T. Woods and John Gribbin's physics text

"Tiger Woods drives sales of physics book sky-high"

A photograph showing a copy of Get A Grip On Physics by John Gribbin on the floor of Tiger Woods's wrecked SUV has seen the book rocket up Amazon's bestseller chart

by

Richard Lea

December 4th, 2009

guardian.co.uk

It's been a terrible week for Tiger Woods, but the golf star's moment of madness at the steering wheel has brought a surge in sales for a book written by a science writer teaching at Sussex University.

A series of pictures released by Florida police of Woods's wrecked SUV includes a shot of the back seat, complete with waterbottle, towel and furled umbrella. But there among the shards of tinted glass in the footwell sits a well-thumbed copy of a paperback with the golf-appropriate title clearly visible: Get a Grip on Physics.

This incidental role in Woods's domestic drama has been enough to create a rush to get hold of the book, with the title's sales rank on Amazon.com jumping from 396,224 earlier in the week to a high spotted yesterday by the Wall Street Journal of 2,268.

Speaking in a break between lectures this morning, the author, John Gribbin, said he was "delighted that anyboy's reading my books. I just wish it was one that's still in print."

Part of a planned series on subject areas which was cancelled after poor sales, Get a Grip on Physics is an illustrated introduction to modern physics first published in 1999 which tells the story of developments in physics since the 1950s, charting the discovery of the four forces of nature, the search for grand unified theories and the beginnings of string theory.

"It's not a book you sit down and read from cover to cover," said Gribbin, "you can dip in and out of it. Tiger Woods is absolutely my target audience. He's busy, hasn't got a lot of time, but wants to catch up on what's happening in physics."

Publishers are becoming increasingly familiar with rapid rises in book sales, though the spikes are more often associated with US presidents. Barack Obama has already sparked a rush on sales of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland and Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment, but he is following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and John F Kennedy, who set off a stampedes for titles by Walter Mosley and Ian Fleming.

Gribbin has yet to see a rise in sales on Amazon.co.uk, where the book was languishing at a ranking of 71,115 this morning (perhaps because it was published in the UK under a different title: Get a Grip on New Physics), but he's hoping that Tiger Woods may graduate onto his other works.

Best known for In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, an exploration of the mysteries of quantum physics still selling well 25 years after it was first published, Gribbin has amassed a back catalogue which ranges widely over modern science. His latest book is In Search of the Multiverse, which charts ideas about alternative realities from Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to recent developments in M-theory pointing to a landscape of alternative universes in string theory.

"Perhaps Woods will see if he can find a universe in which none of this ever happened," suggested Gribbin.

Get a Grip on Physics

by

John Gribbin

ISBN-10: 0760737487
ISBN-13: 978-0760737484

Robert I. Hedges [Amazon.com] writes...

I have read many of John Gribbin's books, and have liked them all. This is by far the most general and basic of his books that I've read, but it is still wonderful. It is great for general audiences, and is suitable for adults and older children. He describes the basics of physics from early developments through the latest subatomic particle discoveries and string theory, so for such a small book, it covers a lot of area, without the mathematical rigor of a typical physics text.

On page 41 he discusses electromagnetic relationships, and has one of the most easily comprehensible explanations (and illustrations) that I have seen for this basic physical phenomenon. In his discussion of the speed of light, he explains the basics of Einstein's insights in a comprehensible manner that clarifies basic relativity well for beginners, though he does make a minor mathematical error on page 49.

I found his discussions of quantum physics very strong, with a great explanation of things like the famous "quantum leap" and atomic shell stability that is both accurate, and accessible to non-scientists while still being entertainingly written. I have always admired Ernest Rutherford's work, and was especially amused to see the inclusion of his famed quip about chemistry in his biography: "all of science is either physics or stamp collecting," this despite winning the Nobel Prize for chemistry (which he always regarded as an inferior academic discipline to physics.)

As the book gets further into the modern era, needless to say, the subjects get tinier and stranger. Gribbin covers the wackiest of subatomic particles (quarks, antiquarks, leptons, pions, glueballs, tauons, etc.) well, and excels in his basic introduction to string theory, the Schrödinger's Cat paradox, quantum uncertainty, compactification, black holes, superfluidity, and other oddities of the physical sphere. He pays more than a mention to Richard Feynman (although the terrible likeness of Feynman on page 145 makes him look more like the lead singer from "Night Ranger" than the eccentric physicist we know an love.) Feynman was one of the most brilliant men who ever lived, and Gribbin believes, as I do, that he was at least on par with Einstein, and possibly even more insightful.

This is a great introduction to physics, but I only gave it four stars for purely physical reasons (sorry about the pun.) The book is printed on unbleached, recycled paper, which is rather dark brown, and is sometimes a big strain on the eyes to read; likewise, the small sections are sometimes chopped up and illustrations are inserted in awkward places, making it more difficult to read than it would otherwise be. I do like the illustrations, and think the biographies and fact boxes throughout help the reader immensely. This is a fine book, and I recommend it highly. I also recommend Gribbin's other books (which are somewhat more complex than this one), and highly recommend Feynman's books as well.

"The Light of Alexandria"...first 1,000 years of science

The Light of Alexandria

by

James Maynard

ISBN-10: 1411653351
ISBN-13: 978-1411653351

SciArt Media writes:

This is the history of science, in the first thousand years, from the birth of the world's first two scientists, Thales and Anaximander, until the final destruction of the greatest library of the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, in the year 415. Journeying through time and space, we visit ancient Ionia, Greece, Egypt and Rome as we meet Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Aristarchus, Galen and many more of the people who created ancient science. We will see how the ideas of science, many thousands of years ahead of their times, were postulated and argued in the fields of astronomy, medicine, physics, evolution and much more.

