LAUSR

In a  article C. Drummond & B. Fischhoff conclude ‘. . . scientific knowledge may facilitate defending positions motivated by nonscientific concerns’ (Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences of the United States of Amnerica, , –). How did we get ourselves into such a situation? I, for one, spent decades of my professional life working from the simple conviction that better information would produce better outcomes. It turns out I, and apparently most people who trained me and who I trained, were wrong. Better information may, but often doesn’t, bring about better decisions and many of us in the practice of conservation seem to be unaware of why we have been having such limited impact. The first sentence of the first chapter of this book suggests what we, or at least I, have been guilty of: ‘ironically, those communicating about science often rely on intuition rather than scientific inquiry not only to ascertain what effective messaging looks like but also to determine how to engage different audiences . . . and get science’s voice heard.’ This book sets out to change our intuition into an active use of the science of science communication. There is (who knew) a science of science communication and we need to learn everything they know. Though not an instruction guide, the authors provide a cornucopia of ideas based on a phenomenal review of the literature. I learned