Reaching Out As A Scientist

I firmly believe that scientists have the obligation to reach out to society, and do so in an agile and timely way (at least as much as publication delays allow us). Putting my time and effort where my mouth is, I have just joined Psychology Today as a contributor. The first post in my blog “Decisions and the Brain” there is on “Why We Are All Crooked Bankers.” I have also just covered the same research in a post in the Spanish blog Nada es Gratis, “Egoísmo eres tú: robando a las masas.“

Both posts cover my research article “Generous with individuals and Selfish to the Masses,” published in Nature Human Behaviour this year. It humbled me to see the impact that this article had beyond academic circles. It was covered in a large number of newspapers after acceptance, including newspapers as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Le Temps, and popular-science magazines as New Scientist, Spektrum, or QUO. It was also covered in Nature as a Research Highlight, and I wrote about it in “Behind the Paper” at Nature: Behavioral and Social Sciences.

I will not repeat the story of the paper here. There are enough links above. I just wanted to stress how important it is to reach out and communicate beyond academic circles. We scientists tend to concentrate on our own research and talk only to other scientists, and then we are surprised when the public opinion follows ill-informed pundits and modern snake-oil salespeople (some of whom, it pains me to say, boast academic titles and affiliations). I am not saying we should become journalists. That is not our job or our expertise. I am just saying that we owe it to society to learn to communicate better. There are excellent tools and platforms, and very-professional journalists out there who are willing to listen if you would just speak up. Instead of shaking our heads in disbelief at the things we see in the media, we should shake our fingers loose and type. This is why I have joined Psychology Today, why I support Nada es Gratis, and why I have just moved my webpage to a platform I can control more directly (github).