Is this book dead yet?


David Colquhoun reviews Unscientific America, and pans it on an interesting point:

I think Mooney and Kirshenbaum have it all wrong.  They favour corporate communications, which are written by people outside science and which easily become mere PR machines for individuals and institutions.   Such blogs are rarely popular and at their worst they threaten the honesty of science.  More and more individual scientists have found that they can write their own blog.  It costs next to nothing and you can say what you think.  A few clicks and the world can read what you have to say.   Forget corporate communications.  Just do it yourself.  It’s fun.  And think of the money you’d save for doing science if the PR people were just fired.

I don’t know if it’s quite ‘corporate speak’ they want, but they do seem to want to put gatekeepers in place, and filter the voice of science to remove any rough edges.