Beauty pageant contestants vs. science advocates: this isn't helpful

As a science fan and a PR guy, when I see something like this video - where contestants from the Miss USA 2011 pageant answer the question "should evolution be taught in schools?" - I really cringe.



If you are a science fan and you sat through this entire video then kudos to you. (Actually the answer from Miss Vermont was rather good.)

Let's get something clear from the get-go here.  Evolution is real.  It's sound science and it must be taught in public schools.  Myriad advances in health and science derive directly from evolutionary biology.  It's not a secular alternative to the Bible.  You don't "believe" in evolution any more than you "believe" in gravity.  If you're reading this and you're a person of a particular faith and you're offended by this, I'm sorry - but you're wrong. The sound science of evolution isn't encroaching on your faith, your faith is encroaching on sound, provable, evidence-based science and when you try to take evolution out of classrooms you're only making things worse.

But let me make something else clear: I think the Miss USA contestants were set up for failure. As I understand it, the goal of a contestant in a preliminary interview competition isn't to advocate for science or religion or anything else - it's to sound reasonably pleasant and articulate and avoid offending the judges.  I don't think it's fair to expect a woman in her early- to mid-20's to speak competently and at length to the pedagogic merits of evolutionary biology if that isn't something she's studied.  If you were in your early twenties, and you were put on the spot about a controversial issue you hadn't studied in depth, and you assumed you were talking to a group of people who had different opinions, chances are you'd come out where most of these women did - "present both sides fairly and let people decide."

As someone in PR, that's a very recognizable phrase.  Nearly everyone agrees with that blanket statement.  Give people the right to choose. Present both sides fairly.  If you're against those statements on just about any issue, you're typically seen as an elitist or worse. You're positioned as the person who doesn't want people to have their views heard and you're not interested in a fair debate.  PR folks like me recommend taking this tack in a messaging strategy for clients all the time.

This is where many scientists see themselves today on important issues like evolution, climate change, and vaccination.  Scientists point to the data and say the debate is over - those with interests on the other side take advantage of the fact that the issues are still not well known to everyone, and align themselves with consensus-claiming, PR-driven statements.  They're just trying to be heard and they want a fair shake.

So scientists and science communicators find themselves right on the facts but wrong in the eyes of the public.  So they sometimes resort to mocking:



Personally I think it's pretty funny. And it probably wasn't produced for the purpose of changing minds. But mocking beauty pageant contestants - as good as that may feel for some - doesn't really help.  A lot of people think pageants are silly, but a lot of other people really like them.  And we're trying to reach everyone.

Perhaps it makes sense to do some outreach to the contestants, give them some education, help them understand the issue, and then let them be great messengers and advocates for science?

I've heard cheerleaders are pretty good at that...

speaking of #scimom...

The Wandering Scientist reads my "reflections" post and says I left out #scimom's who don't work in academia.  It's a valid point. And she's been paying attention to this a lot longer than I have - and not just because she's actually a #scimom.  Back in 2009 she put together perhaps the first #scimom list.

She says academic #scimoms can be more visible in the blogosphere and are more able to write about their work.   And she says being a mom prompts some to take you less seriously at work.   I think perspectives vary a bit on this (the CEO of the company where I work is a proud mom and grandmother), though I understand her point.

I'm curious to know what #scimoms think.  The impression I get is a lot of #scimoms write under a pseudonym whether they're academic or not.  Again just my impression but I get the feeling that anonymity has declined in the mom-o-sphere generally as it's grown more commercialized, but #scimom's still see a significant downside to sharing their names.

I know this topic has been the subject of much discussion at ScienceOnline and elsewhere.  I come from a different online community - public relations and issues management - where transparency is paramount and hiding your identity means hiding your true interests.  So it's hard for me to accept.  But that doesn't make this any less real.   Again, curious to know more about what others think.

#scimom reflections

The #scimom posts as a text cloud

When I introduced the #scimom meme I thought of it primarily as an outreach strategy.

I'm a firm believer in what Ethan Zuckerman has called "imaginary cosmopolitansim." People think the Internet exists as this profoundly diverse information exchange that breaks down countless cultural barriers - but in practice it serves as a force for homophily, strengthening bonds among people with similar interests while excluding people with other backgrounds or viewpoints.  Members of specific communities feel increasingly close kinship to each other - but those communities also tend to grow isolated, and view those in other online communities as more "foreign."

