Science is Messy

The question of the morning is “What is Science?”

Don Kennedy, editor of the journal Science, says “It’s a process.”

“It’s a dirty process,” clarifies Alexandra Witze, news editor at Nature, “Science is quite messy.”

As a graduate student in Neuroscience, pretending for the next few days to be a journalist, I can tell you firsthand that Witze is right.  Performing a scientific experiment often seems akin to making a soufflé without a recipe. It usually doesn’t work.  You make a hypothesis, you figure out how you might test it, and you try it.  It doesn’t work.  Not the first time, not the second time, not the third time.  You re-assess your experiment. You try it again, and again… and again. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you get a result. Perhaps it supports your hypothesis. Perhaps not. 

Someday, after several years of work, you might have enough data to publish a paper on a tiny piece of a puzzle, a small question within the world of science, which might elucidate something that has some small relation to some bigger question.  As a scientist, this is how I see science.

In journalism, it’s what’s new that matters.  An article that was published in Nature yesterday is something that scientists “just discovered.” In fact, those scientists were probably working on that discovery for years, and have known for months the conclusion that today is “news.”

Yet even when scientists have amassed enough evidence to support their hypothesis and publish in a major journal like Science or Nature, their findings still may be proven wrong. 

As Kennedy said, “Anything published in Science is ready for reversal.”

Or, as Witze put it, “You can publish in Nature or Science and it can be total crap.”

This idea of “science as process” creates a dilemma for those who need to report “science news.” They must share new findings with the general public.  They must understand the process behind it.  They must help convey the process in their writing, to fit a new finding into the context of the history of the field.  And, they must accomplish all this in 400 words. 

Lemonick’s challenge

What are we after, here?

We want to engender a trust of scientific evidence, through an appreciation for the process that produces that evidence.  We want people to know why they believe what they believe. Many participants emphasized (or implied) that focus on scientific process is the way to achieve this, and I believe they’re right.

However, Michael Lemonick pointed out that there has been a great deal of excellent science writing that has done exactly this. Many writers have pointed out the fallibility/reversibility of science, stressed process over facts, and highlighted the difference between common and scientific usages of terms like “theory.” Many of the attendees have written stories conveying the passion and drama of science. Even with all of these great pieces of writing, half the population still disbelieves evolution and trusts astrology.

The proposition that if we could only produce more articles about science process, things would be different - Lemonick said - is kidding ourselves. People have read these stories, and the world hasn’t changed. Maybe more stories would have more effect - but what reason do we have to believe that editors will include more stories now, hearing the same arguments they always have?

KC Cole pointed out that there is such a thing as a tipping point. Continued emphasis can have an effect on editors and on the public consciousness. New media also provide a unique opportunity to collect thorough statistics on readership. Every click on a page can be counted, in a way that every page read by newspaper or magazine subscribers could not. These statistics could prove convincing to editors (and advertisers) that there ought to be more science in the media.

There seemed to be a general consensus of the types of stories that ought to be told. The questions that remain are how and where to tell those stories, and how to convince editors to run them. And Mr. Lemonick’s challenge should be kept in mind: how do we know we’re not kidding ourselves, telling good stories in the same old ways? How do we know that what we’re doing is truly New?