Culture clash – Probing CP Snow’s Two Cultures, part 2

Last week I asked a rather trivial (did someone say trite?) question (the 2-second Two-Cultures poll) about perpetual motion machines – as a gentle lead-up to this week’s 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  So what were the results and what can be learned, if  anything, from them?

First, here are the data in all their glory:

Next, the lessons learned:

1.  Don’t trust a physicist to carry out a meaningful poll! OK so I have to admit it, from a scientific perspective the poll was meaningless – the people who took it didn’t represent a cross-section of society (I assume), the questions and their framing revealed more about my biases than other people’s opinions, and the ability to see other people’s votes before casting your own threw any validity the poll might have had right out of the window!

2.  If you genuinely want to know someone’s opinion, don’t intimidate them! This was completely unintentional, but I got the distinct impression that many people saw this as a test rather than a poll and were fearful of getting the answer wrong.   Another humiliating blow to my already-battered credentials as a social scientist.  Scientifically there was a correct answer, but I was more interested in what people thought than what they knew.  With this in mind, there are probably 101 ways in which the poll could have been framed better.

3.  Don’t try and be clever with a one-question poll. As any self-respecting pollster will tell you, asking a single question tells you more about the person setting the poll that the people answering it.  To make any sense of these data, information would be needed on all sorts of other stuff.  Its abscence is another nail in the coffin of this as a serious exploration of people’s perspectives.  But…  if you want to have a bit of no-too-meaningful fun, one-question-polls are great!

Having got some of the negatives out of the way, there are some interesting things to come out of this exercise – flawed as it is:

4.  The 360 people who took the poll were a pretty knowledgeable crowd. The “scientifically correct” answer (and I just know I will get flak for that phrase) was that perpetual motion machines defy the laws of physics – or the second law of thermodynamics to be precise.  They are an impossibility.  And most people taking the poll realized this.  Of course, this probably means that folks reading 2020 science have an above average grasp of physics (give yourselves a pat on the back).  But I was impressed, nevertheless!

5.  There were a fair number of people who took the poll who could be classed as science-engaged. These were the folks who didn’t hit the scientifically correct answer, but were nevertheless interested enough in the question to have a stab at an answer.  This is a crowd that really interests me – people who don’t necessarily have all the answers (and probably realize it), but are are willing to engage. Probably because on 99.99% of all subjects, this is where I sit.  Folks – you are my true peer group!

6.  A small number of people weren’t interested in the science, but interestingly were engaged enough indicate their lack of interest. This is where the poll really fell apart – if you weren’t interested in science in general or perpetual motion machines in particular, why on earth would you bother taking the poll in the first place!  The really interesting question here is whether the people who just “don’t care” really were a minority, or whether they simply weren’t engaged in this poll.  I suspect the latter, but I would love to test this in a better thought-out study.

7.  Public understanding of science probably exceeds public knowledge of science. This actually isn’t supported by the data here, but the poll does suggest it is a reasonable hypothesis for further testing (it probably has been already.  What do I know – I’m just a physicist!).  Let me explain:  The original idea behind the poll was C.P. Snow’s question about the second law of thermodynamics, and whether people could describe it.  My guess is that most people – including a fair chunk of the scientific community – couldn’t provide a good description of the law if asked out of the blue.  That’s because the questions tests knowledge rather than understanding.  Part of the thinking behind this poll was to see how people responded to a question that revealed how much they understood about a physical phenomenon, rather than how much they could recite.  Of course it fails because of all the problems highlighted above.  Nevertheless, it does suggest – however tentatively – that people might understand more about how the world works than questions probing their level of knowledge might suggest.

This is extremely important when it comes to science communication, education and engagement.  Scientists love to despair at how little “the public” knows.  But I suspect that this knowledge-based perspective suggests cultural divides that are less apparent from an understanding perspective.  And if divides – cultural or otherwise – are to be bridged, it helps to first understand where the real divides are before developing appropriate approaches to crossing them.

8.  The “Two Cultures” is a myth – at least within the readers of 2020 science. Actually, this would be a nonsensical thing to conclude, were it not for the 2020 science readers qualifier!  The data from this poll show a single science-aware culture with a long-tail extending into “don’t care” attitudes.  There is no indication of a strong counter-culture – which is a pity because I would really enjoy having a more diverse readership.  But the poll did not test a representative cross section of the community, and so has no relevance to the universe outside this website.

At the end of the day, this was – as I noted earlier -  just a teaser to get people engaged leading up to the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  It doesn’t tell you a lot about whether science-related cultural divides continue to hinder social progress.  But at the least it hopefully gets people thinking, and eager to participate in more robust discussions on science and cultural divides.

Finally, as a bonus I thought I would slip in the results of a counter-poll posted by Ruth Seeley:

Concerned that my poll was unduly biased towards science-types, she [rather tongue in cheek] posted a set of questions crafted to test the literary accumen of readers.  And I’m pleased to note that, just as most people taking the 2-second Two-Cultures poll were science-savvy, most people taking Ruth’s counter-poll had a pretty good idea what a semicolon is for.

What a smart bunch we are!

(And a final-final word: Dave Ferguson also posted a counter-poll that perhaps better expressed Snow’s contrast between science and the humanities.  I haven’t shown the data here as they are more complex to represent than those from mine and Ruth’s.  But if you want to see how readers coped with a question on Shakespeare’s works, check out the results here.  Im ashamed to say, I showed myself up as NOT being eligible for the humanities counter-culture!)

Related posts:

1. Culture clash: Take the 2-second two-cultures poll
2. Culture Clash – the biopolitics of popular culture
3. Celebrity scientists – it takes more than stardust
4. Cultural smokescreens
5. Poll: Does trust in science need restoring?

Tagged as: Communication, CP Snow, Public Engagement, Two Cultures