One claim I see on the internetz is the claim scientists are bad at communication. Yet, in the last few weeks, scientists–not their universities*, or Democrats who purport to support scientists–managed to make NIH indirect grant costs part of the political discourse. Indirects are not only complicated, but they’re boring as shit, and still people were discussing them.

While there are bad science communicators, what this really gets at is a fundamental asymmetry between scientists and professional propagandists, such as global warming denialists or creationists. The scientist actually spends most of her time doing science-related things (aka ‘her job’), while the propagandist, often financially well-supported, gets to spend his whole time ‘catapulting the propaganda’ (to use an old-timey phrase).

There are professional counter-propagandists, but they are typically underfunded, and often, for institutional reasons, slow off the mark.

Anyway, scientists are reasonably good at public communication and outreach–indirect rates are boring as fuck!–but it’s hard for them to go up against a massive, conservative propaganda effort.

*As anyone familiar with universities might expect, they were timid and slow off the mark.