I have been trying to acquaint myself with the state of modern science by way of the television. In this country which gave the world many scientists of great repute I was sure that the schedules would have a leavening of quality science programmes explaining this most crucial area of human endeavour to a population anxious to find out what underpins and extends their very existences. I spent the week scouring the five ‘terrestrial’ channels:
(For my overseas audience these are BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4, all of which are funded from the public purse, and ITV and Five, which sell commercials to fund their activities.)
Monday 28 April: none.
Tuesday 29 April: none.
Wednesday 30 April: none.
Thursday 1 May: The Big Bang Theory! Channel 4 10.30pm. I am a big-animals-on-islands type of scientist and I confess to being easily bewildered when people start talking in equations. I settled down with a dry sherry and was looking forward to having the formation of the universe explained to me, only to suffer a very third rate ‘comedy’ about three scientists with poor social skills whose lives are disrupted by arrival of a beautiful woman in their midst.
Contrary to what some ill-informed people think I am no eugenicist, but I do wish the parents of the scriptwriters for The Big Bang Theory had been hosed down with cold water when they got jiggy, as one would do with dogs mating in one’s garden, to avoid the children asking embarrassing questions. (My grasp of modern idiom is coming along well, I feel.)
Friday 2 May: none.
Saturday 3 May: none.
Not a single factual science programme on any of the channels available to everyone who has a television. However in the dramatic presentations it is clear what science is for: it is to help the police elucidate which American has killed which other American. It is also clear who becomes a scientist: people of eccentric appearance and manner with peculiarly arranged hair. They inhabit extremely modern, uncluttered and strangely lit laboratories, there is usually only one of them and he or she possesses an extraordinary range of scientific specialities and skills. They are sessile, but propel themselves on chairs which swivel and have small wheels, often making verbal ejaculations as they do.
They also have a Magic Results Machine. My week of investigation shows that modern science goes like this: the scientific problem comes down to something that is picked up in forceps, a torch is shone on it and it is given a Significant Look. Next, it is placed in a small plastic tube, something clear is dribbled from a pipette and catalysed with another Significant Look. The tube is taken by a small robot arm into the Magic Results Machine.
The Results take as many as sixty seconds to be produced, in which time a Policeman In Sunglasses (the PIS) demands them sooner. The Magic Results are spat from a printer and within minutes Science has allowed the PIS to take the suspected malefactor into custody. He naturally protests his innocence, but The Science produced by the Magic Results Machine Will Not Be Denied. Someone starts playing a double-bass in the room and after a Significant Pause, the Science that Will Not Be Denied causes the suspect to Tell All to the PIS.
The British version does away with the science: a constable simply beats the confession out of the suspect with a telephone directory. Quicker, it saves on the double-bass player’s fees and is truer to life.
A little research shows I am not the only one surprised by this lack of science programming: a Mr David Attenborough, a broadcasting naturalist of some repute this week gave ‘industry executives’ a chiding that their schedules had no place for science.
Science broadcasting in the past seemed to have been better – there was a programme called Tomorrow’s World, and I am reading a book by a Professor Feynman who relates delivering talks about physics to camera for the BBC, and the BBC reporting they were widely watched and appreciated.
What now appears is – if I may coin a phrase – parascience. It does not deal with the raw work of our noble trade, but its applied results in society and the environment. It leaves the impression that science comes from a Magic Results Machine.
Mind you, one of those would have been useful in 1836: pick up finch skin in forceps, goggle at it significantly for a while, place a piece in small tube which disappears into Magic Results Machine and sixty seconds later it spits out the Theory of Natural Selection. Which Thos Huxley would then seize, slip into a telephone directory and rush off to use it to beat up some Bishops.
Having thrown no few brickbats around, I feel I must give an honourable mention to the BBC Science and Nature webpage. There is clearly no shortage of science reportage in the BBC, a shame so little makes it to anything other than a computer screen. The wireless schedules show that BBC Radio 4 features science each weekday at 9pm. I shall have to investigate further.
