My latest Science Progress blog post looks at the case of a recent Science paper that has had a dramatic impact on the debate over so-called "MTR"--an extremely destructive and invasive form of mining that literally takes the caps off of mountain peaks to access the coal inside them. In essence, it's the story of scientists being willing to stand up and say what they think about policy, and having a real influence as a result--a case study in how to make scientific information have its maximal impact. An excerpt:
To me, the most intriguing question is this: How did the 12 environmental scientists on the Science paper managed to achieve such an impact? Did they plan for it, or was it just fortuitous?
So I called up Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the article’s lead author. I was something like her 30th media ...
