The following post was written by my colleague Dr. Jonathan Kellogg about recent experiences with science communication relating to the Fukushima Daiichii Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) disaster. We work together on the Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring (InFORM) project which has been working to make measurements of Fukushima derived contamination in the North Pacific to determine the environmental and public health impact of the disaster on North Americans. Communicating with the public about science and the scientific method can be very rewarding but can also come with some pitfalls and challenges. This post is part of an ongoing effort to communicate with the public about what the professional scientific community is learning about the environmental impacts of the FDNPP meltdowns in 2011. Here Jonathan points out that the color schemes than one uses to summarize data in figures can be important and send messages that the data do not support. In this case a website that has a history of misrepresenting scientific results and misinforming the public about Fukushima appropriated a figure by the InFORM team and used the red color on the figure to suggest that there were dangerous levels of Fukushima derived contamination in the northeast Pacific. As comments on their story indicate, members of the public without expertise in this area of scientific inquiry were mislead to think that red = bad and therefore the contamination we measured was a significant risk to environmental and public health. A vast body of scientific research suggests just the opposite. So scientists must choose their colors wisely when bringing their results to the public. More below the fold.
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