ekzept

Despite the title, what the book's about is the disassembly of the science reporting apparatus within the media outlets of the United States. This is largely due to deregulation of those media, and the token commitment to science (and perhaps other technical) reporting which networks and media made in the age when part of the mission of having a media outlet was "public service". Thus, according to Mooney and Kirshenbaum, the active and often excellent contributions to scientific journalism from cable and broadcast and print media were aberrations because management of these companies felt they had to do something which would be seen as public good, but nothing more. According to them, these media do not see any profit to be had by continuing these works, since in modern media, profit comes from entertainment, and education is and can no longer be entertaining, despite the wisdom and insights of Mark Twain in his Innocents Abroad.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum try to make the case for educating while entertaining, but their saddling of the scientific community with the task is both unrealistic and morally inapppropriate. The notion that science must be conducted in the large, with big money backing is mistaken. There are, no doubt, unique explorations involving high energy or remote places or unique vantage points or specific applications like the medical and biopharmaceutical which benefit from massive expenditures. While learning as much about the universe in as many places and ways possible is endemic to the scientific enterprise, all scientific inquiry has limitations at all times, many of them highly practical. Thus, while limiting resources allocated to science many limit the numbers of professional scientists or the kinds of studies undertaken, these do not limit science. So, the idea that scientists owe society engagement because scientists are recipients of public tax dollars can be answered either by engaging or by refusing the support. Who loses if the support is refused?

Mooney and Kirshenbaum do have many important things to say along the way, offering compelling arguments that even if scientific education among the American public were deeper, support for science and its ideas would not be higher. These are important realizations. It is almost believable that Hollywood is the public's most important educator. But I don't buy it.

I cannot and won't proceed and comment on the myriad of anecdotes Mooney and Kirshenbaum offer in support of their finding. I've picked a couple instead.

First, when Benjamin Franklin was criticized for desacralizing lightning, as Mooney and Kirschenbaum rightly record, the opposition to his "lightning rods" came not only from some eerie common sense of ill and psychological displacement, but directly from and by bitter attacks by clergy that his seemingly passive inventions were interfering directly in the domain of the divine, and were a usurpation of the Creator's authority. Lightning rods were only retained after they proved their practical worth to the public, despite the continuing admonitions from pulpits. I see plenty of reason there for people to believe and argue that it is indeed religion and its institutions which are the impediments to public acceptance of scientific findings.

Second, Mooney, Kirshenbaum, and others would have scientists engage, Sagan-like, and to evangelize, Billy Graham-like, the values and perspectives of science, using the compelling means of Hollywood. Consider:

(1) When done, as in the case of the TV show, Numb3rs, even if an initial success is had, the enterprise ultimately fails because the profit motive compells the series, as it continues, to enlarge its audience and become as scientifically vacuous as its competitors and imitators. With Numb3rs, however superficial the mathematical presentations were in its first two seasons, now the content focusses almost entirely upon personal interrelationships and the shoot-'em-up-blow-'em-up grist of the typical cop TV show.

(2) These engagements consume a lot of uncompensated time. I mean by that time which has no professional reward in what scientists love to do, explore, learn, discover, whether or not money is gained by participating. Sure, some love to teach and for them that may be enough. But teaching requires students and learners, and these "students" needn't learn if they don't want to learn. If they do not, their teachers haven't really taught.

No, I think the reason we are in this predicament is that modern science demands a commitment of time and effort to be learned, and that Americans are unwilling to invest that effort or that time. Americans have become exceedingly lazy about intellectual pursuits, failing even to read much. Should scientists or mathematicians take time out of their own professional lives to "teach" in the manner Mooney and Kirshenbaum recommend, they have less time to do the profession they love, one which is an increasingly harsh mistress in her demands. Why should they do that?

As far as the public goes, the quote by Arthur C Clarke which Unscientific America uses when recounting the origins of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States is appropriate for the entire problem and project:

If the Soviets beat us to the moon, added sci-fi visionary Arthur C Clarke, "they will have won the solar system, and theirs will be the voice of the future ... As it will deserve to be."

(Emphasis added, from Unscientific America, page 27, hardbound)

Similarly, if Americans do not awake to their anti-intellectualism and fierce embrace of religion not being in their best collective interests, then the future will indeed belong to India, to China, and countries who are not encumbered by such limitations as it will deserve to be. No doubt, solutions for climate change problems will be available for sale by the best and brightest minds the planet Earth offers.

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now.

--Arthur C Clarke

That may be the best plan. The program of Mooney and Kirschenbaum is not. Harris, Dawkins, and Myers, among others, are properly arguing for the intellectual respectability of atheism as a value. To the degree the public only accepts antics as means of proving points, desecrating Communion wafers simply seems comparable to those dramatic gestures by a Rush Limbaugh or a Glenn Beck.

But science and other rigorous intellectual inquiry must continue to be what it is, whether or not anyone listens, as means wax and wane. Let there be a price for our participation, if people desire the insights science, mathematics, and rigor can provide.