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Q & A with Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
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Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future
By Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
Basic Books, New York, July 2009
Hardcover, 209 Pages, $ 24.00
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum is a must read for anyone who cares about understanding or reversing the long national slide into delusion and willful ignorance that has periodically gripped America throughout its history. I had a chance to virtually sit down with the authors to discuss a few ideas in their new book. As you can see below, and the book well demonstrates, these two work together to seamlessly provide relevant and fresh perspectives on a dilemma as old as the nation.
The book is called Unscientific America ... are matters in the US really that bad?
Afraid so. Here in the United States, a dangerous mix of religious ideology, political attacks on science, media superficiality, and the scientific community’s own disengagement have all helped create a dangerous state of affairs. Even though it is crucial to determining the course of our future, most people in America just don’t have science on the radar, and of course they hold many deep misconceptions about the most important issues, like global warming.
We argue that science needs to raise its profile in our culture, moving from what is essentially a special interest status to become an absolutely central component of who we are as a people. If that happens, we may yet manage to overcome the greatest challenges of the 21st century--climate change, the energy crisis, national economic competitiveness, global pandemics, and nuclear proliferation.
Why this subject?
This book is really a sequel to Chris's The Republican War On Science. As we both have come to realize, the problem of science in our culture is much bigger than just conservative politicians attacking science all the time. So we needed to take a more sweeping look at the place of science in U.S. society. In this sense, you could say the book picks up where Republican War left off.
And in this attempt to go farther, we like to think that Chris’s experiences in journalism and media were complimented by Sheril's science training and experiences in science policy. The duo approach allowed us to cover a lot of areas, and highlight the growing disconnect between science and society as it manifests itself in the news media and the entertainment industry, in politics, in religion, and also in the inadequate way in which we're currently preparing tomorrow's leaders in science.
Chris pointed out here that climate change denier extraordinaire Marc Morano may be dead wrong, but he's articulate, well funded, and there's no one on the science side that competes with him. What specifically can be done to change that?
It’s simple: Things won't change until the world of science invests in creating counter-Moranos. There are many talented and extremely young intelligent people in science today who could fill that role, but there is little training available for them, and even less of a career trajectory for them to get there.
Generally, young scientists have been exposed to a very traditional academic menu of courses, when instead it would behoove us to offer more interdisciplinary and media skills to those who are asking for it. And that's not just to create counter-Moranos; it's fundamentally necessary to address an imbalance in the academic pipeline today.
Just consider: The last assessment by the National Postdoctoral Association reported that only 7% of those who earn a PhD in science will someday achieve tenured faculty status. Not everyone studying science is interested in that, but the reality is that there simply aren’t enough positions in academia for all the scientists that the system is currently producing. Meanwhile, at the very same time, we need better science communicators, better teachers, and more outreach people who are really good at taking science out into our society.
So the answer is simple: We’ve got to offer today’s young scientists more ways to get to very different careers from the standard academic one. And then we will have our counter-Moranos, as well as many scientists engaged in other important tasks to reconnect science and society.
You say in the book the bloggers can't save us, what do you mean?
In 2008, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that for ever five hours of cable news, you'll encounter about one minute's worth of coverage devoted to science and technology. At the same time, newspapers around the country are killing their science beat and firing their science reporters.
The chief thing filling the vacuum are science blogs, which have become simultaneously the best and worst sources of science information. It's very difficult for many people to access expensive subscription-only scientific journals unless they’re in academia.
Blogs do discuss what's being published on the front lines of science, but people who write about science on blogs generally only reach an audience that is already interested in reading about…science on blogs. But that’s not America—and that doesn’t bridge the divide.
Indeed, what's available on “science” blogs also includes awful misrepresentations and distortions of the truth, which have fueled the modern anti-vaccination movement, anti-evolutionists, and most notably, climate change denialism. In fact, the latest Internet poll to determine the "Best Science Blog" awarded one such site the award based on public vote.
There is no doubt that blogging has tremendous positives--we do it after all--but it's also not a silver bullet solution to the challenges of improving science communication.
In the book you bring up atheism among scientists as a topic of questionable efficacy, can you summarize that here?
This is a powerful trend within the science community, especially online, that we think has made a definite turn towards the counterproductive. We understand very well why scientists get ticked off at religion—after all, it’s the central reason that so many people reject science on an issue like evolution. But that doesn’t mean that the best way to reconnect science and American society is for scientists to launch blistering attacks on people’s faith.
So in the book, we argue that we need to de-escalate things, and focus on bringing religious America more towards science, rather than continually attacking the faithful and leaving them on their guard and distrustful of the scientific community. A culture war helps nobody, and it especially doesn’t help to have science caught up in the middle of it.
So final word, what is your best advice on how to proceed?
We think it’s the young scientists, mentioned above, who have the enthusiasm and drive to take what they know and bring it to the rest of America. They’re looking for ways to do this—we meet them on every campus we visit and are constantly inspired by their energy. But the jobs aren’t there for them. The careers aren’t there. The fellowships aren’t there. We just need to give these people more opportunities, and they will do wonderful things. And yes, they may even blog now and again.
Update 11:45AM EDT July 12: Full review and lively discussion in comments is now available at Daily Kos.Related Articles:
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