President’s update

Thank you to Joan Leach for the President’s Update.

Ever had that deja vu all over again feeling? Overseas colleagues sent me a link to an article in The Conversation (probably to wind me up—you know who you are!). You can find the article here.

What can I say? First, let me be clear—I find the research by Besley and Dudo to be interesting from afar. But, I don’t think it reflects reality in the Australian context. In short, I’ll argue here for American exceptionalism in science communication—as in Americans are exceptionally obsessed with science literacy and have been for a long time. And there’s nothing wrong with improving science literacy. However, I would guess that a repeated study in Australia would not find that Australian ‘trainers’ gauge success by ‘giving people information’ and ‘correcting misinformation’. Now, I know this is just anecdote from the ASC perspective, but the training I’ve seen is about a lot of other things—dialogue, engagement, awareness, wonder, reframing—you name it. Anybody want to join me in a follow up study on this from an Australian point of view?