There is an interesting article in this week’s Boston Globe (see story) on a greater acceptance amongst members of the medical community in doing advocacy work. According to the article, in the past, there was a belief that doctors could effect social change simply by generating sound scientific data from medical research. Now there is a realization that relying on the data isn’t enough, since people in policy positions, such as, well, many (the majority?) of our politicians don’t place as high a value on data as scientists do. I’d go further and say that most policymakers probably don’t even understand the data, which is not necessarily a knock against them; knowledge is so specialized these days, where often it is only a small group of experts who have the specific content knowledge that would allow for an accurate understanding of what the data means.

The article got me thinking about what we might be able to do to make our politicians more science-savvy. Maybe it’s more important to teach politicians about how scientific data is generated, gathered and interpreted than it is to teach them the nitty-gritty details of molecular biology or nuclear physics (although it would be great if somebody could teach Bush that “nuclear” is not supposed to be pronounced “nucular”).

Obviously scientists and doctors are in a good position to do this kind of work. But I also think that science journalists, who also understand more than a little bit about how science works because they cover it for a living, are also in an excellent position to help politicians learn more about the scientific enterprise and what science can—and cannot—tell us, simply through accurate reporting and writing on science.