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DOI: 10.1177/1075547013499142
published online 16 September 2013Science Communication
David R. Johnson, Elaine Howard Ecklund and Anne E. Lincoln
Science
Narratives of Science Outreach in Elite Contexts of Academic
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DOI: 10.1177/1075547013499142
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Article
Narratives of Science
Outreach in Elite
Contexts of Academic
Science
David R. Johnson1, Elaine Howard Ecklund1,
and Anne E. Lincoln2
Abstract
Using data from interviews with 133 physicists and biologists working at elite
research universities in the United States, we analyze narratives of outreach.
We identify discipline-specific barriers to outreach and gender-specific
rationales for commitment. Physicists view outreach as outside of the
scientific role and a possible threat to reputation. Biologists assign greater
value to outreach, but their perceptions of the public inhibit commitment.
Finally, women are more likely than men to participate in outreach, a
commitment that often results in peer-based informal sanctions. The study
reveals how the cultural properties of disciplines, including the status of
women, shape the meaning and experience of science outreach.
Keywords
outreach, science communication, codification, gender
U.S. scientists face high expectations that research will yield measurable
practical benefits rather than general public good (Hackett, 1990). While
scholars devote a great deal of attention to the commercialization of research
1Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
2Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA
Corresponding Author:
David R. Johnson, Department of Sociology, Rice University, MS-28, 6100 S. Main Street,
Houston, TX 77005, USA.
Email: david.johnson@rice.edu
499142SCXXXX10.1177/1075547013499142Science CommunicationJohnson et al.
research-article2013
2 Science Communication XX(X)
into technological and economic benefits (see Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), less
attention is paid to another area of accountability in the United States for
societal benefits: science outreach. Here science outreach is defined as any
activity such as public lectures, interactive forums, or popular press articles
in which scientists communicate their research or broader scientific concepts
to those outside the scientific community.1 Expectations for outreach are
prompted by a number of factors. Historically, outreach was motivated by a
“deficit model” view; scientists attempt to fill the public’s perceived science
knowledge gaps. A “crisis of trust” in science (Yearley, 2000) may also moti-
vate outreach, with the objective of improving the public image of science in
the wake of backlash from problems such as nuclear energy and contamina-
tion of the environment (Beck, 1992). Finally, worldwide the emphasis on
the “third mission,” the need for universities to connect directly to the exter-
nal world, has been stressed (Enders & De Weert, 2009).
The key U.S. outreach initiative was the mid-1990s implementation of a
National Science Foundation (NSF) Broader Impacts criterion, which man-
dated outreach work for many of the nation’s researchers (NSF, 2007). This
requirement states that those seeking funding must describe how the pro-
posed research project will affect society via teaching, inclusion of under-
represented groups, creation of outreach relationships, public discussion of
research findings, and general social benefits of the project.2 In so doing, the
NSF compels academic scientists to engage in public outreach, underscoring
the importance of social accountability.
Given the perception that U.S. science is falling behind other industrial-
ized nations in recruitment to science careers coupled with a federal outreach
initiative to address the problem, it is surprising that scholars know little
about U.S. scientists’ perceptions of outreach. Most studies have relied on
samples that are unusually small, with statistical analyses of outreach by U.S.
scientists generally utilizing samples comprising less than 100 scientists
(Andrews, Weaver, Hanley, Shamatha, & Melton, 2005; Kim & Fortner,
2008). The only qualitative study is based on interviews with 20 scientists
situated in diverse organizational contexts. Studies conducted by interest
groups provide insights but are neither systematically designed nor subject to
peer review (Hartz & Chappell, 1997; Pew Research Center, 2009).
Multinational surveys provide some U.S. data, including analyses of interac-
tions with the media (Peters et al., 2008) and popular press articles (Bentley
& Kyvik, 2011). Although valuable, these surveys provide a delimited view
of outreach and obscure the meanings and motivations that scientists assign
to such activities.
Here we begin to fill some of these gaps by investigating narratives of
outreach among scientists at U.S. research-intensive universities. Drawing on
Johnson et al. 3
in-depth interviews with 133 academic biologists and physicists, we empha-
size the importance of context. Research conducted in other national contexts
is difficult to apply to the United States because organizational contexts are
either substantially different from U.S. universities or poorly controlled in
analyses. We draw on conceptual insights from the sociology of scientific
work—which integrates scholarship on science, professions, and gender.
Because we are studying scientists, we focus on the operation of the scientific
reward system in particular, which points to the importance of professional
status and organizational context. In comparing two disciplines, we consider
how disciplinary codification may shape understandings of outreach. And
because U.S. outreach policies emphasize women and schoolchildren, we
consider how outreach may be understood as a gendered form of “care work.”
Results offer a fine-grained analysis of elite university contexts of science,
paying special attention to how scientific discipline and gender shape scien-
tists’ narratives of outreach. These features of work are consequential for the
meaning of outreach and outreach policy.
Background
Knowledge of science outreach is primarily derived from quantitative
research conducted in Europe, including France (Boltanski & Maldidier,
1970; Jensen, 2011), Spain (Martín-Sempere, Garzón-García, & Rey-Rocha,
2008; Torres-Albero, Fernández-Esquinas, Rey-Rocha, & Martín-Sempere,
2011), Switzerland (von Roten, 2011), and the United Kingdom (Burchell,
Franklin, & Holden, 2009; The Royal Society, 2006), in addition to multina-
tional studies (Bentley & Kyvik, 2011; Peters et al., 2008; Shanley & Lopez,
2009). This research primarily focuses on measurement of outreach and anal-
ysis of the factors that enable and constrain commitment to outreach among
scientists. For example, in a study of scientists in France, Germany, Japan,
the United Kingdom, and the United States, Peters et al. (2008) find that 64%
of scientists have been interviewed by journalists at least once in the past
3 years. In another study that examines popular science publishing in 13
countries, Bentley and Kyvik (2011) find that one third of academic scientists
have published a popular article. Assessing broader measures of outreach in
France, Jensen, Rouquier, Kreimers, and Croissant (2008) find that half of
French scientists are engaged in some type of public outreach.
