yea well, but it's also a bit more than that. To take up my analogy with the doctor who doesn't know what an artery is, even if they made the mistake in their own free time you'd hesitate about visiting them with your issues during office hours.bob sterman wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 10:37 amCan't disagree with that - although I think it needs to be acknowledged that people can't be expected to do their job 24/7. I would say that getting fed up and tweeting something that does nothing to advance science communication is not "incompatible" with being an effective science communicator the rest of the time.Woodchopper wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:37 amSo to sum up Warumich and FairySmall, it would be preferable if the people advocating for science actually did so scientifically.
And I'm not sure the argument for a scientific approach was strengthened by the suggestion that that Professorships like the one Roberts has tend to go to those "who look good on TV" (for which Warumich has apologised). Or the analogy with Angelina Jolie being made a Professor of Film (incidentally she has credits as a director, screenwriter and producer - as well as acting).
Finally as a serious aisde - although things are changing with online conferences - I would strongly recommend that people try to avoid using whether someone is seen at conferences as a proxy for engagement with a field - because e.g. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaon ... le/2738415
The conference thing is maybe a fair point, but it's just one part of a larger issue. The UK science communication community is fairly close-knit (and that includes both practitioners and researchers), there are other engagement points than conferences, such as mailing lists, journals, policy briefings etc. Of course I don't know every post-doc or science writer, but someone with a high profile professorship should have made an impact, somewhere, somehow, and there is no evidence of any kind of engagement that I can remember seeing. But then of course my eyes aren't everywhere either. But the twitter evidence suggests that she's not really that much into engaging with the community. It's not that important, I wouldn't ordinarily care much, but I would still be justified in saying that the tweet was silly, probably counterproductive, and that she should know better given her job.