#SundayThoughts I think the way we talk about #science needs reform - a brand makeover, if you will. I say this as both an educator, as a citizen and as a parent. #Thread

2/ I teach mass communications at a university level, so I advise students on what courses they need to take to meet requirements and graduate. My school only requires two science courses, and my students balk at even these.

3/ You can contrast this with the love of science I saw from kids up until middle school as I was raising mine. Science was getting to feel confident about your world and how it works. It was so exciting.

4/ At some point something changes and people think science is just something hard that only a few who have special aptitude can understand.

5/ They console themselves by imagining that aptitude comes with personality problems. "So what if I don't understand physics? At least I'm likable." Or worse, science is the thing I pay the nerds in the basement to do while I do the important stuff.

6/ My students go from excited explorer to fearful storyteller, put in the position of trying to explain things they don't understand well. What's sadder is they believe they *can't* understand. That science is secret, cult knowledge.

7/ It's more dangerous when people see science as cult knowledge and then assign bad motivations to the people who have it. Think scientists make up things like climate change or disease to get that sweet, sweet grant money.

8/ While it's true that bad deeds are easier to do in secret, we have systems in place to discourage that. Think public records laws in government or peer review in science. When you have lots of people reviewing your work, it's harder to do ill.

9/ The level of collusion among people to make that happen in an anonymous system isn't really imaginable. But people do imagine it, because they can't understand it.

10/ So scientists are branded as basement nerds, scheming geniuses or lionized as the saviors of humanity. They aren't any of those. They didn't lose the excitement of discovery and have the discipline to keep working to understand the world better.

11/ Maybe those are better ways to talk about science. Excitement. Discovery.Understanding and control of the world. Challenging. Disciplined.