Scientist/layperson relations
jstemwedel | May 31, 2007The Society of Women Engineers is hosting an event on June 3rd that may be of interest to girls (or their parents) in the Twin Cities area:
On June 3rd, hundreds of girls in St. Paul, Minnesota will attend an event hosted by SWE called, "Wow! That's Engineering!" Through hands-on activities, girls will learn how solar power works, the wonders of deep sea diving, and even develop their own lip-gloss. Most importantly, they'll realize that engineering is not just about working behind a computer; it's about making a difference in the world.
This looks to be aimed at middle school and high…
jstemwedel | April 25, 2007Pencils ready? Here's a quick quiz; circle all that apply*:
1. You're a scientist and you've just published some research in a peer reviewed journal. You want:
a. Scientists in your field to read and discuss your work.
b. Interested non-scientists to get the important bits of what you found and why it matters, whether by powering through the article themselves or by getting a clear explanation of the article from a scientist.
c. No discussion of your article at all -- once it's on the page in the journal, there's nothing else to say about it.
d. All discussions of your findings to be based…
jstemwedel | February 3, 2007In a guest-post at Asymptotia, Sabine Hossenfelder suggests some really good reasons for scientists to communicate with non-scientists -- and not just to say, "Give us more research funding and we'll give you an even smaller iPod." She really gets to the heart of what's at stake:
I find it kind of ironic that during the last decades this ancient desire of men to just understand had to be more and more justified by the prospect of material output. Nowadays, governmental funding goes primarily into applied sciences, ideally into military applications, many of which fulfill the only purpose to…
jstemwedel | February 3, 2007During the discussion after my talk at the Science Blogging Conference, the question came up (and was reported here) of whether and when tenure and promotion committees at universities will come to view the blogging activities of their faculty members with anything more positive than suspicion.
SteveG and helmut both offer some interesting thoughts on the issue.
SteveG takes up the idea that academic blogging can often be a productive way to communicate the knowledge produced in the Ivory Tower to the broader public. Arguably, public outreach is part of the larger mission of institutions…
jstemwedel | January 24, 2007Larry Moran posts a response to my response to his earlier post on the advisability of putting ethical discussions into science classes. Careful fellow that he is, he's decided to stick to a single issue per posting, so he starts with "the relationship between science and technology and where 'ethics' fits in". Larry opines:
Part of what we need to do as science teachers is to make sure our students understand the difference between science and technology -- between the uses of science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge. ...
The goal, as far as I am concerned, is to convince…
jstemwedel | November 22, 2006Some readers have called to my attention a pair of recent stories from the New York Times that you may find interesting.
First, Audrey noted another dispatch on the eternal struggle over how math ought to be taught:
For the second time in a generation, education officials are rethinking the teaching of math in American schools.
The changes are being driven by students' lagging performance on international tests and mathematicians' warnings that more than a decade of so-called reform math -- critics call it fuzzy math -- has crippled students with its de-emphasizing of basic drills and…
jstemwedel | November 8, 2006The 110th Congress has been elected. Whether it's the crowd you voted for or not, there's quite a lot of talk now about a new direction, a new civility, possibly even a new pony (but I might not have heard that last part right).
So, given that the Congresspersons will be looking for our votes again in another two years (along with a third of the Senators), this seems like a good time for the people (i.e., you all) to put together an agenda for these elected representatives of ours. To streamline things a bit, and in keeping with the overarching themes of this weblog, let's restrict the wish…
jstemwedel | October 9, 2006I'm blaming the folks at Three Bulls! for the post that incited this one. Indeed, I started my descent into what is clearly a delusional plan in a comment there.
The short version: Pinko Punko was disturbed at how very little actual communication of content was involved in a presumably science-centered media frenzy. The "journalists" in question neither sought actual informative content from scientists (let alone striving to understand that content), nor passed on anything like it to their viewers. To those of us who expect journalism to communicate actual content (or at least try to),…
jstemwedel | September 27, 2006I can't remember a time I have had a more severe jones for a spinach salad than the last few days. The perfect balance of crisp and earthy and creamy, whose eating would be not merely a mechanical refueling of my body, but a transcendant experience -- is that too much to ask?
Well, during a spinach-borne outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 it is. But, while I dream of spinach (and grade papers), I'm thinking of how information (or lack of information) about our foods plays a role in our ability to make choices about what to eat.
I was already hungry for spinach when I caught an update on the…
jstemwedel | September 4, 2006I am, as usual, late to the party reacting to the news that UCLA neurobiologist Dario Ringach has given up research on primates owing to "pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project". As reported by Inside Higher Ed:
Ringach's name and home phone number are posted on the Primate Freedom Project's Web site, and colleagues and UCLA officials said that Ringach was harassed by phone -- his office phone number is no longer active -- and e-mail, as well as through demonstrations in front of his home.
