Carls and Neils

Even though I have not seen the new Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson yet, I am already amazed at what a huge accomplishment with regards to popularization of science, it is becoming judging solely on its presence in social media. While the nerdier parts of Tumblr have always been more in favor of Sagan’s suave scientific charm than the meme that has made Tyson a fundamental block of the new Internet culture, screenshots from the new Cosmos are quickly emerging and deGrasse Tyson is proving to be as enthusiastic and fun as his now legendary predecessor in this television series. In browsing some of the stills featuring deGrasse Tyson I was pleased to see a post with over 130,000 notes in which he recalls meeting Carl Sagan in Ithaca when he was only seventeen. In telling the anecdote, he notes that he “already knew I wanted to become a scientist, but that afternoon, I learned from Carl the kind of person I wanted to become”. This sentiment has resonated with me very strongly, not only because I have been lucky enough to have shaken hands with Nobel winners and gotten advice from some of the most excellent minds in physics today, but because it underlines, in easily relatable terms, how the figure of a scientist as a person rather than as a puppet in a lab coat can be tremendously influential. Accordingly, I want to share some thoughts on science popularization, science education, and the ways in which mainstream media, modern academia and our culture mystify science in ways that make “Carl Sagans” stand out rather than being the norm.

Last year, I took a class on the history of medicine and science. For one of the lengthier assignments I wrote a nine page essay on the mystification of science and the popular perception of laboratories as special, magic places where the scientist is, by default, so much more powerful and so much more important than his  or her counterparts educated in other fields. I opened my discussion by writing that

“A condensed matter physicist might say that a metal is a solid with a Fermi surface thus appealing to a quantum mechanical concept accounting for the most characteristic properties of metals.  The concept of a Fermi surface is a very specific one and it is likely that an astrophysicist or a biologist would not be familiar with it enough to understand why it implies that, for example, metals conduct electricity. At the same time, the recognition of metals as solids that conduct electricity is in no way an obscure fact and it is plausible to expect most people to be aware of it. The disconnect between hearing the phrase “Fermi surface” and thinking of electrical conductivity of metals therefore illustrates the disconnect between scientists and their mode of thinking and the way in which everyone else perceives the same natural phenomena. Moreover, this disconnect should not be taken as simply a matter of language but as an implication of a deeper sense of hierarchy between the kind of understanding of nature that is available to scientists and to the proverbial layperson.”

It is remarkable that this is a phenomenon that emerges very early in one’s career as a scientist – the moment you feel confident enough to utter “moment of inertia tensor” or even simply “quantum mechanics”, all conversations with friends, family, or hairdressers stop as their eyes either roll or widen. Sometimes it is even enough to just mention studying physics to get the uniform response of “you must be so smart, I hated physics in high school”.  At the same time, considering the politicians that sit in Congress and routinely vote on NASA funding, education plans, and science regulation, one notes that very few are indeed scientists and it becomes very easy to wonder whether their responses would be the same. How many Senators would be scared of the jargon?

Two reasons for this disconnect come to mind. One concerns our culture and mass media. The crazy scientist is a trope as old as comics and television and the fact that it is almost impossible to see a scientist who is not a white male wearing a lab coat has only recently been questioned. Scientists you meet on television are crazy, evil, or simply no fun at all. I happen to be about halfway through watching The X-Files which is for all intents and purposes a cult show and I am constantly frustrated at how Dana Scully’s scientific background is used to make her (very justified) rational approach to the paranormal sound boring and stubborn, in comparison to Mulder’s often borderline psychotic fantasies about the little green men. Scientists in novels and comics are equally problematic since if they are not evil they have usually been in a horrible accident and have become everything other than a scientist. My research mentor, a theorist with a remarkable publication list, is an energetic older lady who likes classical music, works in an office stacked with books and goes home by 4:30 every day. I have yet to see a scientist like her in a TV show or a graphic novel. And while I want to stop listing examples here in order to move to discussing the part of the problem that lies within the scientific community itself, it is worth mentioning that even if you don’t care about the scientist in the Simpsons or the fact that there has never been a Disney princess who sported lab goggles rather than a tiara (I keep waiting for an Ada Lovelace-inspired steampunk fantasy) reading the news and comparing the amount of space allotted to pop celebrities and controversial politicians as opposed to real science, beyond the common buzzwords such as “God particle”, “black hole”, or “time travel”, should definitely drive the point home.

Results from a Google search for "scientist"

As I mentioned above, a large part of the issue definitely lies with the scientists themselves. To some extent, the issue is larger than science – in a world where obtaining credibility means paying thousands of dollars to learn things, a large portion of which one could read about in library books and Wikipedia entries, it is no surprise that academics are insular and at least slightly elitist. On the other hand, it is rather easy to argue that science impacts people’s lives daily and that the vast majority of its findings are applicable to the well-being of our society beyond simply adding to the overall body of human knowledge. And while jargon is sometimes inescapable and oversimplifications can indeed be as misleading as fun analogies—both of which abound in popular science writing--it is definitely true that most scientists subscribe to yet another set of stereotypes about scientists except that this time the key ingredients are institution rankings, awards, and peer-reviewed gossip. These guidelines for dismissing someone’s work or ideas as not worth discussing are things that one learns rather quickly and after year or so into one’s bachelors degree it is already so easy to complain about the lack of rigor or lack of fame in certain highly specialized circles. For a layman, it is therefore hard to break into the social and professional circle of “real” science and it is no wonder that the groups that are routinely marginalized in all spheres of life, such as women or people of color, make it in science even more rarely than their white male peers. Consequently, if the goal is to bring science closer to those who make big decisions as well as those who want to make educated consumer choices, and to make science less mystical and less inferiority complex-inducing, the story of Carl Sagan spending an afternoon with the 17 year old deGrasse Tyson and inviting him to his house should be compulsory reading for everyone.

Another related point is definitely that of science education for ‘non-majors’. It is interesting to note that a number of institutions conduct research in science education (I definitely have physics in mind here) but very few of the improved introductory sequences are aimed primarily at non-majors--not in the sense of premedical students, but rather in the sense of those studying economics, political science, or the humanities. While I might be something of an elitist myself, I have always felt that among the students interested in pursuing a career in science there is a fair amount of self-selection going on.  Difficult science classes for science majors mean that there are sometimes less science majors at the end of the class but the ones that are left have the kind of talent or endurance that a career in academia or industry might require. Non-major science classes are by default fundamentally different and it seems crucial that these students be a little more knowledgeable but more importantly a lot less intimidated once the class is over. Providing this kind of background to those who will be making laws or movies would most definitely change the kind of reputation science has taken on.

Finally, I want to emphasize that even if it is difficult to believe that a change in culture and a proliferation in science popularization along the lines of Cosmos can bring about an atmosphere in which scientists are respected, we can never really stop talking about the need for role models for future scientists, no matter where they come from and what they look like. In contemplating writing this, my guiding thoughts have definitely been focused on laymen and the way in which this can be made a less ugly word, but all of the efforts to make science less intimidating and better supported by the structures of power are essentially futile if there is not a constant influx of new minds into all of the scientific fields. The Carl Sagans of the world are instrumental here and it is particularly inspiring to see that his successor is not just some old white man in a lab coat. These are the kind of people that science students should indeed grow up to be.