| Faith in science is not enough – people deserve proof | Alom Shaha Education must be at the heart of science communication, or else we are simply asking people to 'believe'I am an evangelist. But instead of spreading the gospel or any other religious message, I spend my time trying to share the knowledge of what I believe to be humanity's greatest cultural achievement: science. There is a more mundane term for what I do – "science communication". It's a horrible term, smacking of exactly the kind of thing that turns some people off science. It covers a wide range of activities – from science film-making to working for medical-research charities to going into schools and throwing liquid nitrogen around in a desperate attempt to convince teenagers that "science is fun". Funnily enough, it's not used to describe those who teach science, even though science teachers arguably do more "science communication" than anyone else.The UK's best known science communicator is probably Professor Brian Cox. He's doing a great job of making science seem cool and sexy to the public and, in my opinion, deserves the accolade of modern-day Carl Sagan for his contribution to the cultural status of science. I've known Brian for years and worked with him before his celebrity status went supernova. I would love to say "I told you so" to all the TV commissioning editors who rejected my suggestions to use him as a presenter. I suspect Brian finds it as ironic as I do that TV companies now regularly put out adverts looking for "the next Brian Cox".As much as I love Brian's work, I don't think we need any more like him at the moment. Instead, we need more really good science teachers, and here's why: I don't want to see science become something that people "believe" is important and cool and sexy without understanding why. I don't want people to mindlessly buy into the geek scene in the same way that they might have bought into the alternative lifestyle scene, had they encountered it first in the right circumstances. But that's what I've seen happening – people attending the lectures, events and festivals organised by "science communicators" and going home convinced that science is the "right" way to look at the world, without really understanding why science is special. I've encountered people who are desperate to hang out with the science in-crowd (yes, there really is such a crowd), and even "science communicators" who struggle to explain what it is they think is special or important about science. When I ask them why they want to be science communicators they invariably talk about wanting to share their love of science with the world. Perhaps this is not so different from people who want to share their love of Jesus, Muhammad or Krishna.It seems to me that many of these people are looking for an identity, something to believe in, and they've "found" science in much the same way that others find religion or spirituality. Some of these science groupies are scarily reminiscent of the kids who were in the Christian Union at school.As a child, it would frustrate me that my friends would bang on about how great Islam was and how the Qur'an was this amazing book with the Truth in it – when they had little idea what the Qur'an really said or what the details of the Islamic faith were. Recently, I've been feeling a disconcertingly similar sense of frustration when talking to people who are part of the "sceptic" movement, or the geek scene.Sure, science by its very nature requires us to take things on faith – we cannot individually verify every scientific statement ever made, heck, few of us know how to prove that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way round, but without ensuring that education is at the heart of science communication, we are simply asking people to "believe" in science. If we can't do better than that, than we're no better than the religious leaders that so many self-proclaimed geeks are contemptuous of.I have encountered priests who seemed simply to want to increase the numbers of their flocks, and I've met others who genuinely want to pass on their understanding of god. There is a parallel with science communicators – there are ones who think that getting people to believe "science is fun / important" is what matters and there are others who want people to understand why this is so. It's a subtle but important distinction – the latter is more difficult to do and my feeling is that the best place to do it is in the classroom.My friend Jonathan Sanderson, a science communicator I admire hugely, has pointed out that it looks like I am advocating a return to the "empty vessel" model of communication. I'm not sure he's wrong, but I'd happily concede that, particularly with adult audiences, we need a range of approaches, from saying "this is how the greenhouse effect works" to "take a look at this, you might find it interesting". But Jonathan agrees with me that, "most science communicators would have a dramatically larger impact over their lifetimes if they quit the scene and took teaching jobs". I'm not disparaging the good work that many science communicators do, but some of the most talented, creative people I know work in this peculiar field and I just wish more of them would aspire to become teachers instead of dreaming of becoming the next Brian Cox.Science policyScienceReligionAlom Shahaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Crystal sponges to mop up power station CO2 A team of Australian scientists has developed a new material that can soak up large amounts of greenhouse gases. abc.net.au |
Patrols to prevent whale harassment Wildlife officers in Albany will speak to a witness who says they saw a teenage boy climbing onto a whale's back last week. abc.net.au |
Another gas pipeline criticised A Bundella farmer says landholders fighting to have the Narrabri-to-Wellington gas pipeline moved off their land should not give up. abc.net.au |