But more than that, this book also tells of the history of the Mediterranean world in that era and about what life was like for the people of that long-forgotten time. Here, we learn of their dress, styles of music, poetry, art and theatre. The ancient world is brought to life through the eyes of the scientists/philosophers who inhabited that time and place.

The Light of Alexandria contains comprehensive biographies of the most famous scientists of ancient Ionia, Greece, and Egypt including: Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Euclid and Archimedes. The work also includes several lesser known, yet just as important, scientists such as: Eratosthenes, Galen, Aristarchus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Hypatia and many more. Astronomers, mathematicians, doctors and other scientists mix with philosophers, historians, polticians, warriors and lovers.

The life stories of the most famous and important people in history from 600 BCE to 415 CE are also told: the romantic intrigue of Cleopatra, Caesar and Marc Antony, the cruelness of Draco and the bravery of Spartacus, the madness of Caligula and the genius of Hannibal.

The invention of many devices people associate with modern life are profiled: the first vending machines, automatic doors, shopping malls, machine guns, mechanized stage machinery for plays, automated con games and even an analog computer invented nearly 2100 years ago.

The Light of Alexandria tells how the first thousand years of science helped to shape the world of twenty centuries ago, as well as our world today and how science dimmed, faded and was nearly snuffed out, leading to the Dark Ages.

The human mind never stops wondering, and this is the story of the first thousand years of our commitment to that wonder.

Nature, aesthetics, and science

"Nature’s fine designs"

Scientists find modern lessons in ancient creations

by

Corydon Ireland

December 3rd, 2009

Harvard Gazette

Starting with bacteria and blue-green algae, nature has been busy making things for at least 3.5 billion years. The success and longevity of its processes make biology worth studying as a source of robust designs for new materials, nanotechnologies, and even new approaches to architecture.

“We look at what nature does so nicely, and try to mimic it in the lab,” said Joanna Aizenberg in a Radcliffe Fellows’ lecture Wednesday (Dec. 2).

The Moscow-trained researcher is Harvard’s Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science and a pioneering researcher in biomimetics, a branch of science that models new systems and materials on nature.

Her early inspirations, while she was a graduate student in Israel, included intricate sponges found in the Dead Sea. Their glassy superstructures, while seemingly delicate, easily withstood crushing pressures deep under water. And their crystalline surfaces gathered and focused light more efficiently than any man-made lens.

Aizenberg is also a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. She explores biomineralization, the way that nature uses organic catalysts to prompt inorganic materials to “grow” into lenses, glass fibers, and other useful structures.

In the aptly named Aizenberg Biomineralization and Biomimetics Lab on Oxford Street, Aizenberg and her researchers are looking into the “self-assembly” of inorganic materials as nature might do: efficiently in surrounding temperatures.

Examples of biomineralization are everywhere, she said: the houselike structures that mollusks make, the glassy frameworks of marine sponges, ultra-hard mammalian teeth, and the calcium phosphate skeletons that give human bodies their shape.

Biomineralization sometimes goes awry — think kidney stones. But mostly it creates useful structures that in turn offer lessons on self-building secrets that are billions of years old. “Nature creates these shapes from the bottom up,” said Aizenberg.

Her lecture, in the Radcliffe Gymnasium, was illustrated with slides showing infinitesimal structures of astonishing beauty and complexity. Silica patterned on a nanometer scale looked like miniature hats, baskets, and stars. Winged oysters had mineral projections that resembled a crucifix. Spiky radiolarians (amoeboid protozoa) had mineral skeletons as varied as snowflakes.

Beauty is a constant feature of small-scale biology, said Aizenberg. Without aesthetics, she would not be interested in pursuing this scientific avenue. But within these lovely mineralized forms are examples of high functionality. The glass fibers framing those deep-sea sponges, for instance, are stronger and more optically efficient than anything humankind can make.

Aizenberg showed a picture of a whitish tapering glass sponge. Its crown of light-gathering optical fibers made it “a beacon deep in the ocean,” she said. And its multiple intersecting “beams” of glass provided lessons in robust building techniques that Aizenberg is sharing with architectural designers.

Studying how nature builds can illuminate construction on a grand scale (architecture) or a tiny one (nanotechnology fabrication).

To get at nature’s building techniques, Aizenberg looks at marine organisms called echinoderms, which include brittle stars and sea urchins. Their complex skeletons start as single crystals of calcite, a mineral that in its simplest form looks like a slanting cube.

It’s a disarmingly simple start for something as intricate as a marine skeleton, but “somehow nature knows how to grow these things in a bottom-up fashion,” said Aizenberg, who is also the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Radcliffe.

From a substrate of single crystals, the brittle star can grow lenslike spherical arrays that are on the micron-scale, pass light without distortion, focus light exceptionally, and as a bonus are terrifically strong mechanically. (Because of the brittle star, we now have bio-inspired arrays of tunable micro-lenses.)

Beyond lenses that gather and focus light, some echinoderms have pedicellariae, forcepslike structures in near constant motion that keep dust, sand, and unwanted micro-organisms from settling on the creatures. In a video that Aizenberg showed, the pedicellariae looked like earless snapping puppies.

