Am I Making Myself Clear?: A Scientist's Guide to Talking to the Public |  | Author: Cornelia Dean
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 327952
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 0674036352
Dewey Decimal Number: 501.4
EAN: 9780674036352
ASIN: 0674036352
Publication Date: October 30, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
What we don’t know can hurt us—and does so every day. Climate change, health care policy, weapons of mass destruction, an aging infrastructure, stem cell research, endangered species, space exploration—all affect our lives as citizens and human beings in practical and profound ways. But unless we understand the science behind these issues, we cannot make reasonable decisions—and worse, we are susceptible to propaganda cloaked in scientific rhetoric. To convey the facts, this book suggests, scientists must take a more active role in making their work accessible to the media, and thus to the public. In Am I Making Myself Clear? Cornelia Dean, a distinguished science editor and reporter, urges scientists to overcome their institutional reticence and let their voices be heard beyond the forum of scholarly publication. By offering useful hints for improving their interactions with policymakers, the public, and her fellow journalists, Dean aims to change the attitude of scientists who scorn the mass media as an arena where important work is too often misrepresented or hyped. Even more important, she seeks to convince them of the value and urgency of communicating to the public. Am I Making Myself Clear? shows scientists how to speak to the public, handle the media, and describe their work to a lay audience on paper, online, and over the airwaves. It is a book that will improve the tone and content of debate over critical issues and will serve the interests of science and society. (20090914)
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| Customer Reviews:
 Dean makes herself absolutely clear! December 28, 2009
Dennis Meredith
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book does a great service to scientists, as well as journalists and the public. Dean not only makes a compelling case for scientists' involvement in public issues, but she shows clearly how they should go about it. Her chapters on the nature of the news business and the worsening state of science journalism -- told from a veteran insider's perspective -- will help scientists understand what is an alien realm to most of them. And, she offers a wealth of insightful journalists' tips on working with an editor, interviewing subjects, writing op eds, crafting letters to the editor, working with editorial boards, and writing accessibly about science. Her chapter on testifying in court or before a congressional committee is must reading for anybody considering plunging into those messy arenas. It's a good thing the publishers decided to make the book's cover a distinctive orange, so that it will be easily locatable on scientists' bookshelves.
A must-have guide for scientists and those who communicate for them October 16, 2009
pcwluhn (SF)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Cory Dean is a long-time science writer for the New York Times and a superb one at that. I'm already 3 chapters into this book and I find her brisk, precise, and entertaining prose a breath of fresh air. And she makes some telling points about how scientists and engineers could better communicate their work to the public at large. If you're a scientist, an engineer, or someone who communicates for them, this is one book to add to your bookshelf.
 A much needed book for scientific and non-scientific communities alike. February 14, 2010
David K
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
A much needed book for scientific and non-scientific communities alike. Written by science writer (and former New York Times editor) Cornelia Dean, the book makes the case that scientists need to make "their work more accessible to the media, and thus to the public." This doesn't come naturally to most scientists, and so the book gives some practical tips on how scientists can accomplish this goal.
Dean starts with "an invitation to researchers" to put aside their natural reticence and distrust of the media and help themselves and journalists get the key messages of their science across to the public. Because there are plenty of people out there who don't hesitate to misinform the public about the science in order to protect their own interests (e.g., the climate change debate). In ensuing chapters she provides some insights into how scientists can better "know your audience," help educate and work with journalists, and how to get the message across on radio and TV, online, and in the courtroom. She also offers tips on writing books, writing Op-Eds and letters to news outlets, and writing about science and technology in other venues.
Two of the most valuable chapters actually have to do with how journalists cover science issues. In "Covering Science," Dean notes some of the differences in style and communication between journalism and scientific writing. These differences set up an inherent conflict. Scientific researchers view journalists as being superficial, insufficiently concerned with accuracy, focused on controversy, and even "ignorant." In turn, journalists view researchers as boring, "caveating things to death," prone to incomprehensible jargon, and incapable of drawing a definitive conclusion. In "The Problem of Objectivity," Dean discusses the limitations of journalistic "balance" in which one opposing voice is given equal weight to the thousands of proponent voices because both sides are represented. This journalistic trait is exploited by, for example, climate change deniers, who know that TV interviews with one scientist and one naysayer (even if he is a non-scientist) looks to the public like "two sides" of a debate, even when the science is overwhelmingly in favor of one view. Given that it is often difficult for a journalist to know the state-of-the-art of the science, this opens the door for imbalance in an effort to provide balance.
Perhaps the most valuable chapter to scientists is "The Scientist as Source." Here Dean provides some practical hints as to how scientists can best interact with journalists. Again she encourages scientists to put aside their hesitations to speak to the press and to embrace the opportunity to get out a message that accurately reflects both the research itself and the ramifications of that research to the public.
"Am I Making Myself Clear?" is quite readable, as one might expect from a science journalist. I recommend reading this book along with Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's "Unscientific America" and Randy Olson's "Don't Be Such a Scientist." All three books are useful to the scientist to help him or her relate better to the public, and to the public at large to better understand how science works.
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