#AcademicChatter #scicomm @AcademicChatter
Hi scientists and academics: I don't usually make threads like this but goddamn. Can we all stop pretending that the wave of anti-intellectualism in the US is somehow our fault and that we alone are responsible for fixing it?

Look, I love #scicomm. I do a lot of it. I try to read up on effective communication and writing skills. However, I'm always distracted by how many resources (almost all of them) imply or outright state that we alone are in charge of combating fake news and bogus science.

The implication, too, is that we accidentally got ourselves into this situation by being a little too "esoteric" and "unrelatable". This is often stated in an introductory section. But people aren't denying climate change because Dr. Whoever just didn't explain it well enough.

People aren't antivaxers because scientists are out of touch or aloof. Do I think scicomm is important? Absolutely. Do I think we need to work to be more clear and relatable? Sure. But acting like this is all just one big mixup/miscommunication is absolutely ridiculous.

I think as scientists we have this knee jerk reaction where we think, "Oh if ONLY I could explain it to them, then they'd get it." And maybe they would, on an individual basis. But at a systemic level, pretending like effective scicomm is going to somehow compete with...

the millions and millions of dollars poured into misinformation campaigns and lobbying is an unfair burden we place on ourselves. It's not an even matchup by a long shot. That being said, there are ways we can combat that, mostly by participating in the political process.

And scicomm has its place, helping on a case by case basis. I still love it. I'm still gonna do it. But let's stop putting this immense pressure on ourselves to singlehandedly defeat this problem, and stop putting the blame on ourselves for something that was out of our control.