communicating science

Last weekend I attended the annual North Carolina sci-shindig (called ScienceOnline2010 this year), and it was the best iteration of the conference yet. I am still reeling from everything that happened during the three days I was there. Rather than post a session-by-session discussion of what happened there, though, I thought I would simply share a few of the main lessons I took away from the conference. Writers Help Other Writers Writing a book is no easy task. It involves much more than simply sitting down and hammering out an arbitrary number of words or chapters, and as someone who is…
I bumped into Chris Mooney a couple of times this past weekend at ScienceOnline 2010. I tried to talk to him — I honestly don't have any personal animosity to the guy — but he was mostly rather dour, and the most I got out of him was a claim that the arguments will start up again soon, when the paperback edition of his book comes out. I tried not to roll my eyes and say that no, we're pretty much through with his book now (see how nice I am in person?). Anyway, he didn't seem to be very happy any time I saw him, but maybe he was much more cheerful when I wasn't in the same room. He's still…
If there is any problem with my upcoming panel discussion with Tom Levenson and Rebecca Skloot tomorrow morning it is that there is too much to talk about! There is no way to get to it all. In the spirit of the conference, then, we are going to let the questions of our audience guide the discussion rather than lecture our listeners about our experiences, but I did want to briefly comment an issue Tom brought up on his blog earlier today.Tom wrote; [O]ne piece of advice I do have for writers planning to start blogs specifically to aid their upcoming book projects -- don't. At least don't…
"Yeah, well like they say, it takes as much faith to believe in science as religion." I had just been suckerpunched. After spending the last several minutes explaining evolution and its relevance to the history of our species I was hit between the eyes with that old one-liner. Even worse, there was no time to respond. Given that I was a guest in an evangelical home on Christmas and dinner had just been set I simply replied "I don't think that's true at all." Asserting that science is just as much a religion as Christianity must be one of those things that Christians like. It is a comment…
A sample slide from the Your Inner Fish teaching resources.Just in time for Christmas, paleontologist Neil Shubin has given us a real treat. Neil has composed PowerPoint slides of the illustrations used in each chapter of Your Inner Fish and made them freely accessible to all. I don't have any plans to deliver any classroom lectures in the near future, but if I ever do go back I will definitely make use of them!
Trailer for Jurassic Fight Club II Clash of the Dinosaurs This year saw the release of Unscientific America and Don't Be SUCH a Scientist, two books that aimed to take scientists to task for not being media-savvy enough. Whatever "it" is scientists are clearly not "with it", the books argue, and the public's inadequate understanding of science can be traced back to the inability of nerdy scientists to give themselves media-friendly makeovers. I didn't particularly like either book (and that is putting things a bit mildly), but I have to admit that I am a little biased. Within the field I…
Long before I signed up with ScienceBlogs.com I started blogging on the website ProgressiveU.org as part of the "Blogging For Progress" scholarship contest. I was one of the winners selected for the fall of 2006, and some of the folks at ProgressiveU recently caught up with me about what I have been up to since then. Science blogging, the public's fascination with dinosaurs, "Ida", Written in Stone, and more covered in the two-part interview, which can be viewed here and here. Enjoy!
I'm pleased to announced that paleontologist Scott Sampson, author of the new book Dinosaur Odyssey and host of the children's tv show Dinosaur Train, has just launched a blog. It is called The Whirlpool of Life. Go check it out!
Those of you who are fans of his books, like Clan Apis and the Sandwalk Adventures and Optical Allusions, should know that he has been keeping a blog, Drawing Flies, that is all about the intersection of science, education, and art. It's got comics! You can't go wrong!
Discover Magazine announced a contest to create a two-minute video explanation of evolution many months ago, and we finally have a winner. All five of the entries are good, so go to the link and watch them all!
Tonight! On PBS' Nova! It's a promising new documentary on human evolution, Becoming Human. I'm going to try to watch it, but unfortunately, my glasses are broken, and I just got back from an eye exam, so my pupils are dilated and the world is a far too bright blur. I'll try to see the glowing blobs moving on my TV screen anyway.
Mooney and Kirshenbaum are still crying over the bad reviews their book received. Move on, Chris and Sheril. Obsessing over your reviews and hashing over them endlessly is yet another sign that the book isn't very good. Let it stand on its own (that is, shakily, ready to topple at a sneeze) and write another, better book. If they can, that is.
Perhaps you are a scientist. And perhaps you have wondered how badly the popular press could possibly mangle your research. Wonder no more: we have discovered a new maximum. Behold this research summary in The Daily Galaxy, and be amazed! It's about a paper in the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B. It's straightforward physical chemistry using some cool tools to image the formation of double helices of DNA: it's simply addressing the question of how complementary strands align themselves in solution. It's physical chemistry, OK? It's about tiny molecular interactions…until the Daily Galaxy…
The Discovery Channel is having a documentary about Ardipithecus ramidus at 8pm Central time (in about half an hour). I'm planning to set my work aside for a while and fix a bowl of hot soup — it's cold here, with a snow storm on the way — and see if they actually do it right. First half hour wasn't bad: nice overview of the practice of finding old bones, and a good illustration of the fragmentary nature of the fossil. At the same time, though, it's also doing a good job of showing how they know the pieces of Ardi are from a single individual. S l o w i n g   d o w n. So far this program is…
In the middle of the summer of 2008 the ScienceBlogs cat herders relayed some exciting news to my blogging colleagues and I. Randy Olson, creator of the documentary Flock of Dodos, had created a new movie called Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy and wanted to send us all screener copies for a coordinated review "party". It sounded like a fun opportunity at the time, but little did I know what a headache the movie release would become. Even though I enjoyed Flock of Dodos, there was one aspect of it that didn't sit right with me. Part of Randy's thesis was that scientists fail at helping the…
This is a promotional video for CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. When I meet any Australian scientist in the future, I will be expecting them to break into song.
Well, no, actually, he didn't. But once again, he's going to get misquoted by every creationist on the planet, thanks to Newsweek. They have an article about him and his book, and in a nice bold pull quote, here's what they claim: Hey, frogs are highly derived amphibians; we certainly aren't descended from them. Monkeys are closer to us than frogs, but they're still cousins, not grandparents. Not only does that quote look silly to a creationist, it looks ridiculous to a scientist. So what did Dawkins actually say? Why, that the whole simplistic imaginary chains of descent that creationists…
One evening, about a year ago, my wife returned home from some church function or other and said "I just saw a juvenile baboon beg to handle a mother's baby." I had no idea what she was talking about. Where had she seen a baboon? Had she gone to the zoo instead? In truth Tracey did not see an actual baboon. What she saw was an adolescent female human approach a new mother in an attempt to handle the mother's newborn child. This behavior is not restricted to humans. It is seen in other primates, such as baboons, something Tracey and I had both recently learned about through Dorothy Cheney and…
The other day I had a little chat with Scicurious. We talked about the usual things; the latest academic frustration, weekend plans, &c., but sooner or later we got onto the topic of science popularization. We both work hard to not only make science accessible, but to make it interesting, yet our daily pageviews our abysmally low compared to the stats of political, sports, or gossip blogs. We are trying as hard as we can to be good popularizers yet relatively few people are interested. Why? This question has been made all the more frustrating by a handful of books published this year that…
It's another negative review of Unscientific America. I think we're reaching consensus on one thing: the book was awfully light on substance.