The Best Australian Science Writing 2013 (10 page)

Weapons researchers came to believe that their technical expertise gave them a privileged role in advising government on nuclear policy. Washington concurred, going so far as to include Livermore scientists in the identification of nuclear targets in the Soviet Union, which is perhaps why the Russians called Livermore ‘the City of Death'. They also had a large role in deciding on the types of weapons to build. One said: ‘If you don't understand the technology and physical effects of the weapons, then in my view you don't have the right to an opinion on nuclear policy'.

Among weapons scientists the conviction grew that understanding and exercising control of the technologies was sufficient
to render them safe, as if mastery of the technical sphere carried over into the political sphere. Confidence in the technology spilled over into the structures that determined how and when it might be used, reflecting the modern predilection to elevate technical truths over other kinds of truths, so that those who could articulate the former acquired authority to speak.

In the emerging geoengineering field, scientists have assumed a privileged place in advising not merely on technical questions but on governance arrangements, ethical concerns and international negotiations, despite their lack of expertise. There is a view that if you are clever enough to understand atmospheric physics then you are clever enough to grasp the nuances of politics, social change and ethics. As in the nuclear arms race, the allocation of authority to those with scientific expertise reflects the continued privileging of the hyper-rationality of physical science over the kinds of reasoning and knowledge valid in other spheres where the weaknesses of humans and their institutions are recognised and the lessons of history absorbed.

In his study of the Livermore laboratory, sociologist Hugh Gusterson found, contrary to expectations, that weapons scientists at Livermore held a variety of political views, with as many identifying as liberal as conservative. They traversed a range of religious orientations; three even identified as Buddhists. The emerging divide over geoengineering is not principally along a left–right fault-line, or even a pro-environment versus proeconomy split. The divide is between Prometheans and Soterians (named here after the Greek goddess of safety, preservation and deliverance from harm): a technocratic rationalist worldview confident of humanity's ability to control nature, against a more humble outlook suspicious of unnatural technological solutions and the hubris of mastery projects.

Livermore scientists were not opposed to nuclear arms control treaties, but they were ‘almost unanimously hostile' towards test
bans. There is a similarly strong resistance among geoengineers of the Promethean persuasion to any regulation of research and testing, especially from ‘the UN'. At Livermore, antipathy to test bans was not merely pragmatic. Gusterson divined deeper cultural meaning in testing. The ‘display of the secret knowledge's power' imparted a keen sense of community among participants. He read weapons tests as ‘powerful rituals celebrating human command over the secrets of life and death'. Tests were proof that human mastery of dangerous powers could be attained. In the same way we might expect that tests of geoengineering technologies, if they succeed, will persuade those carrying them out that technologies of planetary control can be mastered.

Impossible scale

Nature re-engineered

Science is more than freaks and circuses

Paul Livingston

I hate the Big Bang Theory. It's not that I have a problem with 13.7-billion-year-old singularities expanding out of nothing in order to produce something like myself. What I'm referring to is the American sitcom named after this creation event. A series that perpetuates and promotes the myth of the scientist as socially awkward, erotically disenfranchised, and one who lives a sad, companionless, blinkered existence.

These ubiquitous representations of universally male, whitecoated, bespectacled geeks portray scientists as beings neither to be admired nor emulated. It should come as no surprise that science literacy has declined in Australian schools. For most students, a climate change model is Miranda Kerr in a swimsuit.

The majority of scientists have never put on a white lab coat. What are they going to do? Spill some think all over themselves? Cogitation is not messy. The Einstein who cogitated the theories that would shake the scientific world was a young patent clerk, not the sockless wild-haired celebrity he would later become.

Not that I'm advocating sexing up science (personally I'm parthenogenetic, I have no need to be fertilised, but that's another story), but science educators do nothing to help their cause by perpetuating the myths themselves.

Much of science education takes the form of magic shows designed to impress and astound the students. Yet no matter how hard a hyperactive, lab-coated science educator might try, using sodium acetate to create an exothermic crystallisation in the shape of a pagoda is no match for a professional conjuror sawing a woman in half or converting a silk hanky into a Bengal tiger.

Entertainment beats science hands down. So how else to lure young minds into a life of cognitive enquiry?

The answer is not in ‘educational games'. Children can sniff out subliminal science in a second. They really couldn't care less if their balloon-powered race car proves Newton's three laws of motion eloquently. The fact that a body continues to maintain its state of rest unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force does nothing to stem the tears if your balloon car comes last.

Dogma insertion is not the answer. Religious educators have adapted this ploy in the hope of tempting young minds to their cause with startlingly incongruous results. Look no further than the Text Message Bible:

Wrk hard at wateva u do. U will soon go 2 da wrld of da dead, where no 1 wrks or thinks or reasons or knws NEting (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

How cool is that? Mostly un.

I was disappointed to hear a discussion on ABC Radio ridiculing the idea of a transit of Venus app, which allowed you to track the 2012 transit on your mobile phone. The app connected to a live webcast of the transit. When Venus touched the edge of the sun, the app recorded the moment and the user's location before sending the data to a global database.

Why demean this initiative? Surely observing a major oncein-a-lifetime cosmological event in real time is preferable to numbing the mind with Angry Birds, or DeathSpank, or And Yet
It Moves? (actually, And Yet It Moves is pretty cool).

Even the extraordinary subjects of science are themselves demeaned. In a bid to draw children to the Deep Oceans exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney, children were encouraged to ‘follow Mr Blobby on Facebook'. Mr Blobby was described as ‘a jolly little psychrolutid'. Admittedly, Mr Blobby does resemble Peter Sterling after a sauna, but this does not give one the right to belittle any member of the order Scorpaeniformes.

Would Stephen Hawking have caught the public eye with such voracity had he not suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? Are freaks and circuses all science can offer?

Changing ingrained attitudes will not be easy. Perhaps science could emulate the arts when it comes to enhancing its image; artists are renowned for their liaisons with various partners and muses. Yet Toulouse-Lautrec was no George Clooney, and that Mona Lisa, she's no oil painting.

There is no doubt science can be intimidating to the novice. So a softly-softly approach is advised. Here are a few points to keep in mind when teaching science to the uninitiated:

   Thorium is not a character from World of Warcraft III.

   Parallax will not cure a headache.

   A brown dwarf is not funny.

   Solar flares were not worn in the seventies.

   Igneous rock is not something you can dance to.

   A charged particle usually gets off scot-free.