Science As Entertainment And Entertainment
Science
Richard Wassersug
Science is serious business, or so many scientists like to believe. Science will cure cancer, heart disease, and perhaps even poverty.
To the extent that we sell science with that pragmatic sales pitch, science that doesn’t conspicuously benefit individuals either physically or economically is interpreted, by default, as less serious and less substantial. Many of us, who participate in this “other” science, for which the benefits are neither immediate nor obvious, justify our work when obligated to do so as “pure” or “basic.” We argue to potential sponsors that our explorations will somehow eventually lead to tangible physical or fiscal benefits.
The truth is that many of us, in fields ranging from astronomy to zoology, know that the transcendence from the pure to the practical is unlikely to occur in our lifetimes, if ever. Secretly we feel like charlatans when we petition public and private agencies to support our endeavors on the grounds that somehow, somewhere, sometime, our curiosity-driven queries about the universe will hit pay dirt. The truth is—although we rarely say it out loud—we do research not because we believe that it will ever pay off, but because we find it entertaining.
That is certainly my situation. For more than a quarter century I have amused myself studying the morphology and behavior of tadpoles. What first drew my attention to these beasts was how funny they looked. They entertained me.
For my doctoral thesis I indulged myself in a profoundly impractical study of the insides of the mouths of tadpoles. In contrast to tadpoles’ simple exteriors, their insides are phantasmagoric landscapes of hills, valleys, folds, flaps and projections. To me they were, and still are, works of art. Each trip to the microscope, to look inside the mouth of a new species, is the opening of a new art gallery.
I’d like to argue two points in this essay. The first is that for many of us, the science we practice is genuinely a form of entertainment. The second is that science for entertainment’s sake can, in certain circumstances, be a credible rationale for the activity. Science can be meritorious and worthy of society’s support simply because it is entertaining.
There are many structural parallels between scientific projects and the various diversions that we consider entertainment. Virtually all activities that we call entertainment, from ice hockey to opera, have an internal framework or rules, and much of their appeal lies in how the entertainers perform within those constraints. Science similarly has formal constraints, and good science in practice can be likened to a good performance in any field of entertainment.
When we think about the open-ended nature of scientific inquiry, the parallels between science and entertainment are, admittedly, not obvious. But when we look at the actual mechanics of a scientific investigation, particularly in the basic sciences, the parallels are evident. An opera or a hockey game has a clear start and a finish. Usually we know at the outset approximately, if not exactly, how long the event will last and can plan how much time we will devote to the event. We know in advance the number of periods in the hockey games and acts in the operas we choose to watch. Similarly, for most research projects we can reasonably predict the amount of time that we’ll devote to data collection, data analysis, and writing up the results. This is quite different from the unentertaining monotonous or unpredictable events that create, respectively, tedium and turmoil in our lives.
For scientists based at primarily teaching institutes, we must plan the time dedicated to our research around teaching and administrative responsibilities. The time commitment to those non-research activities is preset by others and not us. If Thursday afternoon is free, we declare, we’ll finally get to collect some data, just as we might proclaim that Saturday night we’ll go out to the theater or a sporting event (if we can get tickets). One regrettable parallel between how and when we do research or indulge in entertainment is that the amount of time we can devote to either is a smaller fraction of our lives than we’d like. Both activities are relegated to our “free” time. Nevertheless it is our own time, and unlike the multitude of more pressing matters in the daily grind, we can package it as we like. Stated bluntly, science for many of us is a hobby, with all of the positive and negative connotations that that term implies.
In either an entertainment venue or a scientific investigation, there are moments of great anticipation—moments that we passionately await. In a hockey game, it comes when the game is tied in the last period and the home team has the puck. For opera it may be the soprano’s aria in the third act. In science there are similarly instances awaited with bated breath. Those moments are preludes to the elation that comes when a reporter gene corroborates our introduced DNA sequence in a transgenic organism, when a stain reveals separate bands on an electrophoretic gel, when an action potential confirms a drug’s effect in an electrophysiological preparation—or when a key hypothesis is statistically confirmed with p<0.05. At all those moments we feel like cheering, just as we would when the home team scores or the fat lady sings.
If you’ll accept for the moment the argument that much of science is diversion, a hobby undertaken for one’s own enjoyment, there remains a problem with justifying it on such grounds. It may be fun for us, but that hardly makes it worthy of external support. Just because we get our kicks out of watching labeled cells fluoresce, or peaks appear in spectrographic analyses, that scarcely justifies others paying our “admission fee” to such personalized and private science shows.
This leads to my second thesis. If science can entertain us, it can also entertain others. And in many cases, I believe, not-so-serious science can be honorably marketed for its entertainment value.
The public can rely only so far on the promise of serious science to solve our serious problems, for the ultimate grim problem, our mortality, is a long way from being solved by science. When solutions to our problems are not immediate, we can tolerate hearing only so much about the problems themselves or those promised solutions, before we turn our minds away. Thus, while we wait for cures to cancer and heart disease, we escape through entertainment.
Here’s a charming irony. NASA and its partners justify sending astronauts into orbit by claiming that research on humans in weightlessness could lead to cures for osteoporosis and other degenerative diseases. So far though no medical breakthroughs have come from manned space flights. Meanwhile, one of the few commercially successful products from the Space Shuttle program has been IMAX movies.
