Earthwake (2): Science in News, Current Affairs, and General Programming

(December 17th 2007) In the concluding part of this meeting report, we will consider other forms that science can take on television and media, including the question of space science propaganda. By Jeremy Garwood.

As a prelude to further discussion of science in general television programming, the audience was asked to consider what the public now likes in terms of televised science and to vote on examples taken from science in general programming (current affairs, travel series, entertainment).

The representative samples chosen ranged from the anecdotal to the excruciating (personally, I found it ironic that at a time when television is seeking to be more popular, it often succeeds in making us look elsewhere).

Big Brother discovers Science !

The last British excerpt was from Channel 4's 'Big Brother' - a 'reality show' also found in other countries, in which selected competitors are made to live together and perform tasks in a kind of large fish bowl, cut-off from the outside world for a period of weeks, yet constantly subject to full-time scrutiny from cameras and microphones - television viewers are asked every few days to choose which competitor is to be ejected next from the bowl, the 'winner' (with associated money/fame etc.) is the one left remaining at the end who is either considered the most telegenic or the least irritating by the voting television audiences.

Yes, even 'Big Brother' has discovered the value of science! In order to determine how much food money the competitors were to be given to spend (and presumably to eat in a choice of sumptuous culinary dishes), they were presented with an equipped 'scientific laboratory' in which they were required to perform 'scientific experiments' - the veracity of the answers from these experiments would result in more or less food! (If only scientific research were that simpleÉ).

Bella Italia

The Italians (RAI) then gave us a bit of air and greenery with 'In the Path of Darwin'. This was an 'informative and entertaining travel show' in which a group of scientists and children were shown racing sand buggies in Brazil, and rolling down sand dunes in Ecuador while following (very approximately) in Charles Darwin's footsteps in order to learn some evolutionary biology. The narration alternated between jokey travel commentaries and informal observations upon bird beaks, mangrove swamps, and turtle sex.

A la Francaise

French television showed an interesting report (from FR3) on solar ovens in the French Alps - huge convex mirrors (built shortly after the Second World War) can focus the sun's rays to generate temperatures of several thousand degrees, used to melt metals and perform experiments at temperatures then unattainable in laboratories.

However, the flipside of French TV (from TF1) showed a 'comic' talk/chat show, 'Phenomenal', in which comedians, stand-up comics and other (apparently) reputed entertainers are asked to comment humoristically upon 'natural phenomena'. In this case, they observed how an octopus reacted to discovering that the small crab it wished to eat was sealed in a glass jar - it took a few minutes and many excruciating jokes before the octopus 'learnt' how to unscrew the jar's top and consume its crab. The comedians were suitably impressed by the octupus's intelligence which probably measured up well to their own capacities.

Auf Deutsch

Finally, 'Galileo' from Germany's ProSieben, showed a well-paced visually stimulating analysis of the water consumption of a typical Berlin appartment block, following the city's water from the rivers through the pipes, out of the taps into washing machines, glasses, sinks and showers, down the toilets and drains and out into the rivers again, asking people what they used water for and comparing its purity and volume against health, pollution and energy considerations.

British Tentatives.

Peter Barron, Editor for BBC's major daily current affairs programme, 'Newsnight', said that the key problem when considering the reporting of science in News and Current Affairs was that most journalists have Arts backgrounds and that they have a worldview that could almost be described as "Anti-Science".

"Yet, everything nowadays is dominated by maths and science." Hence, on 'Newsnight', he tried an experiment: he sent his Arts correspondent (a plumpish reporter in his 30's) back to school full-time to train to become a science student and to pass a Physics school exam. He admitted that when he had had this idea, he had dreamt that it might be "a way of transforming how we look at science in the U.K." However, the approach failed miserably because they were unable to get deep enough during the reports they made over several months: it was just too superficial. Instead, the reporter was shown making poor jokes about Physics and commenting on the sexual attributes of his young and athletic female Physics teacher. And to make matters worse, at the end, the Arts correspondent proved completely incapable of coping with school Physics. He totally failed his physics exam (with 28%).

