I am flabbergasted at the attacks on scientists explaining current understanding, until I realize that the people attacking very rarely comprehend the process. This isn't a slap at people attacking scientists, it's very much an indictment of our educational and scicomm system, that we say "here is a fully functional adult, who doesn't have the slightest clue as to how this stuff actually works, and we are totally fine with it." As well as experts saying "insert random domain specific jargon here" for said individuals to consume.
I've (PhD in physics) taken long (6-8hour) car rides with my Sensei (2 years of college) to tournaments. On the way, we talk about science, and I put in consumable, non-jargon terms, things like the big bang, quantum physics, steller lifecycles, etc. I'm not an expert in some of these, and out of practice in others, but being able to explain to an intelligent and curious person is feature IMO for scientists.
One should not be mysterious, or assume mantles of superiority. We all put pants on, one leg at a time. Being able to explain the joy of discovery in an approachable way is a skill. One I'd love to see in graduate schools.
My own anecdote on the crackpot bits ... I'd started at SGI in 1995 ABD. I was writing, and it was going slowly. My manager knew I was a physics type, and he forwarded me an email he'd received from someone on a new theory of relativity.
Don't ask me why someone would email SGI (a workstation company) about this. I don't know.
He asked me to look it over. This is like 4 weeks into the job (my first full time professional job post grad school). I thought this was an assignment worth doing. So I reviewed their paper. I caught a bunch of sign and other related errors they made, and wrote up a summary. He asked me to interact with them. So I sent it back to the people.
I got all sorts of weirdness coming back from them. It was a conspiracy to keep their breakthrough out of the public mind. "No", I said, "it was a set of mathematical errors." I pointed out that if they fixed them, they would get normal special relativity. They didn't want to. And complained to my manager.
I am flabbergasted at the attacks on scientists explaining current understanding, until I realize that the people attacking very rarely comprehend the process. This isn't a slap at people attacking scientists, it's very much an indictment of our educational and scicomm system, that we say "here is a fully functional adult, who doesn't have the slightest clue as to how this stuff actually works, and we are totally fine with it." As well as experts saying "insert random domain specific jargon here" for said individuals to consume.
I've (PhD in physics) taken long (6-8hour) car rides with my Sensei (2 years of college) to tournaments. On the way, we talk about science, and I put in consumable, non-jargon terms, things like the big bang, quantum physics, steller lifecycles, etc. I'm not an expert in some of these, and out of practice in others, but being able to explain to an intelligent and curious person is feature IMO for scientists.
One should not be mysterious, or assume mantles of superiority. We all put pants on, one leg at a time. Being able to explain the joy of discovery in an approachable way is a skill. One I'd love to see in graduate schools.
My own anecdote on the crackpot bits ... I'd started at SGI in 1995 ABD. I was writing, and it was going slowly. My manager knew I was a physics type, and he forwarded me an email he'd received from someone on a new theory of relativity.
Don't ask me why someone would email SGI (a workstation company) about this. I don't know.
He asked me to look it over. This is like 4 weeks into the job (my first full time professional job post grad school). I thought this was an assignment worth doing. So I reviewed their paper. I caught a bunch of sign and other related errors they made, and wrote up a summary. He asked me to interact with them. So I sent it back to the people.
I got all sorts of weirdness coming back from them. It was a conspiracy to keep their breakthrough out of the public mind. "No", I said, "it was a set of mathematical errors." I pointed out that if they fixed them, they would get normal special relativity. They didn't want to. And complained to my manager.
Thus my introduction to internet cranks.