Blogs / The Intersection

Miller-McCune has a new review up this morning about how Unscientific America and Cornelia Dean’s Am I Making Myself Clear? compliment well. Our book is described as ‘a call to action,’ while Dean’s details how to achieve results. Here’s an excerpt:

When scientific discoveries conflict with either our religious beliefs or personal prerogatives (as when climatologists point out that our lifestyles are straining the limits of our planet’s resources), we find them easy to ignore or dismiss. Our minds have not been molded to respect the scientific process nor to take the warnings of its practitioners seriously.

Two new books approach this dilemma from different perspectives. In Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (Basic Books; $24), Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum provide a detailed diagnosis of the problem and how it developed over the decades. In Am I Making Myself Clear? (Harvard University Press; $19.95), Cornelia Dean offers practical advice to researchers who are interested in making things better.

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One can only hope that researchers — and the academic administrators who decide what the scientists of tomorrow need to know — read these concise, sharply written volumes and take their message to heart. The process of reconnecting science and society cannot start soon enough. Presuming the climatologists are correct, our planet and the species that live on it are in a lot of trouble if we don’t start taking science seriously soon.

We couldn’t agree more. Read the full piece here.

I was delighted for the opportunity to deliver a talk about Unscientific America at my local bookstore in Durham, North Carolina. There’s something extra special when you recognize so many familiar faces in the audience. They didn’t even mind my cold and I was particularly touched when one sweet gentleman in the front row gave me his handkerchief before the Q&A. Gosh I love this town, its bookstore, newspapers (The Herald Sun and The Independent), and so much more.

Thanks to everyone who came out and participated in a terrific discussion about science, education, the Internet, politics, and literacy in America. I left re-energized to finish the final edits on my next book and even managed to turn in the manuscript on time today.

I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night…

While I have been busy getting married, on honeymoon, and trying to get settled in Boston, a great many things have been said about Unscientific America and about myself and Sheril. Many have been false, unfair, or worse. Or as Josh Rosenau put it: “Mooney and Kirshenbaum were personally maligned, and their book misrepresented to a degree that raises questions about whether critics actually read the book.”

Sadly, I must agree with this assessment.

During this time, I have been logistically hampered in my ability to reply to such things, but also limited in my desire to do so. After all, there are many reasons to just let stuff go, no matter how unfair or ridiculous. It takes a lot of time to refute errors and misrepresentations, and there’s relatively little chance minds will be changed even when you do so.

(more…)

I have always deeply admired the way Sam Harris argues a point with passion. I happen to disagree with him about Francis Collins, but I have to credit the force of Harris’s take-no-prisoners approach with regard to all forms of “faith”–even when I think it goes too far.

In the process of taking on Collins, Harris also argues against us and against Unscientific America–and for some time, I have been meaning to answer him on this. Life intervened until now; but I trust it is not too late.

Harris quotes one of our book’s passages in which we argue that if we can depolarize the science versus religion battle, we can likely broaden public acceptance of evolution. It’s an argument, Harris says, “that, I fear, most people would accept.” Unlike many New Atheists, then, Harris implicitly realizes the obvious and, indeed, commonsensical force of our argument–even though he rejects it.

Why does Harris reject our case? Let’s run through: (more…)

On Sunday I did a live hour long interview with the famed media critic Bob McChesney on his show “Media Matters.” A lot of stuff came up–not just concerning the decline of science in the media, though that was a key them–and you can listen to the full thing here.

This Wednesday, meanwhile, I am giving a talk right in my new neighborhood–Cambridge, MA, at Porter Square Books. These are the details:

Wednesday, September 16
7:00 PM–8:00 PM
Porter Square Books
25 White St
Cambridge, MA 02140

And here is the link for more info. The talk is being cosponsored by the Harvard chapter of Scientists and Engineers for America, and the head of the MIT Knight Fellowship Program, distinguished journalist Phil Hilts, will be introducing me. Hope to see some of you there….

I did an interview last month with Moira Gunn of NPR’s Tech Nation, and it can now be heard online here. We get into a lot of detail about what it is that people really need to know about science, and how to make them see why it is relevant to their lives–and what the blocks are that prevent this from happening. Enjoy!

I’ve been kinda busy, what with the wedding and honeymoon and moving and all, and so have not been able to respond as I’d like to some folks, such as Sam Harris, who have criticized the book. As I settle here in Cambridge, I hope that will change. As we will be continuing to do media and talks about the book–I’m doing one next Wednesday right here in my new town, at Porter Square Books–there should be plenty of time for all this.

