1. We focus a lot on science communication as the generation of content.  However equally, and if not more, important is the filtering of content.  In the last few years, poorly informed, incorrect and out right maliciously wrong content has become prolific.  We need now, more than ever, for trusted domain experts to amplify, share, and provide reliable and accurate information. I saw this first hand reporting here at DSN with both the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and the Fukishama Reactors that bad information was rampant and people were looking for trusted content.

2. Somewhere we stopped teaching students and the public how to critically evaluate information. Or may be it never existed at all.  We need with renewed vigor to teach students and the public how to think, reason, and evaluate information.  We need mandatory classes and lessons across education levels in logic, philosophy, mathematics, statistics, problem solving, and scientific methodology.

3. We need to make sure good and correct information is more accessible and more viral than bad information.  We need to make it easier for students and the public to get the information they need to be an informed citizenry.

4. Science needs to be more open.  Open access publishing, science communication, and citizen science and other initiatives were good start of a larger “open” movement.  But now we need to swing the doors of science open a little wider.  We are not open or honest to our failures in the enterprise of science.  Metal health issues, inequality, profiteering, and harassment run rapid.  We need change and a river in Egypt isn’t the first step.

We need to be more open about our failures not just successes. @DrCraigMc giving a rallying cry rant I needed to hear and can get behind this morning. #nerdsoftrust

— KT (@vivalakt) June 25, 2018

5. We need to renew the social contract between educational institutions and the public.  We need to place value on an informed and educated citizenry.   This is the hallmark to economic prosperity and quality, political stability and growth, innovation in the sciences and humanities, and overall public health.  The renewal of this contract comes first and foremost with economic commitment from local to national levels and the foresight that this investment will be returned 10-fold.

6. Scientists need to all become nerds of trust. On Facebook, over beers at the bar, in your local and state government meetings, you need to be there with science.

@DrCraigMc of @deepseanews encourages us librarians to be “nerds of trust for friends & family” & use social media like Facebook to discuss science in our social spheres. @alaannual #alaac18 @ALA_ACRL #STS pic.twitter.com/8it9UtOV4m

— Michael R Leach (@mikeleach42) June 25, 2018

7. Science communication needs to be goal and mission oriented.  The idea of a “Field of Dreams” model of putting something out there and expecting it work is ridiculous.  If you have not thought about what success is and how you are going to measure it, stop now.  Science communication has to be deliberate in action.

“We need to stop half-assing our science outreach” and to think I almost meh’d out of this mornings session because sleep. >⁦@DrCraigMc⁩ https://t.co/5wOgz5bTEJ

— KT (@vivalakt) June 25, 2018

8. We need to break out of the echo chamber.  If you defriended all of your Facebook friends who had different political leanings to you, you are probably part of the problem.  Are your science communication efforts only reaching the NPR and PBS, science-enthusiast audience?  Was the last science and drink night you talked at just hipsters in tweed? Probably…  Are you still wondering why the public is struggling with science or just actively anti-science.  YOU ARE NOT TALKING TO THEM.  We need new and creative ways to reach new audiences especially those in lower socio-economic classes. We need to go to where they are and put science there.

9. We need to create and support places and times of innovation…places that domain experts in humanities, social science, education and pedagogy, science communication, and scientists learn from each other and build together.  These need to be places that applaud risk and go after moon shots while focused on action and products. Events like #oceandotcomm are one example.

10. Even if we don’t get anything else right, we need to get one thing right.  Be passionate.  This idea of science as cold, heartless, and stale enterprise needs to die.

“Be passionate. Science is not a cold place, it is an amazing place. Share that.” – @DrCraigMc in how we connect and excite the community in science efforts #alaac18

— Paige Dhyne (@LibandLife) June 25, 2018

The post 10 Things Science, Science Communication, and Just Maybe All of Academia Needs first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Among both scientists and non-scientists there is skepticism about James Cameron’s “Deep Sea Challenge” dive into the Marianas Trench on Sunday and what it really achieved for society.  We keep getting asked: why should we do this and what do we get from Cameron going to the deep?  Deep-sea exploration is expensive, difficult and dangerous. Why should anyone go, let alone he?

One of our more cynical colleagues on Twitter stated:

“Rich asshole builds his own sub and dives really deep. Yawn. Gullible scios and journos mistake such vanity tourism for important discovery”

And one of us [Dr. M] admits that he was also skeptical of the importance of all of this to begin with, but that was before the exciting events of Sunday evening.

There is precedent for this in other fields.  Consider alpha taxonomy (the description of new species), for example, which is where one of us [para_sight], started his scientific career.  The first step to cataloguing new biodiversity is to go out there and collect some samples and take a look; it really is that simple!   As the taxonomy builds, you have to go out ever further and look ever closer, but the process is the same and it is generally NOT built on specific hypotheses, despite how it may be stated in grant applications ;)    Alpha taxonomy is exploratory research in exactly the same way as Cameron’s deep sea mission.  He dove to the Marianas Trench in search of new life, whereas para_sight dissected the guts of fish species that had never been necropsied before in search of new species of parasitic worms.  We don’t think anyone would argue that taxonomy is not science, so why would deep sea exploration not also be?

 “Which is a better investment, science or exploration?  The question is almost as old as the space program itself, and answering it won´t get any easier as humans move toward establishing a lunar base. But could science be an inevitable outgrowth of exploration?”

– David Tenenbaum

We agree with this view that exploration is simply the inductive first step towards more formal deductive science, which brings us to first reason why we should explore:

1.     Exploration is about observation, the first step of the scientific process.  Without exploration we do not have the intellectual fodder for scientific discovery

We may not even know what we should be asking! :

2.     Exploration is about knowledge, about expanding our horizons and answering questions that we haven’t even thought of asking yet

Thus:

3.     Through exploration we can gain knowledge about earth, life, and potentially other planets.

Of course exploration also has immediate and tangible benefits.  Doing new things means doing them in new ways and, necessity being the mother of invention, technology advances hand in hand with exploration:

4. Exploration leads to technological and engineering innovation as we strive to meet new challenges.

5.     To explore the unknown means discovery with ramifications unseen. 

“Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the 17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America’s greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the air.”-NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. “”I believe America should look to its future – and consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a spacefaring nation.”

Undoubtedly one metric of society is its culture of exploration of new frontiers in space, technology, Earth but in the arts and sciences in general.  Put simply:

6.     Through exploration, nations become great.

We should visit the moon or trench simply because we have not been there before or not been there enough.  To not go is to deny our very nature.  We should go because we are driven to rise to a challenge presented:

7.     A humans we are a naturally curious species, we deny our humanity if we do not explore the unknown world around us. 

To meet the obstacles, both seen and unforeseen, of exploration requires the dissolution of borders, barriers, languages, and dispute.  We must cooperate.

8.     Exploration allows for the unification of humanity around great achievement.

Importantly, how do we excite the public and youth about technology and science?  How many kids wanted to be astronauts when they grow up?  How many wanted to be marine biologists because they saw Cousteau exploring the oceans?  If we want to inspire in education and get away from standardized tests and No Child Left Behind, we need to offer new heroes and new dreams.  STEM may be about math, technology, and science, but it all starts with inspiration:

9.     Exploration allows us to inspire others to be explorers and scientists.

As we write this we feel that the most important one, which we save for last, nobody ever states seriously.  Sure all these others are important but they do not touch the core of why exploration is important.  We will no longer be ashamed or apologetic about the fact that:

10.     We should explore because it’s cool, awesome, and amazing.

And given the opportunity any of us would have traded places with Cameron.

The post 10 Reasons Why We Should Explore The Deep first appeared on Deep Sea News.