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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...
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.
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
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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.
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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?"
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"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.
Scientists become celebrities than celebrities becoming scientists (Jenny McCarthy for one)...
XDInd
... 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
I'd rather have more Justin Beibers and Paris Hiltons - empty heads but easily ignored and ultimately harmless - than more Jenny McCarthys and Senator Marco Rubios (the latter of which said he couldn't be sure that the Earth wasn't 6,000 years old because he's not a scientist).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
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I read the Future of the Mind and have to say that I am inspired to direct my studies towards neurology and man-machine interfaces as well as man-machine interface security.
I introduced myself to Michio Kaku late one night when I couldn't get any sleep. After Bill Nye's challenge to have Creationists stop hurting their children by teaching Creationism to them, I started looking through other postings to the BigThink Channel on Youtube. After seeing a 45 minute lecture on Physics, I thought I found myself hours later, wide awake at 5am, cursing him for being too interesting.
As far as the subject of celebrity scientists, we need idols who aren't airheads. Someone who can inspire people to work harder, strive to be more intelligent, I fail to see the harm. Who else should we be inspired by? Peter Griffen? Homer Simpson? Paris Hilton? Justin Bieber?
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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!
Inaccuracy is par for the course on Slashdot. But GP got the spirit of the law right, if not the letter of it.