In the hype leading up to the Superbowl, the biggest story may be Marshawn Lynch's interactions with reporters. This style of interaction appears to be spreading to other sports stars as well and it makes me wonder about the role of sports journalists. In today's social media dominated society sports stars and fans have more direct access to each other than ever before and as with other sectors being revolutionized by technology the middle man is being cut out.
Sports writers used to be the conduit between athletes and fans, but today athletes and fans can connect through any number of avenues from Twitter, to Facebook, to Tumblr, to personal websites or even reddit. Athletes can use any combination of these social media outlets to craft their own narrative and relationship with fans rather than relying on sports writers to dictate their image. This changing relationship between athletes and sports writers appears to be similar to what is happening between researchers and science writers. A number of researcher friends have posted and commented on this recent poll complaining about the disconnect between beliefs/perceptions of the public and scientists. So what is causing this disconnect, does the responsibility of science understanding fall to the general public, the scientists communicating their findings, or science writers translating findings from scientists to the general public? As social media has opened up new avenues of communication for athletes, it also has for researchers. Grant organizations are recognizing the importance of putting in knowledge translation plans in place before projects start. However, without the public being interested in learning about science findings, whether the information comes from science writers or researchers, translating science may just be akin to throwing paper in the wind.
The poll I linked earlier also had a number of interesting questions about the role of science in society. More than half (57%) and a little under half, (43% and 40%) of scientists thought that major problems are that there is a lack of public interest in science, lack of media interest in science, and too few scientists communicating findings. While the public has a fairly positive view on the impact of science on society, there is a trend towards negative feelings with the public lessening in their perception of U.S. achievement in science, the contribution of science to society and the return on investment in science. So it seems that while science and researchers are attempting to reach out more than ever, the public may not want to hear it. Before science and researchers work on knowledge translation it seems that we need rehabilitate the image and trust in science and researchers.
A recent demonstration of the public's mistrust in research and higher education comes from Wisconsin where Governor Scott Walker has proposed a slashing of $300 million from the UW-system over the next 2 years in order to help balance the budge and offer the institutions more flexibility in their own governance and spending. After announcing the plan and receiving backlash he also suggested that professors teach more classes because they were not doing their jobs on the 2-2 schedule of teaching at large research institutions. This brought noted backlash from professors and others in higher-education who suggest that between research (the most highly valued asset at research institutions) teaching and service, professors spend over 50 hours a week working. However, others are unwilling to "break out the tiny violins" and see professors and researchers as underworked and overpaid. Interestingly, the article links a page that lists UW-system pay and if you look at the first page the top 3 paid employees are coaches and sports administrators while the rest of the page is almost entirely dominated by marketing, economics and law professors making a fraction of what they could make outside higher education (pay for these professors is 2-5 times higher than other disciplines because of the competition/availability of jobs from the private sector). So before we can work on knowledge translation, we need to work on the image of higher education and research so that the public can trust and be interested in research.
Edit: 1/30/2015 - I was looking more into the Wisconsin higher education budget issue and see that it parallels the battle with K-12 teachers in the state just 4 years ago with many of the same claims, that they are overpaid and underworked. It seems that much of the misunderstanding of teachers at K-12 that is magnified at higher education levels is that time spent in the classroom in front of students is the only time that should count as work.
Edit 2: 1/31/2015 - I found this article discussing the same issues and article that I mention here about the divide between the public and science/higher-ed. They offer one possible bridge with open forums for scientists and the public (in particular those who are most against various scientific findings - vaccines, GMOs, etc) to discuss issues.
Edit 3: 1/31/2015 - Great discussion on Science Friday about the Pew findings
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