Popularizing Science

Posted on November 12, 2007 by woit

While it’s not one of my main goals in life, I’m all in favor of the idea of popularizing science and making it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. But sometimes I do wonder about the kind of things scientists get involved with when they try and do this. Just this morning I ran into these stories about science that make me ask myself:

  • Is it a good idea for physicists to appear on a radio show discussing what happened before the big bang, or does the lack of any evidence about this or of a convincing model mean that this is just inherently too speculative a topic to be sold as serious science to a wide audience? Should one perhaps leave this topic to the Bogdanovs?
  • Is it a good idea for physicists to promote to the public their work on time travel? Or might this also give the public some misleading ideas about science? (via i postdoc, therefore I am, but there seems to be a whole genre of “time travel” books written by theoretical physicists).
  • Is it a good idea for physicists to appear on a TV show explaining the forces involved in crushing beer cans, as part of a segment on whether women can crush beer cans with their breasts? Especially physicist bloggers known for attacking other physicist bloggers for their sexism and media-inflated nonsense? (via here and here)
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    70 Responses to Popularizing Science

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    1. anon. says:
      November 12, 2007 at 4:16 pm

      ‘Is it a good idea for physicists to appear on a TV show explaining the forces involved in crushing beer cans, as part of a segment on whether women can crush beer cans with their breasts? Especially physicist bloggers known for attacking other physicist bloggers for their sexism and media-inflated nonsense? (via here and here).’

      The third link doesn’t seem to work? It goes to a page with videos like ‘How tiny can a G-String be before it becomes illegal?’

      This seems to be related to issues of string theory, seeing that the strings of string theory have zero width.

      Is the illegality of a G-string a metaphor for the illegality of string theory when promoted as being a scientific theory?

    2. Jonathan Vos Post says:
      November 12, 2007 at 5:07 pm

      You fool! You’ve given away the secret that women crushing beer cans with their breasts leads to time travel to before the Big Bang.

      Of course, that’s because aluminum beer cans filled with virtual squids become gravity wave detectors, as the Joseph Weber/Bob Forward gravity-wave detection apparatus of 1969 was enhanced by SQUID detectors, as Hawking and Thorne deduced when Forward tunneled to an alternate universe where he was a best-selling Science Fiction author…

      The g-string hotlink had to be disabled, else your readers would Know Too Much about Bikini Atoll.

      Oh, wait a minute. So long as your audience is sure that we are joking, then we don’t have to kill you. Which is good, because we think you can be useful in fighting the invaders from E8.

    3. Coin says:
      November 12, 2007 at 5:31 pm

      On points one and two, I would say that the answer is sure, as long as the physicists in question are unambiguous about exactly how speculative their responses are. People are always more interested in hearing about bleeding-edge speculative stuff than they are in hearing about stuff that already works– once something is understood it’s no longer “news”. Focusing on such speculations can even (if done carefully) advance “normal” science literacy, since once the “hook” of the speculative science is in place this can be used as an excuse to feed the listener some “normal” science to explain how the speculative science works. It’s like getting the dog to swallow a pill by wrapping it in bacon.

      The case of Dr. Mallett in specific however maybe should count as an exception considering that there are so many basic unanswered criticisms of his work out there that I don’t think he could accurately present the extent to which his work is speculative, short of actually saying “this is science fiction”. Still I guess this too would be a matter of how it is presented. “If you can get me a naked singularity or a fiber-optic cable of infinite length, I can build you a time machine” would be a legitimate and interesting pop-science way of presenting this work, I guess, but leaving out those little details would seem to constitute dishonesty. I don’t know what tack was taken in the article because no hablo alemán.

      I have no comment on point three.

    4. Peter Woit says:
      November 12, 2007 at 5:56 pm

      Coin,

      One problem is that I’ve never once seen a physicist discussing highly speculative work in the media accurately explain how speculative it was. Even if people do make disclaimers like this to reporters, that’s the kind of thing that ends up getting cut in whatever appears.

      Sure, many people would rather hear about science fiction than science (no, not all people are this way, some actually like the real thing…). The problem with feeding them science wrapped in science fiction is that they ignore the science and pay attention only to the tasty science fiction morsel they are being encouraged to pay attention to. And they then end up unable to tell the difference between science and science fiction.