Peter Barron then described a second experiment that he had been much happier with: "IfÉ the lights go out". He said that knowledge of science and engineering is shunned in the British media: it is seen as unappealing unlike "the natural world". He reasoned that it was much easier to 'shock' people on technical matters in order to get them to react. "IfÉthe lights go out" was a drama documentary which used a fictional scenario, set in the future, to explore the problems of Britain's energy supply - in the winter of 2010, North Sea gas has run out and most of the U.K.'s power stations run on imported Russian gas. It is a cold winter, energy prices soar, the privatised electricity industry struggles to meet increasing demand. Suddenly, disaster strikes as the gas pipeline from Russia is cut (by a terrorist attack). Within hours, Britain is plunged into the biggest power cut it has ever seen. This documentary 'report' attracted an audience of 3.2 million, was widely discussed in daily newspapers and in the British Parliament, relaunching a debate on future energy resources that resulted in a reverse in government policy on nuclear power.

He then spoke of an interview with Craig Venter (the human genome sequencer) which illustrated a typical problem he faces - in general, his reporters (who have no science training) only have part of the day to prepare the background to their interviews and in this case the interview was not very good since the reporter obviously didn't understand enough genome biology or its implications to be able to pose Craig Venter any probing questions.

Chasing Penguins and Nature Documentaries.

Yvon Le Maho is an ecologist/zoologist (CNRS UMR 7178, Strasbourg) whose research includes satellite tracking of migrating animals such as polar bears, penguins and albatrosses in the Polar regions. He uses this information to determine the role of sea ice in the lives and survival of these animals and he has often been involved as a scientific consultant for television documentaries and films, including TF1's popular ecology programme 'Ushuaia' (that has given a high political profile in France to its presenter, Nicolas Hulot), and the award-winning films, 'Le Peuple Migrateur' ('Winged Migration') and 'La Marche de l'Empereur' ('March of the Penguins'). He argues that by the diffusion of images from his research he can help to show that "technology is also useful in studying wildlife", i.e. that technology and wildlife are not incompatible.

Perhaps his strangest experience on television was for "Ushuaia" when he flew a microlight aircraft through migrating flocks of geese for an in-flight interview with Nicolas Hulot, flying in an adjacent machine. He said that scientists are often incapable of explaining themselves in simple terms hence the need for 'talking heads' such as Nicolas Hulot to convey the message.

CERN - Particle Physics as Entertainment.

Paola Catapano, science communicator at CERN and a television presenter in Italy for RAI television told us how she uses "adventure" to appeal to young people. She tries to start her programmes by triggering the emotions. There are many barriers between science and the media, for example, the perception of time: in the media, this is short and immediate; in research, this is longer term and patient. Also, the need for a "vedette": the media only tends to focus on the "big name".

She admitted there was a "fight inside CERN" between scientists who agreed there was a need to simplify science in order to communicate to a general public and those who still don't agree with the approach of "striking the imagination" as the first step towards further insights, for example, describing the main particle accelerator at CERN as the "fastest racetrack on earth". Her motto is: "The intellect works effectively only if emotions are favourable".

Paola Catapano then showed us three video clips to illustrate her point: First, from 'Beyond Einstein', a 12 hour live webcast for the Year of Physics (2005), a Nobel prize-winning Physicist at the Fermilab near Chicago is seen addressing cheering children dressed in brightly coloured lab T-shirts declaring that the Fermilab is "the World's greatest lab!" and that they "smash nuclei, not atoms!". We then saw Paola conducting a satellite interview from CERN with some scientists in an Antarctic research base who assured her that it was very cold and icy out there. She said the "formula for success" was to avoid going into the details which allowed her to talk about many subjects by making them "spectacular and using the emotions".

Her second examples were from the RAI 'Explorer' series - Paola on an ice breaker in the Antarctic, walking on the polar ice, commenting on the cold and pointing to a signpost showing the distances from the South Pole to relevant Italian cities. We then saw Paola floating around weightlessly in an aeroplane from the European Space Agency flying parabolic arcs in order to conduct microgravity experiments. The clip showed students performing weightless acrobatics, and 'flying' on a magic carpet. A goldfish was seen chasing after its weightless water in a sealed bowl.

In the third clip from RAI 3 (the cultural channel), we were shown more of 'In the Path of Darwin', where a yacht with children and scientists sailed along one of Darwin's exploratory routes (in reverse). This appeared as 5 one hour episodes during the low peak summer schedules and the travel element was taken an excuse for entertainment, but some science crept in between the travelogue and jokes - sexual selection in Brazil as a mechanism of evolution was demonstrated to children on a sandy beach. The children were shown images of brightly attired male animals and told that this was how they courted their mates in polygamous species. The children wanted to know if predators found it easier to spot brightly coloured males and were told that the ugly males were not hunted as much but had fewer females. Hence, "live short but have lots of sex". Paola admitted that this was mostly entertainment but that RAI, the Italian public broadcaster, classified it as 'culture'.

