The Scientific Bias Against Promotion

I agree that a dreary comprehensive litany of who made what suggestion and which project official rejected it would be tedious (although me fact that the same idea arose in the minds of many different people - both in the science and the engineering teams - is worth noting), while at least some indication of the resistance to "nonscientific" data might be quite interesting. The battle is, of course, being played out again with regard to the two Galileo Earth encounters, where there was partic...

 The "Sagan Effect"

With Cosmos, Sagan sought to put an end to the fear and to inspire the kind of wonder Hubble's lectures had inspired in the 1930s and 1940s and the Moon landing had inspired in 1969. The series was enormously successful. For the first time since Hubble, a huge audience was engaged in exploring the grand questions of life, nature, the structure of the uni¬ verse, mythology, and what it might all mean, how it might all fit together, the mystery of it all. It examined how our search for meaning...

 Scientists Must Practice Communicating Science

Why should it be hard for scientists to get science across? Some scientists, including some very good ones, tell me they'd love to popularize, but feel they lack talent in this area. Knowing and explaining, they say, are not the same thing. What's the secret? There's only one, I think: don't talk to the general audience as you would to your scientific colleagues. There are terms that convey your meaning instantly and accurately to fellow experts. You may parse these phrases every day in your...