The jumpsuits and respirators—and the scheduled speech at a post office—emphasize the increasingly prominent role that researchers such as Salyers play in a world where bioterrorist risks make headlines and pundits debate the progress of stem cell research. That prominence not only exposes scientists to the dazzle of celebrity, but also subjects them to scrutiny by the public—prompting some to carefully plan even the colors they wear on camera. "Translating their knowledge into terms that people can understand and, at the same time, raising the baseline of public literacy are things that scientists do, and should do," says Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles and director of the Norman Lear Center. In this role, he says, scientists translate "material that would otherwise be obscure to make it accessible."
Some scientist-commentators easily slip in and out of the limelight just ...