Meanwhile, my sense is this: Some people hate Unscientific America with a passion. Others really, really like it. The reviews show as much; we have some extremely negative ones, but also some extremely positive ones, and then everything in between. What other book gets reactions like this, that so completely and evenly run the gamut? I’m sure that there are some, but I don’t know them off hand.

PZ Myers is now asking, “Is this book dead yet?“; as noted before, he apparently doesn’t even want you to read this work that criticizes him. But the reviews themselves suggest a fascinating array of reactions, far more diverse than the now predictable New Atheist dismissal. Going forward–and, I hope, starting next week–we’ll continue to provided some replies to critics, as well as making our case in talks and media. There will be a lot more to say, and as Sheril finishes her manuscript, and I learn the ropes here in Cambridge, we look forward to saying it.

[I have not blogged in several weeks. It's a long story, involving marriage, a honeymoon, and a move. I think you'll all understand--and more on that later! But for now...]

…in my absence, there was tons of hoopla over this Los Angeles Times interview that I did, which mentioned why so many people are skeptical of vaccines, and singled out one online hub for them in particular–the Age of Autism website. For the whole saga, see Orac, here.

Anyways, I imagine Age of Autism pounced on this because I mentioned the site by name in an interview printed in the Los Angeles Times. So, what will they think if….the Los Angeles Times interview is reprinted in the Chicago Tribune? Because it just was. And there may be more.

For arguments on the substance of this issue, I refer everyone once again to Orac’s great post, and also to my Discover feature story on vaccination from back in May.

Meanwhile, I hope to resume regular posting shortly, though first I must get settled here at MIT….

Remember the voyage to the island of garbage in the North Pacific Gyre? It’s a unqiue collaboration between Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) and the nonprofit Project Kaisei. Known as SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition), the marine scientists on board are attempting to quantify hundreds of miles of floating plastic debris and determine the effects it may have on marine life.

I’ve just heard from Miriam Goldstein–intrepid chief scientist of SEAPLEX–about the huge SIO grad student-driven communication effort surrounding this cruise. They are working to involve the public in cutting-edge research through a website, mission blog, live Tweets from the ship, and the very cool set of Flickr project photos!

The SEAPLEX team has been featured on Science Friday, CNN, Reuters, Yahoo News, NBC San Diego, the Irish Times, and ScienceBlogs! It’s a wonderful initiative–not only because it’s intended to protect the environment and increase public understanding of oceans issues, but also in that it serves to highlight the kind of ‘New Scientists‘ we celebrate!

CM and I are following along with great interest…

Dan Vergano poses this question in the title of his USA today column.

Science enjoys the best and the worst of times today, celebrated as the secret sauce behind economic growth, but embattled in high-profile areas such as climate change, stem cells and evolution.

“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before,” said President Obama, in April at the National Academy of Sciences.

At the same time, Obama noted, federal funding of physics and related sciences has fallen by nearly half since the 1980’s, U.S. schools trail in math and science versus Japan, England, South Korea and others. “And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas,” he said.

Vergano discusses our book Unscientific America:

They argue that the science establishment needs a new career path for science communicators (folks like Kirshenbaum, a marine scientist at Duke, who previously interned in the office of Sen. Bill Nelson, D- Fla., and who once worked as a disc jockey.)

“We’re not saying every scientist needs to become another Carl Sagan,” Kirshenbaum says. Or Comedy Central regular, astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. But scientists need to open paths “jobs, positions, and incentives,” for their brethren to communicate the role science plays in modern life, the books argues.

He also interviewed political scientist Jon Miller who thinks more emphasis should be placed on public education:

“No one should graduate from high school without knowing what a molecule is,” he says. That’s because your odds of understanding other science concepts, for example, nanotechnology, the manipulation of materials on the molecular scale, increase greatly — from nearly zero to two-thirds — once you understand that a molecule is a chemical combination of atoms. “You can’t fix this problem without fixing public schools.”

We agree that it’s important to improve early education, however, much of the public is beyond this stage and we need to foster a culture where citizens are engaged in (and voting on) science issues now. Author Stewart Justman is quoted asking:

“Shouldn’t scientists just let the evidence speak for itself?”

I argue no. Much of the public does not have access or subscriptions to expensive journal articles and instead, people shop for information on the internet as easily as they do for Christmas presents, choosing whatever ‘science‘ best suits them. In the age of new media, absolutely not. Spend a few days walking around Capitol Hill and it will be very clear the “evidence does not speak for itself.” Furthermore, the psuedoscience out there–the folks denying climate change and more–are organized, articulate, and prepared to speak for us.

If scientists aren’t communicating more about what we do and why it matters… someone else will. And often with a different agenda.