{"id":182,"date":"2006-04-11T07:48:06","date_gmt":"2006-04-11T07:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/11\/story-is-a-force-of-nature\/"},"modified":"2006-04-11T07:48:06","modified_gmt":"2006-04-11T07:48:06","slug":"story-is-a-force-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/11\/story-is-a-force-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Story Is a Force of Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a nice profile of Randy Olson<\/a>, the biologist-turned filmmaker behind A Flock of Dodos<\/cite><\/a>, which takes a hard look at both sides of the creationism wars:<\/p>\n

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The biologist, Randy Olson, accepts that there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth. He agrees that intelligent design’s embrace of a supernatural “agent” puts it outside the realm of science. <\/p>\n

But when he watches the advocates of intelligent design at work, he sees pleasant people who speak plainly, convincingly and with humor. When scientists he knows talk about evolution, they can be dour, pompous and disagreeable, even with one another. His film challenges them to get off their collective high horse and make their case to ordinary people with — if they can muster it — a smile.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Olson has an interesting story– he was trained as a biologist, did highly-regarded research in his field, got a tenured academic position, and then chucked it all to go to film school, because he wanted to tell stories. It’s impressive to see someone with enough dedication to the idea of science popularization to take such a serious financial risk:<\/p>\n

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“I get hundreds of inquiries from students and graduate students wanting to do what I am doing, to get into this interface between science and the media,” Dr. Olson said. “There just isn’t any financial support for it. The science world does not understand media, does not support it. They don’t see the need for innovation.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s hoping his film does well on the festival circuit, and some of that funding starts to materialize. We could use more people like him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a nice profile of Randy Olson, the biologist-turned filmmaker behind A Flock of Dodos, which takes a hard look at both sides of the creationism wars: The biologist, Randy Olson, accepts that there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on… Continue reading Story Is a Force of Nature<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in_the_news","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}