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Science

Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: Good For Science? 227

Posted by Soulskill from the use-it-if-you've-got-it dept.
Lasrick writes: Lawrence Krauss explores the reasons why scientists such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson became celebrities, and he shares his own experience as a best selling author and frequent guest on television programs like Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Krauss describes how public acclaim is often uncorrelated to scientific accomplishment and depends more on communication skills and personality traits. Nevertheless, he argues that the entire scientific community benefits when credible scientists gain a wider audience, and that celebrity is an opportunity that should not be squandered. Scientists who become recognizable have a chance and perhaps even a responsibility, which they have often exploited, to promote science literacy, combat scientific nonsense, motivate young people, and steer public policy discussions toward sound decision making wherever they can.
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Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: Good For Science? More

Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: Good For Science?

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  • Yes. (Score:3)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @04:44PM (#48806041) Homepage Journal

    As in subject.

  • ... Krauss describes how public acclaim is often uncorrelated to scientific accomplishment and depends more on communication skills and personality traits. ...

    Should be:

    .
    Krauss describes how public acclaim is often uncorrelated to accomplishment and depends more on communication skills and personality traits.

  • It's also good money
    He's coming to Antwerp with his buddy Dawkins the end of January.
    Places are 27 euro a pop, the golden circle is 40 euro.
    To preach to the choir.

    • It's also good money
      He's coming to Antwerp with his buddy Dawkins the end of January.
      Places are 27 euro a pop, the golden circle is 40 euro.
      To preach to the choir.

      Whereas I'm sure you spend most of your time and money going to lectures by people you hate, with views you despise or find ridiculous?

  • Uncorrelated? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @04:48PM (#48806097) Homepage

    public acclaim is often uncorrelated to scientific accomplishment

    I hate it when people use "uncorrelated" or "not correlated" to mean: the correlation coefficient isn't quite 1.0 but otherwise yeah, it's pretty high.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Relax, it is only a fraction of people that use it incorrectly.

  • Betteridge Is Wrong On This One (Score:5, Insightful)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @04:49PM (#48806103) Homepage Journal
    Yes, anything that puts science to a face and makes it approachable, normal and something to be admired or respected is always a good thing. In the US, so much emphasis is put on wealth that we have seen an astronomical rise in MBAs and JDs while STEM programs have languished by comparison.

    • Re:Betteridge Is Wrong On This One (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @05:14PM (#48806329) Homepage

      We also have seen a rise in glorifying "anti-science." Whether it be from the "we don't vaccinate because we don't support big pharma so we use homeopathy instead" crowd or from the "evolution can't be true because in Genesis the bible says the Earth was created 6,000 years ago" crowd. Both sides put down scientists as elite, "intellectual" (in an attempt to turn that into a bad term), and part of the "status quo" that must be overturned. If these groups got their way, all scientific progress (at least in the US) would grind to a halt. So any pro-science person who hits celebrity status helps to push against the anti-science tide.

      • I don't see that as 'anti-science,' I see it as anti-authority. If you talk to people who are anti-vaccers (it's tough, I know), they will often point to experiments to support their reasoning (naturalnews.com links to all kinds of questionable studies to support its inanity). They merely feel the scientists they trust are more correct than the scientists you trust.

    • You mean like this?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • STEM programs aren't going to be made much more popular by having science celebrities. They'll be made more popular by making them into apparently better and more respected career choices. Science is a really tricky field to make a living in, and I don't think science celebrities do much to push engineering careers.

  • Human beings when become celebrities will get their ego 'floated' when they find themselves becoming celebrities, and of course, scientists are no different

    We can see how many of the celebrities have fumbled, sport stars, politicians, movie stars, and yes, even religious leaders, they too fumbled

    They act different, the content of their speeches have also changed and become boastful. Most have forgotten what 'humble' feel like, and truth does not matter anymore

    And truth is what Science is all about - the sea

    • No. If you want Truth, Philosophy is down the hall. Science is about collecting data, creating models of the world around us, and testing the models for usefulness and accuracy.

      • tell that to the theoretical physicists.

    • We can see how many of the celebrities have fumbled, sport stars, politicians, movie stars, and yes, even religious leaders, they too fumbled.

      Fumbled?

      Either that's bait, or you haven't dialed in lately with your trusty USR to the acerbic backwash concerning America's popular reverence for all things Reverend.

      The second such category is of slightly more importance, because it consists of the editors, producers, publicists, and a host of other media riffraff who allowed Falwell to prove, almost every week, th

  • It places them in a position of authority and if they are indeed good scientists allows the public's most common fallacy of appeal to authority to become a defacto appeal to reason.

  • scientific stars wannabe (Score:3)

    by lorinc ( 2470890 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @04:56PM (#48806179) Homepage Journal

    The problem, is that scientific research is now like music was in the 80s. People are much more interesting in writing the article that will be cited 1k times, like people were looking to write that single getting sold 1M times, than actually improving common knowledge.

    Well at least in computer vision, I do have this impression.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson is not a celebrity,
    No matter how much you want to think so.
    To the Joe on the street
    Or the cop on the beat
    It's "Joe Tyson??? Who's that schmoe?"

    Burma Shave

  • Just another form of scientific contribution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stuntmonkey ( 557875 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @05:00PM (#48806223)

    I would put communication onto a list of activities that move the science enterprise forward, but tend to be undervalued compared with producing new research results. Great popularizers like Sagan, and great writers like Arthur Clarke, have done an enormous amount to inspire and motivate people.

    Another group of undervalued people are the tools builders. Things like ArXiv, Mathematica, and so on improve the effectiveness of every researcher by a little bit, and their cumulative impact is enormous but we tend not to recognize them.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      A list of the most highly cited papers was released recently. All the top papers were tools and techniques. