I would be curious to know what you thought. If you are comfortable commenting in public, please leave a comment to this post. That would be a good place to leave any additional questions or comments for Tom as well.
What Happens in HIV
12 years ago
That was very informative. I especially liked the point he made that it doesn’t matter anymore if more than one news source covers the same story. As our technology increases, we continue to be more connected than ever before, but we also get much more selective. Since everyone in the country no longer gets all of their news from just the radio or just a newspaper, it is more important than ever to be able to communicate scientific ideas in more than one way. I get my news from the paper, radio, tv, magazines, journal articles, and the web…so if all other sources refused to cover a story because someone else already did, then I definitely would not know as much as I do today.
ReplyDeleteI do have one question that I didn’t get to ask in the video conference though.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that being known to the public and being a good communicator is really important to getting what you know across to the general public. So obviously it is a good idea to be on good terms with the media. But, what should you do if you are in the middle of an interview, and you suddenly realize that you were only invited to it so they could bash science (or you personally, let’s say if you are doing research on cloning)? I mean, you can’t storm out because they’ll have a field day with that. But you can’t tell them how wrong they are because they’ll chalk it up to you being a “typical condescending scientist”. I really hope I never end up in this situation, but I’ve seen it happen before; what would you say would be the best way to handle a situation like that?
I will be sure to pass those questions on.
ReplyDelete