Science writing: There are not – repeat, NOT – two sides to the story
| May 25, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Education, Intelligent Design |
Particle physicist Lawrence M. Krauss* addressed the gathering at the Canadian Science Writers’ Association conference at Science North in Sudbury, May 24, 2009.
I made some notes of his remarks in a darkened cave, the Inco Cave at Science North, though I do not have a transcript.
His talk was billed Star Trek Physics, and the PowerPoint revealed physics bloopers spotted in Star Trek, the X-files, and other film resources.
It was certainly entertaining, but not riveting, at least for me. Anyone who gets their physics from sources clearly labelled science fiction or UFOlogy, well …
But Dr. Krauss had advice for science communicators:
1. Don’t assume your audience is interested. “Don’t expect interest, create it.”
2. Science is dull, hard, and unrelated to the real world. Communicators must work against that. (“Remember how boring science can seem.”)
3. “Most people perceive themselves as fundamentally uninterested in science.”
4. Confront misconceptions: it’s the only way people remember.
Now, I have reservations about career academic scientists advising journalists how to communicate, or high school science teachers how to teach. They tend to emit platitudes that are too general to be put into practice, and therefore too general to fail.
Take the advice offered above, for example:
Few journalists doubt that we must create interest. (If we doubted, our editors would swiftly correct us.) Our readers typically do hard and boring jobs all day, so the idea that jobs in science are hard and boring would not – in principle – surprise them. However, in my experience, most readers are interested in science when they see its relevance to their lives. Yes, confronting misconceptions can be useful, but much of the time, huge gaps in our knowledge are a bigger problem than misconceptions – and we cannot easily fill in those gaps, either.
Dr. Krauss went on to say that there is an innate tension between journalism and science. The problem is, “journalists think there are two sides to every story.” According to him, this is not true: “Most times, one side is simply wrong.”
Oh well, that’s all right then. Having been informed that one side is simply wrong, the journalist can forget about getting a range of opinion and simply act as a shill for the approved view.
The beauty of that strategy is that if there are problems with the approved view, the journalist is guaranteed never to find out, so she will always be sure she and her sources are right.
Dr. Krauss later conceded that “The editors are the bad guys.” Yes, indeed, in the sense that editors often come up with additional people for us writers to interview, people who offer additional perspectives. They, like us, see most stories as having many sides, not just one, so they are guilty of multiple sins, and we are complicit (when we are doing our job, that is).
He also told us that fear of science is growing in Canada. I have lived here all my life, and I cannot confirm that. This is the home of the Canadarm and the Blackberry, after all. In fact, one of the very interesting presentations that same day was on Canada’s proposed contribution to plans to mine the moon for moon base supplies, but more on that later. Canadians are – in my view, understandably, in these times – skeptical of high-budget schemes and far-fetched ideas. They want to know what the payload is. But that is a different matter.
While insisting that science doesn’t undermine religion in principle (who said it did?), Dr. Krauss made clear that “In many ways I hope it does” and his talk was full of asides making very clear his views on political, religious, and social issues – which entirely belied his claims. Also, like many visiting United States residents I have listened to, he assumed that everyone here cares what he thinks about US politics. Not only do I not care who he voted for in the last US election, I imagine he does not care who I voted for to be mayor of Toronto. I did not seek anyone out to tell them, and would be pleased if he would do the same.
Much of the latter part of Dr. Krauss’s talk was dedicated to the proposition that he knows exactly how the universe began and how it will end, and that Earth is entirely insignificant.
(The fact that Earth is the only known home of life of any kind – and of intelligent life – must apparently not be significant, though the reason why not was never made clear.)
In Dr. Krauss’s view, the only reasonable view of the universe is that it is flat, and there are only a few little details to be ironed out. It was there that I wondered whether my colleagues – mostly salaried science bureaucrats, I suspect, not freelancers – had caught on. Many scientists don’t think that the universe is flat. Are they also people whose side of the story journalists should not cover?
I asked Dr. Krauss during the question period about string theory, which he opposes. Of course he spoke dismissively of it. I don’t get string theory either, but I don’t plan on deciding that there is only one side of the story there either.
Walking back to my hotel, I was sure that Dr. Krauss reminded me of something, and later realized what it was:
In science, small, persistent effects cannot be ignored. Sometimes they force a revision of major paradigms. For example, Lord Kelvin remarked in 1900 that there were just “two little dark clouds” on the horizon of Newtonian classical physics of the day, namely, Michelson and Morley’s measurements of the velocity of light and the phenomenon of blackbody radiation. Kelvin was certain that these troubling little clouds would be blown away shortly.149 Yet all of modern physics—relativity and quantum mechanics—derives from these two little dark clouds. (The Spiritual Brain, p. 173)
It’s always those little things that trip us up.
Later, I was embarrassed to overhear an animated conversation by two colleagues, one of whom claimed to see “some value” in religion, as long as it just makes you feel good and tricks you into behaving better and makes no truth claims. The perfect upper, right? Whereas any speculation is okay if it is called “science” and advanced with a great deal of assurance, and warnings against thinking that there could be two sides to the story.
(Note: Go here for update.)
*Note: At his site, Dr. Krauss describes himself as follows:
an internationally known theoretical physicist
a bestselling author
a frequent editorialist
a sought-after lecturer
a radio commentator
moderately photogenic
a profiled persona
and much more…
Ipse dixit. (He said it himself.)
