โ Scribed by Jeffrey T. Coldren
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Developmental scientists face a dilemma. On the one hand, we have an obligation to share the results of our studies with the public at large. There are several reasons why this is the case. One, perhaps unlike other sciences such as physics or biology, the general public has a keen interest in child development. It is a topic that many people feel personally connected to or interested in because it intimately touches their lives. Recall that the child study movement has a strong tradition in educating parents about the health and development of their children that dates back to Cora Bussey Hillis , the Iowa housewife who demanded that the local university provide as much support to her for the growth of her children as to her husband with the growth of crops. The second reason is because lawmakers and politicians frequently make child development an issue by asking about the state of America's children and how to improve issues such as education. Lastly, lest we forget that many, if not most, of the funds for studying child development come from the public sector; therefore, we often are held accountable and compelled to tell the public the results and implications of our studies.
However, on the other hand, in meeting the obligation to make information accessible, scientific credibility and integrity must be preserved. To do so requires quite a balancing act. confronted this conundrum when she wrote about the "person in the street"the person who asks simple questions and wants simple answers, who is puzzled by complex responses, and who is impatient with the nuances and qualifications of contemporary child development. She urges developmental scientists to resist the urge to do just that in communicating to the public. To provide simple answers to complex questions may make catchy headlines, sound bites, or a book that is digested easily by the public, it is at best quite erroneous and, at worst, perhaps even dangerous. Instead, she argues, the challenge is to help educate the person in the street to ask less-simple questions while communicating the limitations and complexities of our knowledge. The one fact that almost all researchers agree upon, regardless of their theoretical point of view, is that development is complex. To imply less to the public is to treat them with disrespect. Certainly, a book that conveys the complex or even incomplete state of the literature will may run the risk of not being a best seller; it will, in fact, render the most accurate portrayal of the literature.
Unfortunately, the recent book by Thomas Verny and Pamela Weintraub (2002) titled Tomorrow's Baby: The Art and Science of Parenting from Conception through Infancy, published by Simon and Schuster, fails precisely because it oversimplifies some of the most vexing issues currently under investigation in developmental psychology. In the tradition of popular science books, it clearly aims at a mass audience. Divided into 14 chapters with 236 pages,
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