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Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: Good For Science?
Lasrick writes: Lawrence Krauss explores the reasons why scientists such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson became celebrities, and he shares his own experience as a best selling author and frequent guest on television programs like Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Krauss describes how public acclaim is often uncorrelated to scientific accomplishment and depends more on communication skills and personality traits. Nevertheless, he argues that the entire scientific community benefits when credible scientists gain a wider audience, and that celebrity is an opportunity that should not be squandered. Scientists who become recognizable have a chance and perhaps even a responsibility, which they have often exploited, to promote science literacy, combat scientific nonsense, motivate young people, and steer public policy discussions toward sound decision making wherever they can.
As in subject.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
... Krauss describes how public acclaim is often uncorrelated to scientific accomplishment and depends more on communication skills and personality traits. ...
Should be:
.
Krauss describes how public acclaim is often uncorrelated to accomplishment and depends more on communication skills and personality traits.
It's also good money
He's coming to Antwerp with his buddy Dawkins the end of January.
Places are 27 euro a pop, the golden circle is 40 euro.
To preach to the choir.
public acclaim is often uncorrelated to scientific accomplishment
I hate it when people use "uncorrelated" or "not correlated" to mean: the correlation coefficient isn't quite 1.0 but otherwise yeah, it's pretty high.
"...depends more on communication skills and personality traits"
Thank you captain obvious.....like pretty much everything else in life with the exception possibly being sports. Even, assholes and anti-social people don't tend to last very long.
Yes, anything that puts science to a face and makes it approachable, normal and something to be admired or respected is always a good thing. In the US, so much emphasis is put on wealth that we have seen an astronomical rise in MBAs and JDs while STEM programs have languished by comparison.
Human beings when become celebrities will get their ego 'floated' when they find themselves becoming celebrities, and of course, scientists are no different
We can see how many of the celebrities have fumbled, sport stars, politicians, movie stars, and yes, even religious leaders, they too fumbled
They act different, the content of their speeches have also changed and become boastful. Most have forgotten what 'humble' feel like, and truth does not matter anymore
And truth is what Science is all about - the search for truth
Once truth is no longer important, then no matter how grandiose a scientific essay has been produced, it in itself has lost all its value
Remember, Scientists are humans too
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It places them in a position of authority and if they are indeed good scientists allows the public's most common fallacy of appeal to authority to become a defacto appeal to reason.
The problem, is that scientific research is now like music was in the 80s. People are much more interesting in writing the article that will be cited 1k times, like people were looking to write that single getting sold 1M times, than actually improving common knowledge.
Well at least in computer vision, I do have this impression.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Neil deGrasse Tyson is not a celebrity,
No matter how much you want to think so.
To the Joe on the street
Or the cop on the beat
It's "Joe Tyson??? Who's that schmoe?"
Burma Shave
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I would put communication onto a list of activities that move the science enterprise forward, but tend to be undervalued compared with producing new research results. Great popularizers like Sagan, and great writers like Arthur Clarke, have done an enormous amount to inspire and motivate people.
Another group of undervalued people are the tools builders. Things like ArXiv, Mathematica, and so on improve the effectiveness of every researcher by a little bit, and their cumulative impact is enormous but we tend not to recognize them.
No, we need more Justin Beibers and Paris Hiltons.
Table-ized A.I.
Michio Kaku's book "Hyperspace" was an eye opener for the quantum challenged. He is good at describing physics to the common folk. I liked his book. He appears occasionally on different shows.
Scientists become celebrities than celebrities becoming scientists (Jenny McCarthy for one)...
XDInd
Having a real scientist as a TV spokesmodel isn't all bad, but it just seems to be terribly overdone. I get tired of seeing folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson and especially Michio Kaku (who thankfully was omitted from TFS) on TV. When they appear, each is presented as "the guy who knows everything." Micho Kaku has a particularly smug, know-it-all, condescending presentation that grows old in light of his seeming omnipresence on the science-related channels.
