biolog

Blake Stacey has a good deal of insight at the end of an essay that needs wider dissemination. The part I’m concerned with is about the vulgarization of science in the mainstream media.

When the connective tissue of the science is cut away, we lose our ability to understand how progress is being made. Even when the popularizers of science are not actively spreading nonsense because it sells, they are fated to miss the meat for the gristle. What matters is no longer the facts of the science, but the story it is easiest to tell.

The tendency in science writing when one approaches difficult to explain terrain is to launch into a great diversion effort of the material by changing the focus to something more palatable. In other words, if you can’t explain the science, gloss over as quickly as possible and move on.

. . . the temptation will always be to plump for the “social” angle and emphasize the personalities of the physicists involved. This leads you to classic failure modes like the “Oppressed Underdog,” David readying his slingshot at the Goliath of the scientific establishment. My “typical statement” is a paraphrase of Jacques Distler, who pointed out this problem almost six years ago; it’s still alive today, and kicking more than ever. We see it frequently enough in physics, but even biology is not immune, when the science turns on relationships among propositions. You don’t need intimidating jargon, though it helps: all you need is for the actual relationship between David’s idea and Goliath’s orthodoxy to be mathematical in nature.

In defending this thesis, I recognize that I’m leaving myself open to the accusation that I am an “elitist” - indeed, even an Elitist Bastard. How dare I suggest that science is not readily transparent, that the training one receives in climbing the steps of the ivory tower is necessary to enjoy the view from the top? I cannot refute this calumny: all the water in the Tennessee River cannot wash out an MIT degree or a year spent in France. Yet, if education is to mean anything, we must confront its problems as they stand. If we do not identify the obstacles in our path and work honestly to overcome them, then the process of education will be a useless charade, and the hope of a scientifically literate populace will be more distant than ever.

The Oprah-fication, tripe-based Chicken Soup for the Soul approach to science writing today, coupled with generally poor science knowledge among the citizenry, paves the way for the Deepak Chopra’s of the world. And the rot runs deep, at times clear up to the New York Times, New Yorker and The Best American Science Writing series.

Unfortunately, backseating science to front-load an article with the personal narrative or human aspect is what’s taught at Johns Hopkins where I earned a degree in science writing. (sources say that this is also the case in MIT’s new science writing program). Atul Gawande’s Complications: Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science was what we were told to aspire to as an example of award-winning science/medical writing. The book contains well-written science-free accounts of medical curiosities and the patient/doctor relationship, and that is all.

None of my writing instructors were ever scientists, so I witheld my criticisms; a decision I now regret. This may sound damning, but they were not interested in conveying science or educating the public, only in putting a human face on everything we wrote. More’s the better if we slipped a little “vulgarized” science in undetected lest our reader dash his foot upon a hard concept.