© DUSAN PETRICICOn March 20, 2013, Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-Oklahoma) proposed amendment to block federal funding for political science passed in the US House of Representatives. Around the same time, in a letter to the National Science Foundation (NSF), the senator urged that research ranging from robotics to ecology, among others, be ineligible for federal funding. Additionally, the High Quality Research Act, proposed by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in April of last year, was designed to ensure that NSF only supports projects addressing problems “that are of the utmost importance to society at large.” The ability to communicate the societal value of basic research to nonacademic audiences is therefore morphing from an optional soft skill to a crucial tool for scientists who are competing over finite or shrinking resources for research.
National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone argued as early as 2006 that “scientists themselves must do a better job of communicating directly to the public,” taking advantage of “new, non-traditional outlets” on the Internet (In Focus, 6, 2006). In 2011, Laura Van Eperen of the strategic communications company Van Eperen & Company, along with National Institutes of Health researcher Francesco Marincola, called for scientists to use social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, to “communicate to the masses” (J Transl Med, 9:199, 2011).
So have scientists heeded this call? To find out, we conducted a survey of tenure-track scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, polling them on their use of social media for science-related purposes, their attitudes toward such use, and their political ideology. ...
