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

Code of Conduct for Scientists Who Engage in Advocacy

The AAAS hosted a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation to address the issue of scientists expressing their opinions to influence an action, such as a political process. The results of this workshop can be downloaded from this web page. The bottom line is the Code of Conduct for Advocacy in Science by Nicholas … 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

Finding common ground with climate-change contrarians

This article by Prof. Scott Denning from Colorado State University was published in the UCAR Magazine. He offers three pieces of wisdom for interacting with audiences who may be hostile. 1. Begin from common ground. 2. Engage the audience on a human level. 3. Emphasize the basics. Denning argues that our inability to interact with … read more

Judging a book by its cover

I was pleased to see that Eloquent Science was one of six books selected for review by CAPjournal (CAP=Communicating Astronomy with the Public) as part of an article entitled “Reading about Science Communication.” The review, however, was a mixed bag. Following up from a communication workshop organised by the American Meteorological Society, this book is … read more

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