I found this week’s readings very
intriguing even though I am not a science person. In fact, the only science I
was ever good at was biology and I think that’s because my lab partner was too
scared to dissect anything, so I had to do it all. But I don’t think that my personal
interest or feelings towards science affects my perception of the importance of
advances in science and technology. I think that Lisa Dellwo hit on this a
little bit in her blog Why Scientists
(Should) Blog.
Dellwo talks about people not
understanding what a scientist is and what they do. I don’t know the true
definition of a scientist but I know that what they do is important. Most of
the advances we have in our society originate from a scientific standpoint.
Yet, most people still don’t make scientific and technological advancements important
either in their personal life or on the news, as Dellwo also pointed out. In an
interview Dellwo had with Rick MacPherson, interim executive director and
conservation programs director at the Coral Reef Alliance, he said this about
the public’s negative comments on science blogs: “the negative commenters are
evidence that the general public doesn’t understand the evidence-based nature
of science. People don’t understand how science works; it’s not a democratic
process. . . . not opinions.” To me, this quote shows that scientific research
is not driven by the process of discourse but rather by need and necessity. MacPherson
stated that science is evidence based and because of this, I think that
scientific research might be instigated by conversations but I don’t think it
driven by them.
Bouncing off of the idea of research
and the driving force behind it, the other article we read Will We Ever … Talk to Dolphins goes into the methodology behind
researching into interspecies communication. The article dove into past interspecies
communication researching methods, what worked, and what didn’t work. For the
prompt this week, I don’t think any other information on the article is
important but that fact that there is an article our there is more important to
address.
The fact that both readings for
this week were available online to anyone shows that scientists do communicate
with us “non-science folk.” They tell us things that we might not understand
without intense and lengthy explanations so that we can know what new things
are being research and discovered in the scientific community. I would say that
this is somewhat a responsibility, to make known this information, but I think
that it is more of a courtesy. These scientists aren’t required to give any information
of what they are doing to the public, yet they do. They want people to be informed
and make their decisions on issues based on the facts rather than out of
ignorance.
