I found Chris Wilson’s article, in Slate, to be an interesting opinion on the coverage of the LHC and other topics in particle physics, and well worth a look. I swear though, before I’m accused of it, that this quote
On the whole, the best writing about physics for a general audience seems to come from physicists, not journalists.
wasn’t why.
Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Misquote?
I thought he said “On the hole…”
September 26th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Interesting point of view — I’m glad to hear someone speak out against drama-queen science writing. That said, things don’t really break down so neatly between physicists who tell it like it is and journalists who wax cloyingly eloquent. Physicists (including Brian Green) have done their share of the latter, and science journalists (including Dennis Overbye) have done the former. I dare say that most of us who write about science cross back and forth, even within a single piece. One might make a good case for a diversity of approaches to science-writing.
George
September 26th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Ben Goldacre is in complete agreement with you. One of his rallying calls (last heard on the Guaranid podcast is “Fewer sciencewriters. More editors!”
And yes, it was a nice article. Which kept me occupied for ages …
September 26th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I’d agree with that completely George.
September 26th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
A dose of humility would help. I’d like to say that physicists always seem to think they are good at everything, even fields they are not trained in and this rankles the rest of us. As a nonphysicist, I would never dare to say I could do physics better than a trained physicist. Collaboration with a writer or journalist would be a better approach, as you all know from practice. I am sure you can find both physicists and nonphysicists who want others to care about their subject matter. Websites and newspapers are businesses and you can’t blame them for trying to catch peoples’ attention. Better that the physicists have the opportunity to bring the “meat” once folks are familiar with projects than no familiarity at all.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
What was it that confused you about the statement that the quote about physicists being better at writing about physics than science writers was not why I liked the article?
Your advice about humility would be best self-administered - learn to read what people actually write, not what you’d like them to say so that you can rail against it.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Quote from the article:
We should teach about modern science in primary and secondary school. There is no reason why you can’t tell to high school students roughly what the structure of the Standard Model is, about the early universe, etc., in a similar way as presented in popular books.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:05 am
I agree with Count Iblis here. Until we teach basic facts about the universe in a simplified form to every schoolkid — like quantum mechanics and special relativity — every book that tries to say something really interesting about physics will need to start with that 66-page crash course. Unless of course its intended audience is restricted to the tiny fraction of people who are vaguely aware of what happened the last century.
It will only get worse unless we work at it.
September 28th, 2008 at 6:07 am
I wish someone would have taught me the basics of group theory in the second grade.
1. Closure. For all a, b in G, the result of the operation a • b is also in G.
2. Associativity. For all a, b and c in G, the equation (a • b) • c = a • (b • c) holds.
3. Identity element. There exists an element e in G, such that for all elements a in G, the equation e • a = a • e = a holds.
4. Inverse element. For each a in G, there exists an element b in G such that a • b = b • a = e, where e is the identity element.
Is that really hard to understand?
September 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I agree with John Baez and A Student. I am going to understand modern particle physics. I have a background in engineering, but no deep exposure to set theory, group theory and classical theoretical physics. I am willing to invest a great deal of effort to achieve my goal. I’ll learn whatever is essential. As I try to cut through the underbrush to discover the bare minimum needed to really understand what is going on these days, I see that nothing is beyond my comprehension. However, concepts are usually explained in ways that do not allow me to meet my objective efficiently. Either concepts are explained in ways that assume a PhD, or they are not motivated clearly, so it is difficult to know how they might or might not be relevant to a particular course of thinking.
I realize that explaining deep concepts on one page in a way that a bright but incompetent student can understand is very, very difficult. It’s much more difficult than explaining to peers. Almost nobody is willing to do it (with some notable exceptions – you know who you are). But I argue that it is well worth the effort.
Studying advanced mathematics and theoretical physics is much like studying a foreign language. There’s the vocabulary and the grammar to be mastered. There’s the problem of teaching one language using another language to explain it. There’s the difference between just understanding, on the one hand, and being able to express yourself on the other hand. There are all those dialects that are related but often almost mutually unintelligible to be dealt with. And for some of us, there’s the realization that it’s too late in life to become a native speaker, but it is still possible to achieve a useful level of understanding.