    5. dragon says:
      November 12, 2007 at 8:43 pm

      Comparing Carroll, Steinhardt, Khoury, and Brandenberger with the Bogdanovs doesn’t really do a lot for your own credibility. In fact it looks very much like the kind of thing that Lubos Motl would say.

    6. a quantum diaries survivor says:
      November 13, 2007 at 2:22 am

      Hi Peter,

      indeed, good question your #3. I think we can forgive Clifford for having been fooled a little by the soft porn business – his goals were commendable, and he does not seem to bother much if I read him correctly in his blog.

      I think Clifford’s will to appear on a TV show for guys way offset a critical assessment of the use they were likely to make of his good science explanations.

      Cheers,
      T.

    7. milkshake says:
      November 13, 2007 at 2:33 am

      I am all for further elucidating the breast-crushing forces acting on a beer can. Unlike the two previous examples, it is all a healthy fun and no laymen are being blinded by science in the process.

    8. Pingback: Reading between Woit’s lines; risking one’s credibility by challenging the establishment line, even in a small way « Bob Dudesky

    9. anon. says:
      November 13, 2007 at 5:25 am

      ‘Comparing Carroll, Steinhardt, Khoury, and Brandenberger with the Bogdanovs doesn’t really do a lot for your own credibility. In fact it looks very much like the kind of thing that Lubos Motl would say.’ – dragon

      Dragon, your comparison here of PW to LM doesn’t really do very much for your credibility either! The Bogdanov’s come into this for their book, Before the Big bang. BTW, Professor Ernest Sternglass of Uni. Pittsburgh has a similarly titled book, which is more exciting as it contains lengthy discussions of Sternglass’ meetings with Albert Einstein who advised him to ‘be stubborn’ and with R. P. Feynman; who blew his top when Sternglass admitted he hadn’t bothered to completely work out the consequences of his theory before trying to get interest in it.

    10. moron says:
      November 13, 2007 at 5:30 am

      While it’s not one of my main goals in life, I’m all in favor of the idea of popularizing science

      That’s good, because you’ve done nothing but accomplish the exact opposite: unpopularizing science (and popularizing un-science.)

    11. anon. says:
      November 13, 2007 at 5:42 am

      moron, you merely disagree with the following definition of science:

      ‘Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.’ – Feynman.

      (Smolin quotes that on p307 of the US edition of his latest book.)

      Your attitude is very much in the Ptolemic mindset: that anyone asking being critical about mainstream so-called ‘science’ is doing a disservice to science, rather than the exact opposite. (Guess we’ll just have to politely agree to disagree on this one … if you know how to behave.)

    12. Anders R says:
      November 13, 2007 at 6:07 am

      un-science?

    13. Richard Feynman says:
      November 13, 2007 at 7:03 am

      ‘Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.’ – Feynman.

      Thank God someone, after all these years, finally interpreted my quote correctly!

      Yes, indeed, “anon.” is right (though Heaven knows why he would want to remain anonymous and forego having such brilliant insights attributed to him):

      I meant to say, “Science is the organized credulity towards the reliability of fraud-and-crackpot opinion. The mark of a great scientific idea is a complete lack of any comprehensible relation to what many others have successfully done before.” In fact, I would specifically have mentioned loop quantum gravity as the apotheosis of great scientific thinking, but I was too jealous to give them their rightful place in the sun. After all, when inventing quantum electrodynamics, I foolishly relied on the so-called “expert” opinion that said any new theory describing the interaction of charged matter with light would have to be tied down to the moribund ideas of such so-called “experts” as Einstein, Dirac, and Maxwell who claimed — without any evidence or logic whatsoever — that relativity, quantum mechanics, and classical electrodynamics would all have to be applicable in the appropriate regimes of validity.

      If only I had been a true “seer” like Lee Smolin, who wisely dispensed with such garbage!
      , and a stern refusal to ground one’s work in the

    14. dagon says:
      November 13, 2007 at 8:09 am

      “Comparing Carroll, Steinhardt, Khoury, and Brandenberger with the Bogdanovs doesn’t really do a lot for your own credibility. In fact it looks very much like the kind of thing that Lubos Motl would say.’’

