From the archives: Science is Vital rally, London 2010 (RIP Colin Blakemore, being interviewed with me in the lower left panel) Most photos by Joe Dunckley
Sometimes I’m surprised people even remember Science Vital. But scientists marching in the streets, so commonplace now, was actually rather a rare thing back then. So perhaps it did stick in the mind.
I messaged back that maybe so, but it was definitely a younger person’s game. Besides, things have changed so drastically in the world in the meantime that the whole endeavour now feels rather quaint.
A decade ago, in my frequent university science communication lectures, I’d talk passionately about the need for scientists to connect with the public, to engage in dialogue, be open and transparent about how their work could help make the world a better place. Now (as recently as last week), I stand in front of the undergraduates – many glued to their phones as I speak – and admit that, actually, there no longer seems much point.
How can anything I say counteract the toxic deluge of misinformation that firehoses us on a daily basis? Politicians can look the camera in the eye and tell us that black is white, with absolutely no repercussions. A Health Secretary in one of the most powerful nations on earth can proclaim that vaccines cause harm, and peddle unproved snake-oil alternatives while preventable childhood diseases sweep through the land.
How can one well-meaning scientist counter that? Or even a million? The other side is bankrolled by dead-eyed billionaires.
So yes, it seems I’ve grown cynical in my old age. Having lost the rational argument against a bunch of grifters, we may now be beyond the point of no return. The pendulum will one day swing back, of course, but perhaps not in my lifetime.
In the meantime, ask the earnest undergrads in the front row who are actually paying attention, what can we do?
What, indeed?
What Can We Do?
More informed people than I have written extensively on this question. However, given that none of them has found the answer, I hope you’ll permit me a couple of observations.
One: small children LOVE science. Or, rather, they have an uncorrupted sense of wonder. This seems universal. At least, it is in Norwich, where the recent Norwich Science Festival — geared very much towards children — was rammed. Some 70,000 people attended. And in a small city such as Norwich, you notice such things. (I was a participant). The problem is that by the time they become teenagers most of them find science a real turn-off. Why, when they idolise David Attenborough, Brian Cox, Hannah Fry and so on, with their absorbing science documentaries on TV? Again, more informed people than I have written extensively on this question, but I feel that it’s connected with the boring way that science is taught in schools – the sense of wonder is crushed under the weight of the teaching of fundamentals with no obvious end in view. In my view science teaching is back to front. It should start with a wondrous problem and then show how fundamentals can help address it.
Two: We are still recovering — if we ever have — from the disastrous attempts twenty years ago by the Royal Society and their Committee for the Public Understanding of Science to tell the unwashed masses, as if from on high, What They Should Know. If any approach is calculated to emphasise the difference between Clever Scholars and Rude Mechanicals, this is it.