In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal…
jstemwedel | August 14, 2006Regular commenter and tireless gadfly Bill Hooker asks what my take is on the movement afoot to get academics to put pressure on (and perhaps completely boycott) scientific/technical/medical publisher and information portal Reed-Elsevier.
What's wrong with Reed-Elsevier? Among other things, they host "arms fairs" -- like book fairs, but with munitions and torture equipment (which means it's unlikely Scholastic will be hosting an arms fair at the local primary school).
But hey, are we expecting a company to be able to stay afloat on revenues from academic and technical publishing alone?
I'…
jstemwedel | August 1, 2006It was another full day at the BCCE, starting with an excellent plenary address by Peter Atkins (who wrote my p-chem text, plus dozens of other books) and David Harpp (of the Office of Science and Society). Each of them spoke about the best ways to talk about science with people who are not scientists, science teachers, or science students. Some highlights after the jump.
Atkins, it turns out, is not just a scientist and author, but also an accomplished artist. So, it's probably not surprising that he sees the most promising route for spreading chemical understanding as a visual route. A…
jstemwedel | July 17, 2006One of the things that happens when I lay out a problem (say, the difficulties for scientists in communicating with non-scientists about scientific matters) is that my excellent commenters remind me not to stop there. They press me for a solution.
I started, in my earlier post, to gesture toward an answer to the question of how to improve communication between scientists and non-scientists:
... because non-scientists count on scientists as a source of reliable knowledge on a whole range of issues, non-scientists have a stake in improving communication with scientists. This means part of the…
jstemwedel | July 13, 2006Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon put up a post about gender essentialism that starts by citing this post at Mixing Memory on how people's representations of homosexuality affect their attitudes toward homosexuality. Because Chris's post cited my two posts (initially sparked by Jessica's post at Feministing), I came in for some criticism from Greensmile in this comment at Pandagon. As I believed these criticisms to be based on a misunderstanding of my position, I responded. Greensmile then was kind enough to read my posts and to respond that we seem to be having "the most violent agreement",…
jstemwedel | July 11, 2006This is going to look like I'm tooting my own horn again, but actually I'm tooting for Concerned Scientist Daniel Rhoads on this one. Meme Therapy has another installment in their "brain parade" series. In this one, they ask:
We're seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of scientitic research and conspiracy theories involving climatologists and Global Warming. At the same time supernatural thinking (new age, crystals, ID, deified interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis) are thriving. Should we be concerned by the level of magical thinking in our society? And if so what, if…
jstemwedel | July 11, 2006While I hope this hurricane season is a lot less eventful than the last one, it's always good to be ready. To that end, I'm brushing off (and bringing together here) two "classic" posts from the 2005 hurricane season.
As we look to the scientists to tell us what nature may have in store for us, we need to remember how scientists think about uncertainties -- and especially, how important it is to a scientist to avoid going with predictions that have a decent chance of being false. Being wrong may seem almost as bad to the scientist as being under 10 feet of water.
Meanwhile, the scientists…
jstemwedel | July 11, 2006The other day I was chatting with one of my contacts within the world of journalism, who told me about attending a conference aimed at getting reporters more access to scientists. The conference actually collected a good number of working scientists who came to speak with the reporters (not just to present them information, but to answer questions at length). And, the reporters got the opportunity to see research as it was being conducted (e.g., to be in the field with scientists to watch their data collection, rather than just to hear the conclusions drawn at the end of the process). It…
jstemwedel | July 10, 2006The Ask a ScienceBlogger question of the week is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?
On the technical end of things, I suppose I'm a bit surprised at how challenging it has been to clone certain mammals successfully, but getting things to work in the lab is almost always harder than figuring out whether they're possible in theory. I expected, of course, that some would want to try cloning humans and that others would declare that cloning of humans should be completely off limits.
But as…
jstemwedel | June 28, 2006Following up from yesterday's post about how knowledge about the biological basis for X doesn't tell us whether X is to be valued or pathologized, I need to put a few more points (including some questions) on the table.
First, in the comments thread to the Feministing post that prompted my post, a common (and frustrating) misunderstanding of claims from evolutionary biology has reared its head:
I wouldn't put the clitoris in the same catagory as the male nipple by any means. The clitoris is not a by-product, and by the way neither is sex. And "liking sex that does not result in reproduction…
jstemwedel | June 27, 2006Jessica at Feministing notices the BBC reporting on a study that conditions in utero may play a causal role in men's sexual orientation. But, as the title of this post suggests, I do not care what the biological bases for sexual orientation might be, nor indeed whether there are biological bases for sexual orientation. Jessica makes a comment that starts to capture my own non-interest here:
... naturally the larger question with all these why-are-you-gay studies is why do we have to know? I'm terrified that once someone targets a "reason" they're just going to try and find a way to do away…