To her team, these “environmentally responsive microactivators” suggest a future in which reactive synthetic skins could repel moisture or contaminants. Aizenberg is experimenting with tiny arrays of rigid structures, known as HAIRS, that rise or collapse, depending on environmental conditions.

HAIRS stands for Hydrogel Actuated Isolated Rigid Structures. Only twice as wide as a human hair, they can be made to change not only direction and height but color. They can also twist in the same direction on a nanometer scale, a function Aizenberg calls making “dreadlocks.” The braids of these nanoscale dreadlocks, in twisting and releasing, can capture or release drug doses, she said. They also have strong adhesive properties.

Tiny 3-D environments like this, modeled from nature, may someday make “adaptive architecture” possible. Aizenberg speculated on a building covering that repels rain or ice. Another could thin or thicken in response to temperature changes.

The same biomimetic architectural skins, she said, could also be made to change color — not only for aesthetic reasons but in order to expose flaws. (A crack, for instance, would appear as a separate color.)

Echinoderms use microscopic moving structures, the pedicellariae, to repel microorganisms. So someday bio-inspired materials could repel the annoying and even dangerous biofilms that tend to layer piping, medical instruments, and other man-made surfaces with bacteria.

There is a lot to learn from the tiny, eons-old creatures around us, said Aizenberg. At her Radcliffe talk, she summed up the secret to that learning: “stealing from nature.”

Cottonwood

Sycamore

Bhopal disaster...25 year anniversary

It is relevant to remember the tragedies of the past.

"A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal"

by

Suketu Mehta

December 2nd, 2009

The New York Times

IN the Mumbai kindergarten my son went to, the children never had to clean up after themselves; that was the servants’ job. So I really liked the school my son attended when we moved back to Brooklyn, where the teachers made the children tidy up at the end of the day. “Cleanup time, cleanup time!” my 6-year-old sang, joyfully gathering his scraps. It’s a wonderful American tradition: you always clean up the mess you made.

This is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster, an epic mess that started one night when a pesticide plant owned by the American chemical giant Union Carbide leaked a cloud of poisonous gas. Before the sun rose, almost 4,000 human beings capable of love and anguish sank to their knees and did not get up. Half a million more fell ill, many with severely damaged lungs and eyes.

An additional 15,000 people have since died from the aftereffects, and 10 to 30 people are said to die every month from exposure to the hundreds of tons of toxic waste left over in the former factory. But amazingly, the site still has not been cleaned up, because Dow Chemical, which since acquired Union Carbide, refuses to accept any responsibility. The groundwater is contaminated; children of the survivors suffer from genetic abnormalities; and the victims have long since run out of their measly compensation and are begging on the streets.

I have traveled to Bhopal and seen the post-apocalyptic devastation, seen the sick, seen the factory. Methyl isocyanate is a deadly chemical used to kill insects. The night that 40 tons of it wafted out of the factory is, for the survivors, a fulcrum in time, marking the before and after in their lives. They still talk about “the gas” as if it were an organism they know well — how it killed buffalo and pigs, but spared chickens; how it traveled toward Jahangirabad and Hamidia Road, while ignoring other parts of the city; how it clung to the wet earth in some places but hovered at waist level in others; how it blackened all the leaves of a peepul tree; how they could watch it move down the other side of the road, like a rain cloud seen from a sunny spot.

All over India, when misfortune strikes — when a child is ill, for example — people burn chilies to drive away the evil eye. The gas smelled like chilies burning, and people said to one another, it must be a powerfully evil eye that’s being driven away, the stench is so strong.

Fleeing the gas, the Bhopalis clutched their children. Some babies fell, gasping, and their parents had to choose which ones to carry on their shoulders. One image still comes up over and over in their dreams: in the stampede, a thousand people are stepping on their child’s body.

In 2001, the maker of napalm married the bane of Bhopal: Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide for $11.6 billion and promptly distanced itself from the disaster. If Union Carbide was at fault, that was too bad; it had just ceased to exist. In 2002, Dow set aside $2.2 billion to cover potential liabilities arising from Union Carbide’s American asbestos production. By comparison, the total settlement for Bhopal was $470 million. The families of the dead got an average of $2,200; the wounded got $550; a Dow spokeswoman explained, that amount “is plenty good for an Indian.” As Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey observed in 2006, “In Bhopal, some of the world’s poorest people are being mistreated by one of the world’s richest corporations.”

Union Carbide and Dow were allowed to get away with it because of the international legal structures that protect multinationals from liability. Union Carbide sold its Indian subsidiary and pulled out of India. Warren Anderson, the Union Carbide chief executive at the time of the gas leak, lives in luxurious exile in the Hamptons, even though there’s an international arrest warrant out for him for culpable homicide. The Indian government has yet to pursue an extradition request. Imagine if an Indian chief executive had jumped bail for causing an industrial disaster that killed tens of thousands of Americans. What are the chances he’d be sunning himself in Goa?

The Indian government, fearful of scaring away foreign investors, has not pushed the issue with American authorities. Dow has used a kind of blackmail with the Indians; a 2006 letter from Andrew Liveris, the chief executive, to India’s ambassador to the United States asked for guarantees that Dow would not be held liable for the cleanup, and thanked him for his “efforts to ensure that we have the appropriate investment climate.”

What’s missing in the whole sad story is any sense of a human connection between the faceless people who run the corporation and the victims. In 1995, a Bhopali woman named Sajida Bano sent a handwritten letter to Union Carbide. The factory had killed her husband in 1981 in an accident, and then, on the night of the disaster, her 4-year-old son. “You put your hand on your heart and think,” she wrote, “if you are a human being: if this happened to you, how would your wife and children feel?” She never received a response.

