communicating science

This is an excerpt from a letter Richard Feynman wrote in March 1958, back when I was just about exactly one year old and still wearing diapers. He'd been doing some consulting work for the entertainment industry, and wasn't very happy with their attitude. The idea that movie people know how to present this stuff, because they are entertainment-wise and the scientists aren't is wrong. They have no experience in explaining ideas, witness all movies, and I do. I am a successful lecturer in physics for popular audiences. The real entertainment gimmick is the excitement, drama and mystery of the…
David Colquhoun reviews Unscientific America, and pans it on an interesting point: I think Mooney and Kirshenbaum have it all wrong.  They favour corporate communications, which are written by people outside science and which easily become mere PR machines for individuals and institutions.   Such blogs are rarely popular and at their worst they threaten the honesty of science.  More and more individual scientists have found that they can write their own blog.  It costs next to nothing and you can say what you think.  A few clicks and the world can read what you have to say.   Forget…
This is not good for bloggingheads: that makes the third high profile science blogger to announce their rejection of bloggingheads, after Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer. Phil would be #4, except I realize I was rather ambiguous about it when I mentioned it before. So, just to clarify, NO, I won't be conversing on bloggingheads in the future…which I regret, since I think the site had some real potential. Several of the commenters on Phil's site do not think it is a good idea, because lunacy like creationism ought to be confronted whenever we can do so. I agree! The problem with bloggingheads…
I reported a while back that the University of Wyoming geology museum was in danger of extinction: it has been pulled back from the brink by a generous private donation of over half a million dollars, with matching funds from the state. I don't like to see significant public institutions' survival depending on the whim of individuals, but we take what we can get, and are grateful for it.
I'm still re-acclimating to New Jersey (I think northern Utah suits me better) so blogging has been a little slow. I have a spate of book reviews and other posts in the works, but for the moment I wanted to ask my remaining readership a question. Who are your favorite science writers working today and why? (I have no doubt Carl Zimmer will be a top choice.) Additionally, are there any up-and-coming science writers you think the rest of us should be watching? (My pick would be Ed Yong for this one.) Have at it in the comments. [And many thanks to T. Ryan Gregory for placing me on a list of "…
I got a letter from John F — you know, John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants — and he says, "We've got this new album coming out that you might like, want me to send you a copy?", and so I nonchalantly type back, "Sure, here's my address," which was really hard to do when you understand that I was dancing jigglety-pigglety in my chair, pumping my fists in the air, and shouting "WOO-HOO!" at the same time. It would have been impossible except for my blogging superpowers. (Oh, yeah…I'm a TMBG fanboi.) I got the album Here Comes Science the other day, and it is fabulous. It's kids' music, so…
One of the big issues in science education is the topic of science standards: each state is supposed to have guidelines for the public school curriculum, which are intended to enforce some uniformity and also make sure that key subjects are covered. These standards are often accompanied by big political fights as the religious right tries, for instance, to get evolution (and sex education, and historical accuracy, and …) expunged from the curriculum. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the good guys win. An article in Evolution: Education and Outreach assesses the current state of state…
I've always rather liked Bloggingheads — at least the idea of it, with one-on-one discussions between interesting people. It flops in execution often, since some of the participants wouldn't recognize reason and evidence if it walked up and slapped them in the face with a large and pungent haddock (the right-winger political discussions are unwatchable, and it's always had this problem of giving people like Jonah Goldberg a platform), but their Science Saturday has been generally good. I don't always agree with the people they have on, but at least they're interesting and provocative. And…
It's too accurate. That's not the punchline, either — it's just the setup. You'll have to read the whole thing. Don't miss the one right after it, either — it explains how science publishing works.
I know, you can't use reason to talk someone out of a position they didn't use reason to arrive at, anyway. But this result at least tells us the depth of the problem. When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. I've talked to a lot of people who think that way, and the really mind-boggling part of this is that they consider this…
This is one of the best ideas around for promoting better science communication: The Science and Entertainment Exchange forges an alliance between scientists and the popular media. This interview with Jennifer Ouellette shows that she's doing it just right, since it isn't one of these things where surly scientists are invited in to criticize, but where entertainers can tap into the imaginations and weird, twisty brains of scientists to get cool ideas that they can use.
If you're like me, you are eagerly awaiting the release of Dawkins' next book,The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and you've probably already put in your preorder at Amazon. It's kind of like the anticipatory excitement for the Harry Potter books, only for hardcore geeks. To whet your appetite, there is a short extract from chapter one available online. And alas, you have to wait until 22 September for the whole thing. We'll have it read by the 23rd, right? Want more? Here's an excerpt from chapter two.
This is a very interesting analysis of Unscientific America: the authors weren't only shallow in identifying solutions to the problems they identified, they completely missed the big one. This is an informative chart. American variation in science literacy is enormous. Data from Salzmann & Lowell (2008) We've got a large number of science-literate students in the top-performing category (which is good), but the average is relatively low (not good). I know this is really obvious, but I have to say it anyway, since I'm afraid many Americans will read this: the only way that can happen is if…
This is a wonderfully done, very clear explanation of squid color, made using simple hand-drawn animation. See, this is communicating science! CreatureCast Episode 1 from Casey Dunn on Vimeo. (From the Creature Cast at the Dunn lab)
Jerry Coyne shows Mooney and Kirshenbaum the door. It's a nice, succinct dismissal. He makes the empirical argument that their strategy is nothing new and has been in operation for many years, and hasn't worked — but I think just the fact that the scientists they most want to get to change their ways are finding their work both shallow and repugnant is a testimony to their failure as communicators, too. I guess they'll just have to write us off.
Oh, no. Mooney and Kirshenbaum have written another loopy op-ed. I'm reading it in complete bafflement: what is their argument? What are they trying to do? Because none of it makes sense. It's confusing, right from the beginning, in which they sneer at Richard Dawkins for publishing a new book about science. This fall, evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins -- most recently famous for his public exhortation to atheism, "The God Delusion" -- returns to writing about science. Dawkins' new book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will inform and regale us with the stunning "…
You know, I think communicating science is an extremely important enterprise, one that I think scientists need to work at more. That interface with the general public is poorly cobbled together and we often seem to be working in completely different directions, producing a lot of, well, chafing, where the citizenry is off supporting some lunacy like creationism or homeopathy and pissing us off, and we're grumpily tossing off thunderbolts of scorn and pissing them off…and unfortunately, we do not have the benefit of the automatic deference given to such scoundrels as the clergy. I suppose we…
Jerry Coyne has published his review of Unscientific America in Science. It begins this way: In Unscientific America, a book slight in both length and substance, science writers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum argue that America's future is deeply endangered by the scientific illiteracy of its citizens and that this problem derives from two failings of scientists themselves: their vociferous atheism and their ham-handed and ineffectual efforts to communicate the importance of science to the public. And ends this way: More than at any time in my life, I see Americans awash in popular…
I will try to keep this short, especially since the combined length of all the reviews of Unscientific America probably outstrips the length of the book itself.* I did not particularly like Unscientific America. Running a scant 132 pages, it is a scattershot survey of how scientists (according to authors Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum) have not pulled their weight in communicating important issues to the public. It is not an in-depth study of America's science culture wars but rather an extended op-ed whose content will be familiar to anyone who followed the various "framing" skirmishes…