I interviewed Francisco Lacerda, professor of phonetics at Stockholm University last week, for an article that appears today on the university’s English website. Professor Lacerda is one of those people who seems committed to scholarly discussions no matter what.
Professor Lacerda defied the threat of legal action to speak at last Friday’s Phonetics Conference – Fonetik 2009 at Stockholm University about the “Illusion of ‘lie detection’â€. He was threatened with legal action earlier in the year for claiming in a scholarly article that the underlying software used by a lie detector lies “at the astrology end of the [scientific] spectrumâ€.
As part of his commitment to the scholarly debate Professor Lacerda writes a blog where he has detailed some of the events that have occurred since he and a colleague critiqued the lie detector software by Israeli company Nemesysco Ltd.
Daring to Communicate Your Position
What impressed me most about Professor Lacerda is that he is daring to take a stand and communicate his research – no matter what.
Okay, it helps if you having the backing of the university to go ahead and engage in the debate, but even so.
Blogs, conferences, academic journals, and so on are important channels to utilise to get your message out and noticed. That way you have a chance of affecting the debate and changing the direction things will go in.
How do you get your message across?
Connect