A small correction, Tomorrow’s Word was actually called Tomorrow’s World. I guess the BBC cancelled tomorrow’s world in a fit of pessimism.
My favourite Magic Results Machine was in a rather poor film about a monster running amok in a Chicago museum. The scientist got a sample of the thing, put it into the Magic Results Machine which, after the requisite time of tension and special effects, representing a couple of hours, sequenced the whole genome, and then gave the results – not just the species (H. sapiens), but the individual. Including a photograph.
Thank you Bob. Corrected. The spellcheck on the version of Mr Babbage’s difference engine I use failed to notice that one. Mr Babbage sent me an ‘upgrade’ which proved to be a bag of cogs and a spanner. His covering letter said ‘It’s still better than Vista!’ What can he mean?
Charles,
it is easy for an outsider to misinterpret the norms of an alien culture, and I fear you may have missed some recent developments. Television is a rigid, expensive and antiquated medium, much like handwritten bibles, and continues to exist only as a distraction for those who lack the modest intellectual horsepower necessary to participate in reciprocal consumer-producer entertainment economies such as “the internet”.
There is little to mourn. For many years television exemplified the worst of what was known as the “public engagement with science” community: self appointed “communicators” who produced programmes where all content was dumbed down in a desperate bid to seduce people who have no interest in science, while offering nothing for those who were curious about the wonders of the natural world, and everything that science can tell us about it.
In many respect this was due to economies of scale, but also fear and ignorance on the part of the blinkered humanities graduates who ran the medium: in the 21st century, you will be astonished to hear, knowledge of the natural world is considered a quaint optional appendage to a meaningful education, and the majority of those who control mainstream culture wear their ignorance of science as a badge of honour upon their chests.
I am interested to see that you examined in particular those public service broadcasters who are subsidised by the state. As I write this, on television I see they are playing, in order: a programme about amateur entertainers who wish to sing show tunes; some men playing snooker; and a documentary about some people who wish to purchase and furnish a house.
Recently there was a review of the funding arrangements for public service broadcasting. There was a very small possibility that some visionaries might have taken a new approach, and perhaps offered grants to people interested in producing content independently of the vast corporate edifices who own and control the outmoded Edwardian “transmitters” which can still be found mounted on natural hills throughout the country for the purpose of “broadcasting to the nation”.
One could imagine a world in which £30,000 might be given to vivacious young nerds to produce a programme aimed at their peers – such as one would find for other non-science “intellectuals” on “BBC4” – and released under creative commons, perhaps, to be passed on, broadcast, downloaded, and enjoyed for free, as a gift to the world from the nation which brought us the enlightenment, so long ago.
It is instead to be spent on talent contests for amateur singers.
Such pursuits will continue to be richly funded and rewarded, while the cultural capital of science remains at an all time low.
For as long as science has no cultural presence, for as long as there is nothing to stretch and engage those who are interested in science, those who once did a science degree but now work in sales,
then there is no hope for the more concrete outcomes which society demands of its geeks, like innovation, and industry.
We continue to regroup independently and in isolation, raggle taggle bands in the foothills of the internet, small cabals who whisper among themselves of evidence, experiment, mechanism, and the pleasure of finding things out.
It is an honour to have you among us.
I remain, etc.
Dr Ben Goldacre
ben@goldacre.net
“www.badscience.net”
Dear Dr Darwin (belated congratulations on your Doctorate Honoris Causa, Cantab; it was a long time coming), as your fellow naturalist Mr Wallace once remarked, the way to view the behaviour of these apes called Homo sapiens is to conceive of oneself as an anthropologist from Mars. Coming from one of the more rational periods in intellectual life in the western tradition, you are amply equipped for that task. I look forward to your subsequent asseverations on the matter.
The failure to express the true activity of science that you rightly note on the invention of Mr Logie Baird (some time after you, I gather) merely reflects the way in which science is presented to the populace in general. Rather than focussing upon the activity of investigation, formulating hypotheses, testing them and damning those who disagree with you, which is the true essence of science, educators, journalists (I gather you were afflicted with that plague even back in your day), playwrights and other manipulators of the public mind all fail to get past the need for “drama”, “narrative” and what some Americans have been inclined to call the “gee-whiz factor”.
