Strategies for Scientific Activists

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) wrapped up on Monday, 20 February, but not before it generated quite a bit of news and commentary on scientific activism. One example was this article from The New York Times, detailing an event where scientists spoke out about the practices of the current administration. In addition, some particularly insightful commentary can be found at the following blogs:

• In a post on the Bad Astronomy Blog Phil Plait discusses the talk he gave—on current attacks against science—at the AAAS meeting. His blog also sports several additional posts about other aspects of the meeting.
• Matthew Nisbet of Framing Science, also gave a talk at the meeting on scientists using the media to engage the public on scientific topics. He outlines the take-home message of his talk in this post.
• At The Intersection, Chris Mooney gives a condensed version of Nisbet’s post, and he points readers to a recent article he wrote for Seed about how scientists can join the political dialogue.
• Finally, Dietram Scheufele of Nanopublic also gave a talk on the need for scientists to engage the public on controversial scientific topics and how scientists can go about doing so by framing the debate.