The key contribution of these studies is the articulation of factors that
enable and constrain scientific outreach. Examples of constraints include
time (e.g., Poliakoff & Webb, 2007), perception of communication skills
(e.g., Besley & Tanner, 2011), lack of institutional support (e.g., Kim &
Fortner, 2008), and a conception that scientific outreach is an unworthy
4 Science Communication XX(X)
activity for the most rigorous of researchers (Martín-Sempere et al., 2008).
With respect to factors that enable scientific outreach, studies show that out-
reach increases over the life course of the scientific career (Jensen, 2011) and
that previous science outreach participation is a strong indicator of future
intent to do more (Poliakoff & Webb, 2007).
It is difficult to know how well these findings apply to the United States.
Official statistics suggest that half of U.S. academic scientists are engaged in
some type of public outreach (National Science Board, 2004). Multinational
studies provide some insight. Bentley and Kyvik’s (2011) study (comparing
scientists from different nations) finds that U.S. academic scientists publish
about one popular science article in a 3-year period and that only two of the
countries studied have lower levels of popular publishing than U.S. scientists.
Peters et al. (2008) surveyed researchers across five countries, finding that
U.S. scientists, like the other countries surveyed, believe that media engage-
ment positively influences careers.
Few survey-based studies that focus exclusively on the United States are
systematically designed. The largest survey is a report published by a founda-
tion, FreedomForum (Hartz & Chappell, 1997). A report based on a survey of
670 scientists sampled from four professional associations, the FreedomForum
report characterizes scientists’ agreement with negative statements about the
news media. A Pew Research Center study of 2,533 members of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science examines scientists’ views of
the public and includes only one question on outreach (Pew Research Center,
2009). Such general descriptions show what scientists think about the public
(Besley & Nisbet, 2011), but the sampling strategies neglect contextually
specific generalizations, such as how views vary by organizational context,
scientific discipline, or gender.
Five scholarly studies focus exclusively on U.S. outreach. Dunwoody and
Ryan (1985) reveal institutional and disciplinary differences in attitudes
towards media interaction, but their survey does not measure outreach. Kim
and Fortner (2008) survey 94 conference participants, finding that familiarity
with terms in education, professional training, and age are associated with
outreach. In a survey of 73 scientists at a university, Andrews et al. (2005)
report that outreach varies by career stage, job type, and gender. The small
sample sizes of these latter two studies, however, undermine the quantitative
strategies employed. Corley, Kim, and Scheufele (2011), in a survey of 363
nanotechnology scientists, demonstrate that although nanoscientists feel a
sense of responsibility for communicating research findings to the public,
they view media coverage of nanotechnology as less credible than general
science media coverage. Finally, D. J. H. Matthews, Kalfoglou, and Hudson
(2005) conduct 20 interviews with U.S. geneticists employed by the federal
Johnson et al. 5
government or university medical schools. The study portrays scientists’ ori-
entation to outreach as an ethical obligation to society derived from either
professional roles or federal funding (D. J. H. Mathews et al., 2005), but the
narrowness of the group studied limits our ability to understand how scien-
tists’ perceptions may vary outside of the context of this specific scientific
subfield.
Organizational Context and the Scientific Reward System
It is also difficult to know how well existing research applies to U.S. science
because the organizational contexts studied are either substantially different
or controlled for poorly. A wealth of research stresses the importance of orga-
nizational context for the performance and experience of the scientific role
(e.g., Long & Fox, 1995), and both structural and cultural differences in orga-
nizational contexts hold implications for outreach. For example, many
European studies of outreach comprise scientists at institutes that lack teach-
ing duties (e.g., Jensen, 2011; Torres-Albero et al., 2011). As teaching is a
common activity of U.S. academic scientists, there are structural differences
in how nonresearch time can be allocated to outreach activities among U.S.
scientists relative to those who work at institutes, which is more common
outside the United States. This critique applies equally to studies with sam-
ples that include combinations of academic and governmental scientists (e.g.,
Andrews et al., 2005).
Cultural differences within organizational contexts are also likely to shape
science outreach. Different strata of universities offer different constraints
and opportunities, thereby generating locally specific meanings. At elite uni-
versities, scientists characterize a collective expectation of continuous pro-
ductivity over the career with teaching and service marginalized; at lower
tiered universities, scientists are somewhat engaged in research, but a pre-
mium is placed on the teaching and service roles (Hermanowicz, 1998).
Such a proposition about the structure and culture of outreach at elite uni-
versities corresponds to the “Sagan effect” or a professional stigma attached
to doing outreach (Shermer, 2002), yet such conclusions require more careful
examination. Visibility, or the extent to which a scientist and her or his work
are known, is a critical dimension of status within science. Visibility is pri-
marily accrued through publication and citation, but if certain forms of out-
reach enhance visibility, then one would not expect the “Sagan effect” to
operate universally among elites. Moreover, despite low rewards for different
forms of outreach, institutional pressures encourage participation neverthe-
less. The majority of U.S. grants that require broader impact criteria are con-
ducted at elite universities. In 2009, for example, the 59 member institutions
6 Science Communication XX(X)
of the Association of American Universities (a group of elite universities)
accounted for approximately 60% of all NSF and National Institutes of
Health funding in the United States (Association of American Universities,
2012). In the very environments where outreach may be disparaged cultur-
ally, there is a structural impetus for engagement.
From Numbers to Narratives in Context
Research conducted outside the United States generates important outreach
insights, but structural and cultural differences obscure characterization of
U.S. scientists. There is a belief that elite scientists look down on or reject
outreach (Shermer, 2002), yet it is this elite environment of science where
pressure to communicate science to the broader public may be highest.
