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…)
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:
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.
