Keeping the Science in Science Writing
Posted by Eric Roston at 3/19/2008 11:04 PM and is filed under Science,scienceblogs,Religion,Science Writing,The Carbon Age,Global Warming,Evolution 
I feel some compulsion to weigh in on Brian Switek's post about whether scientists and writers should confront anti-and pseudoscientists, a discussion that Chris Mooney launches in his latest Science Progress column, headlined "The Enablers."
I am caught in the middle of the two of them. Chris argues that science journalists shouldn't waste their time attending to anti-science nonsense. This instinct goes to the fundamental organizing principle of my research for The Carbon Age. The book is based almost entirely on peer-reviewed journal articles. I chose this route for some very specific reasons.
First, peer-reviewed articles are primary documents, and I didn't want the noise of media or other commentary. I reached out to many people for help, and read much non-peer-reviewed literature, but stayed away from media for the most part.
Second, I wanted to emphasize that science is, at its core, at least in this day and age, a professional endeavor. Scientists are people who get out of bed, go to work, and try to solve problems, don't finish, go home, and have to come back the next day. The problems they are trying to solve aren't how to market new-and-improved widgets, or why my car's power steering broke, or if Mr. Mustard did it in the kitchen with the candlestick. They are trying to understand their own tiny corner of nature. In the book I write about the intrigue of discovery, the inquiry, its rewards and frustrations.
Third, this research approach sets me up to not talk about religion or anti-science or pseudoscience almost at all. In fact, I can think of only five or six instances in the entire book where I use a word or invoke some thought about religion. Two of these instances are in endnotes. There just isn't much talk about intelligent design or non-anthropogenic climate change or religion in general in the peer-reviewed literature (conspiracy theorists, please light your sirens here!), so there is none of it in The Carbon Age. I just never came across any paper that said anything resembling, say: "The calcite crystal failed to impose chiral selection on aspartic acid in a 0.5 percent solution, so we raised the aspartic acid concentration to one percent and stopped eating pork."
Finally, the most important reason for basing a book's research only on science, and not on the boring this-and-that of science v. religion, is that these polemics obscure the fundamental relationship among science, technology, and economics. Rather than setting up science as a foe of religion, it would make much more sense, given the Gathering Storm and all, to set up science as a friend of technology and economics -- in fact, as their driver.
That leads us to Brian's criticism of Chris' column, and another recent post, in which he thumbs through John Brockman's The Third Culture. Brian writes in these posts about the rarity of good popular science books. I felt the same way, which is how I got into this position (authorship) in the first place. Covering energy and climate, and just about everything else, I thought it was funny (funny-strange) that everyone seemed to talk about "carbon" all the time, be it in the atmosphere or in high-end carbon-fiber tennis rackets, without the enriching overall context. Carbon is the central organizing element of life and civilization, so perhaps we should smash the stove pipes and look at this world of ours dynamically, just by following the carbon.
I am caught in the middle of the two of them. Chris argues that science journalists shouldn't waste their time attending to anti-science nonsense. This instinct goes to the fundamental organizing principle of my research for The Carbon Age. The book is based almost entirely on peer-reviewed journal articles. I chose this route for some very specific reasons.
First, peer-reviewed articles are primary documents, and I didn't want the noise of media or other commentary. I reached out to many people for help, and read much non-peer-reviewed literature, but stayed away from media for the most part.
Second, I wanted to emphasize that science is, at its core, at least in this day and age, a professional endeavor. Scientists are people who get out of bed, go to work, and try to solve problems, don't finish, go home, and have to come back the next day. The problems they are trying to solve aren't how to market new-and-improved widgets, or why my car's power steering broke, or if Mr. Mustard did it in the kitchen with the candlestick. They are trying to understand their own tiny corner of nature. In the book I write about the intrigue of discovery, the inquiry, its rewards and frustrations.
Third, this research approach sets me up to not talk about religion or anti-science or pseudoscience almost at all. In fact, I can think of only five or six instances in the entire book where I use a word or invoke some thought about religion. Two of these instances are in endnotes. There just isn't much talk about intelligent design or non-anthropogenic climate change or religion in general in the peer-reviewed literature (conspiracy theorists, please light your sirens here!), so there is none of it in The Carbon Age. I just never came across any paper that said anything resembling, say: "The calcite crystal failed to impose chiral selection on aspartic acid in a 0.5 percent solution, so we raised the aspartic acid concentration to one percent and stopped eating pork."
Finally, the most important reason for basing a book's research only on science, and not on the boring this-and-that of science v. religion, is that these polemics obscure the fundamental relationship among science, technology, and economics. Rather than setting up science as a foe of religion, it would make much more sense, given the Gathering Storm and all, to set up science as a friend of technology and economics -- in fact, as their driver.
That leads us to Brian's criticism of Chris' column, and another recent post, in which he thumbs through John Brockman's The Third Culture. Brian writes in these posts about the rarity of good popular science books. I felt the same way, which is how I got into this position (authorship) in the first place. Covering energy and climate, and just about everything else, I thought it was funny (funny-strange) that everyone seemed to talk about "carbon" all the time, be it in the atmosphere or in high-end carbon-fiber tennis rackets, without the enriching overall context. Carbon is the central organizing element of life and civilization, so perhaps we should smash the stove pipes and look at this world of ours dynamically, just by following the carbon.
Thanks for the comments and the links! I think we're in a time of transition as far as science writing goes, and the ability to blog may generate a new crop of popularizers and writers. At least, I hope so.
My criticism to Chris' post was written quickly (I was leaving work at the time), but I would have been more sympathetic if something other than "promote good books" was offered as an alternative to keeping quiet. I think scientists should respond to pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean that every response is a good one.
What comes to mind (and what I forgot to mention) is that Darwin was intimately familiar with Paley's "Natural Theology," and that knowledge shaped what we wrote in On the Origin. He didn't directly confront creationism (it would be seen as a direct attack on revealed religion), but he organized his arguments based upon the favorite examples of the famous theologian, therefore simultaneous undercutting creationism and supporting his own theory of evolution by natural selection. I'd like this sort of approach be utilized more often; knowing creationist claims well enough to refute them without becoming shrill or overly antagonistic. Issues like creationism are so difficult to weed out because people are feeling threatened and they need to make a choice (or they make a choice because they don't want to get involved in a big argument). Direct refutation of bad science is still necessary, but if there is not a push towards positive science education, I fear we're going to risk being seen as a bunch of cranks.
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