Is some of the anti science movement to be blamed on scientists?

Darkness27 said:

Not really. I know that there's an unwritten rule that unless you're a very successful scientist, like Dawkins, Hawking, Sagan, Collins, Myers etc., it is very bad to write science stuff for laymen, like a stigmata.

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What you say is largely true, but please don't include Myers (I assume you mean PZ Myers) in your list of very successful scientists. He's known because he's a blogger, not for his scientific output.

sfs said:

What you say is largely true, but please don't include Myers (I assume you mean PZ Myers) in your list of very successful scientists. He's known because he's a blogger, not for his scientific output.

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I thought Myers was an associate professor of biology at the UM at Morris? Hhmmm.

sfs said:

I'm afraid I have no idea what the actual complaint about scientists is here. Scientists don't "keep things to themselves", at least not after they've analyzed them. They publish their results in publicly available journals -- that's the only way they get credit for them. If there's anything at all interesting about their findings, their university (or research institute) press office will also put out a press release, usually exaggerating the importance of the study. Important results will also be highlighted in other journals, like Science and Nature. What exactly are scientists supposed to do? Buy time for ads on Fox News?

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In my opinion this is the best post in this thread so far.

Scientists do put their science out there for the world to see. They just put it where it will not be twisted and sensationalised - journals. You want real accurate information on the latest scientific discoveries? There is only one answer - subscribe to the appropriate journal.

LifeToTheFullest! said:

I thought Myers was an associate professor of biology at the UM at Morris? Hhmmm.

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True, but it's not like he's doing a great deal of research. He's a brilliant teacher, so far as I can see, but he's not working to advance the cutting edge of biology.

LifeToTheFullest! said:

I thought Myers was an associate professor of biology at the UM at Morris? Hhmmm.

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Sure. I didn't say Myers wasn't a biologist; I said he shouldn't be put on a list of distinguished scientists with the likes of Hawking and Collins. He teaches at a pretty good liberal arts college, and as far as I can tell he hasn't published anything in twelve years. Teaching is a great thing to do, and he's probably good at it; teaching at a place like UM Morris doesn't leave a lot of time, or provide a lot of resources, for research. All perfectly fine, but it doesn't square with the suggestion that he'd already established himself as a very successful scientist before he started writing for the public.

matthewgar said:

Now alot here are concerned about how this will effect scientific news, wich is a genuine fear, but people are iliterate about science because it isn't pushed out there, it isn't made a big deal. People become iliterate since outside of school theiry arn't shown alot of science, and have to activly go out of their way. Wich isn't nescarily a bad thing, but if I want to learn about sports, or the world news, I don't have to look far. So science is cautious about throwing things out before too ready for fear of how people will take it, and because science isn't out there, people know less about science, and it becomes a cycle.

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You keep saying this, but you refuse to tell us what you mean by it. How could science be pushed? Should legislators pass laws requiring people to read about science?

It's easy to find out about sports because lots of people are interested in sports, so they'll pay to find out about it, or sit through advertisements to watch it. A much smaller number of people are interested in science; they too can find out about it if they want to, but they may have to work slightly harder to do it.

sfs said:

Should legislators pass laws requiring people to read about science?

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Honestly, yes. If the United States can waste its time with blithering idiocies like Hannah Montana and associated drivel, it can *insert your vulgarity here* well learn to read a research article. If some people don't want to, I wouldn't mind having the government shove it down their throats for their own good.

ignorance is bad.
ignorance is bad.
ignorance is bad.

I'm not calling it the anti-science movement. From here on out, I'm calling it the pro-stupidity movement. I really don't care anymore who that might offend. In an age where my country's education system is already lacking, the last thing we need is a group of religious zealots trying to block our children from an honest education. There's a reason the dark ages were called the dark ages.

I mean, what's next? Anti-mathematics? Anti-literature? How people can honestly hold the opinion that knowledge is evil or bad is just ludicrous.

Delphiki said:

I'm not calling it the anti-science movement. From here on out, I'm calling it the pro-stupidity movement. I really don't care anymore who that might offend. In an age where my country's education system is already lacking, the last thing we need is a group of religious zealots trying to block our children from an honest education. There's a reason the dark ages were called the dark ages.

I mean, what's next? Anti-mathematics? Anti-literature? How people can honestly hold the opinion that knowledge is evil or bad is just ludicrous.

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this one speaks truth

matthewgar said:

Right now your guy's space program is a joke because there is no effort by the goverment to push for it, yet we have stuff like Bush's religious programs.

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Ugh, so frustrating.

matthewgar said:

Well thats the point I think a bit, how can we expect the average joe to have any clue about science, if it's all something thats hidden away. New discoveries arn't really treated all that big a deal, and yes they need to be a bit careful, but when the average person says, "There are no transitional fossils." It's a large part to the fault of scientists and the news and such media that just don't make these things announced or show them. Science is never going to be a big part of society if it's something secretive that only those fully qualified to understand 100% can ever see it. I don't understand everything about physics, or evolution, but I can still appreciate and enjoy and learn about it.

Science isn't treated as something exciting and for everyone, sure you will get armchair scientists like creationists and such, but your just as likly to get people that might get into science or excited about it more then now. Science gets alot of news, but it tends to be bad press and news. Maybe by making science more, it will become more. It's like science has hidden itself in the cloest.