As a result, science is akin to magic and religion in the minds of most, and hence magic and religion are seen as equal competitors to it. Despite the best efforts of you and your colleagues, I fear we are slowly descending into a dark period of ignorance and fear.
So I welcome your return and hope that you at least may do something effective to arrest that decline.
Yrs
Dr J Wilkins
At risk of being pedantic (but then I’d be out of place here if I wasn’t) Channel 4 is owned by the government, but is largely funded by advertising, not the public purse.
Mr Darwin and Mr (?) Goodacre: You have ably summed up why I never watch what is termed “live” TV, but only pre-recorded disks (or even discs).
I do like your vision, Mr G. What a shame it never came to pass. Welcome to the brave new world (or even word) of “tomorrow’s internet”.
Mr Goldacre, even. Apologies.
Whereas I remember a recent awards ceremony of the Association of British Science Writers in which no award was given in the television category, owing to a shortage (or even absence) of any submission worthy of any award short of being slapped round the gob with a wet halibut, popular entertainment – which television is largely for – is very much a matter of panem et circenses, which a person of your erudition will realize is not the same thing as undergoing ritual genital mutilation with a breadknife. In the days of the Caesars, the population was diverted from its corporeal woes by the spectacle of religious people being thrown to the lions (a tradition now largely confined to the internet). Nowadays there are so-called talent shows in which people with no redeeming features whatsoever are humiliated in public. Plus ca change.
Dr Gee, the scientist to whom you link – we bearded scientists should form some sort of club – has taken notice of my dismay at the state of science in British broadcasting. I received an electronic communication saying I had been ‘touched by his golden tentacle’. I at first protested vigorously – I had never visited those kind of houses when in London! He would hear from my lawyers! – then I read Professor Myers’ post. scientists are exercised about they way in which their – dare I say vocation? – is perceived.
As for your panem at circenses, I would say at that at least in the days of Rome the people with no redeeming features were unlikely to survive the occasion to inflict themselves on the populace once more, but I shrink from such a lighthearted jest lest the queer plungers (a Victorian term, which may not have survived to the present, but I feel deserves a renewed airing) who are my critics once again accuse me of being a eugenicist.
Mr Darwin, I am enjoying the pleasant mental prospect of the internet as a genuine gladatorial specacle, in which if one is considered suitably lion-worthy, their openID is dissected away from them and they are cast into the nether darknesses (no doubt to become producers of TV programmes).
Hey, I remember Tomorrow’s World.. It was an excellent show and I used to watch it every week! I remember it coming on the discovery channel back in the day when they were a respectable channel, before they essentially became a crackpot channel full of shows hunting for ghosts and ‘uncovering’ the paranormal. When they’re not doing that, they’re using material from animal planet (another idiotic TV channel.. ugh!), pushing shows like worlds ____est animals. The worst part is, on Indian programming at night, Discovery Channel joins many of the other channels in selling miracle drugs from the amazon forest, magnets that will cure your arthritis, crystals that will improve your mood and win you friends, as well as pushing all kinds of televangelists. Yes, at night Discovery Channel basically stoops to the level of most Indian programming in becoming a god channel (not that their day time programming is a huge improvement!)
There is a science show I quite like that used to come on BBC world (it’s a PBS show), called Rough Science. They put a bunch of scientists on a deserted location with some junk parts lying around, and they have an ambitious task, like predicting the weather or exploring the sea floor. Definitely worth watching.
Also, why the big bang theory bashing? That show is actually remarkably spot on in terms of getting the science right. Stereotypes aside, it’s a pleasure to watch if you’re in the mood for something that’s light and fluffy while not dumbing things down. I’m a physics grad student, I’ve seen all the episodes so far. It’s delightfully geeky and funny, and I’ve only once spotted an inaccuracy with the physics (I think they once mentioned something as having a temperature that was below absolute zero.. unless they were talking fahrenheit, which is just gross.) In any case, it’s a huge improvement over shows like Numbers, whose idea of popular science is to present ridiculous false analogies peppered with bogus buzzwords and equations. You should see the episode where they use the uncertainty principle to catch a criminal.. it gives you a pain in the insides.
