Does science celebrity work?
With Neil de Grasse Tyson heading here next month, Will Harvie asks if high-profile boffins boost the public’s interest in the subject.
The interview with famed American astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson came at an odd moment. He was promoting an upcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand.
The same day, rumours were floating that United States President Donald Trump would withdraw from the Paris climate change treaty. (He did, the next day.)
It seemed reasonable to ask Tyson if his high-profile efforts to explain and popularise science – including best-selling books, TV series, live shows such as he’ll be doing here early next month – have made any difference?
If Trump rejects climate change, then surely Tyson and other global science celebrities aren’t achieving their goals?
‘‘Let me ask an equally realistic question back to you,’’ he replies. ‘‘Imagine how much worse it would be if not for these efforts?’’ Trump could ‘‘zero fund’’ all American science agencies. Close them altogether. Rather, he says, every little bit helps in the global effort to educate people about science.
And education is Tyson’s job, as he sees it. ‘‘I see elected officials as duly elected. If you have an elected official who is sure the Earth is flat or Earth was made 10,000 years ago, or the universe was made in six days, or global warming is a Chinese hoax ... if you are an elected official and you feel that way, then the chances are that the people who voted for you feel that way too.’’ That’s how democracy works.
‘‘As an educator, my goal is not to hit politicians on the head,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s to educate the public about, for example, what science is and how and why it works.
‘‘Once you know what it is, you would never elect a politician ... who does not know it.’’
Or, as Tyson put it in a recent tweet: ‘‘To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of s .... ’’ And then not vote for them. During that interview, Tyson said he had composed but not yet posted another tweet in case Trump pulled out of Paris. Here it is: ‘‘If I and my advisors had never learned what science is or how & why it works, then I’d consider pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord too.’’
Tyson pursued a related idea in the interview. Trump, he says, is a businessman. Businessmen understand that research and development (R&D) produces future profits for corporations, although probably not in the same financial year.
Trump should even be able to grasp the idea that if America is like a corporation, funding science and technology research is its R&D budget.
‘‘If you lead in science and tech, you lead the world in many metrics, especially wealth,’’ Tyson says. ‘‘It seems to me that if anyone could understand that, it would be a president who is fundamentally a businessman. Maybe I’m naive.’’
Tyson hasn’t been invited to the White House yet. But he’s bringing a show called A Cosmic Perspective to New Zealand; appearing in Christchurch on July 4 and in Auckland on July 9.
He ‘‘will guide Kiwi audiences on a trip across the cosmos and attempt to make sense of some of our biggest questions’’.
Are we likely to encounter alien life and will they be protected by the same ethical codes we utilise? Should we be concerned about the rapid sophistication of artificial intelligence and does it threaten us with extinction?
These shows may be the high-water mark in an unprecedented year for science celebrity in New Zealand, says Peter Griffin, director of the Science Media Centre NZ – an off-shoot of the Royal Society.
Big-time science celebrities, including chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall and British professor of particle physics Brian Cox, will be staging live shows here this year.
British cosmologist and television celebrity Brian Greene has already come and gone.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Michelle ‘‘Nanogirl’’ Dickinson has targeted children – especially girls – with her science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) shows.
And psychologist Nigel Latta has presented TV shows on forensic psychology, parenting, Antarctica and blowing stuff up alongside his recent series on the future, What Next?
Latta has stepped well outside his expertise but he bases his shows on evidence, says Griffin. ‘‘I can’t think of a year ... where so much science celebrity talent is coming through New Zealand.’’
This is partly because the Royal Society is celebrating its 150th anniversary but also because Think Inc, an Australia-based ‘‘initiative’’, is bringing science celebrities to its country and some of those guests then tack on a visit across the ditch. (Tyson and Goodall’s shows are both Think Inc projects.)
‘‘A lot of this stuff is best communicated by personalitydriven vehicles,’’ says Griffin.
A prominent host with big and expensive production values can ‘‘work really well in getting a broad audience engaged in science’’, he adds.
There are pitfalls, however, and they’re far short of the White House.
This level of science celebrity suggests everyone should have their own TV show or major vehicle to communicate science. Anything less seems inferior.
‘‘Whereas what we’re seeing in New Zealand is a lot scientists and experts doing stuff at a much lower level and having impact,’’ Griffin says.
They are leading citizen and participatory science, judging science fairs, talking at schools, museums and zoos. Local TEDx talks are often dominated by Kiwi scientists.
‘‘They might not have the cachet of Tyson or Nanogirl but they have a big impact on people’s lives and that doesn’t get recognised as much,’’ says Griffin.
Mostly these science communicators aren’t rewarded or incentivised by their employers to perform this work, he says.
Tyson agrees: ‘‘Academia has to take some of the blame here.’’
The attitude sometimes is: ‘‘Every minute you spend with the pubic, you are not in lab, you are not doing your work.’’
At a minimum, it should be that those scientists who want to popularise their work – or maybe aspire to science celebrity – shouldn’t be hurt professionally.
Tyson says the reward is appealing to fundamental truths of human nature. ‘‘Maybe people are longing for some access to objective truth.
‘‘Maybe people forgot what it was like to be curious, about learning new information and it’s time to reclaim that birthright that we all had as children,’’ he says.
‘‘If you are young enough, you’ll explore your environment on the level to risk your life. That’s how curious we are from birth.
‘‘[For children] from zero to age 3 or 4, parents are always walking after you to make sure you don’t kill yourself. Everything we do is an exploration – and somehow we lose that. I don’t know why.’’