While Zuckerman and his colleagues at Global Voices address cultural distinctions based geographic and political barriers, I thought #scimom might look at two communities that are isolated from one another for other reasons - mom bloggers and science bloggers.  I've long held the view that moms are life's decision makers and scientists are the people who solve the world's most pressing problems, so mingling might be a good idea.  I looked at the different rankings and listings of mom blogs and I didn't see a lot of scientists there.  I looked at the large and growing lists of science blogs and science blogging networks and saw they very clearly skew male - and those written by women focus mainly on, not surprisingly, science.  I also quickly realized that as a non-scientist and a non-mom, I wasn't going to start a dialogue on my own.

So I began to do what I think Zuckerman and the Global Voices folks would do - I searched for "bridge figures."  Bridge figures are people whose experiences help them fit into more than one community and can help build lines of communication across cultures.  I had already been to my share of mom blog conferences, and I signed up for Science Online in 2010.  That's where I met Darlene Cavalier, the founder of Science for Citizens, an outstanding web portal that promotes and facilitates citizen science projects and collaborations between academics and non-academics.  It looked like (and it is) a great resource for parents who want to make science a part of their family's everyday life, and a great home for #scimom.  However, while Darlene is a great advocate, she isn't a scientist either.

I also gave an ignite-style talk at the conference where I tried to outline the need for these bridge figures - but it was clear I didn't connect with everyone, and for very good reason. I was essentially opining on the need for more mom-scientists to speak up in a room where dozens of mom-scientists were listening to me in disbelief, no doubt thinking, "then read my blog, you idiot." So I figured I'd just ask the science bloggers and mom bloggers I knew to write about, umm... you know, stuff.  And then read each other's posts. And maybe that would start getting people in the different communities talking.

So #scimom started out as the pre-planned mingling of communities - a few non-scientist moms kicked in some posts, and a few non-mom scientists did so as well, and they were all amazing - but as it grew it  evolved into this amazing virtual rock anthem for moms who work in academia.  Janet Stemwedel on bass.  Jeanne Garabino on drums. Gerty-Z on guitar. Joanne Manaster on keyboards. Emily Willingham and Carin Bondar blowing horns. And Kate Clancy on lead vocals:

I am going to tell you a secret. I do this job, I am this kind of person, because I want to be a role model for other young women, that they can have jobs and have kids and still have other things going on in their lives.
But really, most of all, I do this for my own daughter, far more than for any of you reading today.

So the #scimom bridge figures are here, they're proud, and they're great writers.  I'm thrilled that this idea may have gotten them talking a bit more about the issues they face as professional women and as scientists. I'm touched at how they've incorporated their interest in science into their parenting.  I'm gratified that maybe they've gotten a few more readers as a result of this meme.  I'm tickled that #scimom got a plug in the Chronicle of Higher Education's website for Mother's Day.  And I'm enormously thankful to all of the people who contributed posts, passed the word on Facebook and Twitter, and read or commented.

But I don't think #scimom has been an especially effective outreach tool, at least not yet.  I look at the #scimom posts and I see similarities with the discussions led by people like Liz Gumbinner, Catherine Connors, Joanne Bamberger, Julie Marsh, Kristen Chase, Susan Niebur and so many other mom bloggers I read regularly. My gut tells me the scientist  #scimoms identify more readily with science bloggers, not mom bloggers. Or maybe they're a community to their own.  Still, I don't see the interaction in ways that I can readily quantify - public discussions and/or links between recognized leaders of the two communities.

Of course I didn't expect this idea to suddenly open floodgates of discussions between online communities.  But I wonder how many people read the posts from bloggers in that "other" community and then poked around a bit.  So I hope that #scimom will continue to grow and evolve and move in whatever direction the #scimom participants want it to go.  But I also hope that people in both online communities will occasionally step out of their comfort zone and do a little exploring in an online community that feels foreign to them.

That's what I try to do every day, and I'd like to think I'm better for it.  And I'll continue to dream up goofy ways to make it happen.  Maybe someday it will work.

Bring Science Home by Scientific American

I think this is great.

The #scimom cloud

This is the text from all the #scimom posts represented as a Wordle text cloud.  Thanks so much to everyone who participated. I'm going to offer some thoughts on this as soon as my workload relaxes a bit.

A #scimom update

I am enormously grateful for all of the posts people have contributed to #scimom and I've learned a lot from reading those posts. For those just joining us, #scimom is something of a "double blog-meme" that tries to build bridges between people who blog about science and people who blog about parenting.  You can learn how to participate by reading this post.

While I won't say the impact has been huge, I will say there are a few people reading some blogs that were new to them - and I think the sense of community among some of those writers and readers has increased a bit.  That's more than anyone could hope for.  I'm also glad we introduced some people to Darlene Cavalier's Science For Citizens.