The survivors of Bhopal want only to be treated as human beings — not victims, not greedy money-grabbers, just human beings who’ve gone through hell and are entitled to a measure of dignity. That includes concrete things like cleaning up the mess and providing health care for the sick, and also something more abstract but equally important — an acknowledgment that a wrong was done to them, and an apology, which Bhopalis have yet to receive.

That was another fine thing my son learned in the Brooklyn school: when you’ve done something bad, you should say you’re sorry. After a quarter of a century, Dow should acknowledge that it is responsible for a very big mess. And now, it’s cleanup time.

Suketu Mehta, a journalism professor at New York University, is the author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.”


Bhopal disaster--the $550 payoff

Science news...fact vs hype

This was a forum: "Fact vs. Hype in Science News" at the meeting of The Ethics Center on December 2nd, 2009, at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park.

[Audio presentation at the bottom of the page.]

"Hype Vs. Fact In Science News"

by

Maureen Cavanaugh, Natalie Walsh

December 2nd, 2009

These days

KPBS

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH (Host): I'm Maureen Cavanaugh, and you're listening to These Days on KPBS. Earth To Bomb Moon! That's how media reports made most of us aware of a planned explosion on the moon's surface last October. After the explosion scientists actually discovered about 25 gallons of water in the form of vapor and ice. But the second half of the story, the results and what they mean, were not nearly as widely reported as the first, which was fodder for jokes and news chat for days. The Moon Bomb story is an example of a larger problem some see in the way science is handled by the news media. They say it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between fact and hype in science coverage. As part of our monthly series on Ethics in Science and Technology, we’ll be talking about some science news with my guests. David Washburn is the former science and technology writer for Voice of San Diego, and now the new managing editor for Voice of OC. And, David, welcome to These Days.

DAVID WASHBURN (Managing Editor, Voice of OC): Great to be with you, Maureen.

CAVANAUGH: Kim McDonald is Director of Science Communications at UC San Diego. Kim, welcome.

KIM MCDONALD (Director, Science Communications, UC San Diego): Thanks for having me.

CAVANAUGH: And we invite our listeners to join the conversation. Do you think science is given the time it should have in news broadcasts? Are scientists themselves guilty of sensationalizing their results in order to get new coverage? Give us a call with your questions and your comments. Our number is 1-888-895-5727, that’s 1-888-895-KPBS. Kim, before you became Director of Science Communications at UC San Diego, you were a science writer, a journalist.

MCDONALD: That’s right.

CAVANAUGH: How did the media cover science stories historically? What did it used to look like?

MCDONALD: Yeah, I’m sure it’s mysterious for most people. You know, the traditional way for journalists to find out about science stories is really through publications, and that’s through peer review scientific papers that come out in journals. Most journals put out a list of their highlighted papers, for example Science & Nature, and Cell, each week to journalists, and that really provides most of the fodder for the reporting. People like myself, who work at research institutions, know about a week or two ahead of time what those articles are going to be and then we actually look for the ones that we think are going to be the most newsworthy and we write news releases about them. And what the news releases are, are they’re really a lay language version of what we think a reporter is most interested in and how that reporter can translate that into a story. Nowadays, there are fewer science reporters—and we could talk more about that later--but, you know, what happens now is that my news releases are written for the general public and they’re posted on the web as stories themselves. But that also produces, you know, story leads for people like David to write stories about.

CAVANAUGH: Exactly. Now David is a specialist in science but a lot of the people who get these news releases and report them on the news are basically general assignment reporters who don’t have the kind of background you or David have in science. And I’m wondering, how does that impact the reporting of what goes on? You, in the old days, say you used to go back and look through the science and read the article and understand the article and then write a story on it. So what’s the difference? What are we losing?

MCDONALD: So right now with what’s happened with the general decline of the news media, you know, since 2001 one out of every five newspaper jobs in the United States have been lost. These people are no longer employed. The first reporters really to go are some of the specialist reporters, the science reporters. So, you know, for example, when I first started in this profession 30 years ago, there’s a group called the National Association of Science Writers that a lot of science writers belong to. And when I started there were about 800 members and they were split maybe 50/50 between PR people, like myself right now, and journalists, freelancers and people that worked for media outlets. Nowadays, right now I think the membership is about 2500 members and I would say that less than 80 of those members are actual reporters for media outlets. So the – there’s been a great contraction in the number of people that are working for media outlets, so we’ve lost a lot of good science talent – or, science writing talent in those years. So, yes, as a result, most of the people that are writing science these days are general assignment reporters. That puts a lot more importance on the fact for me to communicate in my news release to the lay language, to the lay public.

CAVANAUGH: I want to ask you, Kim, and then I want to ask the same question to David, do you think that there’s a sense among news editors and news directors that people just don’t really care about science?

MCDONALD: I think what passes for science these days is more personal health, diets. You know, space is – always has a public interest but we don’t really cover basic science as much as we did in the past and I can tell you that because I find out where my news releases run, and fewer and fewer news outlets are running basic science news releases now than they did in the past. So, you know, why – I mean, you might ask me why should the public know something about basic science and, you know, the truth of the matter is we live in a – you know, we live in an information and a knowledge society that’s driven by science and technology. A hundred years ago, you could work in a factory, you could be a craftsman, you wouldn’t really know how to, you know – now, you actually know – have to know how to read, how to write, how to do math. You have to – You need to know something about science to make an informed decision about stem cells, about global warming. So these are things that people need to know a little bit about.

