Public attitudes to chemicals

Our research shows us that chemistry might have an image problem, but that is not quite the problem we thought it would be. Public perception of chemistry, chemists and chemicals is far more positive than our community believed and before we can hope to influence public attitudes we need to change our attitudes towards the public.

As we looked into chemists’ attitudes towards the public we found that 'chemophobia' is often mentioned as the cause and/or the effect for a chemistry’s perceived negative reputation. Without real evidence, our community has developed this belief and this is a well-established narrative in much discussion.

It turns out, as highlighted by Mark Lorch (RSC News July 2015), that chemophobia is a chemists’ construct. Trying to fight a supposed fear of chemicals – imposing a scientific meaning for the word – is not doing our community much good because we ignore what people really mean and risk sounding patronising and disconnected from society.

We must accept that the word 'chemicals' is commonly used as a short hand for toxic and poisonous, and that meaning emerges in the language that people are using, not in the pages of a dictionary, or in this case in a chemistry textbook. Words have different connotative meanings, as opposed to denotative meaning, and this is hard to control: while we can regulate the use of nomenclature within our community we can’t impose the use of a word like chemicals to always comply with what we mean by it. For example, technically a tomato is a fruit, but we all think and refer to tomatoes as a vegetable.

Most people are ‘cognitively polyphasic’, which means they can handle different thought content at the same time, even if they are actually contradictory. Most people know that everything is made of chemicals, and chemical elements make up everything in the universe, but in everyday expression when they use 'chemicals' that is not what they mean.

This connotation of the word 'chemicals' evolved within a common and powerful heuristic – a mental shortcut – where something 'natural' is considered better than something man-made. This idea is centuries old, and it’s deeply embedded in our culture and language.

People’s views of chemicals do not impact their view of chemistry or chemists. But if we talk about chemicals all the time – especially in trying to combat perceived inaccuracies in the views of others – we actually risk activating existing fears.

Supposed misuse of 'chemicals' has become a pet peeve for our community: we get upset when it is employed in this way and in trying 'to set the science straight' we end up sounding patronising, petty and don’t really achieve what we set out to in communicating. We have many opportunities to showcase chemistry, but if what we do is to go around with a red pen and check whether they are using the right terminology, who can blame the public if they don’t care to listen? Do we want to be vigilantes for the word 'chemicals' or do we want to be ambassadors for chemistry?

We need to create new, positive associations instead of focusing on the old, negative ones. We should avoid talking about 'chemophobia' or framing our communications in negative terms (fighting ignorance, debunking myths, etc). Instead we should try to be more positive, showing people how chemistry makes us feel and championing the cause of chemistry in society.

Matthew Hartings, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, American University

"Chemistry, as a practice and a field of study, has always had the perception of being difficult or unapproachable. I think that in comparison to other sciences, there is a dissociation between the broader public and the action of doing chemistry. This perceived distance is directly related to the barriers that we put in place; there are good reasons for requiring training of those who want to practice chemistry. Some of these barriers are institutional and require that chemistry is performed in safe lab environments (a good thing) and that it uses jargon (which is always unhelpful).

"Chemists are all too happy to keep chemistry to themselves and have people take interest in it from afar. Despite this, there are a large number of people who still take an interest in the chemistry in their everyday lives. I think these are the same people who are protesting the use of genetically modified organisms or requiring only natural chemicals be used in consumer products. These people have a natural desire to engage with chemistry.

"Rather than maintaining a detachment from the broader public, it is our responsibility to engage people with chemistry. And the best way to do this is to enable non-chemists to do real chemistry. I have found great success with enabling non-chemists through kitchen chemistry, but there are a number of other avenues to facilitate engagement. While real engagement is not always easy, I think our profession has much to gain by supporting these activities."

Raychelle Burks, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Doane College

“For me, writing and speaking about chemistry is outreach. I had to ask myself if my use of 'chemophobia' and ascribing to a deficient model of science communication was really outreach. It wasn't. It was inreach – a kind of preaching to the choir.

"Being an ambassador for chemistry requires more listening, flexibility in communication style, and even more listening!"

We have now published the data with the tables from our public survey on public attitudes to chemistry in the UK.

You can download the data on our Public Attitudes to Chemistry page.