Moreover, the literature on outreach is overwhelmingly quantitative, yet
understanding how scientists interpret outreach activities is critical to advanc-
ing knowledge and policy. Understanding narratives, the ways in which indi-
viduals attempt to organize and express meaning (Gubrium & Holstein,
2009), provides access to the meanings that scientists assign to outreach and
the ways in which such interpretations may be shaped by gender or
discipline.
One study in the United States does focus on how scientists interpret out-
reach (Mathews et al., 2005), but its design entails interviews with 20 scien-
tists who work in federal or university medical labs in 14 different cities.
Such an approach may nicely describe how various scientists view or experi-
ence outreach, but it is unable to portray how the experiences of members of
the same group are indicative of an institutionally specific culture of out-
reach. Davies (2008) offers a more robust design, focusing on one British
university, but she offers few details on the composition of her sample except
that it included seven focus groups comprising 3 to 10 participants, drawn
from engineering, life sciences, physics, chemistry, and medicine. Whereas
the work of Mathews et al. (2005) offers details on outreach within one dis-
cipline while obscuring organizational context, Davies (2008) characterizes
one organization while limiting insight into distinctive disciplinary cultures
of outreach.
These studies are important because they encourage researchers to account
for subjectivity and context. An important step in this direction is to closely
examine the influence of discipline. Survey-based studies (e.g., Bentley &
Kyvik, 2011) compare outreach practices by discipline, yet scholars have not
closely examined how scientists’ narratives of outreach may differ across
these groups. The rationale for comparison by field is the level of codifica-
tion, or the extent to which empirical knowledge is consolidated into succinct
and interdependent theoretical formulations (Merton & Zuckerman, 1973).
Johnson et al. 7
Some scholars suggest that outreach is less common in highly codified disci-
plines due to the challenge of translating esoteric knowledge into plain lan-
guage for a public (Bentley & Kyvik, 2011).
An alternative explanation may be derived from consensus, another aspect
of codification, referring to the extent to which scientists agree on what prob-
lems are most important for research, which theories and methods are appro-
priate, and what constitutes a successful career. Highly codified disciplines
exhibit clear and rigid definitions of success, while low-consensus disciplines
possess ambiguous and varied definitions of achievement (Hermanowicz,
2009). Correspondingly, scientific outreach may be less acceptable in high-
consensus disciplines because it is not considered an important parameter of
success. By the same logic, outreach may be more prevalent and accepted in
low-consensus disciplines because scientists have more bases from which
success may be derived. When comparing outreach across such groups, it is
not only the difficulty or ease of translating empirical knowledge that shapes
outreach but cultural features of disciplines that influence outreach too.
There is also reason to expect differences in how male and female scien-
tists engage in and interpret outreach because gendered processes are a per-
vasive feature of science. At U.S. universities, for example, elite institutions
are less likely to employ women scientists (Long & Fox, 1995). As of 1998,
the proportion of full-time female faculty at research universities was 27.7%,
whereas the proportion at 2-year colleges was 48.8% (Schuster & Finkelstein,
2006). Gender differences also exist in positions held and activities per-
formed within organizations. Across all university sectors, female professors
are more likely than male professors to be more engaged in teaching and less
involved in research (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). How universities struc-
ture activities differently for male and female scientists may influence
engagement in and narratives of outreach.
Gender is often included as a variable in surveys of outreach. Jensen
(2011) finds that among French scientists, women are slightly more active in
outreach. Crettaz von Roten (2011) finds that women and men share a posi-
tive view of outreach, but women perform fewer activities. To date, von
Roten’s study provides the most detailed survey-based study of gender dif-
ferences in outreach, but important work remains. Male and female scien-
tists may offer distinctive rationales for outreach that are not easily captured
in surveys. Differing rationales may result from position or the gender com-
position of a discipline, but they may also be the result of a broad cultural
interest in the United States to promote the participation and status of women
in science.
Indeed, one of the key objectives of the NSF’s broader impacts criterion is
to increase the participation of women in science, often through activities
in primary and secondary educational settings. Science outreach may thus
8 Science Communication XX(X)
potentially be associated with emotional labor, which emphasizes relational
and interactive “soft skills” that are tied to personality, attitude, and behavior
rather than technical knowledge (Steinberg & Figart, 1999). Women often
consider this form of work an amenity because they have been socialized to
believe the work is appropriate or feminine (Correll, 2004; Ecklund, Lincoln,
& Tansey, 2012). If the notion of female scientists as role models is viewed
as integral to attracting women to science, then women may either self-select
into outreach roles or face greater pressure than men to engage in outreach.
This perception may also lead male scientists to eschew outreach or view it
as inappropriate. Cultural beliefs about gender are potentially an important
aspect of context that shapes how scientists differentially experience and
interpret outreach.
Method
The sample is a subset from a larger study, Perceptions of Women in
Academic Science (PWAS), which included a survey (N = 2,503) and in-
depth interviews (N = 150) with scientists at all career stages randomly
selected from the top 20 biology and physics/astronomy graduate programs
as ranked by the National Research Council (1995). The study was presented
to participants as an examination of crucial experiences in the science career
trajectory to limit bias inherent in presenting the study as specifically about
women in science. Survey and interview questions focused on scientists’
perceptions of the challenges they have faced throughout their careers.
Acknowledging that studying career perceptions in two disciplines cannot be
construed as representative of science overall, we note that doing so follows
a well-established precedent in sociological studies of scientists. Numerous
important studies have focused on one to two disciplines, for example, to
illustrate stratification (Cole & Cole, 1973), productivity and recognition
(Reskin, 1977), and career adaptation (Hermanowicz, 2009).