Luckily for scientists, we live in an age where information is cherished, even when it is of little tangible value. Science is the ultimate progenitor of new information in the modern world. Thus it makes sense that science is a growing part of the huge entertainment market. Not counting consumer electronics, it is a $480-billion-a-year industry (Wolf 1999).
Although some folks take offense at the concept of “infotainment,” I do not. Entertainment that also informs concurrently fills two somewhat contradictory human needs: an escape from the unrelenting problems of reality and our insatiable appetite for facts.
The recent proliferation of entertainment science is easy to document. Satellite and cable links have promoted an enormous expansion of TV channels that air shows with a science focus. The older and more successful ones, like the Discovery Channel, have spawned newer channels, all with a high science content. The phenomenal explosion of internet sites has further blended entertainment with scientific information. The CNN.com website divides the news of the world into 20 categories and a full quarter of these are ostensibly about science (weather, technology, space, health, and nature).
The media, on behalf of the public, are now constantly in search of entertaining science stories and seek closer ties with the scientific community to get new stories faster. A bold step taken recently by some of the media is the direct sponsorship of scientists through posts such as the Explorer-in-Residence program of the National Geographic Society (and the Scientist-in-Residence program of the Canadian Discovery Channel, in which I participate). I would love to see programs like these grow to a point where every major newspaper, radio and TV station sponsors a scientist or two. Here, finally, will be the recognition that basic science is worth supporting because it is, in fact, entertaining.
In one sense, what I am fomenting here is a return to a time when scientists regularly educated and entertained nonprofessionals without making a big difference between the two activities. Back in the latter half of the 1800s, when Thomas H. Huxley lectured extensively on evolution, the public unabashedly came out in droves to hear his clever and acclaimed performances. If the audience also learned something, that was OK. But what the attendees wanted first and foremost from Huxley, and what he happily provided, was entertainment.
In previous centuries, when there was not such a big gap as there is now between the knowledge of scholars and public wisdom, human anatomy lessons were “demonstrations” to throngs of curious folk in public arenas. The masses are no longer invited to such macabre exhibitions. But, as a vestige of those days, anatomy lectures are still given in rooms called “theaters.”
Zoos and museums played a big role back then. They were the newsrooms and websites of the 17th century. They have not lost their appeal, but sometimes I feel that, as institutions, they have fallen prey to the same overworked sense of seriousness that has stifled the scientists themselves. Too often there is a belief in such organizations that entertainment must be a lower priority than education. Meanwhile the modern literate public, with easy internet access and 50+ TV channels, is not short of educational venues. And now I believe that when people go to a zoo and museum, they want more than ever to simply escape into an entertaining environment. My point here is that to entertain was understood to be a part of the mission of such institutions in the past—and it is nothing to be embarrassed about now.
The opportunities for basic scientists to be part of and profit from the entertainment world are more numerous than many scientists suppose. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to participate, but relatively few scientists know how to enter the field. A bigger problem is that many scientists view popularized science with disdain. They argue that they will lose credibility with fellow scientists, if they spend time on radio, TV, or giving public lectures in museums promoting their science or even have exhibitions feature their science (such as Dr. Paul Sereno’s dinosaur paleontology work featured at the Chicago Children’s Museum). Hogwash. It is little more than pseudo-elitist hypocrisy when a scientist considers it appropriate to beg for research grants from taxpayers, but inappropriate to tell the same public, in an entertaining fashion and in words they’ll understand, what is so exciting about their scientific discoveries.
There are, though, some risks associated with entertaining the public with science. One is that if one gets good at it, one may abandon science itself. Many successful science journalists started as bench scientists but left the laboratory when they found that they could profit quicker as popularists than as scientists. (They may, of course, have found their new profession personally more entertaining.)
A more subtle problem is one of scientific integrity. Just as the medical research community has had to struggle with the ethical implications of industrial (e.g., pharmaceutical company) sponsorship, we may find the same problem with media-sponsored science. With a TV crew looking over one’s shoulder and an audience hungry for “new” discoveries, there is the danger of inflating, if not fabricating, “significant” findings. We must be vigilant that the results and interpretation of our research are truly objective and not biased by any benefactors, including the entertainment industry.
As for entering the field of entertainment science, a place that anyone can begin is with a popular article about their own research. I encourage all newly graduated Masters and PhDs to write an article on their thesis research for their local newspaper, if not a more widely circulating magazine. While the remuneration may not be great, many such outlets pay an honorarium and happily accept such submissions.
Another portal into the world of entertainment science is to answer science questions for a local newspaper column. Similarly one can get involved with a science news show on local radio or start one, if there isn’t one already up and running. The opportunities are there. People want to hear about science, not necessarily because science will save the planet, but because it helps them get away from the world for a little while.
The popular science writer Paul Hoffman quotes Albert Einstein as saying “one of the strongest motives that lead men [and women] to…science is to escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness.” If escapist science is good enough for Einstein, it’s good enough for me.
So, then, let the show begin.
References
Hoffman, P. 1998. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth. New York: Hyperion.
Wolf, M. J. 1999. The Entertainment Economy: How Megamedia Forces are Transforming our Lives. New York: Times Books.
Dr. Wassersug is currently Scientist-in-Residence for the Discovery Channel in Canada. He also holds a post as Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Dalhousie University Medical School, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. E-mail: tadpole@is.dal.ca.