Here’s a Book that I’m looking forward to reading titled, Don’t Be Such a Scientist. The title itself didn’t sound so appealing, until I read the article on Discover.com. Randy Olson is advising scientists to be less of a scientist when communicating with the non-scientific community.
Introduction – The need for a new approach to science communication in an age of information overload. In the words of communication theorist Richard Lanham (”The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information,” 2007), “style and substance, and our expectations for them, have changed places.” It’s not about “dumbing down,” it’s about using style as a means of communicating substance.
Myself, as a person who is a scientist by day and one who enjoys the creative side of life by night, am very intrigued by this notion. (Not because someone has decided to write a book, mind you). It has always been an independent thought of mine that science needs to break out of it’s own niche and communicate better with the outside world. It’s the only way to effectively apply the theories and research to the world at large. And hopefully inspire budding scientists to get involved and see that science does in fact take creativity. When I was a child, I was turned off of science because I much preferred to draw colorful pictures of the things I saw around me rather than investigate the how’s and why’s of the things around me. Anyway, the book comes out in September, and I look forward to reading it. I’ve just recently begun to start reading about all of this stuff. I never realized that people were writing books about all these things that I’ve always thought about.
Dushoom! Dushoom! 