CAVANAUGH: And, David, let me ask you, David Washburn, as the former science and technology writer for Voice of San Diego, do you think that there’s a feeling that maybe people don’t care about science?

WASHBURN: I don’t know if there is a feeling that people just don’t care about science. Kiim hit it right on the head earlier when he said that there’s – you know, the contraction in the newspaper industry has been significant over the last decade and specialists – and like he said, specialists are very often the first people to be laid off or to be transferred to fill other slots like, you know, in cops coverage or something like that that are being, you know, that are left open from buyouts or layoffs or whatever. So that is a big reason for it. I mean, at Voice of San Diego, you know, with the help of a grant from the Legler Benbough Foundation, I mean, they established a science reporter as one of only – you know, there’s only – there’s less than 10 reporters in that newsroom but understanding that science reporting is really on, you know, there’s not many science reporters out there, they decided to make one of those slots a science reporter. So that is definitely true that there’s not enough science reporters out there. Now to move on to your question, you know, do people think, you know, that science reporting is worthwhile, I think that’s, you know, definitely true and I think one thing we have to, you know, keep in mind is, you know, in the current environment, is is that the last – over the last decade, the two biggest science stories, right, have been – Arguably, the two biggest science stories, global warming and stem cell research, have been incredibly politicized. And so – and to the point where Kim and I dealt with it yesterday, we were on the Channel 6 news, the morning news, you know, to have a very similar conversation that we’re having now. We sit down and the anchor basically just jumps into well, what about global warming and what about this report? He had some report basically talking about how scientists were allegedly fudging data or something about that. And that’s in – and it got onto is global warming for real or isn’t it? So I think there is a feeling that people may have checked out of science reporting because it’s so politicized. You know, that you’re on one side or the other on the stem cell, you’re on one side or the other on global warming…

CAVANAUGH: Right.

WASHBURN: …and not focusing on the science.

CAVANAUGH: Right, I understand your point. Tell us, since you are not a scientist, David, and you’re a journalist, how do you cover a science story? What’s the process that you go through?

WASHBURN: Well, what I try to do is this. There is a challenge because what I’m trying to do is two things. I want my reader, the lay public, to be interested in what I write about but I also want – you know, I want part of my readership, I want my readership to be scientists as well. So what I try to do is, you know, I spend a lot of time talking to the scientists that are, you know, the main researchers. Like Kim was talking about, there’s a, you know, something is published in Nature, we get like a heads up on it so we might do a story on it whether it be a breakthrough in any number of areas. So what I will do is spend a lot of time talking with the scientists, really trying to get my head around it because I don’t have any science background. I don’t have any training. My whole – my entire background is journalism. So I will do that and then I will always try to really bring home what this discovery, what this breakthrough, means to, you know, to us on a – you know, that everybody can understand, why is it important? Why is it important that this is – that this discovery happened? And so that’s, you know, that’s kind of a sense of my process.

CAVANAUGH: I’m speaking with David Washburn. He is former science and technology writer for Voice of San Diego, now the managing editor for Voice of OC. Kim McDonald is Director of Science Communications at UC San Diego. And welcoming another guest coming on the line right now. David Schardt is Senior Nutritionist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, D.C. And, David, welcome.

DAVID SCHARDT (Senior Nutritionist, Center for Science in the Public Interest): Thank you. Good morning.

CAVANAUGH: Good morning. I want to let our listeners know we are inviting their phone calls at 1-888-895-5727. First of all, David Schardt, tell us what the Center for the Science in the Public Interest does.

SCHARDT: Well, we’re a nonprofit consumer group, specializing in food and nutrition issues. We’ve been around since 1971. We’re supported entirely by subscriptions to our monthly newsletter and some donations and a little bit of foundation grant. We accept no money from the government or from industry so we’re – we see ourselves as an objective observer and advocate for consumers in the area of food and nutrition.

CAVANAUGH: Well, how good a job, in your opinion, does the media do in reporting science news?

SCHARDT: Well, my – our field is particularly food and nutrition, and I think it depends on which medium you’re talking about. I think probably the worst is TV. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time unless you’re on Charlie Rose late at night. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to really explain an issue, explain research, put it into context. Most of what I see on TV is very quick, very superficial and bewildering, I think, to many consumers who don’t know what to make out of whatever news is being presented.

CAVANAUGH: That’s very interesting. Kim, I want to ask you, we hear that – you said nutrition stories usually get some air time, space stories sometimes get some air time. What are the science stories that you really have to fight to get anybody to cover?

MCDONALD: I think just these basic science – I actually cover a couple of fields at UC San Diego, one is basic biology, physics, chemistry. Those kinds of stories unless they have a real concrete application to the average Joe on the street, as David, you know, described, it’s really hard to get people to pay attention. People really don’t necessarily find attraction to just basic science but it has to connect in a real way with them and I think that’s partly why, you know, nutrition stories, health stories really have a big following.

CAVANAUGH: And David Schardt, even when the news media – and when I say – Let me just say the broadcast news media for a shorthand, when we talk about a breakthrough or something that’s been discovered about our nutritional needs, do you get it wrong? Do we get it wrong a lot of the time?

