There is a lot of material on the 'net that falls into the category of science communication. Unfortunately, at least as I see it, a better description for much of it would be miscommunication. I'm sure that the vast majority of these outlets are produced by people with the best of intentions but they just don't understand the material well enough or don't realize the incredible disservice done when violating one of my favorite quotes, often but apparently incorrectly, attributed to Albert Einstein:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
The page linked above points out one aspect of the importance of the first part of this maxim. Unless something is understandable it will fail the "impact test". This is certainly very important.
Many of the issues I have with much of what is called science communication stems from taking this too far. Things are explained in a way that has impact, and are likely to be remembered. But what is remembered is wrong, or even worse, not quite wrong but not right either. It invites the audience member to oversimplify the concept in a way that either invites misconceptions or it misses much of the real wonder of the concept. They have violated the last three words, the explanation is too simple.
My goal is for this blog is to provide explanations that don't commit this error.
