This Ballot Season, Vote Matt Lundy!
Help send the Toward 2030 author to the hottest science communication conference of 2026
This newsletter has kept up1 throughout the years and a few day jobs because writing about science to a general audience is fun and important work to me. Along that line, I’ve submitted a talk for the Association of Science Communicators SCIENCE TALK ’26 conference.
But so have many others! The program for SciTalk will be determined, in part, by people voting for the talks and workshops that sound the most interesting to them. So, have a look at the description of my talk, and, if you please, send a vote my way!
You can find the link to vote here. My short talk is on the third page (aka IN PERSON - Pt III), number 21, titled “Truth Advocacy: The Role of Science Communicators in a Post-Truth, Science-Critical World.”
While science communicators generally work in making science understandable to general and diverse audiences, this conference and my talk are more meta, focused on talking shop and discussing science communication itself.
My talk will be about how we communicate science in a world of increasing skepticism and doubt towards scientific institutions and the traditional scientific process. In the face of bad actors and vested interests that expressly try to muddy the epistemic waters for personal gain, I would argue that science communicators can’t let themselves be paralyzed by journalistic standards of objectivity, unable to point out lies, falsehoods, and perjuries that are made under the guise of “just asking questions” or “waiting for more research.”
The whole infrastructure of modern research and scientific inquiry is under attack, and as a part of that system, us communicators have a social responsibility to make known its accuracy and importance, because despite its flaws and errors, it is the modern world’s best avenue of discovering (material) truth and all the boons—economic prosperity, medical breakthroughs, technological advancements—that come with it.
Science communicators, in their goal of making complex knowledge and discoveries understandable, must be advocates for the truth.
If my talk moves forward, the final version will be a much more detailed, fleshed-out, and easy to understand version of the above. I’ll likely write one (or a few) posts about the topic here, too!
So, here in the height of ballot season (at least for California), consider making one more easy vote, and cast your support my way through this link.
Also, vote Yes on Prop 50 if you’re in Cali! The only reason we have this prop is to push back against corruption by Texas (and other) Republicans trying to undemocratically hold on to power in the midterms, literally trying to rig the nationwide map.
with notable hiatuses, tbf
Vote for Matt!