      Anon, Dragon,

      Indeed, it’s quite misleading (and dishonest) to lump Carroll, Steinhardt, Khoury and Brandenberger in with the Bogdanovs. They are all serious and well-respected scientists and the post made no effort to distinguish between these kinds of scientists and the Bogdanovs. Anon, you may argue that the connection is simply the title of the book but I think that the innuendo of the post is quite clear and very insulting.

    15. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 8:57 am

      dragon/dagon,

      I’m well aware of the difference between Carroll, et al. and the Bogdanovs and was not saying that they are the same. But I’ll stick to what I did say: until there is some relevant data or a convincing model for physics before the big bang, serious scientists should avoid going to the popular media to promote their extremely speculative work in this area. When they do this, I don’t think they help the cause of science, but blur the distinction in people’s minds between real science and its Bogdanovian varieties.

    16. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 9:14 am

      moron/Richard Feynman,

      Sorry to see that some of your anti-Lee Smolin rant got cut off by the blog software.

      I don’t think “science” is in any danger of being “unpopularized” by anything either Smolin or I have done. What is in danger of being “unpopularized” is a specific subfield of science. To the extent that is actually happening it’s less due to me and Smolin than to the behavior of people like yourself, who from the most illustrious and respected research institutions in the world, post idiotic comments here using stupid pseudonyms to remain anonymous and avoid taking any responsibility for their own behavior. Between this kind of thing, Lubos Motl, Lenny Susskind and the widespread promotion of anthropic pseudo-science, yes, a previously respected sub-field of science is in real danger of being “unpopularized”.

    17. fh says:
      November 13, 2007 at 10:19 am

      It should exactly NOT be left to the Bogdanovs! To the laymen it is at first glance not obvious that the Bogdanovs are crackpot, if we say serious scientists shouldn’t dabble in this speculative realms we leave them precisely to these people who are certainly not going to bother to infuse their presentations with caveats or down to earth science.

    18. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 10:26 am

      fh,

      Again, the problem I see is that serious scientists who go to the public with this kind of material just are not bothering to include appropriate caveats.

    19. moroner says:
      November 13, 2007 at 11:02 am

      >un-science?<

      maybe he means string theory?

    20. Anonymous says:
      November 13, 2007 at 12:45 pm

      Oh please make them stop! It makes one’s job so much harder, obligating one to first unteach one’s students the nonsense Kaku and his ilk spew on the media. I am disappointed in some of the new names who have joined that club.

      I have a non-scientist friend who is truly interested in Physics. He reads popular articles and spends time trying to understand the ideas behind them. Every time I see him, he mentions some article he read about the latest in multiverses or whatnot, and I find myself in the unenviable position of having to declare his hard-earned insights illusory. For what they do to people like him, these pseudophysicists should share a special circle of hell with charlatan preachers and quacks.

    21. Bee says:
      November 13, 2007 at 12:57 pm

      I know I’ve said it before, but I want to repeat it again. This is not a problem that emerges in the scientific community, but just a reflection of a general sociological trend. If anything, it is surprising how long it took the popularity-drug to get into the ivory tower. It is worrisome though that even though dangers of these developments are immediately apparent, little people are able or willing to do something about it. Writing a blog post like this is better than nothing – at least it raises awareness for the issue – but on the long run it’s not going to be sufficient.

    22. Bee says:
      November 13, 2007 at 1:04 pm

      oh, and if somebody could please let me know how one ‘unpopularizes’ things, I’d really like to hear. There’s this immortal believe around that Einstein was wrong (with whatever), I’d really like to unpopularize that because my spam filter doesn’t catch most of such crap and it’s somewhat annoying. Thanks, B.

    23. Anonymous Person (AP) says:
      November 13, 2007 at 1:21 pm

      We should all grow up a little on all sides. If you are going to embarrass yourself on TV, then get paid for it! This idea that you are ‘popularizing’ science when you go on TV is naive. You are advertising science. That is what is happening.

      Second, for those thinking that the public having an incorrect assumption about your silly little subject is somehow of paramount importance, it’s really not. It has no practical importance really. The idea is to have people continuing to give money to support scientific causes. The reasons they might be doing this, whether it’s because of extra universes or time machines or whatever is totally besides the point.