So my challenge to all you brilliant, fluent native speakers out there is this: spend some time, maybe even “too much” time explaining the passions of your professional lives to willing students like me. Tell us not only how things work, but why they are important, and how they fit into the bigger picture. After all, if you can’t teach us, how will you ever reach beyond the walls that enclose your profession? And anyway, it’s a good deal for you – “To teach is to learn”. By teaching us, you will keep learning that you don’t understand as clearly as you thought, and go back and fix it. You can’t loose.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Waitaminnit. Consider this passage from Chris Wilson’s piece (bold emphasis mine):
That doesn’t sound quite right — the proton and neutron are composite particles. Quoting Frank Wilczek,
The LHC rap, one should note, makes the comparison between the photon (”it has no mass”) and the top quark (”it’s draggin its ***”).
September 29th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Wilczek is right, of course. This particular misunderstanding results from an insidious dynamic between physicists and journalists. Physicists, trying to convey the importance of the Higgs, say “It’s the origin of mass!” If they are extra careful, they will mumble “… of elementary particles, not of bound states,” but nobody will listen. And then journalists, quite understandably, take them at face value, notice that protons and neutrons are much more massive than electrons, and run with it.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:16 am
So, I co-host a radio show about science…
I have barely more than a high school education myself, which i swear is a bennifit at times to co-hosting a science-y news public affairs show, as i tend to ask very uniformed questions at times. (the other co-host does have a PHD in neuro something or another)
Feilding questions from the uninformed is what i think science news should be doing more of, not less. Telling it straight only works if the person your talking to has a good deal of knowledge about the subject already.
It’s why I think physicists often make the best reporters of quantum news… They have to explain to friends, family and often complete strangers what it is they do, and how they know what they know about things most people never even knew existed… after a while there is a good understanding, i would think, of how to phrase things well enough to satisfy a curiosity vs. giving a lecture in complex numbers on a pocket white board.
In our shows efforts, we try to have fun by lightly covering a hand full of stories from the current week with very little of the preamble introduction to subjects, but just that which is fit to print in a press release… we also have interviews with real life scientists, and let them speak in their own voices and tell the world how it really is…
Unfortunately in a twenty five minute interview, it’s hard to get people up to speed with everything involved in an area of scientific research… physicists particularly, I believe, have the toughest time. Most folks interested in the subject, without having gone to school to study it, has heard the intro to physics analogies over and over again… but it’s darn difficult to get around that when speaking to the unseen audience if for no other reason than to avoid outrage in the general public against Schrodinger for the cruel treatment he bestows upon his pet cat…
A paleontologist describing a new dinosaur find on air won’t have the same problem. People know what dinosaurs are, what bones are, what a fossil is, and while the dinosaur they picture in their head while listening may not be the same as the actual find, but beyond that they can learn about the significance of the discovery… where it was found, what it may have been related to etc.
In physics, you are often describing dinosaur bones to a society of very bright jelly fish that have never seen vertebrates at all… being a bright jelly fish myself I often wonder where to start… The calcium that was in the bones? The process of fossilization? And what are bones like, how do I describe that to my jelly fish peers? Analogies are the only method open at this point to describe the creature, let alone the actual find and why in might be important or interesting…
In fact, the only language that truly best describes quantum physics is the language of mathematics… and it’s not even the same mathematics most people ever encounter anywhere in their lives… “When did they stop using numbers in math?” the common observer might ask… But people still want to know what is going on… I want to know what’s going on…
Whenever I hear commentary about issues in science journalism, I have to consider the feedback we’ve gotten from our listeners over the years…
Some listeners want the nitty gritty detailed text book walkthrough of what’s going on in this that or the other subject… To these folks we rarely are the best fit… A university lecture with previous course work is what they are looking for… But that takes too long, so they tune in to our drive by snap shots of science and send us emails that request more or less physics, more or less life science, more or less about robots, or global warming or what have you…
Some could care less about the level of detail in the message, but are very interested in getting the gist, and on the full breadth of science subjects… these folks tend to tune in week after week…
Most of what we do on our show is fit to use as interesting convo at cocktail parties, or to tickle the brain when needed via podcast… We’ve gone more Daily Show than national geographic, more pop science with humor, satire, silly speculation than scientific american, though the number of analogies remains about equal…