This article focuses exclusively on the qualitative data, which were col-
lected from 2009 through 2011 after completion of the survey. Outreach
activities were not a component of the quantitative survey. Therefore, the
present study cannot be informed by any Perceptions of Women in Academic
Science survey measures. Interview participants were randomly selected
from survey participants and asked to participate in a follow-up interview.
Early in the qualitative data collection process, outreach emerged themati-
cally in discussions of career challenges. We began to systematically include
specific questions on outreach in subsequent interviews. For the purposes of
this article, the sample includes the 133 respondents who were specifically
asked about outreach, with 67 male respondents and 66 female respondents.
Johnson et al. 9
The respondents include 74 biologists and 59 physicists of various ranks (see
the appendix). And it should be noted that we oversampled on women. The
following questions about outreach were included:
1. I wonder if you are involved in any work aimed at translating science
to individuals outside the academy or the scientific community. Could
you tell me a little about these efforts?
2. Do you think scientists in general are doing a good enough job at
translating science to broader communities? Why or why not?
3. [If no to above] How could they be doing a better job?
Through these questions, we were interested in discovering not only sci-
entists’ own reasons for participation (or not) in outreach activities but also
their perceptions of why other scientists do or do not participate in outreach.
In short, we wanted to examine the dominant ways that scientists talk about
outreach in order to reveal the discourse framing engagement (M. S. Evans,
2009). This methodological approach follows a well-established precedent
in the sociological study of science. Recent studies, for example, have exam-
ined scientists’ narratives of ambition (Hermanowicz, 1998), gender equal-
ity (Smith-Doerr, 2004), and boundaries between religion and science
(Ecklund, 2010).3
All of the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded for analysis.
Our coding process entailed two stages. First, paid research assistants coded
whether or not individuals participated in some form of outreach and the type
of activity—resulting in a reliability statistic of 1.0 because these patterns
were explicit and did not require interpretation. The second stage of coding,
conducted by the first author, focused on substantive patterns identified in
these categories. A subset of the interviews was analyzed to generate a cod-
ing scheme. Codes such as “status,” “discrimination,” “public_religion,” and
“public_antiscience” were developed as themes presented themselves in each
comparative category. This stage of coding coupled theory-driven analysis
and inductive coding to classify the ways in which scientists understand out-
reach. Once complete, the coding scheme was applied uniformly to all of the
interviews. The goal of this modified inductive approach was not to prove or
disprove arguments in the literature by scholars whose work influenced ours;
instead, we sought to use existing and new categories together to explore the
issue of science outreach. For example, we are not trying to test predictions
suggested by the codification thesis, rather we use elements of the codifica-
tion literature (e.g., disciplinary culture) to inform our analysis and offer
afterward a consideration of our findings for understanding of the relation-
ship between codification and outreach.
10 Science Communication XX(X)
The main focus of our discussion is discipline- and gender-specific narra-
tives of outreach that constituted modal patterns in the data. Because scien-
tists’ commitment to outreach varied along these dimensions, we describe the
outreach activities of scientists and then provide a brief description of the
demographic correlates of outreach activities in which scientists are engaged.
Results
Outreach Activities of Scientists and Demographic Correlates
Sixty percent of the respondents are involved in some type of science out-
reach.4 Conceptually, a broad typology of science outreach exists, including
one-way modes of communication such as lectures and two-way modes that
emphasize dialogue, interactivity, and collaboration between scientists and
citizens (Zorn, Roper, Weaver, & Rigby, 2010). Our focus in this article is on
outreach activities that scientists noted as having participated in at least once,
which we present in Table 1. The scientists’ outreach efforts predominately
target children in primary and secondary educational contexts, such as per-
forming experiments at high schools, bringing students to their labs for tours,
and training high school teachers. One fourth of scientists engaged in out-
reach noted participation in public talks or other activities prepared for the
general public. For example, three astrophysicists noted occasions in which
they set up telescopes in state parks for citizens to “stargaze.” Giving talks to
civic organizations (e.g., the American Cancer Society) was a somewhat
common activity—but more among biologists than among physicists.
Commitment to these activities varies considerably by gender and disci-
pline. Overall, women are more involved in outreach (75%) than are their
male counterparts (46%). When compared to men in their disciplines, women
Table 1. Outreach Activities of Scientists.
Physics Biology Overall
Total participants in outreach 41 39 80
K-12 29 21 50
General public 10 10 20
Civic organizations 3 11 14
Public policy/government 3 6 9
Media 3 5 8
Industry 1 1 2
“Citizen Science” 0 1 1
Note: Less frequently, scientists discussed advising public policy, print or online media publica-
tions, industry, or participatory research projects with citizens.
Johnson et al. 11
in both biology and physics have significantly higher rates of involvement in
outreach. The difference is larger in biology, where 73% of women but only
35% of men do outreach work. In physics, 78% of women are engaged in
some type of outreach, as compared to 60% of men. Correspondingly, it is
important to note that while proportionally more women than men in physics
do outreach, the overall number of women in the field is very small. At these
universities, less than 7% of full professors in physics are women.
Cultures of Outreach: Physics
Cultures of disciplines may influence cultures of outreach. For example, doc-
umenting the history of how physics became the preeminent discipline,
Morus (2009) describes a longstanding view of physics as “alien” and having
a “disconnectedness from mundane affairs” (p. 4). Such disconnectedness is
observable today, as outreach in physics is culturally peripheral. In the bun-
dle of tasks that constitute the professional role of the physicist—for exam-
ple, research, instruction, reviewing, or advising work—outreach activities
are not considered a core component of work. And those who do embrace
outreach activities are often perceived as occupying a marginal status.
Coupled with limited societal connections and low public understanding of
physics, this collective orientation to outreach constrains the opportunities
for dialogue and interaction between physicists and the public.
