public outreach

Book review – Explorers of Deep Time: Paleontologists and the History of Life

6-minute read
keywords: paleontology

When I ask you to think of a palaeontologist, what comes to mind? Admit it, you likely thought of someone digging up dinosaur fossils. And that someone was probably a white man. Grounded in the past, and endlessly repeated in the present, this is of course a very narrow picture of what palaeontology is like. In Explorers of Deep Time, Roy Plotnick, a palaeontologist and emeritus professor in earth and environmental sciences, challenges this and other stereotypes. Pardon the excruciating pun, but he leaves no rock unturned in the process of showing the many faces of modern palaeontology.

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Book review – Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style (Second Edition)

Science is fascinating but it has one problem. Scientists. Don’t get me wrong, I admire you all for your endless curiosity, dedication, and hard work. But you have to admit, most scientists are not very good at talking about their work. If we can bore our colleagues with our presentations, imagine what we do to more general audiences given half a chance! At a time when science is under attack more than ever before (Hello, Trump), and the stakes are higher than ever before (Hello, climate change), this is a problem. Enter Randy Olson, who abandoned a tenured professorship in marine biology and moved into Hollywood and film making. His plea to us all: “I love you very much, but, please, can you stop being such scientists?”

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