Ignoring "Cosmos": Incompetence at NASA's Astrobiology Institute
Keith’s note: NASA’s Astrobiology Institute has over 879,000 followers on its Twitter account @AstrobiologyNAI. Not once in the months that “Cosmos” has been on air has it ever made mention of the show – despite the fac that it amounted to a free multi-week advertisement for Astrobiology. If you go to the offocial NASA NAI website you will see that it totally ignored Cosmos too. Yet @NASA and other Twitter and social media accounts openly featured links of direct relevance to the show. Even the President chimed in on the opening episode.
The NASA Astrobiology Institute has made a colossal mistake by not taking advantage of this teaching moment for millions on national television – one wherein all of the things that NASA seeks to study under the banner of “astrobiology” have been thoroughly explained in terms almost anyone can grasp. Indeed, this amounts to utter incompetence on the part of the entire leadership and staff at the NASA Astrobiology Institute – and those at NASA Headquarters who manage Astrobiology as a whole. They simply do not care if they are doing their job and explaining their research to the rest of us who pay the bills.
Why Is NASA’s Astrobiology Program STILL Ignoring “Cosmos”?, earier post
Keith, not only is it leadership incompetence, it is leadership laziness and snobbery.
NASA management is not interested in what the American taxpayers think of Astrobiology, SLS, JWST, or any of the thousands of other programs and projects going on. Funding is determined by what certain Congress critters from key districts think will help them get votes in their next election. Taxpayer interest is virtually irrelevant to what NASA does, and NASA acts accordingly.
And if you take that point of view it will only get worse!
It is an accurate view. That does not mean that it’s right, but it is an accurate summation of the apparent attitudes.
NASA could and should do such a better job of capitalizing on the free “earned media”. Perhaps only the US Military has an easier time garnering attention. It drives us all nuts as we see opportunities like this squandered.
Devil’s advocate: Would it be entirely appropriate for a government agency to use taxpayer money in promoting a for-profit corporation’s TV show?
You missed what I wrote: “Yet @NASA and other Twitter and social media accounts openly featured links of direct relevance to the show. Even the President chimed in on the opening episode”
But that doesn’t address the question. Is it or is it not ethically appropriate for taxpayer funds to promote a for-profit corporation’s TV show?
I am just playing devil’s advocate BTW. It may not be appropriate in isolation, but the public good is obviously better served by exposure to Cosmos than by rigidly adhering to the principle in question.
they did PSAs for Gravity, shout outs for Transformers and I believe Armageddon had their premiere at KSC. certainly tweeting about actual QUALITY science fact shows like Cosmos should be within the bounds of what they use their social media channels for.
Doesn’t NASA promote for profit rocket company’s???
The entire team is clueless and they live in their own little world.
870 000 to 11 followers / followed ratio does constitute a little comfortable world indeed.
Its not really the interactive kind of twitter account, just an annoucement printing machine.
is there really no carrot that can get them to move on this?
Cancel their conference travel funding if they don’t get enough “likes” on Facebook or re-tweets or whatever.
That will definitely get their collective attention.
Given the grief NASA gets over climate change, maybe they don’t want to tick off the creationists too?
[IIRC, Sagan took a lot of snubbing from mainstream scientists over things like Cosmos too. And the National Academy of Sciences pointedly refused his membership because he was “just a science populariser”. So history repeating and all that. http://www.skeptic.com/read… ]