SCHARDT: Well, I don’t know so much wrong as exaggerating the significance of what’s been found. Rarely is there one study that settles something. Usually, it’s a bunch of studies all pointing in the same direction with consistency that leads you to some conclusion. But one particular study doesn’t really – shouldn’t really change people’s behavior. And I think often the broadcasting medium highlights one particular study because it catches people’s attention but they don’t put it into perspective, what – how is that consistent with previous research? Are there limitations to the study? Does it apply to everyone? What are the cautions? There doesn’t seem to be enough time to discuss all of that and that’s essential to really understanding what research means.

CAVANAUGH: And, David, I’m wondering, David Schardt, is this really a question of time or is it also one of expertise?

SCHARDT: Well, I think it’s both, certainly a question of time. But I think a lot of reporters on television delivering nutrition news don’t – they may be consumer reporters but they’re not particularly scientists. This is an area of nutrition. And so I think they don’t know the right questions to ask necessarily or, in particular, don’t know when they’re being told something that’s not quite correct. Now there are some broadcasters who are good. I think NBC News is good, with Robert Bazell, is very good with presenting science. But those are the exceptions.

WASHBURN: And, Maureen, if I could break in here. You mentioned…

CAVANAUGH: Please do, yes. David Washburn.

WASHBURN: You mentioned something very early that I think needs to be brought up is, is that there is, on the other side, as far as the scientists are concerned, a I don’t want to say tendency, but there’s definitely a push sometimes for them to, you know – that make their research as exciting as possible, you know what I mean, and so they – You know, I think a lot of times you’ll have studies come out and the scientists themselves might overhype what it is that they’re doing.

CAVANAUGH: Can blueberries save your life? That kind of thing.

WASHBURN: Right, because I mean, they…

CAVANAUGH: Yes.

WASHBURN: …you know, they need to be published. You know, it helps them when their research is, you know, in the public realm, so to speak. So, I mean, that’s just something to consider as well, that, you know, you have the journalist who’s not exactly a scientist and, you know, they get this breakthrough on, you know, you know, does this cause cancer? Does this – Is this going to save you from cancer, all that kind of stuff. You know, there is a responsibility on the – from the research side to, you know, give them the whole story right from the beginning. There’s been some recent stories that have said that, you know, if you really go back and look at all these things that we’re supposed to – whether it be, you know, everything from beta carotene to certain things, you know, do these things really prevent cancer? And the, you know, study’s coming out and saying they, you know, they don’t so much. And that definitely runs contrary to stories we’ve seen throughout and research that we’ve seen published throughout the years that says, you know, breakthrough and all that kind of stuff.

CAVANAUGH: We’re inviting our audience to participate in the conversation at 1-888-895-5727. And let’s take a phone call. Charlie is calling from San Diego. Good morning, Charlie. Welcome to These Days.

CHARLIE (Caller, San Diego): Oh, good morning. Thanks for taking my call.

CAVANAUGH: You’re welcome.

CHARLIE: You know, I used to be a scientist. I used to be a physicist years ago and now I’m a physician. And to be honest with you, I can’t read more – I can very much identify with the idea of getting it wrong. So much that I read of areas that I do know something about, I find they miss the mark or they sensationalize it or they’re just not quite – they just don’t get the right spin on it or the right understanding behind the concept. And so when I read other stuff that I don’t know so much about, how can I trust that? How can I think that this is – they’re really telling me what’s the important element of this?

CAVANAUGH: Well, I think you’ve hit the heart of the matter there. Thank you so much for the call. I don’t know that anyone can actually answer that question. Would anyone like to respond?

WASHBURN: Well, I mean, you know, I can respond to that. That there’s – I used to have a Dave Barry, you know, you know, calendar, desk calendar, you know, Dave Barry-ism a day thing that set on my desk and he had one that just sticks out. You know, it was like a Q&A and the question is, you know, how come – You know, it’s a Q&A to the newspaper editor, and it’s like how come whenever I read a story about something I know about, it’s wrong? And so – and the editor – and then there’s a hilarious response that the editor gives. And the reality is, is that, you know, there is – if you are an expert at something – I mean, you know, the newspaper stories, the news that you see, is the, you know, the so-called rough draft of history. And so you don’t – you are going to get – miss some of the – An expert’s always going to read a science story written for the general public and be like, well, that’s not the whole story.

CAVANAUGH: Right.

WASHBURN: Now there is a responsibility and that is one that is shirked all too often, is, like the caller said, get it right. I mean, at least get the basics right. And, unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.

CAVANAUGH: David Schardt, I want to ask you, what’s the best way to, in hearing this and hearing what David Washburn just said, what’s the best way for consumers to take in this information that they get about science research in the media?

SCHARDT: Well, we get asked the question all the time where – who do we trust? Where can we get good information about nutrition? And our usual response is, well, if it’s something important, if it’s a life or death issue like cancer or heart disease or hypertension, you should go to the big organizations that specialize in that, such as the American Cancer Society, the National Institutes of Health, some of the major hospitals, who put out a lot of information that’s based on science, it’s reviewed by scientists and which you can generally rely on. Now often they don’t deal with some of the questions that people will have uppermost in their mind because they’ve watched some advertisement or they’ve seen some infomercial, and those organizations don’t deal with that type of information. But for the life and death issues about what causes cancer or what you can do to prevent cancer, things like that, we tell people to go to those big organizations.

CAVANAUGH: Let’s take another phone call. Jim is calling from Carlsbad. Good morning, Jim. Welcome to These Days.

