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\nA game with two halves<\/strong> Could science survive live coverage?<\/p>\n
\nAs the carriage rocked with hypnotic rhythm in the rising heat and dwindling oxygen supply, I suddenly had a vivid hallucination. Did that headline in the Evening Standard<\/em> truly declare,<\/p>\n \nTenacious post-doc solves long-standing regulatory puzzle in formin regulation<\/em>?<\/p>\n \nI blinked, and the words dissolved into a cautionary tale about a Brazilian driver whose chances in the Singapore Grand Prix were scuppered after he screeched away from a pit-stop with fuel hose still attached.<\/p>\n \nBut imagine, Dear Reader, what the world would be like if science were put under the same media scrutiny as sport. What if our every daily triumph or embarrassing gaffe was trumpeted for all to see in the tabloids and broadcasts of the world? What if people rang up radio phone-in programs to wax lyrical about the latest paper in Nature<\/em> or to complain that the big grant had been awarded to some young, brash hotshot when it clearly should have gone to the more reflective and deserving woman down the corridor, or to take their favorite scientist to task for messing up a crucial maxi-prep just when the supporters needed that plasmid to be ready Friday for the Big Experiment? <\/p>\n \nWe got a small taste of that a few weeks ago when the LHC went live, didn’t we? Perched on a stool in the kitchen in my dressing gown with the dark-matter cosmologist who’d come to visit from Paris, clutching cups of coffee, we listened, rapt, to the coverage on Radio 4. Although the language for live commentary of science events has not yet been invented, Andrew Marr did a pretty good job of appropriating the vivid, engaging language of sport to paint the scene before him.<\/p>\n \n“The packets of protons are champing at the bit at the starting gate,” he joked, as in the background, the many-accented scientists emitted clipped, Star Trek-like dialogue. We could scarcely breathe as the first attempt to herd the particles into the tunnel was aborted (“And I don’t know why,” Marr said cheerfully. “Something about ‘the Dump’ “). “We are waiting for extraction,” explained a man with a Pakistani accent, not terribly helpfully, as a French voice muttered Non, non<\/em> behind him. Painful seconds lapsed as the beam was restarted \u2013 then wild applause and cheers burst out as it finally “took”.<\/p>\n \nAt that moment, I wondered how we could get more coverage of science into the world; not rehashed, regurgitated and mangled press-released data, but the sweaty, messy, human endeavor as it unfolds before us, outcome uncertain and all to play for. Such attention might not be comfortable for scientists, but if mere athletes can stand the heat, why couldn’t we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I rode home on the Underground this evening, packed in shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow commuters, I couldn’t help but notice the headlines in the forest of tabloids brandished at eye level around me. No minutiae of the world of … Continue reading