美国国家公共电台 NPR Alan Alda's Experiment: Helping Scientists Learn To Talk To The Rest Of Us

 

(SOUNDBITE OF POEM, "IF I UNDERSTOOD YOU, WOULD I HAVE THIS LOOK ON MY FACE?")

ALAN ALDA: (Reading) People are dying because we can't communicate in ways that allow us to understand one another. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I don't think it is.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

You may recognize that voice. That's Alan Alda, and this is from his forthcoming book, "If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?" on the importance of making science understandable.

(SOUNDBITE OF POEM, "IF I UNDERSTOOD YOU, WOULD I HAVE THIS LOOK ON MY FACE?")

ALDA: (Reading) When patients can't relate to their doctors and don't follow their orders, when engineers can't convince a town that the dam could break, when a parent can't win the trust of a child enough to warn her off a lethal¹ drug, they can all be headed for a serious ending.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Alan Alda, welcome to the program.

ALDA: Thank you. Nice to be here, Lulu.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You write in your book that for communication, it's important to start with a personal story so that you can form a connection with the listener. So I'm going to ask you to tell me the story that inspired this book. You were at a dentist, I think.

ALDA: I was at a dentist's office in the chair, ready to have him start an operation on my gum. So he's got the scalpel ready to poke² me in the face with it.

(LAUGHTER)

ALDA: He says, now there'll be some tethering. And I said, what? Pardon me. He said, tethering. They'll be tethering. I said, what do you mean - he said, tethering - tethering. He started barking at me. I was too impressed by his surgical³ gown to say, put the knife down, and tell me what you mean by tethering.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, please, sir.

ALDA: And I let him go ahead with the operation. And it turned out that it changed my smile because he cut the little tissue between the upper part of your gum and the - your upper lip. And I was making a movie a couple of weeks later, and the cameraman said, what are you sneering⁴ about? I thought you were supposed to smile.

But turned out when I told the dentist that it maybe would be a better idea to tell people what was going on with this, firstly he said, I told you there were two steps to the operation. And then he sent me a letter trying to maneuver⁵ me off of a lawsuit⁶. And I had no interest in a lawsuit; I just wanted him to communicate better with his patients.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You've made this concept of training scientists and doctors on how to communicate to regular people a mission. You now have the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. One of the educational techniques you teach involves making scientists do improv, improvisational⁷ theater. How does that work? Run us through it.

ALDA: Well, first of all, it's not to encourage them to be funny.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I was about to say (laughter).

ALDA: Yeah. It doesn't make them comedians⁸. It doesn't make them actors. The reason for the improv exercises is to really get everybody accustomed to the idea that contact with the other person is essential. It's the first step toward good communication because if you are thinking only about communication as having the perfect message, regardless of how it lands on your audience, then you're likely just to be spraying information at them and not really saying something to them that sticks.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You are not a scientist by training.

ALDA: No, not at all.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You failed chemistry, (unintelligible).

ALDA: I failed chemistry really disastrously⁹. Kind of tellingly, my father wanted me to take it because he wanted me to be a doctor. And I really didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a writer and an actor. You know, a lot of people don't know how to break into show business.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) But failing chemistry is the way.

ALDA: First way.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) So what prompted you to pick up science journals and read them later on?

ALDA: I followed the same path that humanity did, which was to start with superstition¹⁰. I was interested in things like spiritualism and astrology. And I was - one of the books I was reading was supposedly written by someone who had been dead for a couple of hundred years but written recently through a medium. And I thought, if any of this is true, the physicist¹¹ who lives across the street would probably know the answer. And I asked him about it, and he said well, I don't know. It doesn't sound familiar to me.

So I said, maybe it's - maybe the answer's in the magazine Scientific American. And I started reading that, and I think one of the things that attracted me, engaged me right away was that I saw there was a completely different way to think and to weigh things, which was on the basis of observation and evidence. And there's something deeply moving about it and entertaining at the same time. And that's what I'm trying to get scientists to do, to share that excitement and passion that they have with those of us who don't do that for a living.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, let me ask you - this has been described as an age of hostility¹² to science. We have segments of the population who don't believe in science, who don't trust it. Is that just a communication issue?

