Blogs / The Intersection

Unscientific America has been adapted as a feature story for The Nation based on a hybrid of chapters 6 and 9 with new reporting on the decline of science in the media. Our article Unpopular Science will appear in the August 17 issue and is now available online. We begin:

For twenty-three years Sabin Russell worked at the San Francisco Chronicle. A top medical writer specializing in global health and infectious diseases, Russell covered subjects ranging from bioterror threats to the risk of avian flu and traveled throughout Africa to report on the AIDS epidemic. He won numerous accolades, including a 2001 Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers for his reporting on the flaws of the flu vaccine
industry.

Then came March 30, 2009–his last day on the job. Russell was at MIT, on leave from his paper for a fellowship. The struggling Chronicle had been cutting staff and now suddenly forced many older career journalists to either take a buyout or risk a reduced pension. At 56, Russell was at the peak of his game, but for him, as for many of his colleagues, there was really just one option. “We have not left journalism; journalism has left us,” Russell remarked recently from San Francisco, where he is setting up a freelance office and looking for work.

Now the painful irony: Russell was pressured out of his job just as swine flu murmurs began to emerge from Mexico. This was his beat; few reporters are better equipped to tackle such a difficult yet urgent story, one so rife with uncertain but potentially severe risk. Russell even tipped off his old employer that the paper might want to get a jump on what was happening in Mexico City. “If I was covering this story now,” he says, “I’d be all over the Southern Hemisphere. It’s flu season there. How is Australia? How is the infrastructure to respond to a new strain holding up?”

Continue reading the full story at The Nation…

TIME’s Frances Romero has published a great interview with Chris about Unscientific America and how to raise the profile of science in our culture. Here’s an excerpt:

TIME: How do you think the debate over global warming has progressed since you published The Republican War on Science?
Mooney: We’ve come such a long way just because of political change — it’s not like the science changed at all, but the politics changed — and yet it’s still an incredible struggle. The vote in the House [on a bill to combat global warming] was superclose, and the Senate’s going to be probably even closer. The reason that issue is so hard is that we have a gigantic gap between scientists and the public — and by association, the politicians that represent them. Scientists have been quite strong on this for 20 years and still only half of America seems to know what they’re talking about.

In Unscientific America you’ve moved on to a more overarching discussion about “scientific illiteracy” in society that threatens to hinder productivity in the U.S. What are some ways we’ve fallen behind or are in danger of falling behind?
Science drives innovation which drives growth, and the concerns are very serious that we are slipping in that area. There are attempts to address it but they are nothing like what you saw after Sputnik when we really, really decided that we were going to be competitive. We’re not throwing everything into it. People just aren’t in tune to the role of science in the future of the country.

The interview touches on many significant themes of our book. Read the full Q&A online at TIME.

Today we have an ideas piece in The Boston Globe about the disconnect between science and American culture–and the role of scientists in the bridging the gap.

At the outset, lest we are misunderstood or misread, we want to emphasize that this does not mean there aren’t many other forces–such as poor education and scientific illiteracy and the unreliable media–contributing to the gap between science and society. However, scientists can also be a contributing factor, as we explain in the piece:

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science unveiled the latest embarrassing evidence of our nation’s scientific illiteracy. Only 52 percent of Americans in their survey knew why stem cells differ from other kinds of cells; just 46 percent knew that atoms are larger than electrons. On a highly contentious issue like global warming, meanwhile, the gap between scientists and the public was vast: 84 percent of scientists, but just 49 percent of Americans, think human emissions are causing global warming.

Scientists are fond of citing statistics such as these in explaining conflicts between the public and the scientific community. On politicized issues like climate change, embryonic stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, and the safety of vaccines, many Americans not only question scientific expertise but even feel entitled to discard it completely. The reason, many scientists infer, is that the public is just clueless; perhaps we wouldn’t have these problems if the average citizen were better educated, more knowledgeable, better informed.