Project Prevention puts the price of a vasectomy – and for forfeiting a future – at £200 | Deborah Orr Yet the British Fertility Society says £250 is far too little for a woman who donates eggsJohn from Leicester has already received his public service cut, and has pocketed £200 for the privilege. The 38-year-old opiates addict is the first person in Britain to have received an "incentive payment" from a US charity called Project Prevention, to encourage him to undergo sterilisation. John has said that he'd been thinking about having a vasectomy anyway, and that the payment had simply "spurred me into doing it". He intends to spend the money on overdue rent and shopping.Leaving aside for a moment the ethical considerations, £200 seems like a small sum to be paid to take such a momentous step. By odd coincidence, Dr Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society, has this week suggested that £250 is not anything like enough payment for women wishing to donate their eggs. The "physical rigours" of donation, he says, would be better expressed by a sum in the region of £1,500. Compensation, he adds, however, "should not be so high that it acts as a financial inducement".Project Prevention, of course, is a quite different organisation to the British Fertility Society. The former, run by a North Carolina woman, Barbara Harris, targets people with addiction problems, with the aim of persuading them that they are in no condition to bring children into the world. It has already paid more than 3,500 mainly female addicts in the US not to have children, and has brought its discomfiting crusade to Britain after receiving a £12,500 donation from an anonymous US businessman living here.The latter is an umbrella organisation representing professionals working in the field of reproductive medicine, and provides a forum for the discussion of "practice, research, policy and ethics for the advancement of the subject". It is in this spirit that the group has put the issue of payment for egg donation up for discussion.Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of these two debates is extremely unsettling. The idea that £200 is a good inducement to persuade a man to forfeit all hope of recovery from addiction, and a functioning family life, while £250 is far from adequate in compensating a woman for helping someone to have a longed-for child, seems to introduce further unease into areas that are already fraught with difficulty.Harris's crusade is clearly problematic. Here is a charity that makes no bones about seeking out what it views as "the undeserving poor", then bribing them to place their short-term interests – always at the forefront of an addict's mind – against a long-term interest in getting better and having a normal life. At the same time, it is a highly populist strategy. It is pretty impossible to come up with an argument strongly in favour of addicts having children, while even the most liberally minded of people view current social services policy, whereby strenuous attempts are routinely made to keep the children of addicts at home with their parents, as highly risky at the very least.Rutherford's contention is socially charged also, if more subtle. The fact is that even £250 is a "financial inducement" in a low-income household. The idea that £1,500 would not be viewed as a fairly massive "financial inducement" to many people is fairly absurd. Rutherford's belief that a number can be agreed upon, neither too large or too little, that accurately represents the monetary value of "physical rigour" is hopelessly naïve.Further, while it was surely not Rutherford's intention, the suggestion of a £1,500 inducement invites speculation about the level of affluence of the people who might be seen as desirable donors. It is well known that the affluent are tending to have fewer children, later, while the less affluent tend to have larger families, younger. Already, many voices on the right are suggesting that child benefit, for example, should be confined to the first two or three children. The Labour government, a few years back, unleashed huge controversy when it suggested that teenage mothers, instead of being given council accommodation, should be housed in communal mother-and-baby institutions. Rutherford may be on a hiding to nothing, in suggesting that £1,500 is a sum that avoids the ethical questions involved in "financial inducement". But the really troubling aspect of Harris's extreme interventions is that they do find an echo in fairly mainstream worries about "the wrong sort of people" having "the wrong sort of children".It is pretty abject that such frightened and frightening desires for social engineering of this kind should be so present in a wealthy and developed nation. Yet it cannot be denied that a vocal cohort of people really do believe that the welfare state encourages people to have children when they do not have the economic ability to care for them. And actually, it is difficult fully to refute such beliefs, when one chilling aspect of the public spending cuts has been the revelation of the disproportionate extent to which mothers and children rely on benefits.Yet the reliance of families on support from the state is a symptom of an emerging structural problem with the economy, rather than the cause of one. The cliche is that young women have children – in larger numbers in Britain than elsewhere in Europe – because it is an easy way for them to gain a home and an income. The less palatable truth is that such seemingly despairing lack of ambition is not such an amazing distortion of the reality of their life chances. The ludicrous price of private housing, even after the recession, is testament to the fact that huge chunks of the population are right to believe that they are locked out of the "home-owning democracy" for ever. The average age of a first-time buyer is now 37, up from around 23 at the height of the 1980s boom. Further, the promotion of degree-level education as a motor for career success has meant that in-work training and promotion for young people is much harder to obtain. Gradually, the gap between haves and the have-nots has deepened, so that two distinctive labour markets have emerged, one full of prospects for improvement, the other signally lacking in them.The contrasting issues raised by Project Prevention and the British Fertility Society, offer insights into a couple of demographic problems that such social divisions foster. On the one hand, Harris frets about the hopeless and their breeding habits. On the other, Rutherford wrestles with delayed motherhood (often in favour of higher education and career establishment) and the infertility problems that it brings. Together, these different challenges speak of a society that does not function for the common good, and whose talk of "fairness" or of 'thinking about our children's generation" is sadly inadequate, if not actually deluded.Fertility problemsDrugsHealthFamilyReproductionDeborah Orrguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |