Popular science
From RationalWiki
Popular science, often shortened to just pop science, is the result of making science accessible to the wider public - or at least accessible to people with non-expert knowledge. There are many books, films and short television documentaries that fall under this category. It most certainly should not be confused with pseudoscience.
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[edit] Good v. bad
Obviously, pop science requires that a lot of the complexity of scientific theories and understanding must be removed for a lay or non-expert audience to understand it. It takes months of lectures, revision and exercises for a dedicated science student to get to grips with the mathematics of their fields, and years for the consequences of the theories they study to become second nature. With popular science, the aim is to cut out what isn't necessary to understand a theory or to convey it in a way that leads to understanding far more quickly. Mathematics is often one of these barriers that has to be removed in popular science. In A Brief History of Time,[1] for example, Stephen Hawking remarks how he was told that every equation that he included in the book would halve its sales,[2] and thus, he kept only a brief mention of E=mc2 in the introduction. On the other hand, mathematics can sometimes be simplified, or introduced slowly, as is the case in Why Does E=mc2,[3] where the maths are explained with almost patronising simplicity (although they repeatedly apologise for it). This simplification or cutting of finer details invariably leads to mixed results. Popular science can be the source of many misconceptions about scientific theories when done badly - often a theory can be misrepresented by a pop science writer wanting to over-emphasize the sensational aspects of it - but it can cement ideas and perceptions in the public mind when done well.
[edit] Magazines
Much of the public experience with popular science comes through magazines, which range from the generally good (Discover until recently), to the unreadable (Scientific American), to those with an unfortunate tendency to run far too many sensationalistic articles on pseudoscience (most of the rest).
Omni magazine (part of the Bob Guccione/Penthouse family of publications, published 1978-1995) was one of the worst in this regard, and Science Digest (defunct as of 1988) wasn't much better. Both were fond of trying to pass off silly material on UFOs, ESP, shamanism, and other such subjects as "science". Another popular magazine, appropriately enough titled Popular Science, tends more toward coverage of cutting edge consumer products and hobbyist projects than pure science. Scientific American is more of a pure science magazine, but many find it unreadable and others find it too eager to push an agenda, as in their unwarranted attacks on Bjorn Lomborg's environmental writings. Discover attempted to bridge the gap between Scientific American and Popular Science by combining the latter's readability with the former's coverage of pure science, but it has since gone through several changes of ownership (one of whom was former Omni publisher Bob Guccione, since ousted), and in recent years has drifted away from skepticism and too much into speculative science woo.
The high prestige of the major pop science magazines has lead to them being confused with peer review journals. Therefore people often take the contents of National Geographic or New Scientist to be true and accurate. This is especially prominent in the anti science world, where mistakes made in popular magazines are given undue prominence as if they were serious mistakes in high-class journals. The evidence surrounding Piltdown Man, for example, was never published in peer reviewed literature, despite appropriate journals existing from the 1920s onwards. Although these magazines often do report was has been published and accepted in the proper literature, they also mix this with other forms of journalism so people should always bare this in mind and take each story for what it is, a news report, a lay summary of a paper, an interview and so on.
[edit] Television
Television is another outlet for popular science, perhaps best typified by the 1980 Cosmos TV series and the accompanying book by Carl Sagan. Cosmos has been one of the most enduring and influential introductions to popular science for billions and billions of people, which is probably a good thing because the science behind it is sound and well presented. Similarly the PBS' Nova series and the BBC Horizon program have a similar reputation for quality, although the latter has been criticized for concentrating too much on the drama in recent years (and repeating itself every 10 minutes). The Sky at Night is a monthly television programme on astronomy produced by the BBC. The show has had the same permanent presenter, Sir Patrick Moore (who also plays the xylophone), from its first airing on 24 April 1957, making it the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history.
This high degree of quality is not the case with far too many other television "science" series; the 1976-1982 series In Search Of having been a notorious promoter of cryptozoology, pyramid woo, and worse.
Popular science, mostly of the good kind, is the main theme of cable/subscription television channels like the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel and National Geographic's various channels. Although good quality, they tend to play to viewer tastes by emphasizing shows involving adventure and danger in topics ranging from crab fishing to storm chasing.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Amazon - A Brief History of Time
- ↑ Though this is obviously not literally true, as it would have led to many bestsellers having sold a quarter of a copy.
- ↑ Amazon - Why Does E=mc2
