Isolationist Tendencies Will Hurt Academia's Financial Viability
A few months ago during a trip back to San Diego , the author heard about an initiative ran by PhD students and postdocs at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). The initiative involves a weekly trip by a few science researchers to the nearby drinking holes, where they will mark themselves as people doing scientific research and take questions from other, normal customers. By taking the time to appeal to the laymen's curiosity about science, they are hoping to reduce the distance between scientists and normal people, and make more people understand the necessity of scientific research for their own daily lives.