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The Politically Incorrect Science Fair
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Science fairs have reached new levels of intensity, and students are turning to trendy topics like stem-cell research and intelligent design to get a leg up, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Serene Chen says she might not be at Harvard now were it not for her application essay, which described her fetal-stem-cell research on the characteristics of Down syndrome. "If you say you studied something like 'random molecule,' it's obscure, but when you say 'stem cells,' people really perk up," says Ms. Chen, 20, now a sophomore. ... Of a 2002 project involving marijuana muffins for pain management in Santa Cruz, Calif., Mission Hill Middle School science teacher Sherri Kilkenny says, "It got all this attention, but it was very average at best." '"
As much as scientists would like to do research that really matters, and accomplishes something important, they (I will not say "we," because although virtually everyone I work with is a scientist, I lack any formal post-high-school training in the sciences) are smart enough to realize that headlines count too.
This isn't to say that scientists go through their entire careers just generating flash and noise - very few do. But a discovery that plays well to the masses, despite being relative "fluff" in terms of scientific value or breaking very little new ground, can raise awareness of one's work, which can make it a lot easier to get funding for the research that does matter.
These enterprising youth are just picking up on this at an early age, and leveraging it in their favour. Buzzword-compliance probably won't get them beyond a certain point career-wise, but it's interesting to see it having some effect at the beginning.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
But they shouldn't have to do this. This isn't something they should need to know to be scientists and researchers. Period.
If you are independenty wealthy and are doing science as a hobby, your post is absolutely right.
For the rest of us, doing science does mean getting funding - not only for equipment, travel, conferences and the rest, but also for the rather important, if mundane, reason that it's good to be able to pay for food and rent. Being homeless and begging for food tends to put a crimp in your research, whether you're really interested in your work or not.
But take heart - people are working on what they find interesting and worthwhile. It really is amazing how far you can stretch descriptions of your actual work to make it fit whatever is the flavor of the day. Take just about any two subjects - models of neuarl plasticity in the accessory basal amygdala and feminist influences in nineteenth-century reinterpretations of Chaucer, say - and any good researcher working in either field will be perfectly able to seek money earmarked for the other.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
As a student who has been competing the Intel Science Fair for the past 4 years, I can say from experience that there are some very BS topics out there. Projects that have no scientific merit, Judges that don't understand what you are talking about so give you a random score depending on their level of intelligence (if you confuse the smart ones you get a low score, but the dumb ones give you high scores). Then there are the projects that couldn't have possibly been done without the help of professionals (their parents are doctors, their teachers doing research for them, etc.). I wrote small operating system 2 years ago, and had the misfortune of having a judge point to a random line in my source code and ask "What does this line do?". When I couldn't answer him (20,000 line+ source), he gave me straight 2's (highest being 6, lowest being 0), which knocked me out of competing at state. San Antonio boasts one of the largests Science Fairs in TX, however they need to get their act straight and get some good judges instead of the one's they've had in the past. For anyone that's interested, I'm doing my project over Buffer Overflows on MINIX 3.0 this year (which supposedly eliminates the threat of Buffer Overflows).
- Aetheral Research -
"Oddly enough, the pop scientists are often teachers because they love the idea of instilling a copy of themselves into the mainstream. But they also cater to the lowest common denominator, hence their writings to the public."
This characterization is altogether too common, and from my point of view, flat-out wrong. Einstein and Feynman both knew how to break down complex and current science in such a way that folks from outside the field were able to understand most (if not always all) of it. Does that make them lesser scientists? And are we really so elitist that we have to call any explanation below the journal article level "LCD"?
In the end, it was the lack of public understanding of hot-button topics such as stem cells and anything with the word "nuclear" (why do you think it's called an MRI at the hospital, not a nuclear MRI which would be more proper) that made the science so hard to sell. It would be an idyllic research world if scientists never had to worry about money - I've been working in basic research for 3 years now on an unfunded project, so I have a full appreciation of how important even a trickle of money can be. If we as scientists were more effective more often at communicating with Joe Sixpack (and please, remove all traces of condesention from your mind's voice when you read that), maybe we wouldn't be complaining so much about his uninformed voting on the matters.
"In closing, a pop scientist craves public attention and recognition. A real scientist craves knowledge and nothing more. Which one of these two are you most like?"
Learning without dissemination isn't science - it's a hobby. But dissemination can funnel into directions other than solely into articles. I agree that peer-review is a critical part of how we do business, and if a researcher goes straight to the New York Times instead of Science, that's a red flag. But what's wrong with books and lectures aimed at the masses? Here in Pittsburgh, the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh holds the Faraday memorial lecture every winter aimed at explaining science a wider audience, following in his footsteps. It's unfortunate that so many of these books slide in to the 'Let's Dumb It Down' paradigm, because an effective communicator can simultaneously distill a complex topic down to its essentials while remaining true to the fact that the science contains many nuances.
My $0.02 as a chemist and an educator.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
I went to a super competitive prep school, where everyone had Ivy on the brain. I remember two girls my age on the student newspaper. They both worked very hard at it, and when we were seniors they fought each other, practically to the death, over who got the top editor spot. The loser got the next rung. Both went on to Yale. Yale has one of the best college newspapers in the country, the Yale Daily News. I remember looking them up in college to see if either had continued in journalism; the answer was no. The girl who became the editor in chief? She became an investment banker as soon as she graduated. My point is, these kids in the science fairs, like those two girls, are just doing whatever it takes to get into college, and may not have any real interest in being scientists.
I wish this wasn't mostly true, but most of society favors flamboyance over precision.
*This method has only been validated at the local science fair level. Results at the State level may vary if the project is subjected to a more strenuous and informed judging process.