Popular Science 101
Hawking
Dawkins
… Cox?
My big problem with popular science is that much of the general public is simply too stupid to understand what they’re being told and, as it has been said many, many times over, a LITTLE knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Having had conversations with people following their viewing of these Popular Science programs … “Bang Goes The Theory”, “The Wonders Of The Universe” and so on … I have come to the belief that they are simply better off knowing nothing.
They watch this half hour of AT BEST Year-5-Level Science, and they are suddenly of the opinion that they are now experts in the field in question and start spouting their half-understood soundbytes in an attempt to seem more intelligent than they actually are. In fact, they are simply exposing their lack of knowledge by half-quoting the bits they kind of understood and getting most of it completely wrong.
I don’t just blame the viewers, of course. The shows themselves attempt to present complex concepts in bite-size segments, often distilling them to a mere sentence or two.
While it’s not wholly inaccurate to say that it has been observed that all of the stars within sight of our planet are getting further apart and this implies that, extrapolating backwards through time, everything in the universe was once very very close together … and THIS is the basis of the big bang theory … failing to actually explain the process of moving from observation to conclusion has a crippling effect on the attempted education of the great unwashed masses.
Half of those that DO follow everything these terrible programs tell them end up with gaping holes in their knowledge which are invariably filled with their own idiotic ideas. The other half end up believing that the gaps in the show’s narrative are simply due to gaps in the knowledge of the entire scientific community and so begin denouncing everything the program HAS said as hogwash! This is often in favour of the much easier to believe religious view that everything was merely made by MAGIC. Some guy with a white cloak and whispy beard waved his magic wand and everything just APPEARED! And THIS is the explanation they favour as it fills all of it’s own gaps with even more bollocks!
And so, the viewers of these abortions of “scientific” programs come to rest in a state of mental flux. They believe that they no longer know nothing about the subject. Well, I’ll give them that. They are right!
They now know NEXT TO nothing!
“Flux”? I hear you ask. Well, I chose that word very carefully as it embodies another of the annoying things about Popular Science and the way it is presented to the public.
You understood what I meant. The state of flux leaves them in neither one definite state nor the other. The general, everyday understanding of the word “flux”. The thing is, “flux” doesn’t mean that at all when it comes to the actual scientific definition.
To a scientist, “Flux” means either of the following:
1. Scalar quantity – the rate at which electromagnetic energy flows through a surface.
2. Vector: the amount (eg. of heat/mass/fluid) that flows through a unit area per unit time.
OK, not as snappy or sound-bytey … they would probably need an entire half hour show just to explain that. To a certain extent, it is an understandable practise for these programs to dumb down to some extent – after all, they understand that their audience is dimmer than a 15 watt bulb and probably need help getting their pants on the right way round every morning – but popularizing scientific words with meanings that are nothing like their actual definitions only makes a bad situation worse!
It’s time that the makers of these television programs realized that the great uneduacated masses are better off living in ignorance. Attempting to enlighten them in any way only makes it harder for people with half a brain to continue living their lives among them.
MisterShouty 