Collectively, ecologists produce a staggering amount of information each year. Using the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports subject classification to define the field of ecology, our discipline comprises 129 ecology-specific journals that in 2009 published an astounding 14 280 articles. How much of that information is being used by policymakers? How much is potentially useful to those audiences? The message in Nancy Baron’s new book, Escape from the ivory tower: a guide to making your science matter, is that all of it could be taken up by the media, publicized, and utilized by policymakers if only we could communicate it better to reporters and politicians. But communicating science and making it matter to the public or to policymakers are not the same thing, and the book falls short in addressing this latter point.