URI_Research _Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

Jason Jaacks sees reporting on climate change as having been weaponized for political purposes, with scientific evidence being dismissed if not outright hidden or buried.

remains hopeful and says the truth always, eventually, rises to the surface. And even though the federal government may fall short in addressing climate change, he points to non-governmental and nonprofit organizations, states, large and small companies, and universities that are tackling issues head-on. Both Snyder and Jaacks cite the Metcalf Institute as a key player in the push for both scientific accuracy and literacy. Working from within the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences, the Metcalf Institute engages with scientists to help them better tell their stories and with journalists to hone their science storytelling skills. Jaacks notes that the institute gets to the crux of the issue, generating a greater understanding of who the audience is for a story, the science that is the story, and how to tell an engaging story with accuracy. At the same time, he adds, consumers also must verify the information they seek. “Metcalf actually is enacting the first steps on a foundational level to get scientists and journalists together in the same place,” Jaacks says. Snyder says so-called fake news poses an enormous challenge and URI’s support of the Metcalf Institute holds more importance today than it did previously: “This is where URI has taken a leadership role, and I think it’s more imperative now than I had imagined when I first wrote about these concerns during the Bush years,” he says. “We’re grappling with political and partisan biases that are endemic, decidedly non-scientific and that are damaging in many ways. URI is one university that is pushing back on this false parity permeating public discourse, between rule by unsubstantiated beliefs versus testable scientific facts.”

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY Snyder believes that URI is well suited in its role to conduct compelling research on such pressing issues as the impacts of human activities on hastening climate change, coastal ecology, and the safety of the planet’s food web while also shouldering the responsibility to foster enhanced community scientific literacy. Both fronts, he says, are essential to ensuring that we continue to engage in the quest for information, understanding, and the truth while maintaining our commitment to our citizens as a public institution. “It’s important to understand the role of government political censorship of science and how that impacts the transmission of knowledge and why that’s allowed to happen,” says Snyder. “One of the core issues we face is that scientific literacy in this country is quite low. If we aren’t teaching our children how to think critically, to evaluate data, to understand the difference between falsifiable models versus beliefs, and the false notion that these are equitable — that’s a serious problem that we all have.” Snyder contends that the root enabling force behind political censorship and the weaponization of science lies in scientific literacy, or the lack thereof. He cites how GOP Senator Mo Brooks of Alabama claimed in 2018 that sea level rise was not due to global warming, but rather due to erosion and large boulders falling into the ocean. “The only way I know to combat that is to educate the public so people know the difference between legitimate science and nonsensical beliefs,” says Snyder. Despite ongoing efforts to muzzle scientists or manipulate the outcome of their work, Snyder

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