The fact is, though, that true scientists are specialists who know a great deal about their particular specialty but certainly don't "know everything." At best, they have a strong education in general science topics such as physics and chemistry and likely are extremely smart. And if they really know everything, they oughtta be on Jeopardy. So give us Ken Jennings instead.
Hopefully, what these folks gain in celebrity among the public by playing this game is equaled by the stature they lose among their fellow scientists. I'm not a scientist (and don't even play one on TV), but if I were, I certainly would giggle each time I saw one of these guys spouting off about something.
Public acclaim has never correlated! It might've been close in the 50s and 60s with nuclear stuff and NASA, but seriously, more people care about that woman's butt than science... Keeping Up With The Hawking's? You're dealing with a bell curve, mediocrity wins.
... scientists such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson ...
One of these names is not like the others,
One of these names just doesn't belong.
Can you tell me which name is not like the others,
Before I finish this song?
(okay, maybe it should be "two of these names...")
#DeleteChrome
Einstein and Feynman were both nobel prize winners and Hawkins has Sir Isaac Newton's mathematics chair - we probably shouldn't downplay their achievements!
Carl Sagan was on the slippery slope. He certainly did some good science - but he's hardly up there with the previous three. Tyson has a few decent papers to his name, and his career isn't over yet - but I don't think he's coming close to the others in terms of science achievements.
Einstein was the world's worst communicator. Feynman and Hawkins are better - Sagan was astounding and Tyson may be yet better.
I suppose we might be concerned that there is a pattern here. We're taking people who are better communicators in preference to those who really know their stuff.
But honestly, does it matter? The presenter of a show reads from a script - (s)he is basically an actor. If the author of the script sticks to an accurate portrayal of what's written by the hard-core scientists - then why not pick an engaging personality to present it to us?
The critical part of the cycle is the person who decides WHICH science gets discussed. De Grasse Tyson is often talking about tacheons, wormholes and white holes and other claptrap that's horribly speculative, wildly unusupported, and very probably untrue. As an astrophysicist, he should know better - but as a TV presenter, he does a reasonable job of reading the script.
I'd prefer to have a complete non-scientist who is a supreme communicator be given a script written by good script writers from material handed to them by the hard core scientists behind the scenes - than to rely on a lower-tier scientist (or a high-tier scientist with poor communications skills) to do the entire job.
-- Steve
www.sjbaker.org
Ask some random person to name another WHOI scientist after Bob Ballard. Thought so. Even when he first started splitting his time between WHOI and NatGeo - many of the established scientists in the field could not comprehend why he would want to go on TV and gas on about ocean science. It was like he was speaking another language. After he got the vents stuff out in the mainstream, I happened to be in Woods Hole and saw that they had finally put together a WHOI exhibit on the work that was done. Understand that WHOI proper has always been a locked-down place with nothing much public. NOAA Fisheries has an exhibit and for a long time you could pop into MBL and see what was going on - within reason - used to borrow their labs to sort out alga specimens. So after going through the new exhibit in an old church at the top end of Water St., I was talking to someone who has a business in town and remarked that it was nice to have something permanent for the public about WHOI, good for them. Punchline? She told me the church was merely rented for the exhibit. Arrrrgggghhhh!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This graph is a joke, but it's highly relevant.
Source: http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000943.shtml
If I had to guess, there are both positive and negative effects on celebrities as scientists, dependent upon enough factors that there's no good way to make a headline. The effects a celebrity scientist has are dependent upon why people identify with them, how the public reacts, and of course what the scientist does. If the results of celebrity scientists are making cool posters for dorm rooms and/or being eye candy, then yeah, they probably aren't doing much for it. But, if they are testifying before Congress to act on scientific data or fund research, or encouraging people to improve their critical thinking skills, they are immensely helpful. It's also important that they stay on that side of the line. Discovery Channel and shows on the Discovery Channel have had issues with that.
If you really want to advance scientific literacy, you're going to have to dispel the idea that it's common for something to have virtually only positives or only negatives, as in reality, those kinds of things are quite rare.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says "No."
Could include Marie Curie on this list as well?
While people who move the course of humanity forward make less than people who chase balls for a living, more press is needed badly.
Imagine all the STEM people disappeared, humanity may collapse.
Imagine all the athletes disappeared...not really a problem.
If by celebrity we mean that good scientists get famous for actual research and get patronage to run their labs free of government funding, then hell yes.
If by celebrity we mean that their career as a "Scientist" means to be an advocate for one bit of research over others even well outside their own work, then probably not.
Celebrity Scientist says celebrity scientists good for science.
If the results of celebrity scientists are making cool posters for dorm rooms and/or being eye candy, then yeah, they probably aren't doing much for it.
Don't discount the indirect effects of culture. Cool posters that place cultural value upon educational or scientific achivement may have value in guiding the pursuits of younger generations.
I remember a section from one of Feynman's books where he visited the home of someone, and a woman in the household exlaimed she was thrilled to have been visited by a general *and* a professor both in one day. I'd argue that that's a household that places a premium on education relative to other cultural influences. (maybe also a premium on the military, but that's another thread).
It's the LAW of headlines, so as a responsible group of editors, please change the headline to:
"Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: BAD For Science?"
or to keep it consistent with the rest of the internet:
"Non-celebrity scientists hate him. These 2 weird tricks to being a celebrity scientist."
I watched an older show with Neil, he definitely has either had some coaching or something as he was almost as bad as W Bush in the first episode. It was some other science show on Netflix, and his ability to read the teleprompter was horrid. LOL just like a professor's first big class or recording. Luckily he has gotten 1000x better with it all, and now is just as good of a speaker as he is a scientist.
TYSON / NYE 2016! Bring science to the Whitehouse! Write them in, save humanity from itself and superstition!
Anything Krauss says, anywhere, for the rest of his life, is tarnished for me, by his slimy defense of Epstein, who admitted having sex with underage prostitutes.
that Hawking's work is still unprovable at this stage, it's an insult to every single of of the names mentioned to include a man that has never published a single scientific paper, discovered anything (not even some effect he himself was incapable of theorizing about as an experimentalist) or otherwise contributed to anything other than a Steve Jobs esqe cult around "science" turning every retard into a new-age zealot. Fuck everything about Neil Disgrade Tyson.
You're a dumbass. The parent poster didn't say "should not be allowed to talk about politics", he said they'd be more credible if they didn't bullshit about politcs. There's a huge difference,
Scientists who become recognizable have a chance and perhaps even a responsibility, which they have often exploited, to promote science literacy...
I just want to say, that I don't think there's any responsibility implied here. Generally, someone can be as clever as they like, and not do anything for anyone else, and it's not their problem. There's maybe no reason not to, perhaps since they would be promoting the way they make a living; maybe I just don't like the way this was phrased.
That's twice you've gotten it wrong, now. "Star stuff". And, of course, we are. With the exception of the hydrongen atoms, almost every atom in our bodies was forged in the heart of an exploding star. Maybe you already knew that--but a lot of people don't, and many more never really stopped to think about. It really is amazing, you know.
Oh my GOODNESS. Do NOT correct someone if you're going to say something even less correct. Exploding stars - supernovae - produce everything on the periodic table after Iron (element 26). Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen happen as part of regular nuclear burning. They are certainly dispersed by a supernova but regular nuclear burning inside of a star.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis
I repeat: If you want to correct someone GET IT RIGHT.
Fumbled?
Either that's bait, or you haven't dialed in lately with your trusty USR to the acerbic backwash concerning America's popular reverence for all things Reverend.
Here Falwell plays into the meme (strangely accepted by many of faith) of God as a crypto dominatrix who delivers his retribution shrouded in the most complete and thorough back story conceivable about why the perpetrators might have acted on ordinary human motives (these acts, nevertheless, remaining somehow entirely transparent in their divine origin to suitably entitled religious figures).
I personally have to concur with Hitchens final decree on Falwell: "If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox."
