Recent readings about professional grant writers, and about science reporting in newspapers (what reporters finally want, understand, select, care about, consider as important or irrelevant for their readers...) made me think that solid earth geologists are perhaps also wrong when dealing with the public, the EU, the multi-disciplinary granting and strategic committees... and the media.
I know of course that our aims are not deliverable in front pages, but we have to learn how to "sell" our stuff to laymen who's scientific awareness of geology comes from serials (the big bang, the dinosaurs, the catastrophic asteroids, etc.), or from reminiscences of dusty stone collections. I am deeply saddened, of course, like you are all, by this situation.
Like it or not, we have to "sell" the ore deposits, sources of ALL metals, and especially those used in mobile phones and in TV screens! Such an attitude is of course cynical, schizophrenic, etc., etc. And the balance between scientific honesty and its social aspects is a difficult one. But there seems to be no other way out today, even if we feel estranged.
.
.and if we succeed in introducing more geology in schools (as proposed), we shall again need to capture the kids' attention. And guess with what kind of stuff?
Jacques Jedwab
Université Libre de Bruxelles
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/may/edit_040510.html
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/jun/letters1_040607.html
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/apr/close_040412.html
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