Link Farm: Chemistry Communication

Blogs, like any medium, shift, change, and grow over time. At first, I devoted my humble corner of the internet to food chemistry. After a while, it became a tool to root out misconceptions about chemistry in popular culture.

Well, to borrow a phrase from Click and Clack, I've come around for the "third half of the show" - figuring out how to bridge the gap between the growing public desire for accessible, informative, entertaining science content and chemistry's approach to that communication. A lot of terms have swirled around this issue: "punching down," #BogusChem, "Inside Baseball," 'in-reach' not outreach, #chemophobia, and "dumbing down," to name just a few.

Thanks for the tip about the magnets, Andre!
(P.S. Yes, I know "D" isn't an element)

This post will serve as a (growing) collection of pieces dedicated to thoughtful chemistry outreach.
Readers: Have a favorite post I haven't included? Send it along in the comments.

Janet Stemwedel, Doing Good Science: "When we target chemophobia, are we punching down?"

Chad Jones, The Collapsed Wavefunction: "Punching down? I don't remember swinging at all."

Ash Jogalekar, The Curious Wavefunction: "Where's the chemistry lobby? On why we need a National Center for Chemical Education."

See Arr Oh, Just Like Cooking: "The Chemistry Popularity Conundrum"

Michelle Francl, Slate: "Don't Take Medical Advice from the NY Times Magazine"; Nature Chemistry: "How to counteract chemophobia";

Paul Bracher, ChemBark: "Combatting Chemophobia"

Rebecca Guenard, Atomic-O-Licious: "Chemistry Isn't Just About Chemicals"

Science 2.0: "Chemophobia - The Unnatural Fixation of Activists"

Chemjobber, Dr. Rubidium, See Arr Oh, Chemjobber: "Chemistry Avengers" (podcast)

Marc Leger, Atoms and Numbers: "Consider the audience when addressing chemophobia"

Chris Clarke, Pharyngula: "Did you know douchebags are full of dihydrogen monoxide?"

Andrew Bissette, Behind NMR Lines: "In defense of #chemophobia"

More to come...

CNN Science Time Capsule

I'm forever fascinated by popular media treatment of 'science' as a niche interest.

Don't believe me? This morning, I browsed on over to CNN.com on a lark, and decided to count links. Starting below the toolbars, and counting until the pictures of talking heads at the bottom, I counted a total of 158 story links. For a general news aggregator, you'd expect coverage of politics, weather, and entertainment news, but you'd also hope for some medical, environmental, or (FSM forbid!) actual research news.

I counted 15 stories with actual scientific content of any kind (9.4%).

So, what do you get for your science coverage tithe? Here's the headlines I chose:
(all text likely c. CNN, look at that scary legal disclaimer!)

"Notorious B.I.G. autopsy finally out"
"Hi-tech blimp to track down Bigfoot"
"Florida's great python hunt is on"
"The Maya collapsed; could we?"
"NBA great battles blood cancer"
"Diesel-spewing big rigs go green"
"Arctic spawns massive ice islands"
"Don't wait for Syria to cross red line"
"Which milk is best for you?"
"Researchers test blood for autism"
"Pacific earthquake shakes Japan"
"Acute pregnancy sickness explained"
"A fish called Obama"
"Meteors to bombard Earth this month"
"Yes, you can recycle cigarette butts"

Mayans, Bigfoot, Meteors, celebrity autopsies, pythons, and the NBA. Wow. There you have it: your daily science blast for the 20,000,000 monthly viewers on CNN's homepage.