Science is not a Circus Act.

Alain Jaillet (director of university web-TV, see below) reacted to this by saying that "science is not a circus act". Furthermore, he wondered whether it was a good thing that science was often presented as being black and white. For example, in US cop shows, scientists were shown solving problems rapidly but "this is a false impression. Scientists need time to solve problems". There is currently a fashion for science in drama but he thinks this is just that, "a fashion", and that in entertainment, "fashions change". Problems arise when chasing mass audiences because "public television policies are not the same as scientific/university priorities".

Peter Barron said at 'Newsnight', although they were conscious of the need to focus on their audience, their best reports often ignored fashion and indeed went against it. He agreed that there were problems when drama started getting into "pseudo-science": it was all too packaged and simple. Lisa Osborne defended her BBC drama production by saying that drama thrives on conflict, not on black and white issues - it's good at telling stories. However, she admitted that drama is doing science a disservice if audiences believe it is other than fiction ("I'm selling a story") and that there were problems with docu-dramas because the audience expects them "to be right". "I'm not making license with science, just with the presentation".

"When science is fashionable it has funding," said Yvon Le Maro. In the sixties, nutrition was fashionable in France, then deGaulle gave some money to molecular biology and it began developing. Today, nutrition is unfashionable and "the money goes to the genes". "Should television facilitate the conception of fashions? Perhaps it could present other fields and ideas?" Paola Catapeno replied that: "Television is driven by fashion and hence will chase fashion."

Matteo Merzagora (science journalist) said that scientists in America interact better with the Hollywood film industry. For example, the film "Mission to Mars" was released to coincide with crucial U.S. government votes concerning funding for future manned Mars missions. Similarly, "The Day After Tomorrow" was produced in concertation with lobbying groups to ensure it had "political impact at the right moment".

3. Science in New Media presentations (Web TV, podcasts, modern informational and interactive videos).

'Science in New Media' started off by presenting a zappy advertisement from the European Space Agency with rapidly overlapping images of aircraft, satellite, and rocket design and engineering, although it wasn't clear whether we were meant to be buying anything.

A Virtual Aquarium then showed carefully computer-crafted three-dimensional recreations of long extinct fish (presumably someone's preparing similar imagery of the last members of earth's currently endangered species).

CERN in Geneva showed off an interactive computer tour of its facilities - in case you may have suspected that the bulk of the CERN facilities consist of underground tunnels, this interactive video confirms it, with lengthy walks along metal walkways, through dimly lit concrete caverns lined with metal pipes, plastic tubes and kilometers and kilometers of electrical wiring. Presumably this is part of an effort to counteract the sensationalist image they've been lumbered with since Dan Brown described an environment of high tech murder and mayhem (including CERN's institutional supersonic stealth plane. The CERN website now features a page specifically dedicated to refuting the novel, 'Angels and Demons' - as an American novelist, Dan Brown is not apparently aware of the European Commission's vision of European Science and Technology in fiction).

In a similar vein, we were presented with a holographic display of camera exhibits at the Deutsches Museum in Munich - doubtless more interesting than the video implied.

To finish, there was an excellent information video from the U.K.'s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) -'Tomorrow's Climate, Today's Challenge' (viewable at: www.climatechallenge.gov.uk/multimedia/film5.html), which takes the very simple premise that people might react more to the whole question of greenhouse gases if they could actually visualise them. The film then shows billowing clouds of gas rising from domestic and industrial chimneys, exhaust fumes from cars and lorries, surging forth from aeroplanes - a highly effective image.

University Web Television - Strictly No Entertainment.

Alain Jaillet, Director of University Louis Pasteur's Multimedia in Strasbourg, presented the scope of the university web television system. Founded in 2000, this is an initiative that is spreading from French universities to a wider European university network. The key points behind the web-TV concept are that it should present new avenues for scientific expression, help students to learn better, and that it should enhance the presence of the French language (although this latter point would obviously be waived in the case of non-francophone projects). U-TV presents, via the internet ( http://utv.u-strasbg.fr/), freely available television broadcasts of academic seminars, lectures, meetings and research reports. To date, they have filmed some 6000 researchers in 5000 videos covering 260 meetings (around 2500 hours of television).

This presents new possibilities allowing the whole university access to television for their own projects. "It is not mass audience television, it's hard science for researchers and students." However, to build a good university TV channel, you need a lot of programmes. Most of their production is "hard science because scientists now know they have to communicate".

