So how should scientists try to get across to a broad audience their ideas on complex and sometimes controversial subjects like gender, evolution or religion? This question is hot right now, thanks to Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney via one essay in Science and another in the Washington Post (plus lots of blogging, see http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/). Their ideas about “framing,” or how to convey hot-button science issues to a non-science-literate public, combine brilliance with the best knife-edge controversy I’ve read in a while. Their proposal, in part, is that scientists should cut back on the complexities they try to communicate. They’re right on as far as I’m concerned, and they’ve inspired a debate with an unusually welcome light: heat ratio.