Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica)WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, SELBST FOTOGRAFIERT, MICHAEL GASPERL
The story is all too familiar. An introduced landscape plant like Japanese knotweed has “escaped cultivation” and taken root elsewhere, uninvited. A foreign insect like the emerald ash borer has mysteriously appeared and seems to be spreading inexorably. We are earnestly warned that they are “wreaking ecological havoc” and reputedly costing someone millions or even billions of dollars. We react as if we’re under attack, readily applying the label “invaders” to our unwitting tormentors, as if they collectively had it in for us.
Personifying and demonizing the unfamiliar may help direct our dismay, but we hardly need science for that. When scientists focus on provoking public alarm, our science becomes blurred. Science can help work out the ways people move organisms, and investigate why some ...
