Skep tickle wrote:Scroll past if no interest in Cara Santa Maria.
ERV wrote:I wouldn't be putting any high expectations into Cara Santa Maria either, folks. Gee, how did she get to meet Ariana Huffington? How long did that last (the blog or the relationship)? How long has she had any of her other gigs? How'd grad school work out?
Best of luck to her, by all means, but a smarter and prettier version of Watson is still a Watson.
I've seen Cara Santa Maria speak at 2 national skeptics conferences, TAM 2013 and CFI Summit, and was disappointed each time (assisted by it being pretty much the same talk).
She got up on stage & talked for 30+ minutes each time about her religious upbringing and her move to atheism. Especially at TAM, after a series of other people's talks, her was strikingly self-oriented. IMO quite boring since anyone & everyone in the audience could get up & tell their personal story, & hers wasn't anything special.
At TAM, I figured that she just hadn't received good guidance from TAM organizers, wasn't well prepped on what topic to talk about. At CFI 3 months later, with her giving essentially the same talk, my impression was that she didn't have much else to talk about, but that could be horribly unfair.
See Skeptical Abyss' writeup of the day Cara Santa Maria spoke; also includes Karen Stollznow's talk:
http://www.skepticalabyss.com/?p=341
SA said of KS (among other things): "Karen’s talk is deep with facts and background. Absolutely riveting." No wonder TAM would ask her back.
SA said of CSM (among other things): "This talk is really horrible. Who cares about your personal history, lady! A meandering journey through the land of boredom. At some point I thought she might start talking about something other than herself, but really doesn’t happen, except for platitudes that non-believers need to be more visible in the community. Like who hasn’t heard this stuff a thousand stuff before."
FWIW, I commented on SA's post, see "skeptixx" at #1; it seemed that her resume might have a bit of padding:
Re Cara Santa Maria: This was her first TAM, perhaps she didn't know what the audience would be expecting, and/or wasn't given clear guidelines from organizers as to focus/content of talk. Poking around a bit online, though, I'm not sure what they might have intended her focus/content to be at TAM. She's been a science journalist since 2010; there are others who have much longer-term experience.
Couple of pieces of info that came up:
1) Her Wikipedia page describes her as formerly an "adjunct college professor". Her LinkedIn page says formerly "adjunct professor - Queens College" in NYC and also lists 3 yrs as Adjunct Instructor in biology at the University of North Texas. From info at Queen College's site it looks like adjunct faculty are mostly "graduate assistants" & "adjunct lecturers", plus just a few "adjunct assistant professors". Without a PhD, it would be unusual for anyone to be hired as a biology professor, even as assistant level. At QC, she taught at least one biology course that was also taught by an "instructor" who appears to be on permanent faculty (per 2008 QC course info) and was a research technician (per her LinkedIn info). So, while I find no direct confirmation of her title there, "adjunct professor" *looks* to be at least a shortening of her title while there, and possibly a "rounding up" from adjunct lecturer (or adjunct assistant professor) to adjunct professor.
...
Why all the hate for Cara? :D
Having an MSc is usually not enough in academic terms to be considered a qualified scientist, but it does seems to be adequate for science communicators - I can think of three prominent examples - Ed Yong - who is a well known science blogger (and who recently gave a TED talk on parasites, despite zero academic expertise in the field), Brian Switek (he of the Christie Wilcox 'Svan interference' episode) who only has an MSc but has become a well known writer on dinosaur related stuff, and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Chris Mooney's former blogging partner (I think she has an MSc in marine biology and now works in climate change related communication stuff.) Carl Zimmer also springs to mind and he has no science qualifications whatsoever.
I see Cara Santa Maria as more of a science talking head. She is not a bad science writer (not a great one but adequate enough if you look at the kind of stuff she was producing at HuffPo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/1 ... 98668.html )
I think she realizes her attraction to the media industry is the rather obvious fact that she is very pretty and has the ability to talk on a scientific subject without sounding like she's reading gobbily-gook off cards.
One of the advantages of a scientific training is that you have it drilled into you that there are many things you
don't know, and that all our current knowledge is tentative and can be overturned if new evidence arises. I think she get's this - in contrast to many non scientists who venture into science writing - for example Watson or Greta Christina (who often come across as too certain and authoritative in their writings.)
I have no idea why Cara Santa Maria would be asked to speak at a skeptical/atheist conference. She is more of a science fan rather than someone with expertise on any particular issue. In theory then, she is similar to Watson - although Cara does have some, if rather limited, scientific credentials. But she does have some decent presentation skills and seems to know enough to avoid getting out of her depth by trying to talk in an authoritative manner about subjects in which she has little expertise.
Incidentally, I used to like Watson when she was just a jokey panelist on the SGU. The first time I had a serious problem with her was the first time I saw her give a featured presentation - at the Copenhagen International Atheist conference in 2010. It was a terrible presentation. Subsequent presentations by her just confirm what I concluded at that time - she simply doesn't have the ability (or, more likely, the determination/patience to learn how to do it properly) to carry off a serious presentation. And remember, she has given talks to major organizations on serious and complicated scientific topics (evolutionary psychology.)
By the way, I do think there is an interesting angle of sexism to consider here.
I wonder what would be the chances of a
man with similar qualifications to Cara Santa Maria, getting the opportunities that she has had.
Unless they are highly prolific and produce high quality product (like Yong, Switek and Zimmer) I suspect they would have little to no chance of being picked as a talking head on TV.
Or what about a woman who is not pretty?
Would she get these kinds of opportunities if she was able to write as well as Yong or Switek?
I suspect we are simply seeing a basic problem with modern broadcast media - the fact that looks, presentation skills, and feeding the public's obsession with quick bites of attention grabbing items are prized far more than scientific ability or accuracy - which, if you think of it, partly underlies Watson's complaint (if Ellen Degeneres was really interested in scientific facts, she wouldn't have had a psychic on the show in the first place.)