      Please all of you who are advertising science, continue to expand the pool of money I have available to me! (Sing for my supper?)

    24. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 1:55 pm

      AP,

      I agree that it probably is best to conceptualize what people are doing as “advertising” rather than “popularizing” their work, since the emphasis is typically more on selling the product than on explaining its features. My concern is that the sales tactics being used are ruining the brand, with possible future consumer backlash, or even intervention from the Federal Trade Commission…

    25. Kea says:
      November 13, 2007 at 2:29 pm

      Doesn’t sound scientific to me. Heh, I’m muscular and buxom, but I don’t believe I have such physical capabilities….

    26. Anonymnous says:
      November 13, 2007 at 3:49 pm

      “Second, for those thinking that the public having an incorrect assumption about your silly little subject is somehow of paramount importance, it’s really not. It has no practical importance really. The idea is to have people continuing to give money to support scientific causes. The reasons they might be doing this, whether it’s because of extra universes or time machines or whatever is totally besides the point.” – AP

      This kind of attitude might be expected from a politician or televangelist. My layman friend does care to know something fact-based about the way the universe works. If I understand you correctly, you are just too happy to reap personal profit, even if indirectly, from his being misled and lied to.

    27. dagon says:
      November 13, 2007 at 6:52 pm

      Peter,

      “I’m well aware of the difference between Carroll, et al. and the Bogdanovs and was not saying that they are the same. ”

      That’s a little like arguing that Bush never claimed that there was a connection between 9-11 and Iraq. Maybe you didn’t explicitly say it but it’s clear from the post that you intended to paint them all with the same brush. I was just trying to point out that doing so is extremely non-collegial. Moreover, I’m not sure it does a great deal of good for the lay-public to intentionally try to blur the lines between serious physicists like Carroll et al. and crackpots like the Bogdanovs.

    28. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 7:04 pm

      dagon,

      You’re intent on attacking me personally, based on things I did not write, do not think, and do not believe that any reasonable person would interpret my words as meaning. If you want to argue with what I actually did write, go ahead, but anonymous attacks based on accusations of insinuations that exist only in your mind are pretty sleazy behavior.

    29. zorba says:
      November 13, 2007 at 9:26 pm

      I think that a “reasonable person” would interpret

      “this is just inherently too speculative a topic to be sold as serious science to a wide audience? Should one perhaps leave this topic to the Bogdanovs? ”

      as meaning [a] this is not “serious” science, and that [b] “this topic” is for crackpots. What other interpretation is possible? Did you really want to say , “when I say “sold as serious science”, I don’t mean that it isn’t serious science, I just mean that, whatever it is, it should not be *sold* as serious science, even if it is serious science. Furthermore, when I say “this topic” I don’t really mean work on early universe physics, what I really mean is…..umm…. something else…..”
      Oh. I see.

      Your subsequent “When they do this, I don’t think they help the cause of science, but blur the distinction in people’s minds between real science and its Bogdanovian varieties.”

      doesn’t really do much for me. Basically the show presented four competing views of the subject, which should tell any sensible layman that there is no consensus. There is not even a faint resemblance between the work of these gentlemen and bogdanovology, and the fact that you think that there is room for such a misunderstanding says more about your prejudices than about the subject.

      In a word, I think an apology is called for. Do you really want to be a party to the descent of the blogosphere into a place where people’s scientific work is exposed to this kind of unprovoked attack?

      Even shorter: not one of your better posts.

    30. Tom Whicker says:
      November 13, 2007 at 9:53 pm

      Take Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe (video) as a prime example. It goes on for about two hours and never makes a single
      coherent statement. The production is over the top, (do over saturated colors help young minds comprehend?)…
      with Greene posing as a physicist of some type. No real content,
      just the same meaningless analogies of Ants crawling around a
      long steel cable;this to show the nature of compacted dimensions. And then Greene (Moulder) sits in the Quantum Cafe and keeps getting the wrong color Colada. This is supposed to mean something about quantum theory…..

      And the voice-over just keeps re-introducing the opening premise “Could this be the Theory of Everything?!” I was reminded of the same technique used in the Von Daniken diatribes where the voice over uses the same technique of using a question to imply a non-substantiated premise, “Could this be the Work of
      Ancient Aliens?!”

      In the realm of Popularizing Science this was as big as it gets, and it delivered the equivalent of junk food to a starving world.

      Maybe some of you actually know Greene and know what he thought of the final product. Maybe he’s embarrassed. Maybe
      PBS left all the real content on the cutting room floor. Where
      was Scully when we needed her? So many questions…

    31. Tim May says:
      November 13, 2007 at 10:14 pm

      I think I’m older than most of you here (55, almost 56).

      I grew up with a strong diet of popular science, from dubious sources in the 1950s and early 60s like “Popular Science,” “Popular Mechanics,” and even “Science News” (sort of the “New Scientist” of its day). And from a lot of science fiction and “Gee Whiz” science advocacy. Picture books on astronomy, the “All About” books on science, even “Topm Swift.” And the classics of SF. Lunar bases, the drawings of Chesley Bonestell, the fantasies of Willy Ley, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, etc.

      Yeah, science fiction played a big role in my life back then, but I clearly knew that things like the Moebius strip wall in one of Clarke’s short stories was just SF, even as it helped motivate me to read Martin Gardner’s articles on topology and Moebius strips. Cool stuff for a 13-year-old. (I’ll bet most of you were similarly inspired, albeit in varying ways.) I’ll bet that some 13-year-olds today are reading Lisa Randall’s articles about colliding superbranes and getting interested in science….I just think that in the next 10-15 years they’ll get past any initial biases and will become (some of them) full-fledged scientists. No harm done.

      By the mid-60s, by the time I was about 12-14, I could separate the wishful thinking from the reality. Still, it was really, really cool (a technical word of our generation 🙂 ) to read about antimatter from Dirac’s little mongraph on “Matter and Antimatter,” which I spent my allowance on in 1966, even as “Star Trek” was beginning to air episodes where it figured in. And to read about such highly-speculative things as wormholes (via John Wheeler’s articles, and recountings of his articles, circa 1968-69).

      And who can forget the January 1970 cover of “Physics Today,” with its famous depiction of a black hole bending spacetime? (I think that was the month….)

      And so on, for Everett-Wheeler-Dewitt speculations about many worlds….

      I think physicists learn to separate what is real or remotely possible from what is implausible. The “cool” stuff is a motivator–I think even for many of you folks here–but there’s not too much danger that the pseudoscience will take over.

      Or so I think. Believe me, there was a constant barrage of unproven or speculative or pseudoscientific cruft when I was a kid, from antigravity machines to time machines to Unified Field Theory. I don’t think much harm was done to the public’s interest in funding science. At least not back then.

      (Maybe today’s voters are less inclined to fund the next generation of atom smashers. Can’t say as I blame them. But not because they got exposed to pseudoscience.)

      Meanwhile, some of the speculative stuff probably is helping to draw in a whole new generation of young physicists, who will learn quickly enough the difference between pure fantasy, the speculative but possible, and the safe path of conformity.

      I just don’t think there’s much risk that speculative science will actually mislead anyone capable of critical thought, at least not past their teenaged years.

      Interesting topic.

      –Tim May

    32. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 10:18 pm

      zorba,

      Again, from behind the cover of anonymity, you’re attacking me by making up things I never wrote or thought and that are not reasonable interpretations of what I did write. I’m not going to apologize for stupid things you or anyone else choose to make up. I’ll stand behind what I did actually write.

      Tom Whicker,

      I’m not a big fan of “The Elegant Universe” TV show, for reasons that are much the same as my concern about radio programs on “Before the Big Bang”. Highly speculative research with not a shred of experimental backing or other compelling evidence that it is correct just does not seem to me to be an appropriate topic for radio or TV shows aimed at very wide audiences.

      And please just stop it with the hostility about things like the production values and other characteristics of Brian Greene’s TV show. That’s not relevant to the issue at hand. I don’t question the dedication of Brian or the people on the CBC radio show to their science, their professionalism, or the sincerity of their desire to share with the public their enthusiasm for what they are working on. I just question whether such programs are really a good idea, for reasons that I have repeatedly explained.

