Science Popularization Law.
Moreover, whether it is the ability to be good at popular science or general communication, or the long-term cultivation of a culture of "science communication is fun", researchers need to participate in relevant cultural courses,
communication ability courses and even science reflection courses at least from the postgraduate stage. According to the author's research and understanding, there are very few science communication courses in the national graduate education.
