The responses are rolling in to our Science piece
. At least as I write this, particularly thoughtful and in-depth ones have come from PZ Myers
, and Mike Dunford
, among others. There have also been some more dismissive responses, which appear to miss our distinction between "spin" (which is indeed misleading) and "framing" (which is unavoidable in any form of communication), or which assert without proof that more traditional forms of science communication (the so-called "popular science" model) have been effective, even though traditional science media do not reach the vast majority of the public. It seems to me that all of this merits some reply, which I (perhaps in conjunction with Matt) will be posting shortly. But first let me just point out the obvious: Our Science piece was quite short and compressed; it didn't have space to address some of the points that are coming up, even though we had already anticipated them. A longer piece, outlining our outlook in more detail, is forthcoming, and Matt and I have already booked a number of talks
(and plan to set up many more) in which we will also tease out the argument in greater depth. In the meantime, Matt has some FAQ type documents on his site that explain in more detail: "What is Framing?
" and "Popular Science versus Framing
." I also think Matt's November presentation at the American Meteorological Society's Environmental Science Seminar Series (PDF
) is a great introduction to the argument, and it contains a lot of data. More soon......
