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Making science accessible and scientists human

The Reference Frame “What Is Science?” by Helen Quinn (Physics Today, July 2009, page 8) misfires, from opening paragraph to final sentence.

I have instructed elementary and junior-high students in general science,
 conducted planetarium and backyard astronomy sessions, given workshops for
 homeschoolers, presented maritime history and whaling technology to museum
 visitors, assisted a class in celestial navigation for sailors, conducted
 robotics workshops for middle-school science teachers, and judged middle-school
 science fairs. This diversity has afforded a wide opportunity to hear and ask
 what people think of science.

Most people do not see science and scientists as Quinn believes: “an authority that provides some information . . . that they use to help make
 sense of their world.” Most of us do not distinguish between scientist and engineer. We tend to view
 science and technology as an endless source for nifty new gadgets and medical
 miracles. Other nonscientists perceive science as the emotionless underlying
 source of war and environmental destruction that often wastes tax revenue by
 examining frivolities. Most of us no longer ask Why? or How? The questions now
 are Why can’t I? and How much will it cost?

Quinn’s sense is that the public’s excitement for science can be ignited by expanding the “usual description of the scientific method” to include the notion that it is an iterative, cyclical process incrementally
 increasing one’s insight into the workings of the universe and by including token examples of
 missteps to show that scientists are human. That concept would fall flatter
 than Euclid’s plane on nearly everyone I have worked with. Even if her suggestion that
 revealing scientists’ fallibilities were an effective means to titillate a wider interest in science,
 her dry examples pale against letters and responses in the same issue (page
 10).

People pursue science for many of the same reasons they do anything else. Some
 are drawn to the intellectual stimulation; others hope to better mankind;
 others want to make a buck, gain power, or advance an agenda. The need for “absolute honesty” and the other admirable characteristics Quinn relates aren’t exclusive to scientists.

Science has lost luster not because scientists are fallible, but because much of
 it is so far removed from daily experience that the gap seems unbridgeable and
 therefore suspect. Quantum mechanics and string theory, despite their impact on
 us all, are arcane realms that cannot be discussed at dinner beyond tabloid
 fabrications, and we seem to lack scientists who can or will bridge that chasm.


Quinn further attempts to justify science’s isolation from endeavors such as philosophy and politics by explaining that
 scientific rational methods, and hence scientists, are necessarily limited to
 narrow pursuit of one type of knowledge. That explanation may be accurate.
 However, to the rest of us it sounds like scientists want to experiment
 unfettered on our dime, unleash hurried results to meet grant deadlines, and
 then claim immunity because “moral and ethical questions are not amenable to the methods of science.” How does abandoning ordinary folks to bear the full weight of difficult ethical
 decisions advance the stature of science?

Rather than merely noting “the public’s feeling that science is always changing its conclusions,” scientists need to explain the escalating stream of contradictory studies
 bewildering most of us. The media portrays such nonsense in terms of this week’s miracle diet becoming next week’s tragic mistake. Most scientists avoid such frays and leave us nonscientists to
 draw our own misinterpretations. That does not garner public interest. Part of
 the price for public support of research is routine explanations of how it’s going to those footing the bills.

A disconnected, arid appeal to scientists to reiterate the usual academic line
 will not get many laypeople excited about science. People get excited about a
 subject when they actively share others’ enthusiasm and passion about it. The participation and enthusiasm must be
 genuine; even very young children readily sense gimmicky “experiments” and feigned hyper-excitement designed to entice them. Yet the simplest hands-on
 explorations of basic questions, combined with the challenge that many of those
 questions still lie unanswered, can foster lifelong interests and understanding
 that enhances support for science. I have seen the success of such a process.

Much of the essay by Helen Quinn on the teaching of science deals with the field’s overall structure and process. She seems to downplay the importance of the
 human side of science; she mentions it only briefly at the end of her essay and
 in a negative way that involves jumping to conclusions, making mistakes, faking
 data, and committing fraud. After 31 years of teaching physics at a community
 college, I am convinced that it is important to stress that science is a human
 endeavor. By doing so, we can make science far more interesting and far less
 intimidating to students.

If we portray science in too perfect an image, how could any student feel
 capable of pursuing it? And if a scientist is perceived as a cold and logical
 thinking machine, why would any student want to be one? I think good
 biographies of scientists should be required reading in introductory science
 courses so that students see their humanity. It’s good, too, for teachers to show their own human sides and tell students about
 mistakes they’ve made in their careers. I am not advocating that the approach be too casual,
 but we should make it clear that mistakes are a part of every human endeavor
 and that if a student does not do well on a particular quiz or messes up one
 experiment, it does not mean that the student is a failure. Let us not
 exaggerate the “perfection” of science and scientists.

Helen Quinn’s Reference Frame points in a useful direction, and it certainly improves on the
 typical middle-school oversimplification of what scientists do and how and why
 they do it. However, it maintains one idealization: that we lab scientists
 choose our problems based on a desire for understanding and consistency. In
 many cases, driven by funding imperatives, we choose our problems based on the
 needs of nonscientists. In those situations, we cast our choices in such a
 light that nonscientists will believe we are solving their problems. For
 example, SLAC might not have been built or maintained were it not perceived by
 the public that particle physics has practical consequences.