A useful concept for understanding the place of outreach in physics is
professional jurisdiction, which connotes an “occupational turf” organized
around a knowledge base that is exclusively controlled by a professional
group (Abbott, 1988). High-status tasks such as research constitute the core
of jurisdiction, whereas lower status tasks are at the periphery, where work
is often eschewed or allocated to lower status occupational groups. To
understand why physicists believe that outreach is not, or should not be, a
component of their professional “turf,” we consider the account of a female
postdoctoral fellow in physics,5 who has occasional involvement in
outreach:
I don’t think [scientists] would say that a large part of their duties is to explain
what they are doing to the public. I think they would say that there are organizations
whose job it is to do that, and then they could interact with them, but I don’t think
they would be particularly fond of giving public lectures or going to museums or
interacting with the general public, so if we come up with a definition that it is the
role of a professor to interact with the public, then I would say that probably most
professors don’t do that. But then we really have to decide on what is the job of
the professor (laughs). Is [it] just mainly research or does it also have this
additional role?
12 Science Communication XX(X)
Although this orientation is occasionally part of some scientists’ rejection
of outreach, many scientists who view outreach as outside of their role were
those who noted involvement or satisfaction in these activities. The accounts
suggest a couple of explanations for this view. Some described outreach
work as outside of the scientific skill set, distant from research skills and dif-
ferent than teaching. One physicist,6 for example, noted that the material that
one covers in teaching is clear, whereas what one discusses in outreach activ-
ities is unclear. Another reason outreach is seen as outside of the scope of the
scientific role is that some physicists have been exposed to or work with
paraprofessionals whose work is dedicated to outreach. This view is indica-
tive of a subordinate jurisdiction in a complex division of labor, in which
tasks are delegated to lower status occupations (Abbott, 1988). This is espe-
cially the case among physicists who work at large research facilities with
numerous grants that are pooled together to fund outreach paraprofessionals.
Outreach programs at universities that are primarily enacted by graduates and
undergraduates may also foster this belief. Others view science communica-
tion as the job of science reporters.
Another pattern is the perception that science outreach should be avoided
because it is a low-status task. This theme figured prominently in the accounts
of outreach-oriented female physicists as they described their peers’ views.
The accounts depict a high level of consensus on what it means to be a suc-
cessful physicist. Exposure to this aspect of physics is highest during gradu-
ate training, as the institutional goal of professional socialization is to enhance
commitment to research. Consider, for the example, the account of a female
postdoctoral physicist:7
I’m actually really interested in doing more in education and outreach . . . things
where I can still do science but also have more of a focus on the educational side.
I said as much to my thesis committee at some point . . . and that turned out to be
a big mistake. Rather than giving me useful advice, [they] ended up basically
saying I was setting myself up to not be successful.
Among scientists who have achieved positions in elite physics departments,
this view leads individuals to reject outreach altogether or to allocate out-
reach activities to personal time. Consider how a female physics graduate
student8 presents this dilemma:
You end up doing outreach either on your own time, with the time that you would
otherwise be out canoeing or something, or you start getting people talking behind
their hands, you know “Does she want to do research or does she want to do
outreach?”
Johnson et al. 13
The scientist’s account signifies the importance of projecting a professional
identity that is consistent with collective definitions of success in physics.
Because outreach is considered a low-status task, visible commitment to it
threatens one’s reputation because it signals a departure from conformity to
norms of research commitment in elite contexts.
Although physicists marginalize outreach, they are aware of the role it
could play in quelling tension between professional autonomy and public
accountability. Historically, physicists experienced substantial autonomy, in
part due to their role in the development of the atomic bomb, which func-
tioned as a symbol of serendipity that indicated the importance of funding
basic research (Herken, 1992). Although funding started to decrease in the
1970s, physicists enjoyed a period of time with limited accountability in
terms of directly meeting societal needs (Kevles, 1978). This historic auton-
omy and its contrast to a current perception of societal pressure for account-
ability emerged in several interviews. The comments of an associate professor
of physics9 capture these views:
During the Cold War era, physics really benefitted from the umbrella of money
that came in through the Cold War. I think to some extent, it became not responsible
enough about communicating why the government should fund basic research and
why it’s good for somebody who isn’t very interested in science. . . . Now that
we’re out of that Cold War era and the country is facing big problems, not only
should we, but in physics we’ll have to do a better job of describing to the public
why it’s important—even when the country’s in crisis—to put money into basic
research.
The instrumental emphasis of such accounts is noteworthy. The objective
presented is the legitimation of professional autonomy. Only implicitly does
public knowledge of science enter into such narratives, insofar as scientists
suggest the need for the public to understand how basic research may lead to
long-term societal gains. Missing from these narratives is any emphasis on
communicating factual knowledge of physics. To be sure, a subset of physi-
cists who are actively engaged in outreach do focus on outreach activities
with the goal of attracting women to physics, as we will see below. When
outreach is discussed in terms of the role of the physicist in society, however,
the objective is the legitimation of autonomy.
Cultures of Outreach: Biology
Compared to physics, a slightly lower proportion of biologists are engaged in
outreach (approximately 55%). Biologists embrace a much more neutral
14 Science Communication XX(X)
view of outreach activities relative to physicists. The following comment by
a female assistant professor of biology,10 who participates in outreach, nicely
captures the sentiment:
It is something that is not going to count for that much in a tenure package,
although it doesn’t count for nothing. But it doesn’t count for that much compared
to another publication. I don’t really feel like people discourage it, but I don’t feel
like it’s really encouraged a whole lot, either.
Data from interviews with physicists showed more emphatic rejections of
outreach from the bundle of tasks that constitute the scientific role. What,
then, constrains outreach among biologists?
