Setting the Terms for Zoonotic Diseases: Effective Communication for Research, Conservation, and Public Policy.

Julie Teresa Shapiro,Tigga Kingston,Rebekah C Kading,Winifred F Frick,Ian H Mendenhall,Amanda Vicente-Santos,Rodrigo A Medellín,Luis Víquez-R,Stefania Leopardi,Paul Racey

doi:10.3390/v13071356

Abstract

Many of the world’s most pressing issues, such as the emergence of zoonotic diseases, can only be addressed through interdisciplinary research. However, the findings of interdisciplinary research are susceptible to miscommunication among both professional and non-professional audiences due to differences in training, language, experience, and understanding. Such miscommunication contributes to the misunderstanding of key concepts or processes and hinders the development of effective research agendas and public policy. These misunderstandings can also provoke unnecessary fear in the public and have devastating effects for wildlife conservation. For example, inaccurate communication and subsequent misunderstanding of the potential associations between certain bats and zoonoses has led to persecution of diverse bats worldwide and even government calls to cull them. Here, we identify four types of miscommunication driven by the use of terminology regarding bats and the emergence of zoonotic diseases that we have categorized based on their root causes: (1) incorrect or overly broad use of terms; (2) terms that have unstable usage within a discipline, or different usages among disciplines; (3) terms that are used correctly but spark incorrect inferences about biological processes or significance in the audience; (4) incorrect inference drawn from the evidence presented. We illustrate each type of miscommunication with commonly misused or misinterpreted terms, providing a definition, caveats and common misconceptions, and suggest alternatives as appropriate. While we focus on terms specific to bats and disease ecology, we present a more general framework for addressing miscommunication that can be applied to other topics and disciplines to facilitate more effective research, problem-solving, and public policy.

Highlights

Communicating complex scientific findings to diverse professional audiences, as well as policy makers and the public, can be very challenging
We present a short glossary of terms that illustrate these four types of miscommunication that we believe have caused the most confusion and disruption to effective, accurate communication regarding zoonotic diseases and bats
While we have focused on terms that we find have been commonly misused with regard to bats during the COVID-19 pandemic, misuse of these terms and the types of miscommunication that they exemplify are applicable to other species, situations, and disciplines

Summary

Introduction

Communicating complex scientific findings to diverse professional audiences, as well as policy makers and the public, can be very challenging. In communication about zoonotic diseases and bats we identified four recurrent types of miscommunication that are profoundly impacting inference and thereby interdisciplinary communication, public opinion, and, potentially, policy (Table 1) They arise from problems in messaging by the sender, understanding of the receiver, or both. The types of miscommunication are: Incorrect or overly broad use of terms—words in which the sender is unaware of the accepted definition of a term in the field(s) that coined it and so uses the term erroneously, or without the level of evidence that would support that use, e.g., bats as the reservoir of MERS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2 This perpetuates misinformation and misunderstanding in audiences, whether they are other researchers or the general public. This may be due to the fact that the audience (and occasionally the messenger) is unfamiliar with the methodologies generating the evidence (e.g., serological evidence, phylogenetic evidence)

Findings

Incorrect conclusion from evidence

Discussion and Conclusions