As you know, I've been screaming myself hoarse about it for years:
Distrust has been multiplied by the publishers of scientific journals, whose monopolistic practices make the supermarkets look like angels, and which are long overdue for a referral to the Competition Commission. They pay nothing for most of the material they publish, yet, unless you are attached to an academic institute, they'll charge you £20 or more for access to a single article. In some cases they charge libraries tens of thousands for an annual subscription. If scientists want people at least to try to understand their work, they should raise a full-scale revolt against the journals that publish them. It is no longer acceptable for the guardians of knowledge to behave like 19th-century gamekeepers, chasing the proles out of the grand estates.
Sing it, George. He has a good deal else to say of value here as well.
Good article and lots to think about.
ReplyDeleteI agree that much of what's written in scholarly articles may as well be written in Lithuanian for all that I can understand it. But I recognize that my ignorance doesn't mean the science is bad, which seems to be the view of climate change deniers and anti-vax kooks.
Better science education would help. The public school system I went to was supposed to be excellent, but when I speak to folks who went to private school, I"m always astonished by how much more they were taught.
And it is a shame that we have to rely on a corporate and ignorant media to provide the only venue for public discussions of these issues. (Okay, now we have blogs, but I doubt they reach as many epople as do the networks or cable channels). Reporting on science tends to be simplistic to the point of being wrong.