Should IPS take a stand in media debate?

摘要

Scientists typically avoid the public debate going on in the media of their fields of experience. I must confess to having been one, at least in my younger years as a pure scientist, who found discussions with laymen to some extent useless. It took quite a while to realize that behind the illusory difficulties to explain scientific issues to somebody who didn't share the same dictionary, there was in fact an inability to understand the matter clearly enough. This again made it difficult to convey ones own, so to say science-based, point of view to a discussion in a clear enough way. Avoiding the debate with a layman was actually due to a fear of losing the ground by not being able to argue clearly enough. By the same token, it has to be pointed out that the majority of the questions in natural sciences are so complicated and manifold that there is always more than one answer.