    33. Peter Woit says:
      November 13, 2007 at 10:23 pm

      Tim,

      Thanks for your comments. I think you’re right that these things do play a role in inspiring some people, and that’s the best argument for them. But that’s only one side of the story and I think the other less positive side deserves some consideration.

    34. Tim May says:
      November 13, 2007 at 10:42 pm

      I agree Peter, and have been reading your blog for a couple of years now. (I only decided to start making a few comments when I felt I would not make a complete fool of myself in areas I know little of.)

      I thought Brian Greene’s 2-hour “Elegant Universe” special was pretty vague, with not much attention given to “But why do we think it’s a plausible model?” sorts of considerations, but was not all that damaging.

      It takes a fair amount of sophistication to understand the criticisms you and Lee Smolin make. (I really appreciated Lee Smolin’s fairly even-handed treatment in “Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.” His recent book was not so much to my liking, not because I’m a string theory proponent but for other reasons, too complicated to get into right here.)

      You guys, and others, and the weight of a lot of non-evidence, have done a lot to shift the debate from “String theory must be right–it’s just too beautiful to be wrong!” (my phrasing) to “Show me the money!” (someone else’s phrasing).

      Science is not a popularity contest, as many here have noted, but neither is it a “annointed by public acclaim” contest, which string theory was largely the benefit of during a certain period, roughly 1986-2003.

      Me, I’m skeptical of any current theories. I expect a theory unifying gravity and the ultrasmall comes only when we can start to (experimentally, or observationally) probe scales a whole lot closer to the Planck scale than anything we’ll see in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

      I’d love to be wrong on this.

      –Tim May

    35. Aaron Bergman says:
      November 13, 2007 at 11:11 pm

      Brian Greene’s TV show is worth it if only for the best thing ever written about string theory.

      More seriously, I understand the frustration one feels about the popularization of science. But what is the alternative? People are going to be excited about their work. Some of the best people are those who absolutely believe that what they’re working on is the right thing to be working on. If we’re going to be popularizing science, isn’t that excitement what we should be showing. Caveats are great and all that, but who remembers those things in the end? Not only that, but should we start censoring those people who aren’t sufficiently cautious in their public statements? Is Smolin OK but Greene not? Kaku but not Maguejio? You? There are going to be books. Many of them are going to make people like, say, me unhappy. But, really, if it gets people interested in science, it probably works out for the best in the end.

    36. Tom Whicker says:
      November 13, 2007 at 11:16 pm

      Peter,
      Sorry if I sounded hostile to Brian Greene. Just my poor attempt at humor. The Elegant Universe is a bit personal for me, as I was
      asked to host a showing of it to local science teachers. It is rare for such local people to show interest in Physics, and I was excited about the event (I hadn’t seen the film at that point).
      From their reactions and my lowly viewpoint, the film was just a
      waste. I think it helped re-enforce some attitudes in group
      along the lines of “why does our tax money go into this kind of stuff?”

    37. Tim May says:
      November 13, 2007 at 11:41 pm

      And I think the views of tax payers, about “why does our tax money go into this kind of stuff?” are valid concerns.

      Fifty, or even 40, years ago the dollars spent on new accelerators like the Bevatron or the Brookhaven AGS, or even Fermilab, were not quite so huge as they are today.

      And the money spent then, and especially in the decades earlier, had some practical consequences: figuring out how to build the A-bomb, to be blunt. So the public supported it, even if after the fact (secrecy and all).

      Around the time of the Superconducting Supercollider, it could no longer be argued that building the world’s largest accelerator was in and of itself justified. And so it was cancelled. Much talk about how a generation of theorist would wander in the desert (pun about the energy desert intented).

      Look, I’m all for basic science. I would love to see the nature of the universe further explicated. But, let’s face it, the cost of each 10x increase in energy (luminosity is another factor) is growing at rates that are unaffordable.

      Unaffordable unless the new accelerator is likely to solve the problem of the Germans or the Japanese or the Russians (figuratively speaking, to go back to prior justifications).

      No one is suggesting new understandings of energy sources, or of weapons, and there is every suggestion that basic understandings are now coming at, perhaps, 100-1000x increases in energy, not the 10x increases in energy (give or take) so common in the 1930s-1970s.