The primary issue that influences outreach among biologists is the con-
nection between biological knowledge and society. Whereas physicists
describe themselves as “walled off” from society, the problems that biolo-
gists describe originate from the relevance of biological knowledge to issues
of interest among the public. Sociologists have shown that when social cir-
cumstances increase the ability of clients to control the work of professionals,
there is a tendency for “professional regression” (Abbott, 1981), where
experts avoid tasks that involve interaction with the public and instead work
on tasks in the knowledge base of professional work, far removed from cli-
ents. The connection of biology to public health, medicine, and environmen-
tal issues, for example, could presumably facilitate outreach, because when
compared to physics, biology may seem less esoteric and more relevant to the
lives of citizens. It is this very interaction that constrains commitment to sci-
ence outreach, however.
One reason that the overlap between biology and societal issues causes
problems is due to potential misinterpretation of the meaning of outreach
work by other scientists. The following statement by an assistant professor of
biology,11 who moderately participates in outreach, described why his sub-
field does a poor job of doing outreach:
In our field [ecology], there is a real challenge between being seen as an activist
and a scientist. As soon as you stick your neck out, you risk losing a lot of
credibility, because you become an environmentalist, as opposed to a scientist.
That may gain you a broader audience, but you lose a lot of scientific credibility if
you’re seen as an advocate rather than a scientist.
Note here the difference between physics and biology. Outreach is not
rejected primarily because it is of lower prestige than research. Outreach is
constrained because of the ambiguity surrounding what role a scientist is
committed to (scientist vs. advocate) and the implications for credibility and
Johnson et al. 15
professional identity in doing so. The close overlap between biological
knowledge and issues of policy or public interest generates professional bar-
riers to outreach.
More generally, however, the interface of biological knowledge and pub-
lic understanding of science creates an ironic problem. A goal of science
outreach is to improve societal interest and understanding of science, yet
biologists who disparage outreach frequently emphasized low public under-
standing of science as a barrier. There are two dimensions to this orientation.
The most general is the perception that the public is not interested in
science—a conclusion that some scientists reach through general interactions
with strangers. An assistant professor of biology12 explained,
No one wants to know about what we do anyways. So, not only can we not explain
it to them, they don’t want to know anyways. I am shocked if, I’m in a bar or
something, just talking to people, and someone [asks] “What do you do?” I have a
series of sort of standard answers. And what I’m doing is trying to suss out whether
they actually want to know. And nine times out of ten, they really don’t. As soon
as you mention the word RNA, they’re running for the exits. And then every once
in a while you’ll find someone who actually really wants to know what you’re
doing and that’s fine. I like doing that, but it’s rare. So, is it our fault? Us, being
scientists, I don’t know.
Other biologists noted that the public lacks a concept of what a scientist does
and that, as a consequence, citizens are unable to understand what it means to
validate a fact, making it easy to dismiss scientific research.
The second aspect of biologists’ perceptions of public understanding of
science is the belief that a portion of society holds antiscience attitudes.
Some scientists suggested that scientific knowledge has become politicized,
attributing public views to “corporate interests masquerading as science” or
the political interests of conservative politicians.13 Most commonly biolo-
gists’ view of the public as antiscience is derived from the science-religion
relationship. The following account of a professor of biology14 represented
this pattern:
I don’t think we do a very good job. There is a gap in vocabulary for one thing, but
it’s more than that. It’s a way of thinking. Too many people out there who believe
that prayer will cure their illness or that angels are guiding their decision making.
The simple results that are in the press about discovering new genes? They don’t
know how to even think about that.
Scientists recognize deficiencies in the outreach efforts of the field, but
they are more likely to attribute barriers to successful outreach to public
16 Science Communication XX(X)
religiosity. Biologists’ perceptions of conflict with the public may be
related to long-standing antagonisms generated by biotechnology contro-
versies such as genetically modified food and genetic engineering (Bauer,
2002). Indeed, research shows that some religious groups reject genetics on
moral grounds (J. H. Evans, 2011) or because they see scientists as “playing
god” (Dragojlovic & Einsiedel, 2012), meaning that many biologists may
be reluctant to engage with society, despite the overlap between biology
and public interests noted above.
Is Outreach Gendered?
There are three dimensions of scientific work that allow us to assess the ways
in which outreach is gendered. The first is simple participation. As we
observed in examining the demographic correlates of outreach, we saw that
women are disproportionately more involved in outreach relative to men in
both disciplines.
A second dimension by which outreach is gendered is in the nature of the
activities themselves. Female scientists were more likely than men to per-
form activities that are motivated by the goal of increasing the participation
of women in science. In the process of describing the outreach programs she
is involved in on a yearly basis, for example, an associate professor of phys-
ics15 listed two conferences for undergraduate women in physics and a week-
end program for girls in middle school. She noted,
Some of the young women who stick with the program throughout their
undergraduate career get a huge amount out of the experience in terms of teaching.
And you know the feeling of reward that you get after each one . . . that’s been
really rewarding, for them, too.
Twenty-one percent of female biologists were engaged in activities with the
objective of attracting women to science, while 30% of female physicists
participated in activities with this aim. The higher prevalence of this pattern
among female physicists is unsurprising, given the lower proportion of
women in the discipline. Only one male physicist, an associate professor,
emphasized that he does outreach because it is important for attracting
women to science.
No scientists offered a rationale that suggested that attracting women to
science through outreach is a task that female scientists alone are uniquely
suited to perform or that somehow women are more effective than men in
performing, but female scientists’ accounts of outreach were often gender
specific. The scientist quoted above indicated that the 20 university volun-
teers on her outreach program for middle school girls were all women. In
Johnson et al. 17
another example, when one physicist16 was asked elsewhere in the interview
whether she thought she would achieve tenure, she responded by describing
her husband as “what a physicist looks like” and then stated,
[That] is what the physicist should be like, and I am not so much [that]. . . . That kind
of different persona, I’ve always wondered about that. For example, I try to do various
outreach things in the department, you know, get the women together and do stuff.
