I've been writing more for D.C. based political magazines lately--going back to the roots, I guess--and I now have a piece in the latest issue of The New Republic about why scientists need to stop taking abuse and fight back. As described in this piece, "framing science"--or, as I put it, "investing... in mass-media initiatives to communicate"--is just one part of what must be done. There's a great deal more if we want science to be both tough but also smart:
So how can scientists strap on the gloves? They can start by investing, through their major organizations, in mass-media initiatives to communicate the facts on issues like climate change. At the same time, through auxiliary groups, those who care about science should directly take on politicians with the most outrageous anti-science stances, such as Oklahoma senator and global-warming denier James Inhofe, while working to elect better candidates (including more scientists). Elected representatives ought to know there are consequences for attacking scientists and undermining scientific knowledge. In an admittedly fledgling way, this has been tried--a group named Scientists and Engineers for America organized to target select races in the 2006 election and, more recently, has been training scientists to run for office and disseminating information on nationwide candidates' science policy stances. Meanwhile, an initiative with which I have been involved named Science Debate 2008 has organized much of American science in a call for the presidential candidates to debate science policy. (So far, no takers.) Scientists seem able to organize behind the prospect of a science policy debate; but a still more overtly political tack will probably worry many researchers, who recoil from the messy political process--and who fear attacks on their carefully guarded objectivity. Furthermore, there has long been a culture in the world of science that disdains mere "popularizers" and those who shirk research for less "pure" activities: Everyone in science remembers what happened to the great public communicator Carl Sagan, who was denied membership in the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Certainly, these kinds of changes could have trade-offs and negative consequences; and they might well bring science itself under political attack. But science is under political attack anyway, which is precisely the point. The only question is how long researchers are going to sit and take it.
You can read the entire piece here. It's entitled "Hard Science." The New Republic always has the best article titles.
