communicating science to public more

Communicating science to the public? More like an advertising blitz.

Sad to say, I'm not being metaphorical.

I nearly drove off the road this morning listening to this story on

Morning Edition about the ways ads (especially for Hollywood movies)

are permeating more bits of our lives. This general thesis does not

surprise me in the least. (For the record, the studio marketing folks

are upfront that this is what they're doing. Serves us right for

fast-forwarding through the commercials.)

The part that really raised my ire was the story's poster boy for just

how far the imbedded advertising has gone, Jack Horner, the Curator

for Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies. Horner has been a

consultant for the Jurassic Park movies. I'm actually glad they hired

a professional here (especially since most of Michael Crichton's

scientific expertise, apparently, is in climate science). But, it

turns out, Universal Studios wanted more than just information about

dinosaurs from Horner. They also wanted hype. And, seeing as how they

gave Horner "a nice tidy sum" (in Horner's own words), they got it.

Horner was part of a team that had discovered remains of a really big

Tyrannosaurus Rex, and he agreed to delay announcement of the

discovery to coincide with the release of the third Jurassic Park

movie. Indeed, he didn't just delay the announcement -- he agreed to

fudge the discovery date by several weeks to coincide with the press

build-up to the movie's release.

Horner allowed as how this would not have been an acceptable thing to

do in a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. But, to his

mind, what appears in the popular press is meaningless. Quoth Horner,

"You can go to the press with anything and they'll publish it." He

wasn't lying, at least not to anyone that mattered. He was "sitting on

a little media hype" to satisfy the studio which, he was quick to

point out, provided funds that made lots of Horner's research

possible. And Horner says this is "within reason as far as I'm

concerned."

Horner is probably right that discovering a big T. Rex makes more of a

splash in the sixth grade class than it does in the world of

paleontology. Moreover, there is probably less interest in the precise

date the fossils were unearthed (what's a few weeks in geological

time?) than in what the fossils themselves might teach us. And, it's

worth noting, Horner's discovery never made it to the scholarly

scientific literature, with or without accurate details about when it

happened. Nonetheless, there's something unsettling about Horner's

attitude.

In the story, Thomas Holtz, a T. Rex expert at the University of

Maryland, articulated a central concern:

We're in the business of presenting observations and facts. And

although it's a trivial fact, you know, once you start doing that, who

knows what else will follow? I hope nothing worse ... and honestly, I

don't see what advantage it gives them, either.

So, let's compile Dr. Free-Ride's list of reasons to think Jack Horner

has sold his scientific soul (or at least delivered the first

installment to Universal):

1. Serious scientists are honest about the facts.

2. Serious scientists are at least a little open-minded about what

facts will end up being important. It is possible that the date on

which fossils were discovered could end up being important.

(Remember that fossilized angel Lisa Simpson discovered on the

school trip? It turned out to be relevant that she discovered it

after it was planted by the developers of the new shopping mall.)

3. Serious scientist can sit on hype without resorting to lies about

what they're hyping.

4. Serious scientist will at least try not to let the "nice tidy sum"

the funder provides influence the findings themselves.

5. Serious scientists are concerned enough about objectivity that

they will resist the temptation to engage in trivial fudging. (The

first fudged fact is always the hardest...)

6. Serious scientists ought to understand that misleading the public

-- whether about the scientific facts, or into thinking that the

community of science would see this kind of fib as A-OK -- is a

very bad idea. The public funds a lot of science. The public also

funds science education in the colleges and universities. And, the

public makes all sorts of decisions about how science will be

taught in elementary and secondary schools. Refrain from messing

with their heads!

7. Serious scientists ought not to abuse their power as scientists,

even if it is expedient to do so in order to serve their corporate

masters.

Let me say more about the abuse.

When Horner said "You can go to the press with anything and they'll

publish it, " I don't think he meant anyone can go to the press with

anything and get it published. I can't, and I'm both an academic and a

responsible adult. Instead, I think he really meant that a

credentialed scientist like himself, with a curatorial post (and a

1986 fellowship from The MacArthur Foundation) could get the press to

publish anything. He's probably right. But, presumably, the reason the

press would publish anything Jack Horner handed them is that there is

a reasonable presumption that credentialed scientists with curatorial

posts and MacArthur fellowships don't make up the stuff in their press

releases! So, it's not really fair to say the popular press is to

blame for delivering us garbage about science when scientists take

advantage of the credulity of the popular press to deliver that

garbage to the editors.

(An aside: Here's the beginning of the Overview of the MacArthur

Fellows Program:

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to

talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and

dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for

self-direction.

Does fudging a detail like when a scientific finding occurred count as

creativity? Does doing Universal Studios' bidding count as

self-direction? If the MacArthur Foundation had a time machine, would