Thanks to Dexter Johnson at his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website) for bringing a singularly odd Huffington Post article about nanotechnology to my attention in his Sept. 12, 2013 posting,
It’s a perfect storm of wrongheadedness. It was penned by Ainissa G. Ramirez, Ph.D., a noted author and “science evangelist,” giving it an air of veracity. But that doesn’t keep the piece from going wrong right from the outset. You can find the first misstep in the second sentence: “By miniaturizing matter, science fact will look like science fiction.” Okay, once and for all: Nanotechnology has nothing to do with miniaturizing matter.
I encourage you to read both Ramirez’s article “What Henry Ford Can Teach Us About Nanotechnology (Sept. 3, 2013)” so you can better appreciate Dexter’s penetrating analysis.
I am taking a different tack. What I find most peculiar about the article is the author, Ainissa Ramirez who lists her educational qualifications in a curriculum vitae on her eponymous website,
EducationStanford University, Ph.D.; Materials Science and Engineering1998Stanford University, M.S.; Materials Science and Engineering 1992Brown University, Sc.B.; Materials Science and Engineering 1990
There’s this on her LinkedIn profile,
Author of “Newton’s Football” (Due 2013 [November 2013])
Random House
August 2012 – Present (1 year 2 months)In Newton’s Football, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Allen St. John and TED Speaker and former Yale professor Ainissa Ramirez explore the unexpected science behind America’s Game. Newton’s Football illuminates football—and science—through funny, insightful stories told by some of the world’s sharpest minds.
….
Lecturer/Science Popularizer
Yale University
January 2012 – December 2012 (1 year)Acting as Bill Nye for Yale, my work entailed getting students excited about science. My passion lies in explaining complex ideas using down-to-earth examples.
…
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Yale University
New Haven, CTMaterials science research in the field of smart materials and nanomaterials. I was the principal investigator in the study of shape memory alloys; inventor of magnetic solder; and fun lecturer in materials science and engineering.
Ramirez is also a member of NISENet (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network). Within that context (NISENet’s March 2012 newsletter), I featured her video on nano (which seemed unexceptionable) in a March 8, 2012 posting.
So, here’s the odd part: How does someone with her credentials write something so “wrongheaded?” I suppose it’s possible none of her teachers at Brown or Stanford noticed her misunderstanding of nanotechnology and that none of her colleagues or students at Yale recognized the problem. However, that seems laughable and it is more likely that Ramirez in an attempt to communicate with her audience has ‘dumbed it down’ for those of us whose science education doesn’t extend past high school, if that.
Sadly, in ‘dumbing it down’, she does both herself and us a disservice. As someone who’s not especially well versed in the sciences, I find it disconcerting to spot such obvious errors as those in Ramirez’s Sept. 3, 2013 article for Huffington Post. If I know she has gotten some of the basis wrong, it means that I can’t trust her in scientific areas where I am entirely ignorant.
By patronizing and oversimplifying the material, she fails to respect her reader and to build trust.
