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.
The last several weeks have been a whirlwind of traveling and talking to audiences about the widening divide between science and society–and what we can do about it. This morning CM is on the west coast where I’ll be joining him in a few days. As a result of crazy schedules, we’re late posting several interviews, two of which are now available for listening online:
Another conversation with the Examiner’s Mary Spiro covered the way science impacts our daily lives and possible solutions to bridge the culture gap. Listen here.
I am already in DC, and SK will be arriving in about an hour–for a day in which we will do our first joint talk about the book together. It has been a long time coming.
Tonight we will be at D.C.’s Politics and Prose for an event co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress (and Science Progress) and Research!America. These are the details:
Tuesday, July 28
7:00 PM
Politics and Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008
202-364-1919 Web site
Jonathan Moreno of the Center for American Progress, and Mary Woolley of Research!America, will jointly be introducing us. In fact, Research!America has also assigned the book to their “New Voices,” a group of young scientists who are precisely the sort of heroes and role models of science in society that we want to see more of out there. As one of them, Heather Benson, puts it of the book:
The authors make it clear that what the scientific community needs is a shift in how we associate and integrate with the public at large. They show that the fault line between science and society is caused by both sides, and that only through changes in both sides can a bridge across be built.
Amen to that!
We’re also meeting with the New Voices today in Alexandria, to talk more about how we can change the culture of science to make political and public engagement more common and focal–in short, to create more “science ambassadors” and “Renaissance scientists.” Research!America is one of the most important organizations out there working to turn today’s younger scientists into effective advocates for science in policy, and skilled outreach experts from the world of science to the rest of society–and we’re thrilled by their support.
Sheril Kirshenbaum (co-author with Chris Mooney) brings us UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA: HOW SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY THREATENS OUR FUTURE, with a discussion of the dangers of misunderstanding and mistrust, and proposals to reverse the trend.
I’m looking forward to meeting readers and offer some fine bluegrass from Old Crow Medicine Show to get you in a Raleigh state of mind:
SK is being shy. She didn’t tell you just how much she rocked an NPR interview yesterday with WUNC in North Carolina. Go listen here.
Meanwhile, over the past few days at Yale and Northwestern, I’ve been fortunate to have another two great events courtesy of graduate student chapters of Scientists and Engineers for America–Yale’s and Northwestern’s (the latter is called the Science and Policy Action Network).Who knew that some 200 grad students (and others) on these two campuses would come out to hear about how they need to become our next generation of science emissaries to the public?
And yet the energy and enthusiasm is clearly there–these scientists want to become such emissaries. They don’t want to fight old culture wars, they want to change something. They want to give something back.
They’re science’s Obama generation, and I’m thrilled to get to meet them across the country.
I just did my first national radio interview for the book–with NPR’s Living on Earth. They put together a really fun segment in which I not only explain the book’s arguments to host Jeff Young, but also provide running commentary on one of the best examples I’ve seen of using the new media to communicate positively and entertainingly about science–CERN’s “Large Hadron Rap” video:
You can listen to the whole “Living on Earth” segment here. Here’s an excerpt:
YOUNG: Well give me some examples of challenges we face where the average Joe needs to know something about science.
MOONEY: Well there are certainly many and I think by far the largest right now is the climate change issue. That’s the one where the most is at stake for the future, and it’s also the one where you see such a huge gap between the average American in terms of what they think the state of scientific understanding is and then the scientific community on the other hand. The scientists are something like 85 percent sure that it’s human caused. And the public is more like, you know, 50 percent sure. And if you break it out by party affiliation, and this has been done many times, the Republicans overwhelmingly don’t accept the science. So you got a politicized issue and you’ve got a huge gap between scientists and the public. You add that to unfortunately a lot of bad media coverage of the issue over time and you pretty much get the gridlock that we have.
YOUNG: Something you point out here I found pretty interesting and that is among those Republicans who do not think that climate change is caused by humans, it doesn’t seem to matter how educated they are. Even well educated Republicans hold that belief.
MOONEY: Yeah, it’s really amazing, isn’t it? This is a different Pew study. They studied global warming opinions and they looked at party affiliation and level of education. And what they found for Republicans is that the higher the level of education, the less likely they are to accept scientific reality. And for Democrats and Independents it’s precisely the opposite. I don’t find that actually surprising having been involved with debating the climate debate for a long time.
You look at someone who doesn’t accept the science of global warming, like George Will the Washington Post Columnist or Michael Criton the late novelist, someone like that, these people are not stupid, you know, they’re actually quite intelligent, and their intelligence itself is what lets them come up with arguments against the scientific position of the scientific community that are quite ingenious and very misleading.
Again, the full “Living on Earth” segment is here.
Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum is a must read for anyone who cares about understanding or reversing the long national slide into pseudoscience and willful ignorance that has periodically gripped America. The book neatly follows up Mooney’s best seller, The Republican War on Science, into a broader, nonpartisan narrative of an entire nation enamored by the nifty gizmos and life saving applications of science, yet saddled with a long history of anti-intellectualism that periodically spills over into open contempt. It’s a dose of stiff but sorely needed medicine for baby boomers and genx’ers who grew up during a short thaw in that icy antiscience trend by way of a cold war, a hot space race, and one great communicator named Carl Sagan.
It will be a light week blogging for me because the kissing experiment requires a good deal of time and attention to run. I’m extremely grateful to David Poeppel and the terrific people working in his lab for all of their support and enthusiasm on this project.
This morning I’m headed back to the Meyer building at NYU for day two of brain scanning volunteer subjects–liquid helium and all… So for now I’ll leave you with a few more photos from my test run yesterday in the MEG.
On the right I’m suited up in scrubs wondering what I’ve gotten myself into and how in the world I went from sea cucumber reproductive biology to kissing experimentation. A couple of additional images are below the fold and remember you can follow the research live on Twitter @TheKissingBook.
Sheril Kirshenbaum is a research associate at Duke University and co-author of Unscientific America. Sometimes she's a classicist, radio jock, or congressional staffer. For more information, visit her website.
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.
