One Astronomer's Noise

To wean me off of reading cool stuff at work, I’ve been hooked into some really good podcasts lately. AstronomyCast focuses on teaching about cool astronomical phenomena, and was sent to me by a co-worker who really enjoys the series. It’s a good way for an astronomer, who probably focuses only on their tiny piece of research all day, to keep abreast of general topics and explanations. I jumped right into the latest one (at the time) which is a great discussion of the scientific method, and is something that all scientists and science educators need to listen to. There are so many ways in which that scientists miscommunicate their work to the public, and this will help.

Next is Skepticality. I’ve only listened to a couple so far, and it’s pretty good, based on the guests. I listened to the latest one on fossils and evolution with paleontologist Dr. Donald R. Prothero. It’s good to hear a bit about the current science supporting evolution, and to hear about new research. Also, his point about how the media only focuses on certain “glamorous” stories, not how they later get disproven, or even about the slower progress in the field, is true and frustrating. Example from the podcast: all mass extinctions are due to meteor impacts. Again, there may be something that scientists can do in their own communities with talks or interviews and the like to correct that, all the time. Scientists do need to learn to be better communicators, not to be good scientists, but to foster science in our society. We are a minority, and have a duty to educate. We’ll never be able to reach everyone, or convert the anti-science folks, but it’s the vast majority in the middle that don’t pay attention or don’t care can be reached. Dr. Prothero seems to do this as he can with books and textbooks, but also sounds a bit to have “given up” on the current generation.

I’m sure I’ll have more fun stuff to listen to and comment on later!