A few years ago, I read an article by Scott Lilienfeld, Ph.D. called “When Worlds Collide” in the American Psychologist. Quite fascinating actually, but that’s not the point of this blog. In a section of his article, Dr. Lilienfeld noted that most academic departments of psychology as well as many other scientific disciplines, tend to strongly discourage their members from making efforts to educate the public about their discipline. In other words, they look down their noses at those who attempt to break down science and communicate its findings to the general public. They derisively call those who engage in such activity “popularizers.” Dr. Lilienfeld even noted that the National Academy of Science went so far as to expel Dr. Carl Sagan from membership apparently because of his popularizing activity, even though he had authored many articles in well-respected journals.

What does that make my wife and I, given that we write quite a few books in the For Dummies series (Wiley), which are obviously aimed at the general public? In other words, our books in this series have attempted to distill scientifically verified findings from the field while clarifying difficult concepts and making them easily digestible to the average person. We’re afraid it makes us unabashed “popularizers.” Is this really a terrible thing?

Think about it. If scientific disciplines discourage their members from disseminating findings in an understandable way, then who will engage in this activity? I’m afraid that this activity will fall into the hands of media personalities who have little or no training in real science. Those folks often feel no obligation to ground what they disseminate in the solid research that exists. Rather, they tend to say whatever they wish as long as it grabs headlines and attention. Such folks have been responsible for promoting numerous pseudoscientific ideas and therapies that may sound intriguing, but which have little or no basis in reality. Many people (and more than a few individuals in the scientific disciplines) have been beguiled and deceived by interventions promoted by such media darlings — resulting in considerable wasted money, time, and resources spent on totally baseless treatments. More often than not, there are real interventions that have been shown to work that get neglected in the process.

We should note that none of our books in this series have been on the bestsellers’ list and none probably ever will be. In part, perhaps that’s because we resolutely refuse to suggest such intriguing, attention grabbing strategies unless data can be found that support them. Occasionally, we’ll make folks aware of ideas that sound promising and logical to us, but we’re always quick to point out if research is needed to support them before we recommend running out to try them. We encourage all of our readers to check out the credentials of the authors they read and to insist on seeing that the authors make note of the science behind what they are promoting.

Popularizers? Guilty. Promoting scientifically validated ideas and strategies? Equally guilty.

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Prof.Lakshman (February 24, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (February 24, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 23 Feb 2010