They could call it…the videomicro? The…it’s nearly there, I have it…the microscope!
What is that Ugly? (Ugly is my talking marine iguana. I smuggled him back from the Galapagos.) Van Leeuwenhoek did invent such an instrument? And I took one on HMS Beagle in 1831? That there are electron microscopes capable of looking inside cells? That whole disciplines do in fact work on microscopic science? There are winsome children stuck down a disused mineshaft?
I mention this because I became childishly excited this weekend when NASA launched a space shuttle which I watched live on BBC News. I found it a feat of astonishing scientific and engineering brilliance, and when this morning I mentioned it to some acquaintances they were most indifferent. Before watching the shuttle launch I had spent an equally astonishing two hours watching In the shadow of the moon which related NASA’s successful efforts to land man on the moon. Again, it was stated that before long the novelty wore off and the public rapidly became bored with the Apollo program.
Hugely impressive, but I am unwilling to gush about it lest I perpetuate BSC: Big Science Chauvinism. Looking at the BBC Science and Nature webpage – possibly a resource of first resort for the layperson looking for scientific enlightenment – one would think that the microscope had not been invented. That chemists do not exist, that atoms and molecules mere figments of the imagination. Physics and their troublesome equations, laws and particles? As elusive as that Higgs Boson. Geneticists, biochemists and microbiologists evidently do nothing of worth (unless it is related to a ‘superbug’).
Today’s coverage of science is:
Space shuttle launch
Skynet satellite launch postponed
Progress at biodiversity forum
Giant trees to clear CO2
Record spin for newfound asteroid
Stonehenge ‘long-term cemetery’
Strong earthquake rocks Iceland
New EU states want CO2 revision
Ships re-write temperature chart
Mars lander flexes its robot arm
Monkey’s brain controls robot arm
Ex-adviser backs nuclear increase
Toilet trouble for space station
Berlin unveils ‘crewed spaceship’
All large, visible science although some of it is barely science at all. Some plumbing news appears to have crept in: the reduction of the space shuttle launch to a sniggering wee-wee story by the media was quite dispiriting.
Were I currently a member of the huge community of scientists whose work is in the realm of the microscopic, I would rend my labcoat at the indifference of editors to my work. There are occasional glimmers:
A glance at The Guardian and Mr Randerson is to be congratulated for reporting the discovery of bacteria a mile below the seabed.
The Telegraph informs us of gut flora that may help diabetes.
In The Times a scientist finds a world in a grain of sand (using a microscope) and a columnist asks can science save us from the NHS? , a report on possible measures to prevent one catching ‘superbugs’ on going into hospital.
I link to these few stories on microscopic science for the sake of balance and to show that they are in the minority, but there is certainly a big-science bias in popular science reporting. Possibly those whose work takes them inside cells (and no Dr. Gee I do not mean prison officers), to the level of molecules, around atoms and the particles which make them up do not burn to see their work subject to a lucid report on a rising page in a newspaper, or prominently displayed on that newspaper’s website. But I suspect they do.
The Times article is rather curious – it raises the prospect of a technological solution, but the research it mentions are miles away from that. It also ignores improving hygiene (as Nick from London observes in the comments), which is something that might actually work now, rather than in 5 years time.
I absolutely second your comments about the over-emphasis on big science, but for HoS accuracy, van Leeuvenhoek didn’t invent the microscope – in fact, he used a stand-mounted magnifying glass for most of his work. Hans and Zacharias Janssen assembled one of the first compound microscopes around 1590, well before van L was in action.
I drink my first coffee of the day corrected Brian. Ah but Bob, isn’t a technological solution much more exciting than merely washing one’s hands?
I guess that depends on how much gaffer tape is involved.
“The smaller the better” is the title of the Nature Methods editorial this month (June), which features a special issue on single-molecule analysis. (Comments are invited at Methagora, the journal’s blog).
I wonder if the un-named author of the Times’s “science in a grain of sand” article would find these pieces of interest? Probably not. As you write, they aren’t stars or superbugs.
Dear Mr Darwin, you raise a question that is vexed indeed. Macroscopic science does have a certain ready-made appeal because, I guess, it is most easily connected with human experience. We have all wondered at the stars above but few have had the privilege to peer at the universe of wonder that is to be found within a single living cell.
As someone who works more at the nanoscale, visualising the molecules that the cells are made of, I am frustrated that it is not easier to convey the aesthetic pleasure not to mention the scientific excitement of this wholly diverting past-time. But then, there is a huge conceptual leap to be made by even the most interested lay-person from the realm of the everyday to the kingdom of the atom and the molecule. Somehow we must find ways to bridge that gulf… though I concede not everyone is wholly enamored with our molecular friends!
Dear Mr Darwin, You must have been preoccupied with the publication of your journal of the Voyage of the Beagle because in that year the The Microscopical Society of London (from 1866 the Royal Microscopical Society) was founded. This organisation continues to support and promote the microworld and its observation and interpretation by scientists.
Bob, on HMS Beagle we found that the constrictor knot did admirable service. I have recently been in one of our august scientific institutions and was surprised to see a more than one machine with its lid held on by a knotted webbing strap (the knots would have made Beagle’s bosun stare, I believe). The spirit of improvisation is alive and well in our scientific institutions.
Mr Derby, my own bulldog Mt Huxley was famed for his application to his microscope. It is not the lack of recognition within science that cause last night’s agitation, it was their almost complete absence from media reports and as such from the public consciousness. I do not believe it is a lack of interest in the microscopic in science reporters, I suspect the indifference lies in the demesne of the news editor, the editor.
I watched – again – in the shadow of the moon just tonight, and felt its power once again. What a masterpiece.
I had to get it in the UK. The DVD was not distributed in Italy. Not yet.