I’ve been told on the side that I do too much outreach, but on the other hand, I get put
on outreach committees, so I have a lot of mixed messages about how I am doing.
The account suggests a predicament. On one hand, some female scientists
may intrinsically value outreach efforts. On the other, outreach activities are
inconsistent with collective definitions of success among the scientific elite,
such that there are distinctive professional identities that indicate what a suc-
cessful or unsuccessful scientist “looks like.”
The predicament is exacerbated when outreach is viewed by scientists as
a feminized occupational task, a third pattern by which outreach may be
viewed as a gendered activity. Prevalent only among physicists, outreach
activities emerged in the interview when female physicists were asked about
discrimination or challenges they faced in their work environments. To illus-
trate, we begin with the comments of one physicist17 whose account sug-
gested that women should conceal their involvement in outreach:
I was getting advice from [a senior female scientist] who’s a very famous physicist
. . . a groundbreaker. . . . And she would always say don’t advertise your outreach
because if women advertised that they do outreach, women in particular, it looks
sort of soft.
The emphasis on “women in particular” and the characterization of outreach
by women as “soft” suggests a gendered construction of the outreach role.
Here again the construction of a particular professional identity emerges:
When women perform outreach, a “soft” rather than “hard” scientist identity
is projected, with negative implications for one’s reputation.
Other accounts reveal similar patterns. Scientists suggested that in some
organizational contexts of physics, such as large laboratories characterized
by hierarchy, outreach is perceived as a stigmatized task that is delegated to
women. A female assistant professor of physics,18 discussing challenges in
the workplace for women, noted,
[A major physics facility]—it’s famous for . . . I don’t think it’s a secret, but there
were many women who were famous and were still being treated as—[they] didn’t
get the full scientist position. For many years they were supposed to do public
outreach things and got half their salary.
18 Science Communication XX(X)
This is an illustration of what sociologists of gender and work refer to as an
“occupational ghetto” (Roos & Reskin, 1992), which describes how wom-
en’s entry into professions often results in internal stratification, such that
women occupy “ghettoized” positions that offer lower prestige and rewards.
Some scientists speculated that this culture of outreach has changed, but
interviews with graduate students in physics suggest that this may not be the
case. When asked whether there had been any particular difficulties in her
science career related to discrimination, one graduate student19 explained that
discrimination still exists but is less overt:
The thing is, most of the time now people aren’t stupid enough to be obvious. It’s
more the subtle things. . . . Among the people I know, women are more likely to
have other things that they really value in their lives. . . . The institutional structures
and attitudes that denigrate that affect women disproportionately. Even things like
outreach. Outreach is an interesting thing because in theory it’s encouraged, but in
practice it’s often not because it takes away from research. Certainly a
disproportionate number of the people who care about outreach are women, so
when that sort of gets—[gasps mockingly] “oh you’re wasting your time” or
“that’s not really important,” it’s those people who feel like what they care about
contributing to the field or to society is not valued.
The emphasis in this account is on culture: Institutional beliefs about what is
valued are seen as a basis of discrimination. It is not simply that discrimina-
tion is directed toward women, because men also participate in outreach
activities (here, it seems, to a lesser extent). Rather, the local legitimacy of
outreach is contested along gender lines.
Discussion
Our findings show that gender and discipline matter in science outreach.
Among both biologists and physicists at top research universities, women are
more involved in outreach than men, and a larger proportion of physicists are
involved in outreach than biologists. The attributes of outreach activities that
scientists noted (see Table 1) offer a suggestive comparison between out-
reach at elite U.S. universities and science outreach in Europe. The rich eco-
system of types of outreach that in exist in the European context appears to
be much more diverse than what we find among U.S. scientists at elite
research universities. The Royal Society Survey (2006) in the United
Kingdom, for example, lists 11 different modes of engagement, but the scien-
tists in our sample overwhelmingly engage in outreach to children and the
public in events organized on campus. And while dialogue or interactive
modes in which citizens work actively with science knowledge is idealized in
Johnson et al. 19
the practitioner and scholarly literature (Zorn et al., 2010), elite scientists in
the United States generally engage in one-way presentations to the public.
Narratives of outreach differ by discipline. Prior research suggests that the
operative discipline-based constraint to outreach is codification. Our com-
parison of physics and biology provides mixed support for this argument and
for different reasons from what other scholars have offered. Bentley and
Kyvik (2011) argue perceptions of public ignorance may be greater in highly
codified disciplines where terminology must be translated into plain language
for communication to the public. Although we employ different methodolo-
gies and examine different contexts, we are able to offer two variants to this
argument. First, this would lead us to expect that terminology would matter
more in physics than biology, because physics is the more highly codified
discipline. For the physicists in our study, however, terminology was less
important than the historic boundaries between the discipline and the public.
The level of autonomy physicists have experienced has engendered a rela-
tionship in which accountability to the public is unimportant beyond the dis-
cipline’s ability to sustain federal funding. Furthermore, lower terminological
barriers actually may operate as a constraint to outreach. This was clear in the
case of biology, not because of the difficulty of explaining biological con-
cepts to the public but because scientists reject the conversation that they
perceive the public is having about religion and biology. The public is able to
enter into a dialogue with biological knowledge due to overlap between biol-
ogy and particular societal issues, but biologists’ perceptions of antiscience
religious views undermine commitment to communication with the public.
More generally, common ground for communication between biologists and
the public functions as a barrier due to the risk of being seen as an activist
rather than as a scientist. Terminology operates in a different direction than
scholars of outreach have argued.
A second variant to the codification argument is that highly codified con-
ventions of what it means to be a successful scientist shape narratives of sci-
ence outreach. Although more physicists than biologists in our sample were
actually engaged in outreach, narratives of outreach in physics revealed a
stronger rejection of tasks that depart from research than we observed among
biologists. Research remains the key basis of status in biology (as it does in
physics), but the informal sanctions such as disapproval of one’s peers are
higher in physics.
