So I had a chat yesterday - it was too brief to be counted that way maybe - about how and why should we be careful on naming a title of our work. I didn't indicate much consent, yet later I thought he was correct.
Quietly, I hid away my T-shirt design, with its title:
Modulated Gravitational and Electromagnetic Waves Propagating Through Space, Rev. 2b
I eat tedium for breakfast.
Admittedly titles are important. In most of the cases, they are doors from which only the curious ones might progress to behold a story in its entirety - as information age goes on, it is increasingly hard to attract browsers.
So where are we now? In Week 2's Science Scholars, a reliable (with a population of over 15 responses) result was shown to us: in all of the science news interesting enough to be brought along and shared, only slightly over a half made it up to the feeble gauge "title well represents content".
All right, then. According to most major tech publishers or media, science brings about have groundbreaking moments every day - a result in a way rewarding, worthwhile and logical, given the proliferating global institution of researchers (I will going to regret to have written that).
However, as part of the general public, for the sake of the ground, I think we should feel alarmed in this situation. To some extent, I cannot help but question whether publicised science news, as it is today, is useful. The issue with titles being just a facet of the problem, I also wish to present my further concerns.
"Why there is a universe?" I asked on Canvas before a session, half facetiously.
I find this question reminiscent now, not only for the joke part but also for the meeting during which it was brought up - Professor Easther's hour-long session on introductory cosmology, a memorable experience of science communication, like any other.
To be honest, the topic was a glimmer in my eyes. Professor Easther demonstrated the mode by which, the scientists believe, the universe expands. Unsurprising, he gave us each a balloon and asked us to measure the distance between various ink spots on it as the balloon inflated. Moreover, a lesson was taught:
As the surface of the balloon got stretched, the speed at which a spot recedes from another is proportional to the geodesic (...fancy word for big arc) distance between them. Therefore every point is the centre of such an expansion while nowhere on the surface is the actual centre of expansion.
Except for the students that were made sleepy, I regard this demonstration as a well-organised science communication. I had kept the balloon for a while until recently it totally deflated, and its markings faded - a Big Crunch too soon, yet the cosmos is at a scale that everybody could touch.
You might feel like interrupting: nothing is news here! No LIGO's results, no fancy Hubble pictures, no shiny physics stuff, just an archaic concept rephrased. Nevertheless, I think that this is the kind of communication the public needs.
Let's look at the other side, shall we? No matter how meticulously backed by science, a standalone piece of news about gravitational waves to ones who fundamentally perceive the world as Flatland would, I guess, help little in giving them any useful information.
On the one hand, noticing the crowd trying to comprehend and discuss the current issues is usually encouraging. On the other hand, hearing the knowledge exhibited but not understood at all (this is the more common, I think) could bring up the opposite feeling.
In 1978, China's People's Literature/Pathlight published a lengthy commentary on the achievements of the mathematician Jing-Run Chen, who had succeeded in a proof for the "1+2" in Goldbach's conjecture.
I have read someone saying "Good science communication can mould intricate ideas into human-scale stories." By that account, the report was a successful communication of science. Moreover, from what I could gather, it made history by encouraging lots of Chinese readers to appreciate the tenacity, resolution and courage of the great mathematician, and to dabble in abstract mathematics.
The article concluded with a paragraph saying "everyone who persevered like Chen will have a chance to prove the final '1+1'", and it had a lasting cultural impact indeed.
A family friend of mine is a professor of mathematics and editor of a prestigious scientific journal in China. A few years ago, he once remarked to me the opposite,
"You would not believe how many letters I receive from around the country each year proclaiming that they have proven the Goldbach conjecture."
"Even as of today, most of them contain elementary logical errors, and I feel sorry for the most senders' presumption, dismissing the problems' substantial complexity and not spending any time to learn the basics at all."
This might be an extreme case, with its effects still widespread today. I had some time debating with some civilian physicists and chemists (so they call themselves), who possibly had found mathematics too hard to handle compared to relativity or quantum mechanics. One of them's "theory" even made LIGO's discovery seem pitiful in some Chinese social networks, having named his theory "Gravitational waves" and became noted a few year ago - though the two objects are utterly irrelevant - he used his gravitational wave thingies to falsify Einstein!
As my observation, they usually possess an applaudable determination of their original theories but have wistfully limited knowledge about basic scientific reasoning or critical thinking. They would call any counterexample or better models brought up by us "conspiracy" or "conceit", unaware of the fact that science exists for a fit and explanation, rather than fame or homocentric interestingness.
As a full-time learner that is morbidly curious in matters like this. I learned that many of them did not get sufficient elementary education, and I perfectly understand some of their motivations, and would sincerely like to invite some to discuss their ideas with someone more proper, instead of arguing with us.
However, they really should have paid attention to where the science in their favourite news started - popular science rarely provides sufficient knowledge but sometimes devastating conceit - and I am not sure who or what is exactly to blame.
"My theory can exclusively fit the phenomena reported in this piece of news... " etc. I read that somewhere in a civilian physicist's post, who was later discovered not to know a thing about momentum, but actively tried to deceive the entirety of astronomy.
I collected a pamphlet outside the Department of Physics in Auckland as well. Similar stories. Light is a lie; the universe does not expand and so on, all based on an earlier science report addressing some anomalies in the redshift data measured in 1995 (I looked the source up, yep).
I still cannot present any solutions, and solely hope that my observations will be of some good reference. Some communications of science, the kind that focuses on the new and unconventional discoveries without adequately precise structuring or without the awareness of potentially misled responses from the public.
Thinking is beautiful, but a fundamentally misguided thinking to oversimplify the physical world sometimes does not seem as much.
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