A stir went through the Australian science communication community last week, caused by an article with the headline Science communicators need to stop telling everybody the universe is a meaningless void. In meetings and online back channels we cried “not ALL science communicators!”
As experts in science communication, we think the article got a few things right but also that this isn’t the whole story. As science communication researchers have recognised for decades, some people who communicate science don’t really take their audiences into account. Instead they rely on the “deficit model”, which wrongly suggests you can change people’s beliefs and behaviours simply by giving them facts to fill perceived gaps in their knowledge.
