Dave Goldberg: We're both in the business of turning groundbreaking discoveries in physics into something digestible for the public.
But why - besides showing off? Are we trying to atone for the stereotypes that come from The Big Bang Theory, or the simple hope that people see physicists as more Tony Stark and less Bruce Banner? Put another way, what does the public really need to know about what's going on in the frontiers of science, and what should we tell them?
Sean Carroll: Scientists certainly have selfish reasons to reach out to the broader public - for their personal interests, and even more for the good of the field.
Are we trying to atone for the stereotypes that come from The Big Bang Theory?
But in areas of "pure" research like my own (cosmology and particle physics), there's a more important concern: The whole point of doing that kind of science is to learn cool new things about the world, which is pointless if we then don't tell anybody what we've learned.
One can argue whether speculative, unproven science should be discussed publicly. I think so, as even the public should understand that science is an ongoing process, not a set of simple answers.
Dave Goldberg: It's absolutely vital - and very exciting - to tell the public about scientific discovery while it's happening.
But there's a danger as well, and that's that we as a community don't always make the clearest distinction between settled (or at least broadly accepted) science, and the speculation of a small, but vocal subset of physicists.
Up until recently, for instance, most of the writing on string theory fell into this trap. The public could be excused for thinking that string theory is the future of physics (and there are a number of reasons to suppose it isn't), but naturally, they don't have the tools to judge one way or another. A charismatic proponent can easily obscure that fact.
The public should understand that science is an ongoing process, not a set of simple answers.
Sean Carroll: This brings up a concept I think is under-emphasized in these kinds of conversations: the Triangle of Responsibility in science communication, whose three vertices are scientists, journalists/writers/communicators, and readers. Each of these three groups have important responsibilities: Scientists need to be accurate, understandable, and fair. Communicators need to represent the science faithfully, as well as to put it into context and accessible language. And readers need to make the effort to read carefully and take what is said seriously.
There's nothing wrong with discussing speculative science, since that's what gets us scientists excited. But we must all share the burden of giving new ideas and results their proper weight.
Dave Goldberg: There's a danger, however, when a single person represents two legs of that triangle: scientist and communicator - and there are an awful lot of scientist-communicators out there (including us).
There's a struggle between the whiz-bang of the perhaps-only-barely-if-at-all possible and the scientific need to be as-honest-as-possible with our readers, above and beyond how we present our own ideas. I have tried, whenever possible, to err on the side of honesty, even if it means that I have to be a buzzkill.
I find myself throwing cold water on ideas like warp drives and time machines quite a lot. This is a position I've evolved a fair amount on, even in the last few years. In the past, I'd have buried the caveats about exotic matter and the like fairly deeply in my discussion, but these days, I'll more likely than not start with, "Time travel is probably impossible."
Dave Goldberg & Sean Carroll
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, Dr. Carroll pursued research on particle physics, cosmology, and gravitation. Carroll's latest book is The Particle at the End of the Universe; he is also one of the founders of the group blog Cosmic Variance and authored From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time.
Dave Goldberg is a professor and director of undergraduate studies in the physics department at Drexel University. Dr. Goldberg earned a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton University and currently works on issues in theoretical cosmology. Goldberg's latest book is The Universe in the Rearview Mirror; he also writes the "Ask a Physicist" column for io9.com and coauthored A User's Guide to the Universe.
Sean Carroll: You often can't be absolutely precise, given constraints of time and vocabulary. So my goal is always to strive to bring the audience closer to the truth, even if the truth is somewhat incomplete. Throwing cold water on ideas like time travel and warp drive will accomplish this better than diving into speculative scenarios right away - so yes, I also lead with the caveats in cases like that.
Tougher cases are things like supersymmetry or the multiverse - reasonable ideas for which we currently have no evidence. I'm happy to talk about them but definitely mention that they are speculative.
Toughest of all are cases like the arrow of time or the interpretation of quantum mechanics, where I have firm ideas about what is right but I find myself in the minority! I try to be fair to the benighted majority view, but it's not always easy.
Dave Goldberg: You use the word "precise" to describe our limitations as communicators, but as scientists, we make a huge distinction between precision and accuracy. I'd rather be plausible.
We communicate amongst ourselves with the language of mathematics, but to the rest of the world, we need to use ordinary language, so whatever we say is going to lack rigor. But if we do it just right, there should be the impression that there's rigor underneath the words.
Let's take the controversial topics like the multiverse and the arrow of time off the table, and get to what is (now) a much more prosaic topic, like the Higgs boson. Here's a massively expensive, massively successful project. What should ordinary people know about the Higgs?
Sean Carroll: To me, the Higgs discovery has been an amazing opportunity for science: A giant Big Science program - the kind that is increasingly common in many fields - with an ambitious agenda that actually paid off, in a very noticeable way.
The problem is that the importance of the Higgs boson itself is hard to convey, accurately.
I've been taking it as an opportunity to explain some quantum field theory, which is a core area of science that doesn't get a lot of public attention. But equally importantly, it's been a chance to tell the stories of the many experimentalists and technicians that make a big project like this actually succeed. At the same time, many explanations have cut corners when it comes to tricky questions like the relationship between the Higgs and mass.
Dave Goldberg: I take your point that there are many stories to tell, but surely the biggest is the discovery itself?
There's a famous story about the 19th century physicist, Michael Faraday, who was asked to defend the study of electromagnetism to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pure scientific inquiry (then, as now) was seen as too remote, too abstract to be of any practical use. So Faraday's defense was something like, "One day, sir, you may tax it."
It's a mistake to rely too heavily on technology to justify basic research.
I bring this up because most physicists tend to use this sort of justification for using basic science. You never know, after all, where scientific investigation may lead. Research at CERN (which houses and runs the Large Hadron Collider, which, in turn, discovered the Higgs) uses this same tactic. It's noted that technologies as diverse as the MRI and the World Wide Web were developed as ancillary to the basic research going on there.
But to my mind, it's a mistake to rely too heavily on technology to justify basic research. Isn't there an implicit human value in knowing how the technology really works? How the universe works? Put another way: Are we meant to be priests or teachers? Is it enough that somebody knows about a discovery, or it doesn't count unless lots of people know about it?
Sean Carroll: I completely agree that we should not lean on hypothetical technology breakthroughs as justification for basic science.
We should tell the truth: This science is worth doing because we human beings want to know the answers.
I don't even think "ordinary people should know about the Higgs" - but they should hear about it, and be able to learn more if they're interested. What they should know about are the basic rules of reality that science has uncovered, from quantum mechanics to natural selection. Big exciting discoveries provide one excuse for talking about those basic rules - and so do blockbuster science-fiction movies.
Dave Goldberg: On this we certainly agree: whether or not ordinary people need to know about what the Higgs means, it is vital that they know how science works.
Sean Carroll: As we try to explain to other people how science works, we're always in the process of figuring it out for ourselves; scientists are just people doing their best to discover how things work.
The universe is bigger than any of us. The quest to understand it is something every person can appreciate and participate in.
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