NCAS Public Lectures Will Resume in September

Have a pleasant Summer and meanwhile enjoy our website, including our improved NCAS Bibliographies section.

May 10: Global Warming & Climate Change -- The Science Basis & Observations on Current Politics

Saturday, May 10
2 - 4 pm Public & Free
No RSVP

Stuart Jordan, Ph.D.
Emeritus senior staff scientist,
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Bethesda Library, 7400 Arlington Rd., Bethesda, MD (map)
Near Bethesda metro (directions)

(image credit epa.gov)

Apr 18 Framing Science: Conflict & Consensus in Public Communication

Friday, April 18, 1 - 3 pm (arrive by 12:45 pm)
Public & Free
Easy Prior Registration Extended to April 17 (*)

Matthew Nisbet, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Communication,
American University

National Science Foundation, Room 375 (*)
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA

(map)

Over the coming decades, as society faces major collective choices on issues such as climate change, biomedical research, and nanotechnology, scientists and their organizations will need to work together with the public to formulate effective policies and to resolve disputes. A major challenge for scientists will be to craft communication efforts that are sensitive to how diverse audiences process messages, but also to the way science is portrayed across types of media. In these efforts, scientists should adopt a language that emphasizes shared values and has broad appeal, avoiding the pitfall of seeming to condescend to fellow citizens or alienating them by attacking their beliefs. Part of this process includes "framing" an issue in ways that remain true to the science but that make the issue more personally meaningful, thereby potentially sparking greater interest or acceptance.

Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at American University. As a social scientist he studies the nature and impacts of strategic communication in policy debates. His current work focuses on scientific and environmental controversies, examining the interactions between experts, journalists, and various publics. In this research, Nisbet examines how news coverage reflects and shapes policy, how strategists try to mold public opinion, and how citizens make sense of controversies.

NSF is one block south of the Ballston-Marymount University metro stop on the Orange Line. For most drivers, Route 66 to Fairfax Dr. to Stuart Dr is the easiest route. Parking is available in the Ballston Common mall, in the NSF building, and at other area parking lots and garages. Metered parking is also available on the surrounding streets.

(*) Easy Prior Registration For This Event
Non-NSF employees must register in advance for a guest badge for this event. By April 17, send an email to ncas-april18@ncas.org (or call 301 587-3827) giving the first and last name of each attendee and optionally their organizational affiliation for their guest badge. We will try to accommodate walk-in registration arriving before 12:45 pm but we will need to give priority to those with prior registrations arriving by 12:45 pm.

Enter the NSF building at the corner of 9th St. N and N Stuart Streets by 12:45 pm and show a photo ID to pickup your guest badge; then proceed past security to Room 375 for seating by 1 pm.

Mar 8 The Lingering Death of Superstition

Saturday, March 8, 2 - 4 pm (Flyer)
Public & Free

Robert L. Park, Ph.D.
Former University of Maryland Physics Department Chair

National Science Foundation, Room 110
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA

Map


At this event, Professor Park will receive the 2008 NCAS Philip J. Klass Award for his outstanding contributions in promoting critical thinking and scientific understanding.

There was a total eclipse of the Sun on May 28, 585 B.C. What distinguished this particular occultation of the Sun by the Moon was that it had been predicted. The discovery of "The Law of Cause and Effect" by Thales of Melitus is often taken as the birth of science. It should also have marked the death of superstition. Why it did not is the subject of this talk.

Robert L. Park is a professor of physics and former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland. He divides his time between the University and the Washington, DC office of the American Physical Society, which he opened in 1982.

Author of more than a hundred technical papers on the structure and properties of single-crystal surfaces, Professor Park now devotes himself to helping the public distinguish genuine scientific advances from foolish and fraudulent claims. A frequent guest on news programs, he posts "What's New, "a provocative and widely-read weekly column on the internet (www.bobpark.org), and is the author of Voodoo Science: the Road from Foolishness to Fraud.

NSF is one block south of the Ballston-Marymount University metro stop on the Orange Line. For most drivers, Route 66 to Fairfax Dr. to Stuart Dr is the easiest route. Enter NSF from the corner of 9th St. N and N Stuart Streets. Room 110 is on the left before the entry guard -- you do not need to go through NSF security. Parking is available in the Ballston Common mall, in the NSF building, and at other area parking lots and garages. Metered parking is also available on the surrounding streets. (NSF Visitor Info)

Feb 9 Postmodernism vs. Science vs. Fundamentalism

Saturday, February 9, 2 - 4 pm
Public & FREE

Stephen Brush, D. Phil.

National Science Foundation, Room 110
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA

map

flyer




Was Thomas Kuhn a social constructionist? Who won the Science Wars, and was the victory the result of a "Trojan Horse" trick? (Think: Stephen Colbert with a Ph.D. in physics.)

In the last quarter of the 20th century, two movements attacked science. Postmodernism, fashionable in academic humanities departments, inspired the doctrine of "social construction of scientific knowledge" (hereafter "social con"), advocated by some sociologists and historians of science. The recrudescence of religious fundamentalism supported the revival of creationism, which opposed and tried to expel from public schools the widely-accepted scientific theories of biological evolution, plate tectonics, and Big Bang cosmology. Science, still a bastion of objectivity in understanding the world, had to fend off attacks from both the left (postmodernism) and the right (fundamentalism).

The question of whether scientists can discover true facts about the world that are independent of their own social environment, or whether all their knowledge is socially constructed, was the cause of the "Science Wars" of the 1990s.

Scientists, who strongly rejected social con, did not notice that at least two widely-accepted scientific facts were indeed socially constructed, as can easily be shown by looking at their history. Moreover, there is some similarity between social con and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, at least if you know something about baseball.

Stephen Brush is a professor (emeritus) of the History of Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was originally educated as a theoretical physicist and did research on topics such as the solidification of an electron gas ("plasma") at low temperatures and high densities. He contributed to the Harvard Project Physics Course for high schools, using the historical approach. He came to the University of Maryland in 1968 to initiate a program in history of science. His current research is a study of reasons why scientists in different fields accept (or reject) new theories.

NSF is one block south of Ballston-Marymount University metro stop Orange Line. For most drivers, Route 66 to Fairfax Dr. to Stuart Dr is the easiest route. Enter NSF from the corner of 9th N and N Stuart Streets. Room 110 is on the left before the entry guard -- you will not need to go through NSF security. Parking is available in the Ballston Common mall, in the NSF building, and at other area parking lots and garages. Metered parking is also available on the surrounding streets. NSF Visitor Information