Let there be stoning!

Thanks to Bogdan Antonescu for pointing out to me the latest entry in Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen blog. It discusses an article “Let there be stoning!” written by Jay Lehr about bringing an end to incredibly boring speakers. If only more speakers would follow this advice: The average conference paper is 20 minutes in length. … read more

Market your science on YouTube

This past Christmas break I read Explaining Research by Dennis Meredith. As his bio states, “Dennis Meredith’s career as a science communicator has included service at some of the country’s leading research universities, including MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Duke and the University of Wisconsin. He has worked with science journalists at all the nation’s major newspapers, … read more

Misrepresenting Science: Saturn’s North Pole “Hurricane”

By now, you may have read about the imagery from the Cassini mission to Saturn. The NASA press release calls it a “large hurricane”. The European Space Agency has a similar release. Nice false-color imagery, yes. But, bad science. Hurricanes are storms fueled by the release of latent heat from condensing water that is originally … read more

Communicating low-probability events

The authors start by asking, “What is the best way to communicate the risk of rare but extreme weather to the public?” Through a role-playing game where students pretended to be in charge of a road-salting operation, LeClerc and Joslyn (2012) found that the students were more likely to salt when receiving forecasts of temperatures … read more

Scientists need “adequate communication skills”

…we should focus on equipping Earth scientists with adequate communication skills, and heighten their understanding of how their words … will be perceived. So says the Editorial “Communication at Risk” in the February 2013 issue of Nature Geoscience about the L’Aquila earthquake trial. I couldn’t agree more. Thanks to Martin Gallagher for pointing out this … read more

Review of Explaining Research by Dennis Meredith

I love to read books, journal articles, and magazines. During the academic semester, I have almost no time to read. I try to catch up during the summers and the Christmas break. This break was no exception, and I got to wrap my fingers around Dennis Meredith’s Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to … read more

Speaking Science to the Public

A while back, I was asked about the type of guidance that I would provide someone who wanted to communicate to the public via their National Hydrometeorological Service’s Web page. The book I most highly recommend is “Don’t Be Such a Scientist”. The author definitely has an American way of writing, so nonnative American English … read more

“Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now.”

Here are some prime quotes from an interview with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson of the London School of Economics Public Policy Group about why scientists are obliged to communicate with those who live in the real world (not academics). But in addition, social scientists have an obligation to society to contribute their observations to … read more

Teller on Communicating Science

No, not Edward Teller, but Teller of the magic act Penn and Teller. The Smithsonian magazine’s March 2012 issue has an article written by Teller, available online. In the article, Teller explains seven principles for how magicians convince the audience of the trick. After reading them, I think many could be equally applied to convincing … read more

Plain English Campaign gets it wrong

In almost all cases, I support the Plain English Campaign, who aim to improve the readability of government documents, corporate letters, web sites, and other forms of communication. In their 2011 Golden Bull Awards, however, the Plain English Campaign got it dead wrong. The UK Met Office won an award for ‘empowering people to make … read more

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