THE start-up of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, provided the biggest science story of 2008, the Columbia Journalism Review. However, the article said, reporting was driven more by the worry that the LHC would destroy the planet than by the science involved. Though it has been dubbed the highest-profile event in the history of physics, the science was largely reported only for context.
It鈥檚 frustrating, but is there a lesson to be learned? 快猫短视频s and science-lovers often bemoan the public鈥檚 lack of engagement with the subject. We wring our hands at what鈥檚 happening to the school curriculum, or at how science programming has been largely displaced from TV and radio. The public complain that science is just too difficult and too boring. And in our outrage and frustration it never occurs to us that they might be right.
The unpalatable truth is that science comes with public disengagement built right in. The Spanish philosopher spotted this problem back in 1930. Boring research, he said, is an inevitable consequence of the process: in order to progress, science demands that its workers become ever-more specialised. The result, Ortega said, is that the majority of scientists are 鈥渟hut up in the narrow cell of their laboratory, like the bee in the cell of its hive鈥�. This kind of scientist, according to Ortega, necessarily produces mediocre, tedious advances.
Advertisement
Ortega鈥檚 lament was picked up 20 years later by the great physicist . He worried that specialisation 鈥� and the ennui it creates 鈥� would eventually kill the scientific endeavour. The specialised scientist who knows nothing outside his own field is, he said, 鈥渁 representative of the brute ignorant rabble鈥� who endanger the future of civilisation鈥�.
Like Ortega, Schr枚dinger saw specialisation as an unavoidable consequence of scientific progress. That brings responsibility, he said: 鈥淣ever lose sight of the role your particular subject has within the great performance of the tragic-comedy of human life. If you cannot 鈥� in the long run 鈥� tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.鈥�
That 鈥渨orthless鈥� seems harsh, but is it something that we need to face? Finding a way to keep science accessible is vital, Schr枚dinger said, because 鈥渢he masses鈥� are more powerful than many scientists would care to admit. With uncanny prescience, he pointed out that they decide issues such as what gets included in school curricula. According to Ortega and Schr枚dinger, public disengagement from science is one step in a journey that includes, for example, allowing creationism into the science classroom, and ends with the disappearance of science from culture.
So what can we do? One radical possibility is to give the public more say in what science gets funded, and not be driven by scientists鈥� demands for ever more specialised efforts.
鈥淥ne radical possibility is to give the public more say in what science gets funded鈥�
As an arbitrary example, a written by the GEM particle physics collaboration stretches over 20 pages, has 31 authors, and relates to the minutiae of whether a particular kind of meson forms a 鈥渂ound state鈥� in a nucleus (two decades ago, a couple of physicists suggested it might). The data presented prove nothing, and the last line of the paper states, 鈥淔urther data are clearly needed.鈥�
The scientists involved in such examples can almost always justify their efforts via a chain of relevance that eventually leads to some real-world problem or other on which their research might shed light. But how far should that chain be allowed to stretch? Do we really need to spend public money finding that obscure physical constant to yet another decimal place? Is it worth doing Project X, which 鈥渉elps us understand A, which is relevant to B, which sheds light on C, which might help us solve D, which might give us a clue about how to cure cancer鈥︹��?
Most lay people find it hard to accept that their taxes are used for research in which no one but the scientists involved can judge or even appreciate progress and merit. Of course, many or perhaps most scientists would find it unthinkable to let the public choose the research agenda. But that suggests people are not qualified to judge how their money should be spent. How is that different from another unthinkable: a barrister arguing that a jury cannot appreciate the subtlety of a criminal case, so the verdict should instead be brought by a carefully selected handful of the barrister鈥檚 peers?
Ortega felt that, every now and then, scientists should look at the cultural value placed on science, and consider 鈥渉ow society and the heart of man are to be organised in order that there may continue to be [scientific] investigators鈥�.
Perhaps, as we wait for the LHC to come back online (after a single bad solder joint has cost the European taxpayer $21 million), it鈥檚 time to do just that. We should take a risk and canvass public opinion about where society wants science to go 鈥� then act on the results. This will almost certainly hurt, but it will also safeguard the future of scientific research. Besides, whose science is it anyway?