I came across an inspiring article entitled “13 things that do not make sense” which highlights some of the great mysteries within major scientific disciplines. While some of the details are inevitably a bit simplistic, the author communicates complicated ideas well. This multi-disciplinary perspective got me thinking about the value of popular science writing within science itself. The people who can explain difficult ideas to non-specialists possess a talent that most of the best scientists lack. Currently, popular science writers are sneered and derided within the halls of academia, but this prospective is antiquated. Popular science writers may unwittingly be working to save science from its own success, and if more widely read by actual scientists, could help to accelerate the pace of discovery.
Long gone are the times when a scientist can be both a highly successful in a given discipline and successful in many disciplines. Generalists, the scientific equivalent of renaissance men, are bygones of an earlier era. There are a host of reasons why young scientists have to specialize in order to thrive, but primarily this is because there is just so much knowledge out there that to become an expert in any one subject requires inexpertise in most others.
Whether or not super-specialization is a problem depends on whom you ask. There is no argument, however, that many thousands of scientists spend large portions of their lives researching problems that are mainly “academic.” In other words, rather than tackle problems at the forefront of science, they seek out the pockets of ignorance well within the boundaries of experience, and attempt to fill in these gaps in our knowledge. This is gnerally an admirable pursuit. But as the pockets of ignorance become smaller and less important, the image of scientists as white-coated academics speaking a language foreign to all outisde becomes reinforced, and legions of researchers bore each other at conferences with the minutiae of their sub-sub-disciplines.
Enter the popular science writer. He is widely reviled within the scientific establishment. Carl Sagan, perhaps the most widely known popularizer of science, is a sore subject for many of the astronmers I’ve spoken to. Why would this be? Perhaps it is because research science is one of the most underpaid jobs in terms of the amount of training required, and the long hours worked. To make up for this pecuniary injustice, science rewards success with reknown from publications and conference presenations. Popular science writers, however, shortcut this time-honored path to fame. They write a book that, even if not all that great and sells perhaps 10,000 copies, is read by probably 10 times the readership of even very highly cited peer-reviewed articles. The establishment often declares these popular science writers to be “mediocre scientists” and publishes scathing reviews of such works.
But the gift of a successful popularizer, their ability to communicate, is often not bestowed on those most successful in the lab. Their gifts are analytical in nature, and they see around them the boundaries defined by their specific research. While skimming lightly above the labyrinth of modern research science, popularizers see the big picture in a way that most practicing scientists cannot afford. They read widely, focusing on review papers and summary articles. They then write to a general audience, starting them with the big picture, then zooming in on specific studies or findings that most illuminate their topic. Thus popular science writers are forced to be generalists. If carefully written, their books can find an audience within the establishment. By honoring disagreements, and not passing judgement on a scientific controversy if there is no consensus within the community, popularizers can help to expand the horizons of research scientists, thus helping them to recognize when they are in a rut, or perhaps chasing their own tails. The specialists could then extricate themselves and refocus on their larger goals.
It is unfortunate but true that scientists are as susceptible to jealousy, mean-spiritedness, and territoriality as any other human. Looking down on scientists who write popular works comes pretty naturally to those who don’t and who consider themselves and their narrowly focused colleagues to be the “real scientists.” Sagan was a real scientist as well as a popularizer of science - he wrote or co-wrote some ground-breaking papers in planetary science, and worked with a number of grad students who went on to do important work in planetary science and astronomy, yet he was rejected for membership in the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps as punishment for his popular success. I remember reading “Intelligent Life in the Universe” which Sagan co-wrote with a Russian astronomer in the 60’s - I think it was his first popular work, and it was amazing. He was a gifted man.
Another one I really liked was Lewis Thomas, whom I compared you to in my blog — he was a research M.D. with a gift for language. Many of his essays are gems.
There are some who could be scientists but who choose to specialize in writing - one I really like is Matt Ridley who wrote “Genome” and other bio-related works. Really a fine writer with (I think) a biology degree from Oxford.
I think many scientists do appreciate the importance of popularizers, but alas, many do not.
-Bruce
Bruce,
Yes, Sagan did contribute immensely to astronomy, besides just his popular writings. It may have partly been his personality that set people off. I recall my astronomy advisor relating a story to me about “Intelligent Life in the Universe.” Apparently, the book is mostly just a translation of a Russian-languge book by Shklovskii, but Sagan managed to pin his career to a great book and thus achieve fairly instant fame (so says my professor).
I agree about Matt Ridley. I have not read any of Thomas’s works, but at your mention I’ve flagged the book you mentioned in your blog for later reading.
I also really enjoyed the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins has gone off a bit on the whole evolution debate, but The Selfish Gene is an astoundingly good explanation of nature. His reasoning, that evolution occurs at the level of individual genes, not at the entire organism, makes deep sense, and I use it all of the time to understand the natural world as best I can. I am no biologist, so I don’t know exactly where the whole gene/organism argument lies. I know that our understanding of genes is now more complex, since we know that more than one gene codes for a specific trait, but I don’t know how the evolutionary theory has been revised to account for it. Anyway, classic read.
Edward O. Wilson, a naturalist, also has a few really good works out there. Richard Feynman, every inch the great scientist, has written some wonderful stuff, though they are more memoirs than popular science writings.
Hey, I just wanted to point out something I found odd about the 13 things article. When he was talking about the WOW event, he said the transmission was at 1420 MHz, and that this was forbidden territory. You can totally buy microwave antennas that operate in that frequency easily, because I work with them. Its a fairly common bandwith for point-to-point transmission and we’ve worked with them many times, so I don’t know what he means about it being a forbidden frequency. 1420 Hz perhaps, because that’s near “secret” navy use VLF bandwith I believe. But 1.4 GHz is ever-popular. If they really did experience a brief burst at this frequency, it was probably someone adjusting the position of their antenna that happened to cross paths with the radio ear.
-Tom
Tom,
I did a bit of checking and found a not-so-reliable report of the “protected band” extending from 1400 to 1427 Mhz. Hopefully the operators of the microwave transmitters you work with know this as well (I’m sure they do)! The real explanation for the Wow signal is probably something very mundane, like you suggested, though it provides the starting point for so many good stories about ET originating from the direction of Saggitarius!
Oh, well that’s possible that there’s a tight band, but the device is still capable of doing it (its a 1.3 GHz-1.57GHz range) and there’s nothing to stop you from breaking that law. Everything’s changing in Jan 2006 anyway.