The Intersection

The Science of Communication: What We Know We Didn’t Know But Convinced Ourselves Otherwise

Posted by Chris C. Mooney on April 11, 2008
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At the risk of getting more comments about framing…In January I spoke at the 2008 American Meteorological Society meeting’s 7th Communication Workshop, and the audio and powerpoints are now online. Many or most of the panelists–and especially myself and Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan–are making “framing science”-type arguments, but of course, there is no real controversy over them because we’re applying them mainly to global warming, not evolution.

Anyways, you’ll need the WebExPlayer, but I encourage you to check out the session. The panelists were myself and Arthur Lupia, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Baruch Fischhoff, Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA; and Molly Bentley, NPR. The moderator was Anthony Socci, AMS Policy Program, Washington, DC.

If you want to skip just to my presentation, which is kind of a hybrid talk about framing, ScienceDebate2008, and the continuing problem of the “two cultures,” see here.

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Comments

  1. #1 MR_G
    April 12, 2008

    Totally OT, but I thought it interesting them my comment on Nisbet’s post here was apparently censored. My comment:

    “…science studies, an important growing discipline that was unfairly attacked during the so-called Science Wars of the 1990s.”

    I thought “fashionable nonsense” was an apt description and that the attacks were fair, telling, and richly deserved. I’m unaware of any useful results that have emerged from science studies.

    Perhaps I’m being unkind, but I suspect you jumped from the train-wreck of postmodernism, looked about for a new vehicle, saw how much attention Lakoff was getting with his ill-conceived framing shtick, and decided to give that a go. If so, it doesn’t say much for your judgement.

    My follow up comment was also apparently censored:

    Although you seem to have censored my previous comment, I’ll try again with something more germane.

    Let’s look at just the text intro to what you linked to: “Technological science exerts a pervasive influence on contemporary life.”

    What’s the “frame” here? I’d guess it’s that non-technological science doesn’t have this pervasive influence. A pervasive influence is of course evil, despite the fact that such influence might be warranted due to the pervasive nature of the subjected studied by a technological science.

    But what sense can we make of a non-technological science? Just off the bat I’d surmise that it’s one based on introspection. One such as Lakoff’s frames, or Chomsky’s “Universal Grammar” or “Principles and Parameters” or “The Minimalist Program” or whatever the flavor of the week is.

    The passage you quote: “So I believe completely that there is a world independent of our thoughts, but when we start to represent that world, we are talking about cultural entities, what else could they be.” is just stupid. Does he believe in objective facts? Well it seems he does up until we talk about them in some language, then they become “cultural entities”. This is just crap. F=ma is the same in German, Japanese, Chinese, French, and yes, even English. “Cultural Entities” are bogus. Can’t identify any such thing. He’s full of it, you’re full of it, Lakoff is full of it, Chomsky is full of it, Science Studies and Postmodernism is full of it.

    I’ll thank you not to censor this, but expect you will. If not, you’re a better man than I think.

    Why am I not surprised?

  2. #2 MR_G
    April 12, 2008

    You guys really suck, ‘When I first came here, the were four reply to this post. Suddenly there was just mine. How’d that happen?

  3. #3 MR_G
    April 12, 2008

    I’m gonna have to start taking screen=cap of this stuff, becaue it’s pretty disturbing.