Ironically, it was Randy Olson who made the snarky remark,

To counter the blockbuster power of “Expelled,” the National Science Foundation, NAS and AAAS are organizing a panel discussion about putting together a committee to look into the possibility of creating a brochure that tells the public how to make a website for a petition that says evolution is fun.

Is this where the Framists’ antics will naturally lead — panel discussions of people sitting around agreeing with each other, NAS books which take the same conciliatory tone they already do, and no real change?

Whatever the case, if you’ve been following BCS’ treatment of framing, the central point is this: The framists offer no constructive or consistent advice to science communicators. That’s what we see here.

I’d say BCS is doing as much as Mooney is to communicate science, given BCS’ school activities; I’d say he has a damn good technical education about communications, and having seen him work, I’d say he does an outstanding job communicating science to sometimes-hostile audiences. But that doesn’t matter to the framists; to them, everyone else is just doing it wrong, and they lord their supposed expert status over everyone else so they can attack people doing good work. But they never give useful advice, and don’t seem to say anything consistent about how to do the job that BCS is doing very well. It’s all just “doing it that way is wrong,” seemingly never do we hear “here’s an effective way to communicate this point: …..

That point remains. Mooney has said don’t ridicule ridiculous people; here he says ridicule them. Science communicators would be better off if he did more thinking and less talking for a while.

I say “revised” because, although I know perfectly well it was Nisbet who made the statement, for a week or two afterwards Mooney was his staunch defender. After I’d had quite enough of that, I quit reading his blog, so it is certainly possible he’s clarified or changed his opinion. I couldn’t find anything by quickly scanning through a few weeks of entries, but if someone posts a link, I’ll revise the post.