In parallel to U-TV, they also produce a web-TV channel dedicated to showing conference proceedings ( www.canalc2.tv/ ). This allows you to see conferences and to download videos of the speakers. However, a problem they have discovered with this service is that it is diffcult for potential viewers to know which video clips are of interest to them. Hence, typed transcripts of the conferences can now be searched for keywords in order to avoid the need to screen through all the videos.

Trans-European collaborations are developing with, for example, universities in Turin, Mainz, and Lodz, and it is their intention to create an international university television channel. However, the European commission is not interested in this proposal: "They are only looking at mass audience-related science". Alain Jaillet is convinced that it is a big error to treat science as a "circus", but that this is, unfortunately, a mistake which has "the ear of the politicians" (at least at the European level). He reiterated: "Science is not a circus act."

Athena Web TV - Officially European Commission-sanctioned Images of Science.

Perhaps the European Commission's relative disinterest in U-TV comes from the existence of their own web TV site? Kathleen Van Damme presented 'Athena Web' (www.athenaweb.org) that she runs for the European Commision's Directorate General for Research. Launched in 2005, it is intended to support the production and diffusion of European science videos. The rationale behind this web site is that "on the internet today, you can find all sorts of religious and 'crazy' stuff and get a 'wrong' idea of science. But, on Athena Web, you will only get good, verified scientific content."

There are currently over 700 films, in both English and the original language, organised by themes and freely viewable by video streaming. You can read the scripts for all the videos. There is also a space for scientists, a zone where they can place and consult their own videos. In addition, the intention is to provide a good source for the media to find or to verify scientific news stories.

4. "Space - Programmes without Limits"

A session dedicated to the diffusion of 'space science' unintentionally revealed another side to the whole question of science on television - science propaganda. Apparently, the enormous cost of exploring space has met financial barriers.

Led by David Southwood, the Science Director of the European Space Agency, several speakers dwelt on 'the Golden Age of Space Research', the space race of the sixties that resulted in the manned moon landings. Since this time, space research has been in the relative doldrums, lacking sufficient funds for its more ambitious projects. Hence why the space community wants more favourable coverage of their research on television, communicating the message that: "Space is Sexy".

However, as the science journalist, Matteo Merzagora, pointed out, the science propaganda from NASA had become so obscenely 'sexy' that it was virtually 'pornographic'. In their defence, the space speakers claimed that there was a shortfall of science and engineering personnel in Europe and that 'space' would serve to attract youth to science careers, although as David Southwood remarked, the director of a leading British aerospace company told him that 'space research' was ideal for attracting science and engineering recruits into the firm but that subsequently they were set to work on developing missile systems.

Conclusions: Whose Crisis? Science or Public TV?

As a teenager, I watched several hours of television each day, a bad habit that soon stopped upon starting university. However, like many ex-regular viewers, I've had the impression that contemporary European television is increasingly superficial, requiring less and less concentration and intellectual input from its audience. At the end of the Earthwake meeting, I have discovered that this is not simply an impression - it's official European Union policy!

There are numerous reports of a 'Media Crisis' in European Public Television, based on a declining share in total viewing audiences and declining revenues (from advertising or government subsidies). A direct response to this media crisis has been a shift away from 'factual' television, including science documentaries, which attract small audiences, towards fiction and general entertainment, which attract bigger audiences.

It almost goes without saying that fiction on European television is dominated by the importation of well-packaged series from the U.S. and that these are among the most watched programmes on European T.V. In fact, based on the current definitions of science programming at this meeting, it seems that the most popular vision of 'science' for European audiences now comes from American 'cops and docs' series.

The 'new philosophy' of 'science in society' is typical of a general trend to chase mass audiences by providing popular entertainment in the declared belief that this is the right direction - the subliminal diffusion of the right kind of images and ideas will somehow elevate the cultural aspirations of Europeans. In this case, it is argued that Science needs a 'better image' to attract more students to study science and to make the general population more technoscience-friendly.

Throughout the meeting, I asked the professional media speakers what was wrong with the previous approach of trying to inform and educate the viewing public through more in-depth science documentaries or discussion programmes? Surely these might present a better quality of viewing, even if they were seen by a smaller audience? They told me that, "of course", there was still a place for such programmes on public television but that the current European Commission priority was "mass audiences".

Everyone agrees that Science is vitally important to the future of human society, can the same be said of Public Television?