ABSTRACT
When considering the persuasive characteristics and prospective influences of antievolutionist mass media, uncertainties remain about how to reciprocally promote evolutionary theory to skeptical audiences. This chapter, therefore, shifts from a descriptive mode to a prescriptive one, examining what might be done to mitigate the media-stimuli prolonging the Evolution Wars. In particular, it addresses how those concerned with advocating consensus science might better promote evolutionary theory to skeptical audiences, in view of the persuasive characteristics and prospective impacts of antievolutionist mass media. To do this it integrates the book’s observations with the most successful methods of science endorsement researched to date. These findings are then translated to Evolution Wars contexts. What results are several recommendations, systematized into general guiding principles, as well as direct and auxiliary intervention procedures. The book is then drawn to a close by contending that, for the sake of combatting counterfactual influences, science supporters ought to appropriate the guileless yet tactical use of persuasion, with improved intervention practices to reach religious audiences. Because when it comes to how people make decisions about publicly contested science, it may be the case that the way science communications are delivered is as important as their factual bases.