36 Responses to Science writing: There are not – repeat, NOT – two sides to the story
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R0b
It is hard to imagine that this is what is bothering you.
I feel my IQ dwindling just by saying so, but I will quote Wiki:
“Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory. Both in its origins and in its evolution in the second-half of the 20th century, cybernetics is equally applicable to physical and social (that is, language-based) systems.
Cybernetics is preeminent when the system under scrutiny is involved in a closed signal loop, where action by the system in an environment causes some change in the environment and that change is manifest to the system via information / feedback that causes the system to adapt to new conditions: the system changes its behaviour. This “circular causal” relationship is necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic perspective.
Example of cybernetic thinking. On the one hand a company is approached as a system in an environment. On the other hand cybernetic factory can be modeled as a control system. Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology in the 1940s, often attributed to the Macy Conferences.”
As I said, I find it hard to believe that this is so troubling. I suggest using terms in context.
The external erosive force in building of canyons of sandstone is part of the natural environment, requiring no agency involvement in order to form a rational explanation. In the case of the plastic ball, the external force is agency – and it is required to in order the form a rational explanation.
We have now moved from circular answers to circular questions. Honestly R0b, why should you need to threaten all human knowledge in order to form an assumption about man and his environment? In order to answer the question you propose, man would have to move outside of the Universe, take a look, and see what’s up. I am almost certain this will not happen. (…and I thought it was ID that was supposed to be the science stopper).
Is your seeming disdain for any reasonable inference to a volitional act in the natural world so personally stagnating that this is the end to which you must go? Do yourself a favor. Give it a rest.
This paragraph will unfortunately have to be parsed apart a bit. Let’s start with our grasp of chance and necessity:
I looked around the web for the NASA Department of Discontinuities in Space and Time. I haven’t found one. I also looked to see if 3M or Schering-Plough, or perhaps NTT Research had any kind of similar organization, perhaps in their Quantum Physics Group. I didn’t find one there either. I did however come across a story about how we landed a spacecraft on an 8 x 20mi. asteroid located 200 million miles from Earth. And, last time I checked (which is not so often) we were able to count the number of quarks in nucleons, and even “weight” them. It would seem (as mere mortal men and women) that we have a fairly useful grasp of how chance and necessity operate.
But perhaps this stands to reason. We, along with the rabbits and the worms, have been negotiating our way through a world of chance and necessity for a very long time.
Uh, I believe agents that act out of their own volition are intractably described by only physical laws.
Surely you are not asking me to produce the entirety of human knowledge of physical properties on this website are you? (All of which describe what chance and necessity accomplish). And surely you’re not asking me to generate a listing of all known agency interactions with nature are you? (All of which are accomplished by the acts of agents).
You ask for too much, particularly in light of your dismissal of just a single paper (specifically devoted to the topic). If you find David Abel’s analysis of the mechanisms of chance and physical law so grossly in error, then I suggest you contact the peer-review director at the International Journal of Molecular Science, PubMed, MDPI, and the U.S. National Institute of Health and file a complaint.
And, finally we agree. But not for long…
We shall see… but is rather difficult to give you that much credit. Learning has its own requirments. Some are practical, others ask something of the person.
Lawrence, I find your comments on the edge of hilarity. I have attendend your presentations.
When it comes to science, it seems almost completely beyond you personally to not hit the science/religion debate. You do it without question, and you never address the counter arguments.
I didn’t attend this particular lecture, but please don’t feign yourself off as to be at a loss for religious combat.
The one thing I will give you is this: you were very polite the last time I crossed your path. You seemed to be genuinely moved that the religiously-minded organizers (that you scoffed at in debate) treated you with such genuine respect.
I can at least applaud you for that.
upright biped – Please don’t try to mimic Denyse – you will only hurt yourself.
You said: “I didn’t attend this particular lecture, but please don’t feign yourself off as to be at a loss for religious combat.”
If you don’t know how to use a word – like “feign” – don’t use it. Save this kind of thing for the professionals, like Denyse.
You, of course, are right.
I am an IDiot.
Larry…don’t act as if you are insulted by the idea of religious combat (or being pegged as a materialist bigot)
Clive 31,
Thanks for backing me up in saying that I practise my craft in a competent way.
I didn’t get to the half of all that Dr. Krauss said (it was most interesting and revealing) – but it is hard to make notes in a simulated cave.
However, I had listened to a presentation earlier in the day by a SNOLAB physicist on much the same themes as Dr. Krauss addressed – but without the fanatical certainty and irrelevant religion and politics.
(I had also done background reading on neutrinos, etc., as it was a privilege to be allowed into SNOLAB and SNOLAB PLUS (under construction)).
Dr. Krauss does not – in my view – clearly understand that journalism is the first draft of history.
No one who practises the craft should start out knowing exactly who is right and who is wrong. It is never as simple as that, and approaching it that way is a good way to be wrong.
And the more things one is absolutely certain of, the more likely one is to be wrong.
I focused on the ID controversy because I noticed that the news funnel was inverted. (A major shift!)
Every pundit said it was dying, but it was obviously growing, if you go by the wide end of the funnel (increase in news stories).
So I opened independent news desks and just started ruddy well covering the stories no one else was. That is all one can really do in such a case.