false 2568246 3 1 Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, with Chris Mooney. She is involved in conservation initiatives across levels of government and works to improve communication between scientists, policymakers, and the public.

In 2007, Sheril helped to found Science Debate 2008; an initiative encouraging candidates to debate science research and innovation issues on the campaign trail. She has also worked as a legislative science fellow on Capitol Hill with Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) where she was involved in energy, climate, and ocean policy.

Sheril holds two MS degrees in Marine Biology and Marine Policy from the University of Maine. Now a science journalist, she frequently writes about topics that bridge science and society from climate change to the science behind kissing. Previously, she served as a Fellow with the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History and as a Howard Hughes Research Fellow at Tufts University. She has contributed reports to The Nature Conservancy and provided assistance on international protected area projects. She also has experience working in pop radio and her work has been published in Fisheries Bulletin, Oecologia, Issues in Science and Technology, and Science.

Sheril Kirshenbaum co-hosts The Intersection on Discover blogs with Chris Mooney and contributes to DeSmogBlog, Talking Science, and Wired Science's Correlations. She was born in Suffern, New York and is also a musician.

.]]> female 5741758 0465013058 9780465013050 25 <![CDATA[Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1238441665m/5741758.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1238441665s/5741758.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5741758.Unscientific_America_How_Scientific_Illiteracy_Threatens_our_Future 3.21 48 Now, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, a journalist-scientist team, offer an updated "two cultures" polemic for America in the 21st century. Just as in Snow's time, some of our gravest challenges—climate change, the energy crisis, national economic competitiveness—and gravest threats--global pandemics, nuclear proliferation—have fundamentally scientific underpinnings. Yet we still live in a culture that rarely takes science seriously or has it on the radar.

For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science; 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old; the number of newspapers with weekly science sections has shrunken by two-thirds over the past several decades. The public is polarized over climate change—an issue where political party affiliation determines one's view of reality—and in dangerous retreat from childhood vaccinations. Meanwhile, only 18 percent of Americans have even met a scientist to begin with; more than half can't name a living scientist role model.

For this dismaying situation, Mooney and Kirshenbaum don't let anyone off the hook. They highlight the anti-intellectual tendencies of the American public (and particularly the politicians and journalists who are supposed to serve it), but also challenge the scientists themselves, who despite the best of intentions have often failed to communicate about their work effectively to a broad public—and so have ceded their critical place in the public sphere to religious and commercial propagandists.

A plea for enhanced scientific literacy, Unscientific America urges those who care about the place of science in our society to take unprecedented action. We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science's message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense. An impassioned call to arms worthy of Snow's original manifesto, this book lays the groundwork for reintegrating science into the public discourse--before it's too late.

]]> 67646 3.53 717 154 2568246 3.21 48 25 2009