We've had posts from moms who aren't scientists like Catherine and Thea and Carmen and Christina. We've had posts from moms who ARE scientists like Jeanne and Anne and Janet.  We've had posts from scientists who aren't moms like Sheril and Jade and Jason.  I've gotten such a kick out of watching people share and forward #scimom posts on Twitter, and the feedback has been very rewarding.  Further, the range of perspectives has been so impressive.  We've even gotten a couple of posts from people who explain why motherhood is not a choice they're making - I honestly didn't expect that, but I think it's an important viewpoint that deserves to be included as well.

I'm going to keep this thing going for a little while longer to see if anyone else has thoughts to share.  So my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has participated and my warm invitations to anyone who wants to play along!

The #scimom Collection

I will  store all the #scimom related posts I find here and a post at Science For Citizens and at delicious.com.  You can find the original introduction to the concept here.  If you don't see your post here just leave a comment or ping me on Twitter @dwescott1 and I'll add it.

• Nerd Love Story: Kind of a fan letter to science by Thea Joselow at Nutgraf
• The call of... booby by Jeanne Garbarino at The Mother Geek
• Scientist, Mom by Anne Peattie at her personal blog 
• Diversity in Science Blogging: a call for action by Elaine Westwick at The stuff of life
• Reflections on biology and motherhood: Where does Homo sapiens fit in? by Carin Bondar at the Scientific American Guest Blog 
• A Hypothesis Is A Wish Your Brain Makes by Catherine Connors at Her Bad Mother
• Affirmations for a Working Mom by Kari Byron at GeekMom
• Why We Love Science by Susan Wells at The Savvy Source
• Motherhood, Science and All That by "Cloud" at Wandering Scientist
• So You Want Your Child to Succeed? Here's How by Sheril Kirshenbaum at Discover Magazine's The Intersection
• Motherhood has made me a slob by Micro Dr. O at The Tightrope
• The "I Drank Water out of a Hose" Meme by Emily Finke at This View of Life
• I'm No Scientist by Carmen Staicer at Mom to the Screaming Masses
• The #scimom project: We are here! by Janet D. Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science
• Health pitfalls of parenting by Catherine Holecko at About.com Family Fitness
• Growing by Cathy Ngo at Frog Monkey 
• Seeing Science by Catherine Holecko at Mayberry Mom
• The mystery of the egg thief by Jennifer at Under the Ponderosas
• The re-education of a science mom by Tracy Z. Turner at Tiny Mantras
• Geek Squared by Christina McMenemy at A Mommy Story
• How Old is the Earth? by Gina Cocking at Super Smart Carbon
• Science and Motherhood by Heather R at I Don't Remember
• On how we need more female STEM celebrities by Jeanne Garbino at The Mother Geek
• Science writing in 5 minutes intervals by "The Febrile Muse"
• The maternity shuffle by Julia James at Science, Upstream
• Backyard science: isotope hydrology style by Anne Jefferson at Highly Allochthonous
• Blaming parents: what I've learned and unlearned as a child psychiatrist by Justine Larson at the Scientific American Guest Blog
• I am #scimom! by gerty-z at Balanced Instability
• #scimom by "Dr. Sneetch" at The Sneetch Blog
• On becoming a #scimom by Micro Dr. O at The Tightrope
• Why I am not a scimom by Jade at Life's a Biotech
• On not being a Supermom by Dr. Girlfriend at Life Beyond the Bench
• Sciparenting and expectations by proflikesubstance at The Spandrel Shop
• On being a mum by Lesley at Lesley's Blog
• Perseverating on Perseverative Error: What Does The "A-not-B Error" Really Tell Us About Infant Cognition? by Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal
• Teen SciMom by XtalGrrl at science and life and a small bucket of crazy...
• #scimom and me by Kate Clancy at Context and variation
• Exploring the earth with kids by PhD Journey: fire, kids, erosion at her personal blog
• Are Infants Born Prepared For Learning? The Case For Natural Pedagogy by Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal
• Sneaking in at the end of the month (#scimom) by The Prodigal Academic at her personal blog
• I've been a #Scimom for 63 years. I know I don't look that old. The kids keep me young! by Joanne Manaster at Joanne Loves Science 
• Why I'm glad I've got Sci-Mom superpowers by Emily Willingham at The Biology Files 
• The Adventures of a Scimom: Conference Edition by Jeanne Garabino at The Mother Geek
• The Adventures of a Scimom: Conference Edition, Part 2 by Jeanne Garabino at The Mother Geek
• Everything I need to know about sea level rise I learned on vacation by Heather Goldstone at Climatide
• The Incidental #Scimom by Kiyomi Deards at the Library Adventures of Kiyomi
• On Motherhood and Bet-Hedging: Part B #scimom by Carin Bondar at her personal blog
• Is Pedagogy Specific to Humans? Teaching in the Animal World by Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal
• The Best Advice I've Recieved as a Woman in Biotech by Mary Canady at Dangerous Experiments
• Lessons in Freeway Calculus by Grace Peng at The Atlantic

The #scimom Posts...