JIM (Caller, Carlsbad): Good morning. You have another previous scientist on the phone. I was a chemist for 10 years and had a science education behind it. My biggest concern is seeing even in my own 17 year old daughter, who is certainly not majoring in science and is in a senior year of high school, basically has taken the physics and the chemistry and bio and has done pretty well in it all but there’s something missing. What I notice that’s missing in her education is the philosophy of science, is the basic tenets that we learned once we got into graduate school or when we learned it in even freshman chemistry, is that there’s a basis to the scientific method that is very profound. And more important is that the paradigm shifts that occur in science are based on very, very profound changes. People are seeing science from the science editorials and the science writers as pop science. It’s the gee, science is neat crowd. And what we notice is that that’s why we see the response we do to the mammogram issue, to the pap smear issue, to the most – to even something like stem cell or the idea of whether science interferes with religion through creationism and calling evolution a theory and that alone giving them justification for not believing. This is the basic problem.

CAVANAUGH: Well, thank you for the phone call, Jim. And, Kim, I wanted to ask you, as Director of Science Communications at UC San Diego, do you find that there is a fundamental problem in trying to get out this information with it not becoming just another political story or another story for people to bounce around but actually with the underpinnings of a scientific method and that understanding affecting the journalists that you talk with?

MCDONALD: Yeah, I think that’s part of the problem in the fact that there’s not a lot of basic science that’s covered by the news media because people really don’t know what scientists do. And, you know, getting back to this whole issue about, you know, why should the public know something about science, you know, we spend – or we will spend, in 2010, $150 billion in federal research R&D, and UC San Diego received last year, I believe, $852 million in federal R&D funds. We’re sixth in the nation in that. So people should have an idea of how their tax dollars are being spent, and most of the scientists at my university are very interested in sharing with the public what it is that they do. The problem is that the frontiers of science, what we do in basic chemistry, in basic physics, in basic biology, has now – You know, all the easy questions have been answered so the frontiers of science is very divorced from just our normal, everyday experience. To really understand what people are doing now in the laboratories, I mean, requires, you know, two or three pages of background first, and that’s part of the problem. But I think that, you know, in general, we – You know, I think Dave Washburn touched on the fact that some scientists are trying to push their own ideas or products. But there is really a culture among scientists that makes them reluctant to actually be interviewed by the media, you know, because of this nature of people getting information wrong, getting their, you know, research, which they painstakingly worked on for years and years, wrong in a newspaper article. A lot of them were reluctant to go on the – you know, news shows like this and talk about the research. So…

CAVANAUGH: Right.

MCDONALD: So my job is really to try to convey what they do in a way that’s accessible to the public and at the same time try to cajole them to, you know, see the big picture that getting information out to the public, you know, in the whole is a good thing.

CAVANAUGH: We have to take a short break, and I’m afraid so we also have to say goodbye to David Schardt but thank you so much for joining us.

SCHARDT: Oh, you’re quite welcome.

CAVANAUGH: David Schardt, senior nutritionist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, D.C. Our conversation will continue with Kim McDonald and David Washburn. We’ll be taking your calls at 1-888-895-5727. You’re listening to These Days on KPBS.

CAVANAUGH: I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. You're listening to These Days on KPBS. We’re talking about science reporting, some would say the decline of science reporting, in the United States. My guests are Kim McDonald, Director of Science Communications at UC, San Diego, and David Washburn, formerly the science and technology writer for Voice of San Diego. And we’re taking your calls at 1-888-895-5727. And I said, Kim, specifically the decline of science reporting in the United States because this is not happening all over the world, is it, the same sort of thing?

MCDONALD: No, it’s not. And as I mentioned, I keep track of the media hits that my stories get when I send the news releases out and while they’re declining in the United States, they’re actually increasing in countries like India, China, Brazil. Those are the same countries where we’re losing our technological edge and the reason is that a lot of these countries are becoming, you know, they’re becoming more important in technology. People have to learn about technology. They’re more interested in technology. And I give you an example. Every year the largest scientific association in the country has its annual meeting; this year it’ll be in San Diego in mid-February. It’s called the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And typically we get about 500 newsroom registrants, about 300 of those are U.S. and the majority of those are PR people like myself that register. About 200 of those are foreign journalists, and most of those are actual journalists. They’re people that come to the conference that write for newspapers and TV and, you know, broadcast TV stations and radio.

CAVANAUGH: Wow.

MCDONALD: So there’s a big difference.

CAVANAUGH: Yes, there certainly is. Let’s take another phone call. Pete is calling from Escondido. Good morning, Pete, and welcome to These Days.

PETE (Caller, Escondido): Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I called in because I actually work at the North County Times newspaper and I’m responsible for putting together our weekly science/technology page.

CAVANAUGH: Uh-huh.

PETE: That’s my task, right. And I was very interested in what I’m hearing here. And what I kind of wanted to point out, and I think David’s pointed towards this, David Washburn, it’s what I like to call the economy of the inch as in, you know, copy inch in the newspaper. I can only put so much into the paper every Monday when we run the section and as a result the stories have to be shorter. Science is typically not something you can summarize, you know, in a quick and easy lead.

CAVANAUGH: Right, effectively. Yes.

PETE: And, you know, around here we have this large scientific community making breakthroughs all the time, physics, stem cell research, biotech, oceanography, that sort of thing, and we want to put out every time one of these companies or these foundations advances something, obviously we want to cover that story. But we can’t really go into the lengths of it, you know, to the length of the scientific paper, we’ve got to do it in, you know, like 600 words or so. And it’s not to say we cut corners but it means that sometimes we have to be glib or, well, I don’t want to say glib, but we have to draw people into the article and sometimes—I’m not saying we do this, you know, that we mess it up but it means we don’t get every little…

CAVANAUGH: Right.

