Celebrities and Science

I realized in December that of all the RSS feeds I have littering my personalized Google home page, I was clicking to read New Scientist more and more frequently. Sure, I love the Seed Daily Zeitgeist, but for unique, provocative content, New Scientist won hands down. So I got a subscription... as if I need more magazines to read! But in perusing the first issue (January 6-12) I was not disappointed. There on page 5 was a short piece that made me smile and feel that the world might just become a better place.

The article reported that a UK charity, Sense about Science (SAS), launched a campaign earlier this month encouraging celebrities to promote scientific accuracy in their comments to the media. They've even developed this handy pamphlet debunking some of the most common misconceptions celebrities perpetuate about the importance of "natural food" and the danger of immunizing children. They also have a phone number celebrities can call to check information before making a statement in public.

But what makes misrepresentation of science so insidious is that most incorrect statements pass the "straight face test" and even sound plausible. The scientific community needs their own celebrities: charming, well-respected scientists who will speak out against public misconceptions and set the record straight.

What makes this difficult, however, is the very nature of science as a constantly evolving, theory-based way of assessing knowledge. The fact that the FDA said in December that eating meat from cloned animals is safe doesn't mean that 5 years from now, they may believe differently. However, by today's standards of food safety, eating this meat is just as safe as eating any other type of meat.

Perhaps the root of the problem with celebrities misrepresenting science lies the very basic fact that the general public does not understand science and thus does not have as well-developed a "BS Filter" when it comes to scientific misrepresentations. Or perhaps we, as a society, have simply grown incurious as information is delivered to us in increasingly well-digested, bite size pieces. Even I shy away from overly-long news articles; the one on celebrities and science was after all only 171 words long.