I guess it's for this reason that the relief scene in Bull Durham (SPOILER: theraindelayinvlveshoomanagenci) is less than completely transparent to the off-screen local yokels, who don't the least suspect human motives when a deluge strikes right between the bullpens and doesn't wet a single stalk of corn within a ten mile radius (though I don't recall the movie bothering to suggest this, there really must have been some blustery weather in the space-time vicinity of non-divine origin to make this ploy modestly plausible, even for agrarian America).
There are sane arguments against certain types of vaccines, and against getting vaccinated under certain conditions. To be a self proclaimed scientifically minded person and claim all vaccines are the same risk is shear idiocy. That rational would mean that surgery to remove a brain tumor is the same risk as surgery to remove a Ganglion cyst over your wrist bone, and that heart surgery when you have influenza is the same risk as when no influenza is present.
Choosing to ignore science which counters your beliefs is exactly the same thing you are claiming the Religious people are doing when they claim Genesis is why evolution is untrue..
I can also guess that you are a pure atheist who believes that science has solved the dilemma of the origin of the Universe, or you will claim it does not matter in order to fit _your_ belief.
So yeah, we have surely seen a rise in glorifying "anti-science" and people like you are just as guilty as the next guy due to the fact that you really don't care about the scientific method and critical thought any more than a zealot. You care about your beliefs and don't want them challenged, so grats on being guilty.
Posted anonymously due to the fact that anyone daring to question the vaccine profit machine is automatically rated a troll on Slashdot, for censorship purposes!
Scientist have political opinions too and they are just as entitled to express them as anyone else.
Indeed. But they are not entitled to present their opinions as science.
This is a very hard line to walk and it is easy to inadvertently add opinion to a scientific statement. For example, "Scientists are warning that infant mortality will fall significantly over the next 10 years" or "Scientists are warning that CO2 emissions will cause a rise in global temperatures". Both of these statements expression an opinion about a prediction rather than simply stating the prediction. Better to use neutral words to focus on the science not the opinion: "Scientists are predicting that infant mortality will fall significantly over the next 10 years" or "Scientists are predicting that CO2 emissions will cause a rise in global temperatures"
And, to be fair, these opinions are often added by the media in order to make the results more interesting.
Aristotle proved that brilliance in one area does NOT correspond to brilliance in ALL areas. People, who are brilliant in one area, often have HUGE egos and a desire to expound on areas they have no expertise in. A scientist with good teeth and hair, no zits or facial scars can get lots of interviews. That does NOT mean they know jack about anything. Media is covered by people who are stupid but pretty. TV prefers pretty to intelligent.
It is super annoying though when physicists host biology related tv-shows..
But took the patent office job because he didn't like the job offers at the time, what the hell do you think "E=MC2 anyone" is supposed to say about "There can be no science outside of an institution"?
You're making one equating the denier frothing maniacs with the less maniacal and less numerous ones on the side of science. After all, you can pick out a dozen deniers frothing (they even froth at each other if one makes a statement that somewhat supports the IPCC, see Prof Lindzen and his support of the reality of the greenhouse effect", but can you come up with any one equivalent to, for example, Mad Lord Monckton or Glen "Hari-kari's too god for them" Beck?
No.
Moreover, deniers have bugger all other than thuggery and intransigence on their side, whilst "the other side" have facts, theory and evidence on theirs.
He was rather to the left. However his "Nuclear Winter" argument against nuclear weapons was off the mark because it was based on primitive science. He used a one-dimensional atmospheric modeling equations to deduce nclear winter. Computers in those days werent powerful enough for 3D modeling. 3D effects such as wind and oceans drastically changed the results when modeled years later.
Which is true for 97% of them. But that remark allows them treat science as equal to non-science arguments or dimiss science altogether.
Really come on! How could you mention his name with the others. I would even drop Sagan. Celebrities, nonsense!
Scientists who become recognizable have a chance and perhaps even a responsibility, which they have often exploited, to promote science literacy, combat scientific nonsense, motivate young people, and steer public policy discussions toward sound decision making wherever they can.
Oh please 'Murica, please listen to these people!