VERIFIABLE REALITY VS INVENTED NARRATIVES
Science writing is a big church: the spectrum extends from the primary research papers and review articles that are the main product of professional scientists, to the stories and books of science fiction writers. My first research paper was published 50 years ago, and, though I’ve written and published five science non-fiction books over the past decade, specialised science journals and review periodicals are where my greatest number of words have appeared, generally in a format that is pretty inaccessible to most lay readers.
This is a challenging space for normal human beings who can, as a consequence of the expansion of open access online publishing, easily stray into what must seem to many like a confusing wilderness. As we’ve seen with climate change or AIDS denial, the danger is that people cherry pick from articles they barely understand.
Trying to make the experience of such online encounters a bit easier, I wrote The Knowledge Wars (2015)
to summarise how real science is reported, explain why publication is a key rule of the game, and describe how the culture works and where its strengths and limitations lie. Appendices at the back address issues like how to read a scientific paper, how to check out someone who claims scientific expertise, and what peer review actually means.
The science publishing enterprise is currently living through interesting times. The emergence of some dodgy online journals, plus other types of fraud facilitated by electronic communication, is a significant issue though, in general, open access via the internet is a major plus. Taking advantage of a few basic hints, those who are interested can increasingly find their way through to the primary science. And there are also places to go for good summaries; syntheses like the News and Views in Nature are intended for a more generalist, though still scientifically literate, readership.
As a rule, science journals don’t knowingly carry much fiction and, when it does seep through and is detected, it’s described as fraud. That carries real penalties for reputation, of course, and can lead to prosecution, even imprisonment, if the work reported was done on government- funded grants. Even so, it’s important to understand that scientists do not sign on to any equivalent of the medical Hippocratic oath and certainly do not commit to ‘first do no harm’, though most behave with great integrity.
Some professional science periodicals, like the Journal of Neurology for example, do carry short fiction pieces though, written by specialists for specialists; they can often be pretty arcane. And the leading science journal Nature has been running a one page ‘FUTURES science fiction’ format for some time now. In general, however, professional scientists aren’t trained to write fiction and, in most cases, it can be pretty appalling when they try. We don’t do creative writing! My one attempt at fiction fell at the post when my agent saw it, though there’s the bones of a very bad Jane Austen climate change murder mystery in a locked bottom drawer.
When scientists do write books, it’s generally in the science non-fiction category. In days gone by, researchers like Australian Nobelists Sir MacFarlane Burnet and Sir John Eccles would publish highly intellectual but still broadly-based tomes that summarised a particular area of interest in ways that would be read by other scientists and the ‘educated’ public. That kind of science writing has largely disappeared, along with the audience. One reason is that we have too much information and it is simply impossible to speculate in the way that those earlier ‘great men’ did. And great men are very much on the way out, anyway. In general, where senior researchers like E.O. Wilson write valuable, general treatises on the more philosophical implications of science, like his Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge (1998), that’s generally at, or after, the end of their active investigative career.
Apart from biographies by Nobel Prize winners and the my struggle accounts of those who’ve had to overcome difficulties with discrimination, working in harsh environments and the like, serious scientists rarely write books. At the end of an eminent career, a few will put together a summary of their life’s work and perhaps find a university publisher. But my guess is that they rarely sell more than 500 to 1000 copies.
There are exceptions, like Jim Watson of DNA fame, but he’s an engaging, if sometimes controversial, author. His first book The Double Helix (1968) should be, I believe, a must read for every young student of science. Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl: A Story of Trees, Science and Love (2016) is a great example of how telling a very personal story draws us in to appreciating the underlying science.
My personal struggle has been to try and write engagingly about various themes in science for a non-science audience. Basically, I don’t think that’s worked all that well and most people who’ve read through and got something useful out of stuff that I’ve written have generally had at least some science background. The difficulty for a scientist like me is to fully engage with just how little people comprehend about the world of science and how it works. We tend to start with the assumption that, at least, the ideas of probability and relative risk are universal, and that views based on the systematic acquisition of evidence rather than ideology and/or gossip over the back fence offer a more useful way forward.
That is, I fear, not how most approach the world. Even the word science in a book title or text is a turn-off for many, while the seemingly simplest technical account — to a scientist — can seem enormously difficult.
One way in that I’ve tried to explore is to talk about the citizen science of, for example, bird watching, joining some field survey organised via Earth Watch or by working as a vacation volunteer. Another motivation for writing The Knowledge Wars was to make the point that there are no priests or Popes in science. We don’t do infallibility! Indeed, scientists aren’t much different from or better than anyone else, but they do work under a set of rules that involves exploring ideas and looking for solutions via careful measurement, rigorous analysis and compulsory, peer–reviewed publication.
