Use your power for good: Collective action to overcome institutional injustices impeding ethical science communication in the academy
Abstract Science communication (scicomm) shapes our world by helping people use science to make societal and personal decisions. Supporting and doing ethical scicomm requires valuing diverse perspectives and the people who do scicomm. Unfortunately, institutional hurdles ingrained in academia impede and undermine ethical scicomm. The injustices impeding scicomm stem from the prestige paradigm of academia (articulated in the present article), which reinforces hierarchical relationships in an exclusionary and exploitative system. To move academia forward, we name and review these injustices through the lens of five realms of scicomm (scientific communication, teaching scicomm, academics engaging in scicomm, scicomm research, and scicomm careers beyond academia). We then provide a novel framework, helping readers identify axes of influence and how they can leverage their intersectional, academic capital to take concrete action to remove the hurdles impeding ethical scicomm in academia.
Authors
- E. Dale Broder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3842-1930)
- Robin M. Tinghitella (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0049-5539)
- Eileen A. Hebets (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9382-2040)
- Shannon M. Murphy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5746-6536)
- Emily Weigel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5570-4142)
- Meena M. Balgopal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3846-9256)
- Anna A. Sher (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6433-9746)
- Bethann Garramon Merkle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0427-9411)
- Jennifer Lee
- Jennifer M Gumm (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4742-5589)
- Chris J Schell
- Joshua J Caffrey
Institutions
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln (US)
- University of Wyoming (US)
- University of Minnesota (US)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Denver (US)
- United States Fish and Wildlife Service (US)
- Front Range Community College (US)
- American University (US)
- Colorado State University (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- BioScience
- Published
- 2024-10-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae080
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Career Development and Diversity
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.58
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station