The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) has announced that atten­dees of its 90th Annual Pacific Divi­sion Meet­ing, sched­uled for August 17, 2009, in San Fran­cisco, will get to learn about the lat­est efforts in sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion from some of the lead­ing experts in the field. The sym­po­sium is called ‘Good Sci­ence is Only Part of the Job: Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence to the Pub­lic’.

As sci­ence has become a larger part of the cul­tural land­scape, researchers have fre­quently found them­selves nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fi­cult waters of poli­cies and pol­i­tics. It has become increas­ingly nec­es­sary for sci­en­tists to work with the media to assure accu­rate por­tray­als of sci­ence issues so there can be bet­ter under­stand­ing by the pub­lic and there­fore bet­ter deci­sions by pol­icy mak­ers. Each of the pre­sen­ta­tions will address how sci­en­tists can be bet­ter equipped to man­age dif­fer­ent media when shar­ing research and infor­ma­tion with the public.

Hank Camp­bell, founder of ScientificBlogging.com, an inde­pen­dent online sci­ence com­mu­nity, will chair the sym­po­sium and present ‘Why Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence Is Impor­tant.’ Greg Critser, sci­ence and health book author, long time sci­ence and med­ical jour­nal­ist, will dis­cuss how to use jour­nal­is­tic meth­ods to trans­form research into com­pelling media dis­course — from news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines to the Inter­net and the blogo-sphere, in ‘Inter­act­ing with sci­ence journalists.’

Prof. Michael Eisen, Depart­ment of Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, will dis­cuss efforts to rein­vent sci­en­tific com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Dr. Euge­nie Scott, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for the National Cen­ter for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion, will dis­cuss how sci­ence is a prod­uct of human beings, which means it is affected by human insti­tu­tions includ­ing pol­i­tics. Dr. Michael White, Depart­ment of Genet­ics and Cen­ter for Genome Sci­ences, Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, St. Louis, will dis­cuss sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion mis­fires and how sci­ence blog­gers deflated the hype over the Ida fos­sil, exposed a stealth cre­ation­ist paper in a peer-reviewed jour­nal, and have relent­lessly pum­meled dubi­ous claims about vac­cines, stem cells, cli­mate change, and per­son­alised med­i­cine, in ‘Blaz­ing Your Own Trail: Writ­ing Directly to the Public.’”