Matt Shipman is a public information officer at North Carolina State University, where he writes about everything from forensic entomology to computer malware. He previously worked as a reporter and editor in the Washington, D.C. area for Inside EPA, Water Policy Report and Risk Policy Report, where he covered the nexus of science, politics and policy. He blogs about NC State research at The Abstract and over at SciLogs.com on his Communication Breakdown blog. You can follow him on Twitter where he is @ShipLives.
Many people, including me, will tell you that science outreach is important. This is nothing new. The public lectures of Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday are thought of as crucial elements in the popularization of science in the 19th century, and they are as likely to be remembered for those outreach efforts as they are for their scientific contributions (which were considerable). But here’s the thing – we can’t prove it.
Scientists pride themselves – and rightfully so – on using facts to answer questions, proving or disproving hypotheses in the pursuit of knowledge. So it is somewhat ironic that scientists have not done a very good job of collecting and analyzing evidence to support their outreach efforts.
For the purposes of this guest post, I’m defining “outreach efforts” in fairly sweeping terms: from online chats with classrooms of grade/ high-school students to public events, and from maintaining blogs to working with mainstream news media. And, to be clear, I think science outreach efforts are enormously valuable. But not everyone agrees with me.
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