sunday - june 4th - 1995 --- Parade Magazine -- St. Louis Post
IN PORTRAYING 'MAD SCIENTISTS,' Tvee DOES A NATIONAL DISSERVICE.


WHAT TV COULD DO FOR AMERICA
--- by carl sagan
"SCIENTIST, YES -- MAD, NO" GIGGLES THE MAD SCIENTIST ON GILLIGAN'S ISLAND AS HE ADJUST THE ELECTRONIC DEVICE THAT PERMITS HIM TO CONTROL THE MINDS OF OTHERS FOR HIS OWN NEFARIOUS PURPOSE.

"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.


Where, in such programs, are the joys of science ?

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


In Search Of...

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.


In Search Of... frequently takes an intrinsically interesting subject and systematically distorts the evidence.

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 ?


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.

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:

Show how we're bamboozled: let people learn by doing.

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.