There are lots of journals out there, more than I could name in any one article, but as you get into science communication, the number of peer-reviewed publications drops considerably.
That seems odd, since communicating with the public, and therefore with the voters on policy, is so crucial to keeping science funding in place.
A group of volunteers had that same thought, so they secured some funding from the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope group and set out to fill that gap. CAP Journal was born. CAP Journal stands for Communicating Astronomy with the Public. It's a new magazine, in print and online, and the timing is excellent.
2009 has been designated the International Year of Astronomy and astronomy deals with the largest issues in the universe; is there life elsewhere? Where do we go next? What did the past look like? Without effective communication, the answers astronomers find will get mired in politics and advocacy, like global warming or any other science topic where people now discuss how to properly "frame" the debate for a public they assume too uninformed to understand real issues.
Effective communication - clear answers to complicated questions - are what we need more of in science writing. The folks at CAP set out to put a forum in place where these important issues can be addressed.
Of course, we're all about open science and science communication here. We just want to lay it out for people with no agendas, no filters and no bias. Toward that end, we always want to support other groups with the same idea, especially if they're volunteers rather than paid shills for media companies.
They asked me to contribute something, since we all have a great deal of experience communicating science to the public, so of course I did. I hope you give them a read. Issue #2 is out now and it's terrific stuff.
If you prefer the print version, you can get a subscription here.
Comments
Hank Campbell | 02/21/08 | 11:26 AM
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1. There are some excellent science writers out there
2. Much of what I read is very idiosyncratic - what gets out to the public is not very representative of the kinds of problems most professional scientists work on, many 'out there' claims get given a lot of emphasis, and how science itself works is not always portrayed in the way most professional scientists experience it. Way too many things get hyped as 'revolutionary' or 'completely overturning long-cherished orthodoxy.'
In short, I think the public gets an often misleading picture of what the world of professional science is really like - most lawyers are not like Matlock, and most scientists aren't the overhyped, quirky individuals who make often it on the cover of Discover magazine.
This is just a long-winded way of saying that direct communication between scientists and the public, in magazines like CAP, and site like ours here, is a good thing, and more professional scientists should participate in this kind of communication.
Michael White | 02/21/08 | 19:17 PM
I disagree with one of your statements though:
We may believe that data speakes for itself, but data is also subject to interpretations, including by laypeople, that are completely valid though not in line with the conclusions of scientists.
It's rare that a layperson comes up with an interpretation of very technical data that hasn't already been considered by people who work in the field. Anyone who has been a TA for a college science class knows how easy it is for people to misunderstand scientific ideas and results if they lack a background in the subject. I can't really imagine a situation where a layperson comes up with a better theory for interpreting the latest particle accelerator results, the meaning of my recent genome-wide expression profiling experiment, or a bunch seismic data collected by a geologist.
The field is usually too technical, and filled with trained, competitive people who relentlessly point out mistakes made by their peers. It doesn't mean that scientists are smarter, but science is intellectually demanding work, and people without the background shouldn't deceive themselves into thinking that they've discovered some remarkable thing completely missed by the people who work on this full time. That was common in an earlier era, but extremely rare today.
Michael White | 02/21/08 | 19:42 PM
It's rare that a layperson comes up with an interpretation of very technical data that hasn't already been considered by people who work in the field.
This really depends on the field. I know in biology it has to get exasperating the hundredth time you are asked why fossil evidence is valid unless the lack of it in a missing link or partially developed body is brought up.
But you mentioned earth science and I think that's the biggest area where not only are the laypeople not experts but neither are the researchers - because it goes into statistical analysis - and lots of results are under suspicion because too many have shown to be wrongly done by experts.
If we take 500 million years of data and choose 500 data points, any layperson can recognize that which points you pick, and why, are crucial. Yet a shocking number of articles are written using flawed knowledge of statistics or data points that are not objective.
I hope that's not the case in biology but, if it is, it will cast all the results into suspicion. The downside to democracy is that people don't have to become experts to make policy decisions. It's the world we live in. Laying out the data as objectively as possible and with respect to the readers is crucial because otherwise they shut it out.
We're good about that here. We never candy coat our verbage or talk down to people so we show the audience a lot of respect but we get that not everyone is an expert and will have questions. So I think that respect is returned because they know we aren't foisting off ideology.
The only comments that irk me are the people with bookmarked objections from their favorite sites who aren't really thinking about what they are saying - because at that point they are agenda based and not knowledge based. You probably get that in biology a lot more than anyone in physics does.
P.S. Thanks for the kind words. I think they have a good idea over there so I hope it's successful.
Hank Campbell | 02/22/08 | 14:36 PM
..not only are the laypeople not experts but neither are the researchers...
I think that's putting it too broadly. I agree that there are plenty of papers out there using flawed statistics (our undergrad and grad curricula are severely deficient in this area), but in the community of earth scientists (and this applies to other fields like genomics) there are a lot of people around with serious statistical chops. The most significant arguments are not over bad statistics, but over how to properly do the statistics on a cutting-edge problem like climate modeling or human population genetics - it's not always obvious, and it can take some time before the issues are settled. It's not a lack of expertise that's the problem in the most important cases.
When it comes to policy decisions, it's a great thing that the non-experts are making the decisions in a democracy (although you should have experts to implement the decisions when technical expertise is needed). I get upset when policy makers are deliberately ignorant about the science. But when people do have the science correct, there are almost always many valid policy possibilities to choose from, and there is no reason scientists should have more say than anyone else in those decisions. I hate philosopher-kings.
Michael White | 02/22/08 | 16:39 PM