The relevance of gender to outreach is especially salient and may be tied
to gendered duties within departments. Female academic scholars more often
engage in activities that are feminine typed than do their male counterparts
(Bellas, 1999); science outreach is just one example of such activities.
Women are more likely to take on service work within academic departments
20 Science Communication XX(X)
and outside of the university. These gendered activities are often low in pres-
tige and respect, as they appear to need little advanced training and go unre-
warded within the department or university (Bellas, 1999). Although we
could not “control” for gender completely, it seems that women are more
likely to take on outreach work than are men. This finding differs from the
work of Crettaz von Roten (2011) who found that among Swiss scientists,
women are much less involved in outreach efforts than men. This difference
in von Roten’s finding and our results is difficult to explain due to differing
methodologies. In examining outreach qualitatively, we add to the literature
on gender and science by revealing that some of what motivates women,
namely, to attract other women to science, does not seem to be shared by men
in science. And engagement in such activities may reinforce the notion that
outreach is a feminized task.
Public translation of science may be seen as outside of the responsibilities
of the university scientist, an understanding tied in large part to institutional
norms that value research productivity over other types of contributions (De
Rond & Miller, 2005). Adherence to these norms limits scientists’ ability to
take on other projects and even creates disincentives for participation in out-
reach, in the form of peer disapproval. It is likely that this negative regard for
outreach may be tied to a “Sagan effect” such that a scientist’s research qual-
ity is thought to be inversely proportional to the amount of outreach work he
or she does. Scientists who popularize or make science too accessible are
suspect by their peers in the research community (Jensen et al., 2008). Finally,
a significant minority of scientists is concerned about what they perceive as
the American public’s general ignorance of science and disinterest in scien-
tific topics.
Despite its strengths, this study has limitations. First, by focusing on phys-
icists and biologists located a numerous elite universities in the United States,
we shed more light on the influence of gender and discipline than we do the
role of specific universities, departments, or institutional types. As noted
when we discussed organizational context, expectations for outreach are
likely to differ according to institutional type. Future research should exam-
ine how outreach differs at elite, middle-, and lower tiered universities.
Second, while we have attempted to provide a detailed account of the mean-
ing of outreach in elite contexts of U.S. universities, there is a need for more
systematic quantitative research to verify patterns we found. Future research
should utilize surveys to test the proposition that scientists’ negative views of
the public constrain commitment to outreach. Finally, we emphasize that
expectations and experiences of outreach may be very different across the
physical sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. While some scholars
include disciplines outside of the physical sciences (e.g., Bentley & Kyvik,
Johnson et al. 21
2011), work in this area is primarily quantitative. Future research should
examine interpretations and experiences of outreach in the social sciences
and humanities, which would offer insight into the meaning of outreach in
low-consensus fields such as sociology and history.
Nevertheless, our results suggest strategies for policy makers interested in
improving communication between scientists and society. Biologists’ per-
ceptions of public religious groups that are antiscience suggest a need for
targeted constituent outreach strategies. Although some religious groups lack
confidence in scientists, research indicates that religious individuals are no
different than nonreligious individuals in terms of knowledge of or interest in
science (J. H. Evans, 2011). This suggests the need for modes of outreach—
such as forums that bring together groups of scientists and citizens that are
more alike than either group may be aware. Universities may also reduce the
impact of disciplinary constraints to outreach by incentivizing outreach
through internal grants, awards, and resource provision.
Appendix
Descriptive Statistics for Interviews
Biologists Physicists
Men Women Men Women
Graduate student 10 8 10 7
Postdoctoral fellow 8 7 2 6
Assistant professor 8 7 2 5
Associate professor 4 9 6 3
Full professor 6 7 11 7
Total 36 38 31 28
Note: The sample was overselected for women in interviews.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by National
Science Foundation Grant Gender in Science and Engineering Grant, No. 0920837,
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Principal Investigator, and Anne E. Lincoln, co–Principal
Investigator.
22 Science Communication XX(X)
Notes
1. See Burns, O’Connor, and Stocklmayer (2003) for a discussion of the definition
of science communication and its intended impact on the public.
2. See http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/broaderimpacts.pdf
3. Methodologically, our approach is similar to Davies (2008), who employs “dis-
course analysis,” which as she states emphasizes how meanings are constructed
about outreach.
4. Our use of percentages in this article indicates proportions of scientists in our
sample who in interviews described involvement in outreach.
5. Phys25F, April 2, 2010.
6. Phys63F, November 29, 2010.
7. Phys29F, April 15, 2010.
8. Phys2, June 10, 2009.
9. Phys24, March 16, 2010.
10. Bio45F, April 23, 2010.
11. Bio75M, August 20, 2010.
12. Bio4M, June 10, 2009.
13. Bio66M, August 9, 2010.
14. Bio48F, April 29, 2010.
15. Phys24F, March 16, 2010.
16. Phys9F, August 31, 2009.
17. Phys24F, March 16, 2010.
18. Phys52F, October 28, 2010.
19. Phys2F, June 10, 2009.
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Author Biographies
David R. Johnson is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Sociology
at Rice University. His research examines the professional and organizational con-
texts of science, including studies of commercialization, science outreach, technologi-
cal change, and the relationship between science and religion.
Elaine Howard Ecklund is a professor of sociology at Rice University, where she is
also the director of the Religion and Public Life Program in the Social Sciences
Research Institute. Ecklund is the author of Science vs. Religion: What Scientists
Really Think (2010, Oxford University Press). Ecklund and Lincoln are presently
writing a book on scientists’ negotiations between work and family life.
Anne E. Lincoln is associate professor of sociology at Southern Methodist University.
Her research interests span education, labor markets and careers, gender, family, and
culture. She and Ecklund are presently writing a book on scientists’ negotiations
between work and family life.