      I sort of was opposed to the Hubble. But having seen what it has shown, along with several other comparably-priced telescopes, I’m now much more in support of these kinds of things.

      I hope I’m wrong. I hope the LHC discovers one or more important particles. I fear I won’t be wrong. Check back in several years.

      And I doubt the taxpayers will authorize a 10 times more expensive generation after the LHC to keep on searching. At least not for a long while.

      –Tim May

    38. Tom Whicker says:
      November 14, 2007 at 12:20 am

      If we’re talking about something in the current media/print world
      that does popularize Science in a successful way to the average
      person, I have to say Mythbusters is it. That show probably has
      the right approach to interest some young kids in how science works (or used to work).

    39. Aaron Bergman says:
      November 14, 2007 at 12:24 am

      I love Mythbusters. Explosions are cool. But there’s a lot more to science, too. The Elegant Universe has apparently sold over a million copies, so people seem to have been interested.

    40. Tom Whicker says:
      November 14, 2007 at 12:35 am

      They do get carried away with explosions. But they’ve done a wide variety of stuff like de-bunking free energy machines, etc. Often there is a nice lesson on thermodynamics, laws of motion, etc. If the general public could just get a tiny grip on basic conservation of energy concepts, it would be a good thing…

    41. zorba says:
      November 14, 2007 at 12:47 am

      I said: ” Do you really want to be a party to the descent of the blogosphere into a place where people’s scientific work is exposed to this kind of unprovoked attack? ”

      I think I have my answer.

      Alternatively, if you genuinely can’t understand why “Should one perhaps leave this topic to the Bogdanovs? ” is deeply insulting, then maybe you need to get away from the blogosphere for a while.

    42. Peter Woit says:
      November 14, 2007 at 6:53 am

      zorba,

      You continue to wilfully misinterpret what I wrote, which very clearly was not an “unprovoked attack” on anyone’s scientific work. My only comment about the science was the uncontroversial one that there is no experimental evidence or convincing model for pre-big bang scenarios. My posting was not about science but about the advisability of media appearances by scientists.

    43. Peter Woit says:
      November 14, 2007 at 10:55 am

      Aaron,

      No one is suggesting censoring anyone. But I think it’s worthwhile to raise this issue, and encourage people who go to the media to keep it in mind. Not every appearance by a physicist on a radio or TV show is a good thing for science.

    44. Jonathan Vos Post says:
      November 14, 2007 at 12:51 pm

      I basically agree with Tim May’s first comment:

      “… the drawings of Chesley Bonestell, the fantasies of Willy Ley, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, etc. Yeah, science fiction played a big role in my life back then, but I clearly knew that things like the Moebius strip wall in one of Clarke’s short stories was just SF, even as it helped motivate me to read Martin Gardner’s articles on topology and Moebius strips…”

      Seeing the phosphorescent murals of Chesley Bonestell at New York’s Hayden Planetarium and Museum of Natural History powerfully motivated me, as did climbing around on the Willammette meteorite.

      I saw Willy Ley live, and he was an amazing speaker, as well as writer. Heinlein was a de facto Engineer, who did Defense research, although he always deferred to his 2nd wife Virginia as a better engineer. Sir Arthur C. Clarke did hands-on Electrical Engineering in developing radar for landing planes in foggy England during World War II (as described in his most autobiographical novel, Glide Path). Isaac Asimov was a Professor of Biochemistry.

      These great men knew what Science, math, and Engineering were about. They intentionally, didactically, wrote on these subjects in fiction and nonfiction, explicitly to motivate people (especially youth) beyond the ability of most public schools. heinlein’s “juveniles” (today called “young adult”) made him less money than novels for adults, as his agent kept telling him. But Heinlein explicitly stated that he wanted to push enough young people into science and engineering and math that they would actually create the Space Program he longed for.

      Half of all the astronauts and other technical people I worked with for 20 years in the Space program cited Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein as early motivators. They also cited Bradbury, although they knew his work lacked science content as such.

      It’s sad that we’ve lost Asimov and Heinlein. They were, in many ways, irreplaceable. It’s wonderful that Bradbury and Clarke are still alive and working. I’m honored to have been in contact, and sometimes coauthorship, coeditorship, cobroadcasting, with all of these.

