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Revenge of the health care nerds

Greg Simon used the phrase "health care nerds" to describe himself and others doing comparative effectiveness research during a lively NSWA forum on health reform in August.

Simon, a Group Health psychiatrist and senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, appeared with with fellow panelists Eric Larson, Bruce Psaty, and Paul Fishman. Larson and Fishman are on staff at the research institute, and Psaty co-runs the University of Washington's Cardiovascular Health Research Unit but is also affiliated with the institute.

You can watch excerpts from the hour-plus event. See panelists and questioners tackle health reform, which Simon warned is "a tremendous communication challenge."

His humorous frame for the issues? Here's what he wants on a billboard:

"Who do you want to make decisions about your health care?

a. whoever has paid your doctor the most lately b. whoever has made
the biggest campaign contribution c. scientific evidence d. your own
values"

He votes for c and d, but then he's a self-avowed health care nerd.

Big Audience heard “Framing Science”

About a hundred people sat Friday, Oct. 4th, in the steeply banked IMAX movie room at Pacific Science Center to hear Chris Mooney of Seed Magazine and Matt Nisbet, PhD, of American University, talk about getting science across.

Across where? Well, how about the dinner table, the car radio, the CNN headline news crawl at the bottom of golf on a Sunday? You name it, and they want people to be able to hear decent, accurate stories via that medium.

This meeting at PSC was ground-breaking. Not because of the subject, but because President Bryce Seidl announced that the center has launched a new drive to reach adults and confront science controversies as part of their mission. (Most people know them for science aimed at children.)

The Forum on Science, Ethics and Policy, a non-profit of graduate students from the University of Washington, sponsored the visit by the duo and promised more collaborations with the science center. http://www.fosep.org

Mooney and Nesbit believe that if scientists do not become more strategic about their messages, then the public will be left with the loudest voices on science policy being non-scientists. From their perspective, it all comes down to framing messages. Is pollution a moral issue or an economic one? Is stem cell research an economic-development opportunity or a moral debate? Either frame will work, but one might get more across than another.

Ironically, Mooney and Nisbet accuse scientists of not paying attention to the data about communication, which shows that framing is just as important as content.

For more from Mooney and Nisbet:

http://www.waronscience.com/home.php
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/01/learning_to_speak_science.php
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/home/53611/

You can listen to an 08 17 07 iteration of Mooney and Nisbet’s talk as a podcast from Science and the City, by The New York Academy of Sciences.
Science and the City podcasts in iTunes. Look for “Framing Science”
The New York Academy of Sciences web site podcast page