Ever since the Professor (notice you can't remember his name) and Maryanne, scientists have suffered from stereotyping of the worst sort. And now when clear science communication would help on any number of issues, they seem to be living up to their pathetic image.
On August 11, 1999–ten years ago tomorrow–the State Board of Education in Kansas voted to take evolution out of the state’s science curriculum.
This came as quite a shock to a lot of biologists I spoke to at the time. A lot of them couldn’t understand how it have happened. Some decided to get together to plan what to do in response. With lightning-fast reflexes, a meeting was arranged over a year later. Representatives from major scientific societies gathered to make a plan. They invited a number of other people to join them. I was one. And, frankly, I felt like I was observing a meeting of representatives of tribes from some New Guinea highland forest, who were following rules and speaking a language that I could not begin to understand. At the end of the meeting, these dozens of scientists made a momentous decision. They would…wait for it…go back to their societies and suggest that they post on their web site a statement that evolution is good science.
I sat there, gob-smacked, wondering exactly how many people actually visit, say, the American Phytopathological Society. And yet everyone at the meeting seemed so happy, so excited that they had really done something–that they had let the public know just where they stand.
The experience was a stunning lesson for me about what scientists think is effective communication. And while some of that spirit still survives today, a lot has changed–at least based on my highly non-scientific intuition. Many scientists have been thinking about what they can do in their interactions with the media to get a better sense of their science across. Many, fed up with what they consider to be a sadly broken media machine, have taken matters into their own hands with blogs. [More]
If only they were as articulate and effective as say, economists.
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