PETE: …aspect of it covered. The other thing is that, yes, we don’t have a full time science reporter by any means. I also handle the business section. A couple of reporters contribute to science somewhat frequently. They also work other beats. They kind of do it as a side gig. As a result, I’m very reliant on the Associated Press to move stories. And without, you know, I don’t want to dis, you know, my fellow journalists at the AP but it kind of tends to sometimes get to that politicized sense when you’re covering a story especially about things like climate change or stem cell research where they would point out – they immediately start saying, well, is climate change real or whatnot.

CAVANAUGH: Right, Pete…

PETE: And…

CAVANAUGH: …let…

PETE: …we go into that angle of it…

CAVANAUGH: I understand what you’re saying but I want to get a reaction from David Washburn. David, I don’t think you have exactly the same inch constraints on the online as probably Pete does but talk a little bit about your reaction to what Pete’s talking about.

WASHBURN: Well, I think Pete obviously brings up a really important point and it speaks to what we were talking about earlier just the general – all the financial pressures on the news industry right now are as intense as they’ve ever been. I mean, one thing, and this is something, you know, I’ve been in both the online world and on, you know, I worked at the Union-Tribune for years but the – I mean, I think there can be a happy medium struck where a story can go online in a more expanded version and then, you know, the – you’re not going to get around the fact that you have the, you know, that you have the inch limits in the printed product. There’s just no getting around that. But you can have that and then have a more expanded version online. I think that’s something that you’re going to see more and more and if you don’t see it more and more, you should see it more and more where you have like, okay, well, let’s – we’ll give you the basics in the print but then if you really want the, you know, the nuances of the research and all that, well, go online and we have a 1200 word story for you. Now, again, there’s the pressures on all the reporters if they have the time to do that, but – So that’s my answer…

CAVANAUGH: Right.

WASHBURN: …to that.

CAVANAUGH: Well, yes, Kim.

MCDONALD: Yeah, well, I, you know, wanted to mention that at UC San Diego, we’ve actually been trying to use the new media a lot more effectively to communicate science. And, you know, the caller’s right. The – You know, science is very hard. It’s not attractive to read in large chunks of type but there are a lot of interesting things that are going on in the laboratories visually that can be communicated by photographs and video, which we’re trying to do more of. And so I really see the online medium, you know, publications – online publications like the Voice of San Diego’s really an effective way to reach the public about basic science and that’s why Dave and I have actually been working together as a, you know, in a partnership, you know, to try to more content...

WASHBURN: Yeah.

CAVANAUGH: Let’s take one more call. Lance is calling from north county. Good morning, Lance, and welcome to These Days.

LANCE (Caller, North San Diego County): Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. This segues perfectly with what Pete from Escondido was saying and what David was saying. Where online can I find a little bit more science without having – a more generalized science that can possibly take me to a link but where I can get that, you know, 600 page or 600 word story and then be able to find possibly a link to the 1200 words or maybe even 2500 words? Is there such a generalized site out there yet or is this what you guys are trying to develop?

WASHBURN: Well, I mean, Voice of San Diego, you know, over the last couple of years has really devoted a lot of resources to science coverage, so check out Voice of San Diego, and, you know, another thing we’re doing is – I mean, one thing about – and Kim talked about a partnership of just efforts we’re putting together. Two things that we do, we have, you know, we have a dedicated reporter to science. A lot of our freelance work focuses on science. We also do the RSS feeds of UCSD, of Scripps, of the various institutions, so if you want to come on, you can read stories that we’ve chosen to do but then you can go and read all the stuff that Kim and his colleagues are writing, and they are good writers. I mean, it’s very – I mean, right when I got on the beat I was impressed with the writing, especially at UCSD. I mean, it’s interesting, engaging science writing that’s happening that you can get through just reading their releases through their RSS feed. And one last thing is that, as Kim was saying, we are really – you know, that reluctance Kim was talking about before of scientists to even talk to journalists because, you know, they get the story wrong and, you know…

CAVANAUGH: Right.

WASHBURN: …there’s too much risk involved, we heard – We have really been trying, and we’ve had some success, we hope for more success to reach – to have the scientists do their own writing. I mean, have them – You know, we would – Voice of San Diego would give any scientist the space to write about an issue or write about their research…

CAVANAUGH: David, I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it there because we are out of time. But I want to thank you both for a very engaging conversation, David Washburn and Kim McDonald, thank you.

MCDONALD: Thanks for having us.

WASHBURN: Thank you.

CAVANAUGH: And everybody who called, we couldn’t get to everyone who called so please do post your comments online at KPBS.org/TheseDays. And I want to let everyone know the next Ethics Center forum, "Fact versus Hype in Science News," is tonight at 5:30 at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park. The event is free and open to the public. Go to KPBS.org/TheseDays for more information. You stay with us for hour two of These Days coming up in just a few minutes here on KPBS.

Audio

Science textbook overhaul

Some classic old science textbooks from the 1950s get an update.

"Classic 1950s Science Textbooks Get a 21st-Century Update"

by

Carl DeTorres

October 16th, 2009

Wired

"Classic 1950s Science Textbooks Get a 21st-Century Update"

Strange, old global maps

"Strange Maps"

California as an island, utopia in the shape of a skull, and other cartographic curiosities.

by

Frank Jacobs

November. 30th, 2009

Slate

"Strange Maps"