Friday, January 25, 2013

Blog prompt #2

"One could argue that the more educated people are, the more they’ll understand media pieces about science and be able to follow public debates about scientific issues.  But the ASR article we read for class today suggests that there’s a limit, namely that education does little good if people have a powerful political or social reason to mistrust science and if they have easily available arguments to challenge scientific consensus.  How can the ASR findings help you become better science writers?  Better scientists?  Better citizens?"

To start with, the ASR findings remind you to remember that people will not necessarily react in the way you might expect them to means that you can calculate for that, which allows you to be able to reach people even when they might prove closed to the ideas you were attempting to impart. If you realize that you cannot take the tack of simply telling them that something is so, then you either have to find a different way of phrasing it, or manage to convince them of something without being able to rely upon what is said by scientists or most of the scientific evidence. 

These come down to the same necessity of thinking, in a way. In my experience, if you can manage to simplify something enough, without dumbing it down to the point that it becomes condescending, you can manage to at least get the concept across to most people. They will not necessarily believe that it is true, but a succession of enough simple concepts is somewhat more irrefutable than a large, abstract concept like global warming. Many people automatically distrust the idea, not only because it has not in fact been proven, but also because there has been so much argument and so much contention over it. So when attempting to get your point across, you cannot simply say that "global warming is happening." Not only is that not true, but its likely to turn people off to whatever you may be writing, saying, or doing. But, for example if you say that "over the last several years, measurements have shown a steady global increase in temperature on average", or that "observations have shown that the polar ice caps have been steadily shrinking", you have not said anything that is untrue, and people are left to draw their own conclusions about the state of the world. This affects  almost equally scientific research, citizenship, and scientific journalism. 

As its been said in class - "Question everything." Its a good basis for science, science writing, and citizenship. Keep in mind that people will not always believe what you say, just because you say that its from scientists. Hell, people may disbelieve what you're saying because its from scientists. But invariably, people will draw their own conclusions, some of them in direct opposition to what scientists or science writers may believe. However, the job of the citizen is to be informed, in all essence. Its the jobs of the scientist and the writer (or science writer) to convey that information and ensure that the public is informed. That is what we must always keep in mind as science writers. Our job is not to convince the readers of what WE think is right; We must realistically assume that we can be wrong, even are likely wrong about the conclusions we draw. We can only present the data in the long ring - question the data, question the scientists. Question their motives, biases, assumptions, hypotheses, question their math if you have to. Equally important, its the job of the scientist as much as the science writer to be objective with their findings - keep in mind that people will not believe - show the data and how it was found, giving people no credence to be able to say that something was hidden, or a factor was thrown out because they don't believe in the same god. 

But above all, never assume that you are right because others are wrong. Objectivity is what this study brings to the table, and everyone should have some. 

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Blog prompt #1 : Literary methodology on the experimental strata

Or, in simpler english, scientific literacy and the scientific method. Scientific literacy is an important concept in general, because people need to have at least a general grasp of how science works so they do not make attempts to condemn it as vile witchery, or simply brush scientific discoveries and concepts off because they don't mesh with their personal beliefs. I wouldn't say that scientific literacy is explicitly necessary for a functioning and robust democracy, but it certainly helps a great deal, and may explain why the american model has persisted for hundreds of years beyond its expected utility. Many of our founding fathers had solid groundings in the scientific theory and literature of the time. But even if true scientific literacy is not necessary, or at least not necessary at a level of fluency, I would say that knowledge of and familiarity with the scientific method are necessary, both for participants in the democratic process and for candidates and participants in the political portion of the democratic process.

If a candidate for office has any idea what they are talking about, they will at some point be forced to bring up more esoteric concepts than the construction of a molecule, be it from an economic science standpoint or a pure technological standpoint. For the professionals and industry interests that will lend support based upon those portions of their campaign platform to parse and decode these statements and technical jargon, its fairly easy, given a professional investiture and a reason to need to comprehend it. But for the regular people that make up the majority of the vote, they aren't likely to have an encyclopedic knowledge of new technologies and concepts. Once, this would have been more of a barrier than it is today. Easy access to knowledge and industry publications virtually guarantees that if one is willing to look, and knows how to, that they can find at least a baseline of information on nearly any subject they could care to name. In its essence, the scientific method can be applied to that concept in the method of search, as well as allowing people to understand the basic theory of how the research was organized and completed. So while scientific literacy isn't precisely necessary for democracy to run, a basic grounding in science and the scientific method is.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

De-invert the polarity of the starboard parietal lobe

Pontificating, prestidigitating, evasculating. Unzip the helix on the tri-aluminum-hyper-oxalate. 

If i have my way, this is the vein that this is going to continue in. Or perhaps not. But given my own interests, other blog posts, and hopes for the future, I think I'll stick with a media outlook on science as this progresses. The URL name is not entirely inaccurate or entirely superfluous - decoding the technobabble inherent in the media may just bring the perceptions of the group up, allowing actual comprehension of the majority of scientific discourse.