      But “the media” have never been clear on the fuzzy boundary between Science and Science Fiction. What got me on the NBC-TV Today Show, live to 10,000,000 people, was a pitch to contrast what Science and Science Fiction say about the Space Program. It was cool that they let me bring Isaac Asimov on as my “guest of guest.”

      I strongly agree with Peter Woit that “the media” seem increasingly unclear, increasingly distracted by coloful graphics, decreasingly interested in meaningful content.

      Fortunately, we have the World Wide Web.

    45. Belizean says:
      November 14, 2007 at 3:35 pm

      Q. “Is it a good idea for physicists to appear on a radio show discussing what happened before the big bang…?”

      A. Yes. As long the the physicists give the correct answer: “We have no idea what happened before the BB and aren’t even sure that the question makes sense.”

      Q, “Is it a good idea for physicists to promote to the public their work on time travel?”

      A. Yes. Whether physics permits time travel is a profound conceptual issue irrespective of the negligibly small number of physicists actively considering this question. A responsible popularizer should present the arguments in flavor of time travel (solutions to the Einstein equations featuring high angular momentum densities that result closed time-like curves), and arguments against (paradoxes, destructive feedback loop of virtual particles), AND point out that this question is generally ignored by the overwhelming majority of working theoretical physicists. [In the case of Ron Mallett, it’s clear that what he’s attempting is in principle probably not absurd (given van Stockum/Tipler). The questions is whether he can in practice achieve sufficiently high angular momentum densities using current technology.]

      Q. “Is it a good idea for physicists to appear on a TV show explaining the forces involved in crushing beer cans, as part of a segment on whether women can crush beer cans with their breasts?”

      A. No. Physicists should acquire sufficient media savvy to distinguish between producers genuinely interested in increasing public understanding of physics and those with other agendas.

    46. YBM says:
      November 14, 2007 at 3:56 pm

      Did you notice this ?

      http://www4.fnac.com/Shelf/article.aspx?PRID=2062733&OrderInSession=1&Mn=1&SID=902a4926-8ace-0979-afa2-d9686866e4f3&TTL=091120070052&Origin=FnacAff&Ra=-1&To=0&Nu=1&UID=073768ffc-07a4-5f27-f209-6d31e8c5f43c&Fr=0

      I didn’t know Lubos was writing in french, or that he was about to support the worst cranks of all times (especially given that they are loud opponents of string theory) :

      “L’équation Bogdanov”
      Author: Lubos Motl
      Forewords: Igor Bogdanoff, Grichka Bogdanoff
      Publisher Presses De La Renaissance (a very cranky one !)
      Date janvier 2008
      ISBN 2750903866

    47. woit says:
      November 14, 2007 at 4:03 pm

      YBM,

      Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll be in Paris for a while in January, maybe can pick up a copy…

      Lubos has often defended the Bogdanovs in the past, I suspect mainly on the grounds that John Baez and I were critical of them, so they must be all right. I wonder what the story of this book is, if Lubos even wrote much of it himself (I don’t think he writes French, perhaps he had help from the writers of the foreword).

    48. anon. says:
      November 14, 2007 at 4:23 pm

      ‘Doesn’t sound scientific to me. Heh, I’m muscular and buxom, but I don’t believe I have such physical capabilities….’ – Kea

      Aluminium drinks cans are actually fairly easy to crush when empty, even when just using your hand or foot. Just make sure it really is an empty aluminium drinks can, not a filled steel one.

      ‘I’ll be in Paris for a while in January, maybe can pick up a copy…’ – Peter Woit

      Well, I just hope you will publish as fair and honest a review of Lubos’ first book on Amazon, as he did of yours…

    49. Tom Whicker says:
      November 14, 2007 at 5:01 pm

      Jonathan,
      Great post. Yes , Bonestell was somehow very powerful.
      For me as a kid (, there was a series of articles in National Geographic from the Palomar 48 inch Schmidt

    50. King Ray says:
      November 14, 2007 at 5:37 pm

      Let’s not forget Ben Bova. With his hard SF he is helping envision future missions to the moon and Mars. Heckuva nice guy too.

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