# Presentation: 663707

## The Communication of Earth Science Information to Leadership and Policy-relevant Audiences:

**An assessment of current NASA communication sites and programs**

**Jon D. Miller**
**Professor and Director**
**Center for Biomedical Communication **
**and the**
**International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy**
**The Feinberg School of Medicine**
**Northwestern University**

## My purpose today is to provide a framework for thinking about the communication of earth science information to leadership and stakeholder audiences. 

## A stratified model of the formulation of public policy

**Decision Makers**

**Policy Leaders**

**Attentive Public**

**Interested Public **

**Residual Public**

**A stratified model of the formulation of public policy**

## For science, technology, and space policy, the decision-makers include:

**The President and his cabinet members with responsibilities for science, technology, and space policy and the heads of selected agencies. **
**The leadership of the House or Senate and the members of House and Senate committees that have responsibility for science, technology, and space policy matters. **
**On some occasions, the members of the Supreme Court and judges in the federal judiciary. **
**The total number of decision-makers in science, technology, and space policy is approximately 200.**

## A stratified model of the formulation of public policy

**Decision Makers**

**Policy Leaders**

**Attentive Public**

**Interested Public **

**Residual Public**

**A stratified model of the formulation of public policy**

## For science, technology, and space policy, the policy leaders include:

**The officers and board members of national scientific and engineering societies and associations.**
**Members of the NAS, NAE, and IOM.**
**Officers and board members of major corporations involved in science or engineering.**
**Officers of universities engaged in a significant level of scientific or engineering research.**
**Winners of a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal.**
**Individuals who testified before a congressional committee (House or Senate) on a science policy matter.**
**Members of major executive branch science advisory committees at the secretarial or agency level.**
**Approximately 8,500 individuals qualified as a science policy leader in 2003.**

## Science and technology policy leaders, space policy leaders, and environmental policy leaders are an important audience with whom NASA needs to communicate.  

**These leaders play an important role in the policy making process.**
**NASA has tended to take the support of the scientific community for granted.**

## Leadership understanding of selected concepts.

|  | Space Policy Leaders |  |  | Science Policy Leaders |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | CU | GS | LF | CU | GS | LF |
| The electromagnetic spectrum. |    52% |    28% |    20% |    51% |    25% |    24% |
| The concept of plate tectonics. | 49 | 35 | 16 | 43 | 41 | 16 |
| The process of nuclear fusion. | 44 | 41 | 15 | 32 | 43 | 25 |
| The concept and causes of global warming. | 43 | 53 |   4 | 41 | 54 |   5 |
| The concept of ozone depletion & recovery | 43 | 51 |   6 | 36 | 50 | 14 |
| The origin & composition of a laser beam. | 39 | 41 | 20 | 36 | 42 | 22 |
| The age of our Sun. | 35 | 41 | 24 | 27 | 47 | 26 |
| The life cycle of stars. | 34 | 43 | 23 | -- | -- | -- |
| The concept of an accelerating universe. | 33 | 48 | 19 | -- | -- | -- |
| The place of quarks in atomic theory. | 18 | 39 | 43 | -- | -- | -- |

**Leadership understanding of selected concepts.**

**CU = clear understanding   GS = general sense   LF = less familiar**

## Leadership trust in information sources.

|  | Space Policy
Leaders | Science Policy Leaders |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A report from the National Academy of Sciences | 8.3 (.08) | 8.7 (.06) |
| An article in Science or Nature | 7.9 (.09) | 8.3 (.07) |
| A story in Space News or Aviation Week & Space Technology | 7.1 (.11) | --- |
| A report by a scientist from a major university | 7.0 (.10) | 7.4 (.08) |
| A report from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration | 6.9 (.12) | 6.6 (.10) |
| A story in the Wall Street Journal | 6.6 (.10) | 6.1 (.10) |
| A story in the New York Times or the Washington Post | 6.4 (.11) | 6.4 (.09) |
| A report from a Congressional committee on science & technology | 6.0 (.11) | 6.1 (.19) |
| A report from the Planetary Society | 6.0 (.15) | --- |
| A report from the Department of Defense | --- | 5.1 (.12) |
| A story in Time or Newsweek | 5.0 (.12) | 4.9 (.11) |
| A story on CNN | 4.7 (.11) | 4.5 (.10) |
| A story on a network television news show | 3.6 (.11) | 3.5 (.10) |

**Leadership trust in information sources.**

## In this context, I looked at NASA and Goddard web sites and online information to determine how these resources serve this population.

**I started with the main NASA portal, quickly dispensed with the large hardware commercial, and found that one in three of the major panels focused on earth sciences. This is a reasonable and friendly entry process. **
**Once I moved to the earth science sites, I found a disproportionate emphasis on weather and hurricanes and markedly less emphasis on climate change or other ecological problems.  **
**When I used the search engine to find information about “climate change,” I found hundreds of links to both NASA and university-based information and sites. **

## The quality of the information provided in these linkages was generally excellent, but I would observe that:

**The information is dispersed into a large number of small packets and that there are relatively few broad integrative pieces. The user is left to his or her own resources to do the integration.  **
**Although it is appropriate for government to limit its emphasis on conclusions, there is a middle ground in which more integrative or summary material – perhaps primarily from university, industry, or professional society sources – could be included in the linkages.   **
**I fault NASA less than the current restrictive political climate within which the agency operates, but this review of NASA sites indicates the importance of seeking legislative support for statutory restrictions on political interference in the reporting of scientific results. **

## The quality of the information presentation provided in these linkages was generally good, but there were some exceptions:

**In general, these sites included too much video of marginal quality. The producers of these video materials should look at the results on the kinds of computers and screens that most people use.  **
**Between a half and a third of the video materials did not have a narrative explanation. It is not clear whether this was always the case or whether the narratives have been deleted for political purposes, but many of these resources have limited value without some explanation.   **
**The search process found linkages to a number of text sources with climate data over hundreds of thousands of years, but there is no indexing of these results (other than the search engine itself) and this material would be much more accessible with some indexing. **

## This review should also remind us and NASA of the important role played by professional societies and groups in the “certification” and dissemination of scientific results.

**The scientific community – including the earth sciences community – is organized into a number of professional societies and groups that play an important role in “certifying” new scientific information.  **
**In general, NASA has paid too little attention to these groups. It is important for all NASA scientific laboratories and groups to develop more focused programs of collaboration and dissemination with professional societies.   **
**NASA should continue to distribute its data widely and quickly to universities, research centers, and other appropriate organizations through long-term agreements to discourage the political restriction of scientific results. **