I thought I'd bump this in part because of the new influx of technologists, and in part because I'm enjoying this essay by Jon Franklin called "The End of Science Writing."
It's not just about science writing -- it's also about the relationship between capital-S "Science" and the rest of society -- art, humanities, politics, the rest of the daily fray.
Here's a pertinent excerpt:
Scientists are forever complaining that they are misunderstood and misrepresented, and I agree. But imagine what it's like to be the guy in the middle, to be caught up in the distortion process, to find yourself bargaining passionately for a tad more accuracy in a story, say, about UFOs or cold fusion.
So we weren't science reporters, we were science writers, and our job was interpretation. We science writers learned how sausage was made, and worked within the system to communicate more clearly and more accurately, not to say more truthfully. But the distortion began as soon as the copy left our hands.
No, let me be brutally honest. Distortion began the very moment we conceived the story, as we angled our perspective to please our editors. As soon as we picked up the phone we started censoring ourselves, second-guessing the story, trying somehow make something useful out of whatever we had. A lot of my colleagues will deny this, but I think the result speaks for itself.
Science, whatever its complaints about journalism, almost always came out on the glorious end of the story. That's why it could stay above the fray. Our tendency, with certain exceptions, was to idolize science. The public bought this. Science was Teflon, science spoke for Truth. In my era we didn't do investigative reporting on science, except maybe around the edges. Newsrooms are intensely political places and muckraking is a weapon wielded by kill reporters against political hard targets. We never, ever, went after science. Science was sacrosanct.
Scientists thought of themselves as apolitical. That they had that luxury was a measure of the privilege they enjoyed. In our political system nothing is apolitical. As soon as science started being financed by public dollars it was political. Science was the darling of both parties. Liberals had backed science from the very beginning of the Enlightenment, and conservatives had come aboard because of the Cold War. Scientists, innocents that they were, confused being in political favor with being apolitical.
It is useful to think of science as the faith of the Enlightenment. Scientists hate this. They don't want the responsibilities of priesthood. But the role is embedded in the most fundamental first dogma of Enlightenment philosophers and scientists. In the Medieval we thought the world was an illusion, created by Satan, and it was faith, the wisdom of the heart, that was pure. Now we think the world is reality and faith is an illusion. I have a whole lecture I give about how we cast scientists as priests, in their white cloaks, with their stethoscopes or whatever. Oh, sure, beginning with Newton science gave religion lip service, but with every "amen" they moved God yet another step away from daily life, until they had Him tucked back somewhere behind the big bang. Science can deny its religious role as much as it likes, but when it's done denying we'll all genuflect. This sacred atmosphere was the air a science writer breathed.
So this guy, he's a good writer -- and he's also covering some really interesting points.
Might be worth splitting off into its own discussion, actually.... what is science? what do we think of as science? |
