Science and the Media     

In the first of an occasional series Harry Robinson comments on the mass media's depiction of science

It’s hard to imagine a better dressed tv show than Catalyst, produced by ABC Science, hosted by the engaging Karina Kelly and shown on Thursdays at 8.30 pm. The visual effects catch but don’t dazzle the eye, the palette is warm and the pace is brisk.

Trouble is, like so many of the well dressed, Catalyst has thought of nowhere to go and so goes nowhere. In one recent week, we had a discussion about coastal surveillance and which technologies might do most for us.  The answer--a mix of many with a vague suggestion that more technology would be a good thing. And there was a long piece about saving the western swamp tortoise, a pretty little creature designed by nature to early extinction.  The question: was a ten year effort to save it  worthwhile?  The answer: maybe, maybe not.  Then came chronic pain and how to alleviate it.  This will continue for several weeks. Week 1 brought the advice that relaxation, stretches and gentle movements were likely to help.  Well, well.  Swamis have been saying the same for centuries.

Go to the ABC website and find ABC Science and you’ll find a similar recipe for the following week--a report on the search for a memory boosting drug, a test drive for a nuclear boat and a warning that scientists don’t know how big and bad top end cyclones can be.  This is the kind of stuff feature editors on newspapers use as fill.

What would an ‘ordinary viewer’ make of  Catalyst? That the science community is busily producing revelations to benefit human kind? Hardly.  That scientists are toiling on short money rations?  Hardly. That some merchants of technology  are doing some rather nice things? Maybe.  That basic research and the nation’s future are in lockstep?   Not in a fit.

  The ‘ordinary viewer,’ vaguely aware of a lack of intellectual drive behind the show, would either tune out or would hug the feeling that scientists--those blokes with bad haircuts--are solemnly delivering marginal benefits to society and seem to have enough money to keep going.

Recently too on ABC’s Radio National, Robin Williams was talking to a science apparatchik  in London about the tiny minority of people (4%) who visit the Science Museum in a year.  The gist of his inquiry: how on earth do we get people at large interested in science? 

It is a vital political question. Few politicians will move to outlay money on unpopular causes, or obscure causes.   A cause needs a strong media profile to attract public money.  Apologies for the media-gabble in ’strong  media profile.’ It’s shorthand which pretty well explains itself.

We don’t expect a lot from commercial media.  Promoting the essentials of such esoteric matters as curiosity-driven research is, rightly or wrongly, not their bag.  Specialist magazines such as New Scientist reach those who are at best partially science-literate: they are already on side. SBS can be relied on  to occasionally screen a stimulating docco but the incidence is sporadic.

To editors, producers, programmers and--yes, politicians--the essentials of science are insubstantial wraiths best left to tiny numbers of intellectuals.  Because the essence of science cannot be seen or heard.  It is an intellectual process, not a drama or melodrama.  A picture of a western swamp tortoise is cute enough but it is not a picture of the scientific thought that prompts the attention.

Kim Beazley has run into this difficulty with his attempts to get Knowledge Nation into the public arena.  He is charged with fuzziness.  It’s said that people don’t know what he is talking about. Fairfax columnist Alan Ramsey on September 22 gave Beazley a blast for his "much-trumpeted but little-understood Knowledge Nation."  The column was among the most acidic of the pre-campaign comment from any source.  It’s true that Beazley can be woolly but at least half the problem is the sheer mystic, unfamiliar, dark corner, bogey nature of science, especially the essence of science.     

Science has had champions in the ring before. Drs Peter Pockley and Barry Jones come to mind. Pockley almost broke his own spirit in trying to get pollies to listen.  Jones, doughty warrior that he is, could not hold Bob Hawke to the cause.

And now the ABC prefers to dress up the incidentals which fall from the back of the science truck rather than aim at the heart of the matter.

If media are determined to stonewall on the essence of science, maybe a sneaky campaign of infiltration is the next ploy.

Harry Robinson
who for 25 years worked in television journalism in Oz and the US and who was for several years air media critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.