Essay: Why Science Needs to Step Up Its PR Game
(From WIRED Magazine, Issue 18.06)
On the final day of last winter’s meeting of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, a panel convened to discuss the growing problem of climate change denial. It went poorly. Rather than brainstorming methods for changing public perception, the speakers wasted three hours trying to find someone to blame. Was it an anti-global-warming campaign by the coal industry? Journalists trying to make their stories appear “balanced”? The Climate-gate emails from the University of East Anglia?
But those are the wrong questions. What the scientists should have been asking was how they could reverse the problem. And the answer isn’t more science; it’s better PR. When celebrities like Tiger Woods or Tom Cruise lose control of their image, they don’t waste time at conferences. They hire an expert. What the climatology community needs is a crackerjack Hollywood PR team.
