Gadagkar, R (2021) More Fun Than Fun : Scientists Must Write for the People. In: The Wire .
|
PDF
Gadagkar - 2021 - More Fun Than Fun - Scientists Must Write for the People.pdf - Published Version Download (601kB) | Preview |
Abstract
My former student Anindita Bhadra recently invited me to speak to the participants (MSc and PhD students) of a workshop on science communication that she had organised under the auspices of Cogito 137, a multilingual web-based science communication platform hosted on the IISER Kolkata web domain. I am no expert on the theory and practice of science communication (many experts spoke during the workshop) but I agreed to speak because I have one point to make. Today, we see an increasing division of labour between scientists who are content with producing knowledge and science writers who are content with communicating this knowledge to a broad audience. We justify this separation as inevitable because science has become so complicated that scientists have neither the time nor the skill required to speak to the general public. For the same reason, science writers have neither the opportunity nor the skill required to produce knowledge. While this may be inevitable to a small extent, I worry that scientists are using the supposed complexity of science as an excuse to shirk responsibility and exaggerate the division of labour more than it is necessary.
| Item Type: | Editorials/Short Communications |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Wire |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Jun 2021 04:52 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2021 04:52 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68679 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