Yet while scientific illiteracy is nothing to shrug at, the truth is that it’s only part of a broader problem for which scientists themselves must shoulder a significant portion of the responsibility. Decrying ignorance and scientific illiteracy, many scientists treat their fellow citizens as empty vessels waiting for an infusion of knowledge. That is exactly wrong, and exactly why so many people, in turn, see science and scientists as distant, inscrutable, aloof, arrogant. Rather than blaming, scientists ought to be engaging with the public, trying to personally make their knowledge hit home and to instill by example (rather than from a distance) the nature and virtues of the scientific mindset – while also encouraging average Americans to ask their own questions and have their say. Scientists must make it clear that while they don’t have all the answers, science is about searching for the truth, an imperfect process of doing the best one can with the information available, while knowing there is always more to learn – the epitome of humility….

Read our full article available online here.

Over at Newsweek, our latest article is up.  We begin by addressing some of negative reactions to the appointment of Francis Collins as head of NIH:

The critics, though, have it exactly backward: the United States needs more scientists like Collins—researchers who show by their prominence and their example that a good scientist can still retain religious beliefs. The stunning irony in the longstanding tension between science and religion in America is that many scientists who merely claim to be defending rationality from religious fundamentalism may actually be turning Americans off to science, doing more harm to their cause than good.

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive and must not continue to be portrayed as such. Though some very vocal voices in the science community disagree, I assure you they are not representative of the whole. I continue to work day to day with scientists who hold a very broad array of beliefs across fields from molecular biology to physiology to conservation. And when it comes to issues like climate change and ocean acidification, everyone must be be engaged if we’re to get anywhere. The new atheist movement takes an adversarial approach, but only succeeds in alienating the majority of the planet away from science. When it comes to enacting sound policies on what really matters, this will always be a losing strategy.

Americans have serious problems with science, and religion is definitely part of the reason. But that doesn’t mean fighting religion, indiscriminately, is the answer. A far better approach is to work with religious believers to help them separate their personal religion from everybody’s shared science, and move toward a much needed middle ground.

The New Atheists will hardly be pleased by the Collins choice, but that’s unpreventable and perhaps even to the good: science and atheism aren’t the same, and the former must always remain a broader, more inclusive category.

You can read the full piece online here.

There’s nothing that makes authors happier than seeing reviewers weigh the pros and cons of an argument in their book and now SciCurious and Janet Stemwedel have posted their reviews of Unscientific America! Sci pays close attention to the role of scientists, Hollywood, and religion. She does a terrifically comprehensive review that discusses the paramount themes in our book:

While it’s true that there are a lot of people out there who simply
don’t want to learn about science, it’s also true that communication is
a two-way street. Scientists can’t sit back and expect their results to
speak for them. While that does indeed work with other scientists, it
doesn’t tend to fly with the lay public. And many scientists don’t WANT
to communicate. Sci cannot tell you how many scientists go into lab
work “so they don’t have to deal with PEOPLE”, or because they just
HATE reading and writing. Teaching at the graduate level, even of
future scientists, is often performed unwillingly and with as little
effort as possible. Scientists know that their future, their career, is
to be found in successes at the bench. I don’t think we can be blamed
for wanting to pursue our careers, especially when “community outreach”
counts for so very little in the pursuit of jobs or tenure. (more…)

Over at Daily Kos, DarkSyde will post his review of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future at 9am ET.  Chris and I will be online ready to answer questions and discuss the book in comments.

Come join this morning’s virtual discussion…

UPDATE: The review is now live here….key quote:

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.

I was strolling down 9th Street in Durham this afternoon, when I stopped in The Regulator Bookshop to buy tickets for this weekend’s Eno Festival.  To my surprise, Unscientific America was staring back at me. Although our official publication date is July 13th, here’s the view from my iPhone:

It’s close to the official July 13 launch of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, and we’re continuing to preview what’s in store. As Chris already noted, he spoke to AIBS last month about the book (slides from that talk are here)–and now the full video is up on YouTube:

We got our copies early, but look for Unscientific America coming soon to a store near you!

Chris has already posted the table of contents and introductory passages from Unscientific America. Here’s a glimpse at what comes next:

strong enough to have “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit” of other significant objects and debris; and so forth.

People were aghast. Not only did they recoil at having to unlearn a childhood science lesson, and perhaps the chief thing they remembered about astronomy. On some fundamental level their sense of fair play had been violated, their love of the underdog provoked. Why suddenly kick Pluto out of the planet fraternity after letting it stay in for nearly a century, ever since its 1930 discovery? “No do-overs,” wrote one cartoonist.

(more…)