With the media distracted by the food fight, scientists weren't leading the public discussion, and other important findings that ought to have received attention in Katrina's wake -- for instance, that we had better tend to our overdeveloped coastlines, which are dangerously exposed to future storms -- were drowned out.(italics added)
That highlighted clause at the opening conditions not only the rest of the paragraph - which concerns itself with the way the public reacted to discussions of the role of climate change and natural disasters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - but the entire article. The entire piece, written by a fellow in science journalism at MIT, simply ignores the role the media has played in continuing to pretend there isn't a working theory of global warming that works as a good model for all sorts of scientific research.
"Climategate" was a manufactured controversy, the purloined emails evidence of nothing more than scientists' back-and-forth on the impact of research on public discussions of global warming. That's all. Since the deniers - whether scientists, politicians, or ordinary folk - are either in the direct pay of petroleum corporations, indirect pay (think Oklahoma's two Senators), or folk confused about the way the science works thanks in large part to a journalistic predilection for insisting on more than one side to any issue, we are left with the conundrum that a well-established scientific theory is claimed to be erroneous by those who have a vested interest in refusing to accept it, and a public too busy making sure they don't lose their jobs, their homes, and their sense of well-being to take the time to consider the reality. Of course, a scientifically-literate science journalism might help matters; there are such, and NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Fridays is a good template for that, but that audience is relatively small, and the contributors exceptions rather than the rule.
Another problem, related to evolution, is exposed readily enough, a bit toward the end of the article.
"Many Christians, including fundamentalists, can accept evolution as long as it is not attached to the view that life has no purpose," Karl Giberson, a Christian physicist and the author of "Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution," told me recently. "Human life has value, and any scientific theory that even appears to deny this central religious affirmation will alienate people of faith and create opportunity for those who would rally believers against evolution."
Does human life have value? How is this relevant to the issue of evolution? This entire paragraph is chock full of either debatable points or red herrings that have nothing at all to do with how evolution is, or should be, taught. Those who deny the reality of evolution through natural selection (in its modified, synthesized, form) will not be satisfied with any attempt to address these concerns outside a very limited, sectarian-Christian insistence that the entire theory is wrong. Even conceding that "human life has value" will not rescue evolution from criticisms from those who, for reasons known only to them, think it a pernicious threat to religion, ethics, and social well-being. On this issue, not one step backward. Give the ignorant and demagogues nothing.
In all, while it might be necessary for the run-of-the-mill biologist, climate scientist, or whomever, to give the public good, solid information that is also accessible, it seems to me this entire piece ignores one important piece of the media puzzle - scientifically literate journalists who eschew simplistic ideas of public controversy in order to get information to the public. While it might be true that, for example, legislation that is intended to address global warming will be met with all sorts of opposition, journalists should present the data to the public, including the role of industry-sponsored counter-factuals and propaganda presented as such rather than present the latter as good-faith, legitimate science. We do need scientists who are a bit more media-savvy, to be sure. We also need journalists who are science-savvy as well, and understand how science works, how scientists come to the conclusions they do, and offer that information to the public intelligently.
