Should a scientist’s communication with the public be more important than their research?

I believe that scientists should stick to their research and their job rather than communicating with the public.

 

Nowadays, with the increased interest in science and technology, more and more scientists are communicating with the public. They give many public lectures, write books, and appear on TV. Of course, this interaction with the public is not a bad thing. In fact, it can be good for society and for you personally. However, what if a scientist prioritizes public interaction over their research? There have been cases where scientists have neglected their research in favor of public popularity or funding. This is a big problem for scientific advancement and for society as a whole. Clearly, the question we want to address in this article is whether one of the essential skills of a scientist should be the ability to give public talks or write for them.
The primary responsibility of a scientist is to discover new scientific knowledge and to train scientists of high quality. Requiring such scientists to develop communication skills, a talent that is outside the scope of scientific research, is unnecessary and wasteful, both for the scientists themselves and for society. Of course, this is not a problem for scientists who already have good communication skills, but since there are many more scientists who do not, it would be more efficient to create a separate medium or person who can efficiently communicate their findings to the public.
Also, one of the biggest reasons why these scientists would want to communicate their work to the public is to gain popularity and fame, which correlates with getting more funding. However, if scientists care too much about this, they may distort their work in order to gain more effective support in the communication process. This was the case with Woo-Seok Hwang in 2005. Dr. Woo-Seok Hwang falsified his paper to gain public enthusiasm, but was later exposed as a fraud when it was discovered that he had done so. This incident led to a poor public perception of stem cells and a distrust of science, which ultimately had a negative impact on the advancement of the technology. By choosing to become more popular than their research, these scientists ultimately hindered the progress of science and technology.
However, there can be a net benefit to scientists being able to communicate with the public. As the average education level of the public has increased, and with it the level of science and technology, the average person has the intellectual capacity to accept a somewhat higher level of science or technology. This has the advantage that scientists can share their research with the public to check and modify it. However, if scientists consult with the public to shape the direction of their research, it is very likely that the research will be commercial rather than academic. In fact, the public is not very interested in research that is not directly applicable to their lives. They want research that directly affects their lives, that they can apply to their lives, that can help them in their daily lives, so the direction of research will be more commercial than academic. This leads to a disproportionate amount of research in the sciences and natural sciences, which means that the development of the natural sciences is likely to be very slow, as research funding for the sciences is relatively higher than for the natural sciences.
Although there has been a recent trend of increasing investment in the natural sciences, the amount of research funding has only increased relatively, and the engineering sector still dominates. Even if there is a significant increase in research funding in the natural sciences, it will never reach the level of funding in the engineering sector. In fact, in 2006, a research report titled ‘A Study on Rational Distribution of Research Funds for Basic Science Development’ was published, showing that research funding is skewed to one side. In addition, in a 2012 essay titled “Rejection of Basic Science Investment and the Need to Deflate the Bubble,” it was stated that “advanced creative R&D and Nobel Prizes are just a dream to be distributed when it is difficult to make a living. In the end, even though support for the natural sciences is increasing, the perception hasn’t changed, and people want to invest in engineering to improve human life and benefit themselves. This perception is not something that can be easily changed in a short period of time, so scientists have no choice but to do research to fulfill this public demand.
Of course, if you have the ability to communicate with the public, you may think that the main purpose of communicating with the public is to appeal to the importance and need for neglected research, so that research in that field can be revitalized and ultimately benefit humans. However, this proves that research should be given more importance than communication. The results of the research should be enough to convince people of the importance and necessity of the research.
In the liberal arts books and lectures of scientists who can communicate with the public, such as Richard Feynman and Steve Hawking, who are widely known not only for their research but also for their social contributions, the books and lectures of scientists who have already succeeded with their papers are organized around the content that is easily accessible to the general public, so it cannot be said that they are effectively sharing their research with the public, but rather that they are cultivating the public’s background knowledge. Of course, it is good to broaden the public’s awareness of science and familiarize them with common sense, but it is not possible to give the public information about practical technologies.
We can also think about the ways in which science and technology have become disconnected from the public, and the dangers and negative aspects of modern technology have been hidden or downplayed. The truth is that all technologies have some degree of risk. For example, nuclear power plants and nuclear dumps are inherently dangerous facilities, but they were only developed because of miscommunication with the public. If the public had been informed of the risks of nuclear technology, it would not have been able to develop as it has. Of course, it was wrong to cut off communication with the public, but by hiding it, many technologies were created and developed, and science itself made great progress, and those technologies are actually used around us and help human life.
For example, if nuclear power plants had never been built, many people would still be without electricity, and the environmental damage would be much worse. If we want to advance science and technology by informing the public of the dangers of technologies at every turn, we need to realize that small risks that the public is reluctant to take can slow down scientific progress to a crawl.
As a result, scientists should stick to their work, their research, rather than communicating with the public. To a certain extent, communicating with the public can lead to good synergies, but if you lose sight of what you are doing and chase popularity, there will be no future for scientific progress.