Science can’t be fun?
- Author: Anna Olejarczyk
- Filed under: News, Online journalism
Nov 10,2007
Sparks were flying as these three put their heads together to discuss the ultimate question: Is the internet dumbing down science?
People like the web. It’s a new medium that is instantaneous, offers interactivity and ability to access content on different levels of detail and the user can check facts.
The new tools allow the “omygawd” factor, according to Richard Black from BBCNews.com, to become a way to share news.
The “omygawd” or “wow” factor isn’t enough. It just gives attention to stories that mainstream media overlooks or doesn’t place enough emphasis. It is up to the audience who are Googling or Digging for stories that decide what news needs emphasis and what their friends should look up. People like curious and quirky stories. But with the web, even a quirky story allows the user to drill down the feature jumping around from article to blog to a video presentation. It allows users control over how much detail they see.
This is the DIY generation. The generation that made Web 2.0 what it is. It’s social networking that allows the user to send things to friends and Black argues that “the more we personalize, the more we take away.”
Anne Casselman from inklingmagazine.com agrees with Black that what articles are popular in the larger web community push people towards inklingmagazine. People like interaction and contests, but they also like “the word of mouth.” Web 2.0 to Casselman gives more opportunity for dialogue. It gives science dialogue.
Unfortunately, this creates an issue of filtering media stories through the people who use the web. It’s stories with the fun headlines or odd topics that will get the most hits on Digg and if this is the answer of how to attract an audience who is not into popular science to read about science, maybe we are using the web for the wrong reasons.
Essentially, it’s all about toning down this enthusiasm about everyone having access to knowledge and information and sharing it with their friends.
François Heinderyckx, from the department of Information and Communication Science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, argues that in the age of the web we are creating a “shapeless shamble.” Web promises speed, but speed leads to haste and haste can lead to manipulation. Validation is still needed, but validation is not what it used to be. “Validation is now based on popularity,” said Heinderyckx.
Instead of finding information or being exposed to new ideas, the web is doing the opposite: It is combining people into communities that validate their own ideas. It’s quite depressing to think that people will read the funny, outrageous or spectacular stories. “People are having fun,” said Heinderyckx. “They are not trying to give humanity knowledge to live better.”
The “omygawd” factor may be detrimental to science, but the internet isn’t dumbing down the science. It is giving the wide audience information in various formats that will be applicable to everyone. What’s key is teaching the facts and they will be filtered. After all, it’s the internet.
2 Responses for "Science can’t be fun?"
I think any media form of science is going to dumb it down to some extent, but that’s not always bad. To take the main findings and present them in a way that anyone can understand is fine, but sometimes it goes a lot further than that… I am not sure that the internet VS printed material has much to do with that except maybe the competence of the people doing the writing, but you never know. Here are 3 problems I’ve found:
1) Perception of science: people view science as a sort of religion. Science isn’t a mass of facts that people believe in. It’s a method to look for facts. People do not all agree with each other in the scientific world. There are very few “laws” for that reason, and these are really basic things such as gravity. People need to understand that all scientific discoveries are open for debate within the scientific community and can also be open for debate within public discussion without having to resort to crazy religious alternatives. Usually, for any minuscule finding, there are people who disagree and eventually one side is accepted as more plausible.
2) Skewing of facts: This relates to the above point, because often scientific findings are presented as truths instead of just information that supports a possible truth. Ie “scientists prove that…” kind of statements is presenting false information to the public and makes me think that the author must have no clue what science is all about.
3) Missing underlying information: Often articles don’t present what researchers actually did because it’s perceived as too complicated. However, it’s important that this is presented in at least a general way. For example, if someone supposedly found some new potential cure for cancer, the question is, what’s new about it? What has this researcher done that makes him special? I think the people who read past the first few paragraphs in an article about science aren’t going to be phased if you tell them some basic information about what cancer cells do and what the traditional approach to trying to kill them would be and how this one is different. I mean, you can’t get really technical, but you can usually avoid using jargon and get to the point of what’s going on… It’s like explaining a concept to someone speaking another language, you just explain it in plain terms, but you don’t have to really “dumb it down”, it would just take too long to explain every detail, but it’s not necessary. There’s a huge step between training someone to be able to contribute to future research and avoiding information all together.
[...] to the same Science Journalism conference that Dave S. spoke of in the previous post. One of the sessions, in particular, that resulted in a heated argument, was whether the internet and the whole Web2.0 [...]
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