Guest Thinkers

For DC readers, as part of a spring lecture series on evolution and medicine sponsored by NIH and the National Academies, I will be speaking tonight at 7pm at the […]

Last night in his State of the Union address, Obama asked Congress to send him a bill that caps carbon emissions, with the president framing the matter primarily in the […]

In the U.S., there is often the false assumption that Europeans are somehow more engaged and supportive of science than Americans. Yet, as I discuss in severalstudies and as I […]

Over the past decade, best-selling books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point have told compelling stories of how marketers and political consultants use “influentials,” “mavens,” “connectors,” and “navigators” to […]

It’s out today, U2’s latest album, rock like only they can do it. Check it out from the recent Brit Awards.

At ClimateWire, one of the new innovative models for science journalism, Christa Marshall has a great feature on how language will shape the pending political battle over cap and trade […]

I’m blogging from Chicago’s O’Hare airport, on my way to Portland to participate in a unique summit bringing together philosophers, scientists, social scientists, poets, filmmakers, and artists to consider new […]

I’m spending the weekend in Oregon at an outpost on the edge of the Columbia River Valley. I’m in town for a unique three cultures summit on climate change, a […]

Good news on the science beat front. Cristine Russell at the Columbia Journalism Reviewhas the details on an innovative move by the Washington Post to consolidate coverage of science, the […]

This past weekend, a diversity of scholars and experts were called to Oregon for what might be described as a “three cultures summit” on climate change. The two-day deliberation included […]

The BiPartisan Policy Center has announced a Blue Ribbon panel that will issue recommendations intended to inform Obama’s call for a Memorandum on Scientific Integrity.Importantly, the panel will study and […]

At the “three cultures summit” this past weekend in Oregon, I had the opportunity to meet Hank Green, creator of the immensely popular EcoGeek blog and YouTube auteur of the […]

A Gallup survey report released yesterday finds that a record 41% of Americans–and 66% of Republicans–now say that news reports of climate change are exaggerated. I first spotted this troubling […]

Next week on Thursday at noon I will be in Edmonton, Canada delivering the annual Picard Lecture at the University of Alberta’s Health Law Institute. More information on the presentation […]

The struggles of the science beat at local newspapers have little or nothing to do with scientific illiteracy or public respect for science and much more to do with the […]

When pundits like Richard Dawkins use the trust and authority granted them as scientists to denigrate religious publics, is it unethical?On issues such as climate change, nanotechnology, and evolution, research […]

I’m back in the office after a great event last night at the American Museum of Natural History. Close to 100 attendees came out to the magnificent venue for a […]

For more than a decade, Rick Weiss covered science (and its politics) for the Washington Post. When he left the paper last year, the news organization lost one of the […]

The Obama administration had a rough start to its communication strategy on the stimulus plan, going from no message to a catastrophe frame, only at the last minute shifting to […]

Sometimes I just don’t get it. Whether it is climate change, evolution, or vaccination, the more literal minded among science bloggers and pundits typically blame science journalists for breakdowns in […]

There’s a must read Shorenstein Center white paper out by Time magazine contributor Eric Pooley, who spent Fall 2008 at Harvard researching how the news media covered the run up […]

Just how important is public communication? Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren believes that scientists should devote 10% of their time to talking to the public about matters of science and […]

A new study at the journal Risk Analysis examines the factors shaping public perceptions of nuclear energy and provides important clues about how to effectively mobilize public support for expanded […]

Not surprisingly, Carl Safina’s Feb. 10 essay at the NY Times calling for an end to Darwin worship generated a fair amount of criticism.Safina’s suggestion to frame information in terms […]

Shankar Vendantam’s story headlined “Climate Fears Are Driving ‘Ecomigration’ Across the Globe” runs on the front page at the Washington Post today. It’s not often that climate change is a […]

Back in January, Desmog blog noted what they dubbed a “troubling” trend online, plotting a rise in mentions of “global warming + hoax.” The graph was construed as evidence of […]

For readers in the New York area, I will be on a panel tonight at the American Museum of Natural History, focusing on climate change and the news media. The […]

In an essay today at the NY Times, Carl Safina pinpoints one of the lingering challenges in communicating about evolution: what he calls the “cult of Darwin.” If we would […]

At The Yale Climate Forum, Lisa Palmer contributes a very useful feature reviewing various strategies for how scientists can write effective newspaper op-eds on climate change. Most of the first […]

Turns out that GOP message guru Frank Luntz doesn’t think much of the Bush administration’s communication strategy across the past eight years. In an interview with NPR’s On the Media […]