ALDA: Well, I think it's at least partly a communication issue. Trust is really important because not only don't we have the time in our ordinary lives to get up to speed on basic physics, let's say. To get up to speed on a particular specialty¹³ in physics, like nano science, it's kind of important to have trust that we feel toward those people who have spent their lives doing that. Science and the public have separated so much that many people in the public consider science just another opinion.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Isn't there another issue, though? You know, I've noticed in my reporting - whenever I talk to scientists, they don't like to use declarative sentences (laughter). The whole ethos, you know, of science is exploration and discovery. The way people may hear that is that scientists aren't sure about stuff.

ALDA: Yeah. I think many of us feel - wait a minute, you told me a year ago red wine was good for me. Now you're telling me...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Exactly.

ALDA: ...It's not. You told me coffee was no good; now I should drink coffee. What's going on here? Can't you make up your mind?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I look at the red wine changes very, very closely, let me tell you.

(LAUGHTER)

ALDA: Well, just keep experimenting on your own.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Exactly.

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, I do.

ALDA: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

ALDA: That's also a communication question. I think there are basic things about science that people should be helped to understand. For instance, any one study is not supposed to arrive at the truth for all time. It gets us a little closer to truth. Almost every research paper that I read says, at the end, more research is called for.

(LAUGHTER)

ALDA: I wish articles about science would include that more. This is not the final word.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, that it's an evolving thing as opposed to - you know, you haven't arrived at the destination yet. You're on your way there.

ALDA: Yeah. And there may not be a destination. It just may be nice scenery until you drop off.

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, that's a very happy thought (laughter).

ALDA: Yeah (laughter).

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Alan Alda - his book is "If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?: My Adventures In The Art And Science Of Relating And Communicating."

Thank you so very much.

ALDA: Thank you. That was fun.

1 lethal   

adj.致死的；毁灭性的

参考例句：

• A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
• She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。

2 poke   

n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• We never thought she would poke her nose into this.想不到她会插上一手。
• Don't poke fun at me.别拿我凑趣儿。

3 surgical   

adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的

参考例句：

• He performs the surgical operations at the Red Cross Hospital.他在红十字会医院做外科手术。
• All surgical instruments must be sterilised before use.所有的外科手术器械在使用之前，必须消毒。

4 sneering   

嘲笑的，轻蔑的

参考例句：

• "What are you sneering at?" “你冷笑什么？” 来自子夜部分
• The old sorceress slunk in with a sneering smile. 老女巫鬼鬼崇崇地走进来，冷冷一笑。

5 maneuver   

n.策略[pl.]演习；v.(巧妙)控制；用策略

参考例句：

• All the fighters landed safely on the airport after the military maneuver.在军事演习后，所有战斗机都安全降落在机场上。
• I did get her attention with this maneuver.我用这个策略确实引起了她的注意。

6 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

7 improvisational   

adj. 即兴的

参考例句：

• I have never been at games like charades or improvisational acting. 您从来都唔擅长玩“有口难言”或者“即席表演”之类既游戏。
• I'm practicing self-control, those random and improvisational acts aren't allowed. 我在练习控制自己，那些随意的、即兴的举动是不允许的。

8 comedians   

n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The voice was rich, lordly, Harvardish, like all the boring radio comedians'imitations. 声音浑厚、威严，俨然是哈佛出身的气派，就跟无线电里所有的滑稽演员叫人已经听腻的模仿完全一样。 来自辞典例句
• He distracted them by joking and imitating movie and radio comedians. 他用开玩笑的方法或者模仿电影及广播中的滑稽演员来对付他们。 来自辞典例句

9 disastrously   

ad.灾难性地

参考例句：

• Their profits began to spiral down disastrously. 他们的利润开始螺旋形地急剧下降。
• The fit between the country's information needs and its information media has become disastrously disjointed. 全国的信息需求与信息传播媒介之间的配置，出现了严重的不协调。

10 superstition   

n.迷信，迷信行为

参考例句：

• It's a common superstition that black cats are unlucky.认为黑猫不吉祥是一种很普遍的迷信。
• Superstition results from ignorance.迷信产生于无知。

11 physicist   

n.物理学家，研究物理学的人

参考例句：

• He is a physicist of the first rank.他是一流的物理学家。
• The successful physicist never puts on airs.这位卓有成就的物理学家从不摆架子。

12 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

13 specialty   

n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长

参考例句：

• Shell carvings are a specialty of the town.贝雕是该城的特产。
• His specialty is English literature.他的专业是英国文学。