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Transitional fossils can be found in every natural history museum around the world. You can walk into any popular bookstore and find at least 10 different books discussing the science of evolution written specifically for the education of lay-people. You have popular science 'mouthpieces' like Steven Hawking, Eugenie Scott, Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrass Tyson, even Bill Nye, etc etc who specialize in bringing science to those not in the field. During the Year of Darwin I couldn't go a week without running into some sort of popular news article on the topic. There are entire TV networks that at least attempt to address scientific concepts in ways that make them interesting to lay-people. There are free-access journals available to anyone who knows how to Google. Papers in subscription journals aren't that difficult to get free copies from, even.

Despite all of this, the vast majority of people won't bother to read the article, or watch the program, or buy the book, or search through literature on the topic in an effort to understand it. It simply because it isn't their cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, it may put them in danger of being wooed by smooth talkers into taking a position against science for political leverage.

I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but science doesn't take the form of some sort of 'Eureka!' grand discovery moment at 4am while leafing through a tome of formulas and statistics. This is how just about every movie portrays the scientific process and it is wrong nearly 100% of the time. When progress has been made in science, it is hardly a moment to call the press--rather, it is time to prepare a manuscript featuring the relevent data, submit it for review, revise and retest when it gets shot down, and may eventually receive acceptance. After this, the methods must be retested by several other groups and predictions be confirmed before the idea is built upon. This isn't the sort of material that makes for a great PR story or piques the public interest at all, so quite a bit of scientific advancement will inevitably fly under the radar of most non-science types.

TL;DR, 99.99% science doesn't work the way Awakenings or A Beautiful Mind would suggest.

In regards to the OP, good scientists, whether academic or industrial, are VERY busy people with 24/7/365 jobs that don't end when they leave the office. This leaves little time to seek publicity. And a big driver here is that the laymen aren't the ones providing important funding (no funding = no work). The important thing is to publish & present work to the right people who might further their work. Plus, seeking too much media attention may be seen as annoying or self-centered by their peers. Media coverage is always overdone & overhyped. When I see something in the news about the how the latest nanotechnology is going to revolutionize something, it generally gets no more attention than an eye-roll from me.

I also can't stress enough, as others have said, how incremental large discoveries really are. Graphene, for example (in the news quite a bit), wasn't the target of a recent Nobel prize because of a eureka moment, but the result of many publications describing in detail its properties, applications, and benefits to real-world applications (the big picture). There are probably thousands upon thousands of scientific papers submitted every month. The general public would be bored to death to hear about graphene's electron transport at condition X or Y (and probably won't understand it anyway). But outlets like scientific american do a respectable job filtering through a lot of this to give the big picture to the public. Too much media hype is annoying and can create a bubble around an area of science that will probably burst. Most reported science never directly sees tangible applications. It's the collection of many of the more relevant ones, that do.

matthewgar said:

And then when I check these new release notes on discoveries...you check the actual information and they were found the thing back in 2000, 1998 and such and only being announced now.

I wonder if the concept and idea of no transitional fossils, or other big discoveries being ignored or not known is that there just isn't a big deal made out of them. While Ida was a joke in how that was handled, to me thats how any big science discovery should be handled by announcing it, the fact checking should be better done. But science isn't a big deal for alot of people because it gets hidden, we rarly get to see the information out and front, it's usually kept either away from prying eyes, or where only people that are really big on science might find it.

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Re: time lags, often that time is needed to study a newly made discovery. Proper preparation and detailed study of a new bunch of fossils can easily take years, especially if you are short on funding. And you definitely don't want to rush announcements before they are ready for a solid publication. For one thing, a solid publication is what's going to get you recognition from fellow scientists. For another, you risk having the AVs of the world jump on every time one of your preliminary ideas turns out to be wrong. Bad policy if you want to counter any anti-science opinions...

And it's not like science news are hidden from anyone, given that major news sites tend to have science sections, plus there are zillions of dedicated science news sites.

AV1611VET said:

I think the general public is getting tired of science's yellow journalism, and is starting to wake up.

A little late, I might add.

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AV, I don't want to go into another rant, but please make sure you know what you're talking about before slandering science yet again.

I've just recently discussed the quality, or lack thereof, of press releases with my supervisor. In his experience at least, the researcher doesn't have a huge amount of control over them. Basically, they write drafts that a busy press office dumbs down and churns out, speed and simplicity given a huge priority over accuracy. And, of course, you can't expect the folks at the press office to know all the fields of study their articles come from, so all kinds of rubbish almost inevitably creeps in.

Naraoia said:

AV, I don't want to go into another rant, but please make sure you know what you're talking about before slandering science yet again.

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I know what I said, and I stand by it.

When I was a Radioman in the Navy, I had a TOP SECRET security clearance.

Should something appear in the Pacific Daily News about something that was classified, you can be sure that, even though the story wasn't written correctly, security would be paying us a visit, wondering where the leak came from.

AV1611VET said:

I know what I said, and I stand by it.

When I was a Radioman in the Navy, I had a TOP SECRET security clearance.

Should something appear in the Pacific Daily News about something that was classified, you can be sure that, even though the story wasn't written correctly, security would be paying us a visit, wondering where the leak came from.

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And what does that have to do with "science's yellow journalism"? Can you explain it without obscure metaphors for us more literally-minded types?

Naraoia said:

And what does that have to do with "science's yellow journalism"? Can you explain it without obscure metaphors for us more literally-minded types?

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Sure -- where in the world did the press get this story from in the first place?

Did a shrewdness of scientists suddenly jump on the telephone to avoid becoming victims of the publish-or-perish principle, or were journalists crawling all around inside CERN, waiting for two Pb ions (Pb[sup]+[/sup] ?) to collide head-on?

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many formats, which can include books, television documentaries, magazine articles and web pages.