Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet will kick off their Speaking Science tour tomorrow in Kansas City, in the Stowers Institute auditorium at 4 pm. It should be a fun event and a good chance for science advocates to start a discussion about how to communicate science to nonscientists.
Nisbet and Mooney kicked the discussion off with their article in framing in Science and the associated op-ed in the Washington Post. There was a vigorous debate online about those articles, what it means to "frame" science, and what framings might be useful.
Missouri recently fought back a state law forbidding stem cell research, a law that nearly cut off the Stowers Institute at the knees. Stowers attracted world-class molecular biologists and biotechnologists, and would probably not have been able to hold onto them had the voters not amended the state constitution to allow cutting-edge research. I'm sure that the successes of that campaign will play a central role in discussion at the talk, as will the success we've had on this side of the border in defending science education.