Jeniffer Ouellette has a nice piece in symmetry magazine on why the big bang theory is a worthwhile show.
Aatish, possibly one’s somewhat arcane British sense of humour does not quite appreciate the nature of modern American humour as typified by The Big Bang Theory. I sat through it with my face untroubled by a smile.
I have not had the pleasure of ‘Numbers’, but if it causes you internal discomfort I shall certainly give it a miss.
Congratulations on your entertaining and, sadly, accurate description of what we can see of science in contemporary TV programming.
To be fair, there are programs where one can identify Magical Results Machine as DNA sequencer, XREF analyzer, IR or mass spectrometer, or HPLC (including the manufacturer, which might be significant), albeit remarkably fast and with entertaining (or annoying) sound effects and visual presentation (instead of boring, functional ones we are used to)...
While British television appears to suffer from the omission of science, U.S. programming often commits outright errors of science. On our side of the pond, if one receives a television signal by cable or satellite, there are several channels which offer shows claiming to discuss “real” science.
Many of these shows are focused on some aspect of medicine. Others illustrate the environment and ecology of various non-urban locations around the planet, and feature (often extremely impressive) photography of indigenous fauna. Archeology, Cultural Anthropology, and occasionally origins of our universe and planet are discussed. In the last few years, the writers of these shows have discovered modern geology, and programs discussing this science have appeared.
This being my own field, I watch most of these “geoscience” programs, and I am often distressed by them. Critical information is sometimes left out, especially when it might temper melodramatic decriptions of a geologic hazard; hypotheses which are still considered unresolved in the geologic community are represented as fact; and scientists interviewed for the program sometimes seem to be chosen by their screen presence rather than their level of recognized scholarship. In fact, my husband will often not watch them with me, tiring of my exclamations of “BS!” and “What are they smoking?”
This causes me to observe all those other science programs with an extremely skeptical eye. I can’t expect that the shows focused on other fields are perhaps more accurate in fact and tone.
Mr Darwin, may I suggest that some of your correspondants who think that Tomorrow’s World was good might be wearing rose tinted spectacles.
Certainly, in the days when Messrs Baxter and Woolard used to point at interesting gear trains with their pens it was educational but in the latter days of Maggie Philbin and Judith Haan the standard slipped. The show reduced science to such a folksy, non-challenging level that it became so dim-witted that subjects became more obscure.
I remember a whole segment about quantum cryptography in which the words quantum and uncertainty priciple were absent, indeed it was only afterwards that I realised that it was Mr Heisenberg’s principle that was under discussion. In short they used to reduce the nature of modern scientific developments to Magic Results Machines.
I suggest that the problem with catering to the lowest common denominator only serves to lower the common denominator.
Dear Mr Darwin
Tomorrow’s World was best before the computer became generally available, and you could actually see what was going on inside the various innovations and inventions demonstrated. Once computers arrived, the innovations were invariably a series of peripherals controlled by software, and the program became a series of Magic Results Machines – not very televisual, and rather boring. Not like my latest green innovation, even if the Magic Results Machines turn grass into excrement, are furry and run around, squeaking. More, I venture, in common with your own experiments on earthworms, concerning which I remind the younger Gees when we decant freshly made compost from our wormery.
Your servant, etc. etc.
I propose that one day soon, another of their magic results machine, probably a version of Photoshop -i, will give them the ability to obtain a fingerprint from a reflection of the perp’s thumb in a dirty brass doorknob in a photograph taken by a camera phone in a moving car.
H will remove his sunglasses, step to his good side, squint at the setting sun, and say, “Can you clean that up for me?”
“Sure thing, Aitch.”
“Good work. Print it.”