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Wanted: a Real Science Channel
You ever thought about what a real science channel would look like? Something to counter fakers and disinformation? Maybe it can happen.
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But would it work? Most of American knows nothing about science. They are far more likely to be entertained and interested in psychics, the paranormal, and well, science-esque stories that they can understand.
I think this is an important point. One of the things that keeps people from being interested in science is the "high barriers to entry". I'm not saying that the average person is too dumb to understand science -- not at all. The problem is that all too often science is described in scientific jargon. In order to explain what cutting-edge research is about, you usually have to "fill the viewer in" on backround material first. Consider Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" book. The first few chapters have nothing to do with string theory -- it's basically a primer on relativity and quantum mechanics. Given the popularity of that book, one could argue that people are, indeed, willing to struggle through introductory material to get "to the good stuff." However, I would argue that (a) people are much more tolerant of that type of slow beginning when reading a book than they are when watching the TV and (b) high book sales are no indication of how many of those book purchasers ACTUALLY FINISHED READING THE BOOK!
I'd love to see a cable science channel as is being discussed. However, unless you're going to stock this channel full of shows narrated by people like Richard Feynman, who could explain difficult concepts in everyday language, I think this would fall flat on its face. And there aren't too many Feynman-types around who would be willing to make the kind of commitment this channel would require.
Honestly, TV is often called the boob tube and I think that's for good reason. It's very difficult to go into any kind of very meaningful discussion about difficult topics in this media. That goes not only for science but for current events as well. A lot of the problem is due to commericals interrupting the flow of information and I realize that what's being proposed here is a non-commerical channel. However, I think after a hard day of work most people aren't going to want to struggle through science.
GMD
watch this
Real science doesn't get the ratings because it doesn't get shown.
Here in the UK, the BBC will often schedule an evening at the Glynbourne opera ot a special broadcast of Mahler's 27th symphony (or such like, if there is such a thing)
Extremely intelectual artistic stuff which only ever draws a small audience.
Ihey NEVER schedule serious science programs in this way.
Since the mid 1980s when they changed the emphasis of their entire science broadcasting there have been very few non-human interest science shows, although why anyone considers children being operated on to be science I don't know.
the problem is that the people who commision and schedule the programmes don't understand and don't like science (by their own admission), so none but the bare minimum gets made for "educational" reasons.
RJG.
Why would a "real science channel" be devoted to debunking fakers and disinformation?
That is *not* real science. Get a clue.
Now, a channel devoted to real science AND a channel devoted to debunking bad science. That would be cool.
Its very informative, but lacks the flash and buzzwords that makes television successful. In other words its fairly boring. Digging up McLuhan's corpse here but the medium is very much the message. Selling science on TV is a *tough* sell and you need various gimmicks to get a critical mass of people watching.
Carl Sagan was a cult of personality of his own.
Connections was amusing, smart, well narrated, and had lots of on-locale stuff.
Right now the Science Channel comes off exactly like what they made us watch in high school when teachers didnt feel like teaching, only not as dumbed down.
Television really isn't a good medium for science. Then again its not good for a lot of things, yet there are ways around this problem. Look at all the sexy women reading the telepromter on cable news. Or shows with "extreme" type advetising gimmicks. Hiring people with real charisma and giving them some creative control. etc.
An issue that does bother me is that SCI-FI, PAX, PBS, etc have no problem playing these "Unexplained" shows, all of which give a lot of credit to creationism (right-wing bias in the media is quite real) and other credulous nonsense without a counterpart on some other channel attacking these shows. An offensive, in your face, science show consisting of people with some backbone could make for some excellent ratings. Divide that up with traditional science shows and it might work. Find the luminaries out there, let them speak in a format that's entertaining. I've read that Bucky Fuller was just a great speaker. Where are the Bucky Fullers of our age? There are a lot of "Carl Sagans" and "Bucky Fullers" out there. Find them and give them a job and watch the money roll in.
I just thought that I would write to thank you for your enlightening program on Nostradamus. Indeed, his extremely vague prophecies foretell the future quite accurately. Certainly, "hollow mountains" could refer to nothing but the World Trade Center towers. How amiss we were not to have figured that out in advance.
And, of course, had the Germans known in advance that Hitler (whose name of course, appears nowhere in the predictions, since he uses "double-entendre" and "poetic license") was the second "Anti-Christ" they could have prevented him from coming to power.
I particularly enjoyed the ending, which stated that we could avoid a 27-year war if we heeded the prophecies. Well, let's all go ape poopy, and start murdering people from the "near east" and "North Africa" so we can wipe him out before he can act. Killing a few hundred thousand innocent civilians in this manner is clearly not enough to give someone Anti-Christ status, as WW II American/British military did so quite readily during the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden. (The firebombing of Dresden, being the most deadly attack of all time; its death toll was higher than the combined death toll of both of the nuclear bombings. Of course, Nostradamus failed to mention this one. (Unless you squeeze some new meaning from his nonsensical poems.))
How dare you call yourself "Canadian Learning Television"? The "special" did not even present the skeptical view of Nostradamus' predictions. You are spreading a myth that has no educational merit. Had you presented both points of view, this would have been educational indeed. The only things that I "learned" during your program were the naivete of humanity, and that the money that my parents spend on cable would be better spent by giving your programming supervisor a subscription to Skeptic magazine.
Perhaps you would like to air a one-sided special featuring Scientology propaganda, or some specials on ghosts, UFOs and the moon-landing hoax? Just blame it on the Freemasons.
If it were up to me, your channel would feature the same "program" 24 hours-per-day, seven days-per-week. It would be a black screen, with "READ A BOOK" written in bold, white letters. Perhaps you should heed these words. May I recommend Carl Sagan?
Yours in regret,
Rene Malenfant
A lot of people have responded with, "Have you seen The Science Channel?" and "Hey, there's Discovery". Somebody else even claimed that the Canadian version of "Discovery" is superior to the U.S. version, which I would only agree with in that perhaps Canadians are better educated in general and thus need a smarter form of dis-info in order to be properly bullshitted, and Jay Ingram are so very full of shit.
Here's the sad, ugly truth of the matter: Television is a tool of mind-control through societal behavior modification. It is incredibly effective in many basic ways. It is owned up and down by the kind of people and organizations who are aligned and well suited to this kind of work.
You will NEVER get a generally available 'Science' television show which is un-biased, un-manipulative, and which honestly seeks to enlighten its viewers. NEVER. --Science in its current, publically accepted form, is founded upon a series of lies to begin with. There is simply no way the basic nature of television will change short of a massive paradigm shift where all the people in positions of power suddenly turn 'good'. This seems unlikely.
With the exception of DVD's and such, I stopped watching television about a year ago. That is, I do not watch any of the 'live' commercial feed into which virtually everybody in the West is plugged. The results were fascinating, if not un-predictable. .
What a science fiction idea! That a whole population subjects itself for hours to that creepy flickering light. Watching people watch television is fucking disturbing, and we all know it. It's like those Borg ports where the head is plugged into that flickering thing. Fucked up, and everybody knows it.
What I find most upsetting is when I see little children innocently watching television without their parents warning them of what is being done to their developing minds. There is so little chance for people to escape, as the conditioning begins almost from birth. Only one in a thousand or so seem to manage to break away. Maybe even fewer.
-FL