Guest Thinkers

When a candidate falters, the first person blamed is the chief campaign strategist. Six months ago Clinton’s top adviser Mark Penn could do no wrong. He was the guru of […]

At Time magazine, a focus on who will break out of the pack?!As the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary approaches, it’s all horse race all the time in the […]

Excerpt from coal and utility advertisement run in KansasBack in November, by framing their advertising appeals in terms of economic competitiveness and patriotism, a coal company and utility effectively promoted […]

If anyone knows their way around airports, it’s Frank Luntz. The language maestro estimates he logs 300,000 miles a year and stays in 100 hotels as he jets around the […]

Starting in the 1970s, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists began to apply their methods and theories to understanding the processes and assumptions that shape the production of scientific knowledge and technology. […]

Advisers worry that Benedict is not as media savvy as John Paul.Religion like science does not speak for itself, it needs to be carefully communicated with the media and specific […]

Back in 2005 when I spent a month as a visiting scholar at Dresden Technical University in Germany, I was stunned to be told by several graduate students that in […]

Mike Huckabee plays guitar and jokes about his weight on The Tonight Show.Last night on Jay Leno, Mike Huckabee put in the best late night performance in presidential history, potentially […]

Here we go again…another book telling us why religious belief is illogical. Shocker! But this time it’s from one of my favorite writers, John Allen Paulos. It will be interesting […]

On January 4, the National Academies will release its revised and updated report on Science, Evolution, & Creationism. After the news conference that day, the booklet and brochure will be […]

For readers on campus or in the area, on Monday I will be giving a lecture hosted by the Program in Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy (STEP) at Princeton University’s […]

Artist rendition of nanobot assisting in reproduction.As I highlighted last week, in the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology my colleague Dietram Scheufele is the lead author on a survey analysis […]

Dear readers,I have spent the weekend battling a major case of the flu and unfortunately tomorrow’s Framing Science talk at Princeton University has been postponed. I am hoping it can […]

Pew has released its annual analysis of the top 20 most followed news stories of the year by the public. Pew pairs the survey data with a summary of their […]

In the Sunday NY Times Book Review, the conservative satirist PJ O’Rourke reviews Taylor Clark’s Starbucked, an investigative and sociological look at the rise of America’s most prominent coffee chain.For […]

A X-Mas GoracleIn an editorial in the latest issue of the journal Climatic Change, Simon Donner argues that scientists need to join with religious leaders in communicating the urgency of […]

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

[Image from Salon.com feature on panelist Barbara J. King]Full details are now available for the previously announced panel on Communicating Science in a Religious America at February’s AAAS meetings in […]

“Sandwalk” blogger Larry MoranIf the blog debate that ensued after publication of our article at Science showed anything, it was just how widely misunderstood the concept of framing might be. […]

Each Monday evening in November, AAAS is sponsoring a series of panel discussions on major issues in science and technology policy. The panels are hosted by NPR reporters Joe Palca […]

The studios of Point of InquiryFor those in the DC area, Wednesday evening I will be speaking at the one year anniversary of the Center for Inquiry’s Public Policy office […]

Pundits and journalists continue to speculate about whether or not conservative Republicans will get strongly behind a Rudy Giuliani presidential run. As it stands right now, according to a recent […]

Pew has posted advertising revenue analysis for major magazines over the past year. Not surprisingly, the “big three” news magazines continue to suffer, other mags such as The New Yorker […]

Neil deGrasse Tyson understands the central role of framing in communication and it’s a major reason that Tyson is perhaps the most effective science popularizer of his generation. In a […]

At the Columbia Journalism Review, managing editor Brent Cunningham argues for a new journalistic beat that covers the obscuring uses of language and messaging in politics. The essay is part […]

James Thomson w/ Ian Wilmut (seated)What happens politically when the two scientists most widely associated with therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research appear to abandon cloning and embryo extraction […]

Conservatives are promoting Bush as the biomedical Atticus Finch. Shown here posing with a “snowflake” baby, adopted and born from left over in vitro clinic embryos.Some collected thoughts on what […]

My colleague Dietram Scheufele is lead author on a study in the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology. In their survey work, Scheufele et al. find that experts are more concerned […]

You can debate the wisdom of spending more than $100 million a year on your athletics program or whether you want someone like Jim Tressel to be the national face […]