© J. Dunn
I’ve said it a few times in public and in private – one of the main reasons I, as a busy scientist with probably insufficient time to devote to a lay blog (no different to any busy scientist, mind), got into this whole gig in the first place was to fight back against dodgy reporters and shonky ‘journalists’.
For the most part I have to say that I’ve been represented reasonably well in the media – even if most of it is owned by a few highly questionable moguls who espouse wildly partisan views. There have been a few occasions though where I’ve been the victim of simply crap reporting, terribly investigation and downright dirty tactics done by so-called journalists. I’ve talked about this on a few occasions on ConservationBytes.com (see ‘Crap environmental reporting‘, ‘Science turned bad by the media‘ and ‘Poor media coverage promotes environmental apathy and untruths‘).
In a bit of a coincidental turn of events, Bill Laurance sent me an interesting piece published in Nature on this very subject just while Paul Ehrlich and I (most of you know that Paul is in Adelaide at the moment) were talking about ways in which scientists could turn around public opinion from one of suspicion of science, logic and intellectualism, to one applauding the application of objective techniques to solve the world’s worst problems. Paul half-jokingly said “what if there is no solution?” – but I suspect that one such as he has found that constant writing, outreach and excellent research are the only ways to tear down the walls of ignorance, despite all the stupidity of certain elected officials. Two steps forward, one step back.
Bill suggested ConservationBytes would be a good place to reproduce this excellent article by Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds, and I agree. So here it is: Read the rest of this entry »
ConservationBytes.com 