"I' m sorry, Dr.," says the cartoon superhero, "the people of Earth will
not appreciate being shrunk to 3 inches high, even if it will save room
and energy..." He is patiently explaining an ethical dilemma to a typical
scientist portrayed on Saturday-morning children's television.
Many of these so-called scientists are moral cripples driven by a
lust for power or endowed with a spectacular insensitivity to the
feelings of others. Themes - staged conveyed to the young audience is
that science is dangerous, and scientists are worse than weird:
They're crazed.
The applications of science, of course, can be dangerous.
Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the
human species -- back to the invention of stone tools and the
domestication of fire -- has been ethically ambiguous. These advances
can be used by ignorant or evil people for dangerous purposes or by
wise and good people for the benefit of the human species. But, too
often, only one side of the ambiguity seems to be presented in many TV
offerings to our children.
The delights in
discovering how the universe is put together ?
The ex-hilaration in
knowing a deep thing well ?
What about the contributions that science and technology have made to
human well-being, of the billions of lives saved or made possible by
medical and agricultural technology -- more than all the lives lost in all
the wars since the beginning of time ? There's hardly a glimpse.
We live in a complex age where many of the problems we face, whatever
their origins, can only have solutions that involve a deep understanding of
science and technology. Modern society desperately needs the finest minds
available to devise solutions to these problems. I do not think that many
youngsters will be encouraged toward a career in science or engineering
by watching Saturday morning TV-or much of the rest of the available
American video menu.
Over the last 10 years, a profusion of credulous, uncritical TV series and
"specials" have been spawned----on ESP, channeling, the Bermuda
Triangle, UFOs ancient astronauts, Big-Foot and the like. The style-
setting series
begins with a disclaimer disavowing any
responsibility to present a balanced view of the
subject.
You can see a thirst for wonder here untempered by even rudimentary
scientific skepticism. Pretty much whatever anyone says on camera is
presented as true. The idea that there might be alternative explanations,
decided upon by the weight of evidence, never surfaces.
If there are both a mundane
scientific explanation and one requiring the most extravagant paranormal
or psychic explanation, you can be sure which will be highlighted.
A popular series called The X-FiIes, which pays lip service to
skeptical examination of the Paranoranal, is in fact skewed heavily
toward a reality of alien abductions, strange powers and government
complicity in covering up just about everything interesting.
Almost never does the Paranormal claim turned to be a hoax or a
psychological aberration or a misunderstanding of the natural world. Much
closer to reality, as well as a much greater Public service, would be a
series in which paranormal claims are systematically investigated, and
every case is found to be explicable in prosaic ( boring ) terms.
Other shortcomings are evident in television science-fiction programming.
Star Trek TV, for example, despite its charm and strong international and
interspecies perspective, ofien ignores the most elementary scientific
facts. The idea that Mr. Spock could be a cross between a human being and
a life form independently evolved on the planet Vulcan is genetically far
less probable than a successful cross of a man and an artichoke.
There must be a dozen of alien types on the various Star Trek TV
series and movies. Almost all we spend any time with are minor
variants of humans.. This may be driven by economic necessity, costing
only an actor and a latex mask, but it flies in the face of the random
nature of the evolutionary process If there are aliens, almost all of them,
I think, will look devastatingly less human thin Klingons and Romulans.
Star Trek doesn't come to grips with evolution.
In many TV programs and films, even the casual science-the throwaway
lines that aren't essential to a plot already innocent of science-is done
incompetently. It costs little to hire a graduate student to read
the script for scientific accuracy. But this is almost never done.
As a result, we have such howlers as "parsec" mentioned as a unit of
speed instead of distance in Star Wars -- a film in many other in many
other ways exemplary.
There's a great deal of pseudoscience for the gullible
on TV a fair
amount of medicine and technology, but hardly any science --
especially on the big commercial networks. There are network employees
with the title "Science Correspondent" and an occasional news feature
said to be devoted to science. But we almost never hear any science from
them, just medicine and technology. In all the networks, I doubt if there's
a single employee whose job it is to read each week's issue of Nature or
Science to see if anything newsworthy has been discovered. When the
Nobel Prizes in science are announced each fall, there's a superb news
"hook" for science: a chance to explain what the prizes were given for. But,
almost always, all we hear some-thing like ..."maybe one day lead to a
cure for cancer." And today in Belgrade."
How much science is there on the radio or TV talk shows, or on those
dreary Sunday morning shows, in which middle-aged white males sit
around agreeing with each other ?
By far the most effective means of raising interest in science is
television. But this enormously powerful medium is doing close to nothing
to convey the joys and methods of science, while its "mad scientist"
engine continues to huff and puff away.
Often there's a good science program in the Nova series on the Public
Broadcasting System, on the Discovery Channel or The Learning Channel, and
occasionally on the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Bill Nye's The Science Guy programs for young children, which began on PBS, are fast-
paced, range over many realms of science and sometimes even illuminate
the process of scientific discovery. But the depth of public interest in
science engrossingly and accurately presented-to say nothing of the
immense good that would result from better public understanding of
science-is not yet reflected in network programming.
How could we put more science on television ? Here are some
possibilities:
Establish a state-of-the-art computer graphics facility to prepare in advance scientific visuals for a wide range of news contingencies.
There is a pressing national need for more public knowledge of science.
Television cannot provide it all by itself. But if we want to make shortterm improvements in the understanding of science, television is the
place to start.
Where, in such programs, are the joys of science ?
In Search Of...
In Search Of...
frequently takes an intrinsically interesting subject and
systematically distorts the evidence.
When is the last time you beard an intelligent cornment on science by a
President of the United States ?
Why in all America is there no TV drama that has as its hero someone
devoted to figuring out how the Universe works ?
When a highly publicized murder trial has everyone casually mentioning
DNA testing, where are the prime time network specials devoted to
nucleic acids and heredity ?
I can't even recall seeing an accurate and comprehensible description on
television of how television works.
Show how we're bamboozled: let people learn by doing.