Peter Kareiva, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, has authored a post on Cool Green Science, "the conservation blog of The Nature Conservancy," that looks at the current state of scientific illiteracy in the wake of Chris Mooney's new book "Unscientific America."
Interestingly, Karevia makes the bold statement that the scientists are to blame for the public's lack of knowledge and understanding when it comes to science. Here's an excerpt:
"The blame lies to some large extent with us scientists — not with the media, and not with an intellectually lazy public.
As my Conservancy colleague Rebecca Goldman pointed out in a Cool Green Science post last month, scientists by and large do not know how to communicate. Even worse, when when one of us does communicate, it is viewed by other scientists as an indicator of some sort of lack of rigor, and “less serious science.”
Too few scientists think about audience and how to reach it. We are boring instead of entertaining — in fact, we would probably be embarrassed if we were called entertaining. What is up with that? Instead of presenting just the facts, we need to be able to use our science to address the topics most people care about — job security, health, children, national security."
Click "source" to read more.
Interestingly, Karevia makes the bold statement that the scientists are to blame for the public's lack of knowledge and understanding when it comes to science. Here's an excerpt:
"The blame lies to some large extent with us scientists — not with the media, and not with an intellectually lazy public.
As my Conservancy colleague Rebecca Goldman pointed out in a Cool Green Science post last month, scientists by and large do not know how to communicate. Even worse, when when one of us does communicate, it is viewed by other scientists as an indicator of some sort of lack of rigor, and “less serious science.”
Too few scientists think about audience and how to reach it. We are boring instead of entertaining — in fact, we would probably be embarrassed if we were called entertaining. What is up with that? Instead of presenting just the facts, we need to be able to use our science to address the topics most people care about — job security, health, children, national security."
Click "source" to read more.
Wed Aug 12 17:32:28 2009
Wed Aug 12 21:32:13 2009