Bias in Science and Communication : A field guide

Bias in Science and Communication introduces a wide variety of biases affecting human cognition, with a specific focus on how they affect scientists and the communication of science. Bias is a natural outcome of our thinking as the nature of our cognitive processes leads to inherent limitations, resulting in predictable biases in both our own judgements and the interpretation of our communications by the public, policymakers and even other scientists. The role of this book is to lay out how these common biases affect the specific types of judgements, decisions and communications made by scientists.

The book is divided into four parts. The first introduces the reader to a variety of decision biases (including a pre-reading test to demonstrate these), the field of decision-making in general and fundamental considerations regarding the psychology underlying different types of communication.

Each chapter in the second section of the book focuses on a specific bias or a set of related, decision-making tendencies, describing the general effect, examples including those from the pre-reading quiz, how they impact decisions and some of the implications for scientists’ decisions and communications.

This is followed by a set of chapters that brings insights about these individual biases together to demonstrate how they can combine and interact to produce a variety of well documented effects including publication bias and stubborn denial of what, to scientists, are regarded as accepted facts. It also covers, more broadly, the ways in which biases can be overcome or avoided.

Finally, the concluding section is the 'field guide' drawing overall conclusions about the impact of biases on science and communication, with advice on how to recognise biases, and a summary of what we know about their modes of action and amelioration strategies. That is, advice to help readers to identify and reduce biases in their own thinking and communications.