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

• Published in: Viruses Vol. 13; no. 7; p. 1356
• Main Authors: Shapiro, Julie Teresa, Víquez-R, Luis, Leopardi, Stefania, Vicente-Santos, Amanda, Mendenhall, Ian H, Frick, Winifred F, Kading, Rebekah C, Medellín, Rodrigo A, Racey, Paul, Kingston, Tigga
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 13.07.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Animals; Bats; Chiroptera; Communicable Diseases, Emerging; Communication; conservation; Conservation of Natural Resources; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Disease Reservoirs; emerging infectious diseases; Humans; Information Dissemination - methods; Language; Problem solving; Public Health; Public policy; Public Policy - trends; science communication; Therapeutic Misconception - psychology; Training; Viruses; Wildlife conservation; Zoonoses; Zoonoses - transmission; bats; conservation; emerging infectious diseases; zoonoses; science communication; Chiroptera; public health
• ISSN: 1999-4915; 1999-4915
• DOI: 10.3390/v13071356

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.