Blue Collar Scientist

Wired is reporting on the top 12 greenest cars sold in the US, and on the dirtiest dozen cars sold here. And we have a good illustration of what we are up against in doing science outreach on the page. From the story:

[They] examined everything from emissions and fuel economy to the pollution generated during the manufacturing process to determine the 12 cleanest, and 12 meanest, cars sold in America.

And from the comments:

This analysis sadly misses out the critical part of the analysis which is the embedded manufacturing energy cost of the vehicle. Under this type of analysis vehicles that are energy intensive in manufacturing such as the Toyota Pious do rather badly. To find out which is the greenest vehicle you need to add up the manufacturing environmental cost and the in use fuel environmental costs to get the overall cost.

and:

A better list would take into account the actual process that each car undergoes before it is put on the road. How much material, recycled materials, factory pollutants, ect.

Now, I’m frankly not sure how to interpret this. It could go one of two ways. It could be that these commentators are raising a valid, though obscure methodological criticism of the report, which seems to have considered these issues, but maybe didn’t treat them in the best way. But it seems more likely that they just didn’t read the story, skipped ahead to the two lists, and assumed they were based on MPG ratings.

The lesson? There’s always going to be the percentage that isn’t paying attention to what you say when you are doing outreach. And you are in constant danger of missing a critical but obscure problem with the research you are discussing. Either problem can sink your efforts, and there’s only two solutions: Prepare well, and be engaging.