Scientific researchers are now called upon to more engage more fully with diverse publics and policy-makers. Public engagement, however, comes with its own challenges. As they leave their labs and enter the public sphere, researchers need to consider how to make responsible use of communication techniques by coupling skill in communicating effectively with deeper reflection on communicating ethically. This combined education and research project advances that goal by researching, piloting, and disseminating case studies addressing scientists' obligation to engage with the public, and the ethical issues they may encounter when they do so. The project draws on ten important instances of public science communication across five natural science and engineering disciplines, examining the ethical principles at work in communicating scientific knowledge to a non-expert audience, and using these cases to train young scientists to achieve the broader impacts society rightfully expects.
Leveraging the recent growth of communication training initiatives directed at scientists, the project pilots and assesses the resulting case studies at fifteen partnering institutions, in diverse settings in those institutions, including communication practice workshops, communication seminars, and courses on research and science ethics taught by scientists, philosophers, and communication scholars to STEM graduate students, postdocs, REU students, and students in communication fields. Case materials and associated research are published in book and ebook formats and in peer-reviewed journals of national communication societies and associations relevant to science and engineering ethics,and distributed to national research ethics case banks.