Professional writers like Bill Bryson, who aren’t science-trained but make the effort to talk to real scientists and listen to what they say, can, and do, write enormously popular science books. Journalists can also do a great job, with a terrific example being Jo Chandler’s Feeling the Heat (2011). Then there’s James Gleick’s book Genius (1992) on the iconic physicist Richard Feynman, though Feynman himself also wrote engagingly for a broader audience. And semi-fictionalised, historical accounts like Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter (1999) are eminently readable and interesting.
What does work well is the dystopian- future novel (or TV series) based around some catastrophic event, or progressive degradation, that has its basis in the science of, for instance, climate change. ‘Shock, horror, we’re all going to die’ also has great appeal in my own field of infectious disease. Successful titles
in this genre, like The Coming Plague (1994) or The Demon in the Freezer (2002) seek to convince us that we all live in the shadow of horrific threats that may, or may not, be triggered by really bad guys, or at least be exacerbated by really stupid guys.
Invited to write Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know (2012) for an Oxford University Press series, I took the line that it might be good to understand just something of how infection and immunity works (which I managed to do to the satisfaction of my literary editor) and that, because we’re pretty good at the science, the everyone’s going to die horribly scenario is pretty unlikely. The other case I tried to make was for the need to resist the impulses of financially constrained governments to cut public health services, which is where the real risk lies. Needless to say, focused on reality, information and with no personalised shock-horror theme, the book only achieved very modest sales.
When it comes to explaining scientific principles, understanding how a virus infection works or demonstrating the operation of an internal or external combustion engine, a good animation presented on YouTube, or in a Wikepedia summary, works infinitely better than any written account. The problem is that such material takes time and expertise to produce, and that isn’t usually the skill set of the science writer.
There is, however, a great deal of good stuff out there — in Powerpoint talks, for example — that most scientists would likely make freely available. Thinking in terms of ebooks, it would be pretty easy to work video into the model. With print copies, animations could be provided as an add-on via a USB stick — though these things are too easily lost — or in some way incorporated into the book to connect wirelessly. My Fitbit seems to do that OK!
Books are great for getting across ideas and philosophical positions that are essentially intellectual constructs, or for engaging us with stories where our imaginations can fill in the details more vividly and personally than any visual media presentation. And it’s great to see terrific fiction writers take up major themes from the physical (Ian McEwan’s Solar [2010]) or medical/ psychiatric (Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy [1991-95]) sciences. In my own area, I appreciated Denis Lehane’s The Given Day (2008) and Tom Keneally’s Daughters of Mars (2012), both of which use themes from the catastrophic 1918 influenza pandemic. There are rich veins to be tapped in historic science- related events and we’ll hopefully see more substantial novelists engaging with this area.
Books about climate change and the environment have enjoyed a very prominent place in the science writing pantheon, from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) to geologist Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt (2010). Whether, of course, they change any minds of those neoliberal zealots who are currently doing everything in their power to destroy any possibility for a sustainable human future is, of course, debatable. Such people are too busy doing what they do to read, think or have anything resembling a conscience.
That’s why, whatever aspect of the art we practice, science writing is so important. There’s an urgent need to change hearts and minds and to get people to engage more broadly with the idea that verifiable reality is what really matters. We don’t vote for the laws of physics and they don’t bend to the ‘demands’ of radio shock-jocks! Whether we engage readers via well- constructed and interesting accounts, through stories about real or imagined people and events, or via humour — Tim Minchin comes to mind — it doesn’t really matter: to each her, or his, own!
In the democracies, we need people to be informed about what’s really happening and to vote accordingly. As we try to do that, we’re up against the invented narrative and deliberate ignorance that fuels so much of contemporary economic and political life. Even the story of what’s happening right now with the Great Barrier Reef does not seem to be breaking through.
How do we get the idea across that, as the only thinking beings on the planet, we have a ‘duty of care’ to all life on earth? That’s a major point in The Knowledge Wars. What does it take for people to understand that, while science can identify and describe problems, it can’t — without behavioral change and sound public policy — provide simple, painless and automatic solutions? When was the last time we made it rain or deflected a typhoon or a tsunami? How do we convince people that, ultimately, we are a construct of nature, not the other way round? We have a lot of work to do.
About the Writer
Peter Doherty is a veterinary surgeon and researcher in the field of medicine. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Rolf M Zinkernagel in 1996 and was named Australian of the Year in 1997. His books include The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, A Light History of Hot Air, Sentinel Chickens and The Knowledge Wars.
This article is based on the keynote address Peter Doherty gave at the inaugural Quantum Words Festival at the NSW Writers’ Centre on 12 November 2016.