Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Death Star petition response is science communications done right

Someone in the White House pays attention to studies of effective communication.

The Obama administration's "We the People" petition site has a simple rule: get 25,000 people to sign on to any request, and it will get an official response. And all sorts of outrageous requests, including calls for secession and Obama's impeachment have received an official response (although, oddly, a call for open-accessing federal research has not). Over the weekend, a pretty improbable petition managed to get a response: a request that the US government build a Death Star. And it is brilliant.

Not only is it funny and compelling—it's certainly both—but it shows how to turn an unlikely opportunity into a great platform for promoting science, using techniques highlighted by science research itself. Studies of a process called "cultural cognition" indicate that people are more likely to accept information from those they identify with culturally. And the response's author (Paul Shawcross from the OMB's Science and Space branch) establishes his cultural credentials in the title, a reference to a key scene in the first Star Wars movie. Similar references are sprinkled throughout.

With a cultural connection established, Shawcross shifts gently from the topic of a fictional space station to a real one—the International Space Station, which allows him to give a plug to NASA's "Spot the Station" service. And from there, he's off, seamlessly giving attention to the Mars rovers, the commercialization of space launches, the Voyager probes, and the James Webb Space Telescope. And, before he wraps up, he shifts to some of DARPA's robotics work.

There's clearly a healthy dose of PR in the piece—Obama's cultural credentials as a science and sci-fi enthusiast are established along the way—but the key message only appears in the last two paragraphs. That's where Shawcross shifts the focus to science education. "We are living in the future!" he writes. "Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field."

It's one of the slickest pitches I've seen for getting involved in science.

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