IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jenvss/v5y2015i1p66-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Defending the Ivory Tower against the end of the world

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Wright

Abstract

Science was once pure, unadulterated, and a source of public entertainment. Entertainment is now driven by celebrity, and choice is everywhere. Yet, many scientists still believe decision-makers will find and use their research to make science-based decisions. However, this is simply not the case. Articles are written in an inaccessible style, and access is often restricted. Thus, the Media acts as a gatekeeper, limiting stories to subjects directly related to human health, brief, feel-good human interest pieces that often include misinterpretations, oversimplifications, or (worse still) fair and balanced 1-1 discussions. Conversely, misinformation produced by those with economic interests is freely available and easy to find and understand. Yet, many scientists still avoid engaging or correcting factual errors in media and policy as this is often seen as Advocacy: impurity in the Ivory Tower existence, despite already advocating for their work when submitting grant proposals and permit applications. Meanwhile, damage is being done. A now-retracted paper linking autism to vaccinations induced a public movement that persists, with real-world implications for outbreak risks. Likewise, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC)’s reputation is being actively sabotaged by ‘grassroots’ organisations that are heavily, if not exclusively, funded by Big Oil, delaying appropriate policy action. Many lives are actually at stake. Science is under siege, but hiding inside the Ivory Tower is not the answer. Science budgets are falling with the use of science in management decisions. We must leave the Ivory Tower, or science will perish inside the walls to the detriment of the world around us. Copyright AESS 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Wright, 2015. "Defending the Ivory Tower against the end of the world," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 5(1), pages 66-69, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:5:y:2015:i:1:p:66-69
    DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0227-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s13412-015-0227-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13412-015-0227-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. E. Parsons, 2013. "Editorial: So you want to be a Jedi? Advice for conservation researchers wanting to advocate for their findings," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 3(3), pages 340-342, September.
    2. Xin Shuai & Alberto Pepe & Johan Bollen, 2012. "How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-8, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beatriz Barros & Ana Fernández-Zubieta & Raul Fidalgo-Merino & Francisco Triguero, 2018. "Scientific knowledge percolation process and social impact: A case study on the biotechnology and microbiology perceptions on Twitter," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(6), pages 804-814.
    2. Wang, Zhiqi & Chen, Yue & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2020. "Preprints as accelerator of scholarly communication: An empirical analysis in Mathematics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    3. Ortega, José Luis, 2018. "The life cycle of altmetric impact: A longitudinal study of six metrics from PlumX," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 579-589.
    4. Mike Thelwall, 2021. "Measuring Societal Impacts Of Research With Altmetrics? Common Problems And Mistakes," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(5), pages 1302-1314, December.
    5. Xu, Fang & Ou, Guiyan & Ma, Tingcan & Wang, Xianwen, 2021. "The consistency of impact of preprints and their journal publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    6. Victoria Tur-Viñes & Jesús Segarra-Saavedra & Tatiana Hidalgo-Marí, 2018. "Use of Twitter in Spanish Communication Journals," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-10, July.
    7. Petr Heneberg, 2013. "Effects of Print Publication Lag in Dual Format Journals on Scientometric Indicators," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-12, April.
    8. Beibei Hu & Xianlei Dong & Chenwei Zhang & Timothy D. Bowman & Ying Ding & Staša Milojević & Chaoqun Ni & Erjia Yan & Vincent Larivière, 2015. "A lead-lag analysis of the topic evolution patterns for preprints and publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(12), pages 2643-2656, December.
    9. Edward Christien Michael Parsons & John A. Cigliano, 2020. "Is the “academic conservation scientist” becoming an endangered species?," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 10(4), pages 478-482, December.
    10. Grover, Purva & Kar, Arpan Kumar & Dwivedi, Yogesh K. & Janssen, Marijn, 2019. "Polarization and acculturation in US Election 2016 outcomes – Can twitter analytics predict changes in voting preferences," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 438-460.
    11. Liwen Vaughan, 2016. "Uncovering information from social media hyperlinks: An investigation of twitter," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1105-1120, May.
    12. Mojisola Erdt & Aarthy Nagarajan & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin & Yin-Leng Theng, 2016. "Altmetrics: an analysis of the state-of-the-art in measuring research impact on social media," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1117-1166, November.
    13. Zhiqi Wang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Yue Chen, 2020. "The impact of preprints in Library and Information Science: an analysis of citations, usage and social attention indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1403-1423, November.
    14. Jianhua Hou & Hao Li & Yang Zhang, 2020. "Identifying the princes base on Altmetrics: An awakening mechanism of sleeping beauties from the perspective of social media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-28, November.
    15. Zohreh Zahedi & Rodrigo Costas & Paul Wouters, 2014. "How well developed are altmetrics? A cross-disciplinary analysis of the presence of ‘alternative metrics’ in scientific publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1491-1513, November.
    16. Nuredini, Kaltrina & Peters, Isabella, 2019. "The presence and issues of altmetrics and citation data from Crossref for working papers with different identifiers from Econstor and RePEc in the discipline of Economic and Business Studies," EconStor Conference Papers 204461, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. J. C. F. Winter, 2015. "The relationship between tweets, citations, and article views for PLOS ONE articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1773-1779, February.
    18. Qing Cheng & Xin Lu & Zhong Liu & Jincai Huang, 2015. "Mining research trends with anomaly detection models: the case of social computing research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(2), pages 453-469, May.
    19. Holly M Bik & David A Coil & Jonathan A Eisen, 2014. "microBEnet: Lessons Learned from Building an Interdisciplinary Scientific Community in the Online Sphere," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-4, June.
    20. José Luis Ortega, 2016. "To be or not to be on Twitter, and its relationship with the tweeting and citation of research papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1353-1364, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:5:y:2015:i:1:p:66-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.