Monday, February 22, 2010

Highlights of AAAS: Communicating science

The best line at the AAAS meeting came from Steve Schneider in a talk on science communication:

“Science is not a democracy. Quality trumps equality.”

It is a fantastic accurate description of the difference between the practice of science and the “balanced” approach to media coverage, from one of the best at coming up with analogies to explain climate science.

The fact that it took me three days to decide to post that line because of fears it would be misconstrued or abused – "Breaking News: Top climate scientist is a socialist" or "Fascism at top science conference" – says as much (about the current media environment) as the quote itself.

More highlights to come.

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