It's been fun watching #scimom start up - a few people have written posts and I know a few more plan to, thanks to the comments in the introduction post here.  I'm creating this post (and one at Science For Citizens) to keep track of all the links.  I also have a tab at my delicious page.  I'll create a link in my sidebar to this post to keep it accessible.  Here are some posts:

• Nerd Love Story: Kind of a fan letter to science by Thea Joselow at Nutgraf
• The call of... booby by Jeanne Garbarino at The Mother Geek
• Scientist, Mom by Anne Peattie at her personal blog 

some other posts that may not be "official" but are in my mind relevant:

• Diversity in Science Blogging: a call for action by Elaine Westwick at The stuff of life.  Anne Peattie put this in her list of #scimom posts.
• Reflections on biology and motherhood: Where does Homo sapiens fit in? by Carin Bondar at the Scientific American Guest Blog.  Carin is one of the bloggers I've been talking with about this idea and she shared this with me - a great piece from February. 
• A Hypothesis Is A Wish Your Brain Makes by Catherine Connors at Her Bad Mother.  Catherine clearly has a lot going on and I'm sure she's not worrying about this idea, but she's also someone I've been talking with and I just thought this post was excellent. 

That's what I've found for now - I know more are coming, so stay tuned...

Introducing #scimom

My Science for Citizens Project!

UPDATE:  Bloggers from both communities are starting to write posts.  The first post came from Thea Joselow - her "Nerd Love Story" is a great read.  Next, Jeanne Garbarino (a science blogging mom) gives us The call of... booby.  As more come in I'll organize them.  I've added a scimom tag to my delicious feed, so that's another way people can find the links.  (As long as delicious exists, anyway.) 

I think this could be cool. It's not a science project, but it may help make science more interesting and acessible to everyone.

Online moms have extraordinary power – far more than most people realize. Companies listen to them. Policy makers listen to them. Moms make the overwhelming majority of decisions in life – what to buy, who to vote for, when to get health care, and so on. They do most of the work. They do most of the child-rearing.  They're the boss. The problem is a lot of online moms feel labeled, disrespected, and misunderstood. 

Science bloggers push the boundaries of ideas.  They give us facts, and theories, and great stories about discovery.  They celebrate the pursuit of knowledge and help us understand all kinds of important things.  The problem is a lot of science bloggers also feel labeled, disrespected, and misunderstood. 

I think if moms are making decisions based on the right information and with the right context – the kind of context you can get from science bloggers – the world will be a much better place. And I think if science bloggers understand the perspectives of the REAL influential people in our society, they can help make sure their work has an even bigger impact than it already does. 

Of course I know there are plenty of people who are scientists AND moms.  But even those mom/science bloggers tend to stick to one community or the other.  In my observations over a few years now, these two online communities remain fairly isolated from each other.  So I've been working on an idea to get the two communities talking.  Here it is, plain and simple.

1) if you're a mom blogger, write a post this month that has something to do about science or science blogging.  It could be anything -your love (or hatred) of science or a particular scientist, a hope you have for your child, an appropriate role model, whatever you like.  Just make it personal and relevant to your life. 

2) if you're a science blogger, write a post this month that has something to do with parenting or parent blogging.  Maybe it's something your parent did to get you interested in science.  Maybe it's on the science of parenting.  Maybe it's your love (or skepticism) of something in the mom-o-sphere. Just make it personal and relevant to your life. 

3) if you're a mom AND a scientist, then just write a post this month about how awesome it is to be a mom and a scientist or something like that.  Maybe suggest a role model, or a story about why both roles are important to you.  Just make it personal and relevant to your life. As far as I'm concerned you make an awesome role model and people should know about you.

4) ask another blogger in your online community to participate.  You can call them out in your post like it's a blog meme or you can ask them any way you like. 

5) tag your post #scimom and I will keep track of the posts and link to them at Science for Citizens and here as well.  If you want to tweet a link to your post, just add the hashtag #sci-mom and we'll keep a tally so people can find relevant posts to read. 

6) read a post from a blogger in the OTHER community (i.e. if you're a mom blogger read a participating science blogger's post and vice versa) and leave a comment.

That's it.  At the least I hope it adds some links and traffic to people's blogs, and gets them a few new readers.  Maybe it will spur new conversations, friendships, projects.  I don't know.  I just like to see people interact.  Please let me know if you're in, if you have questions or ideas, or anything else.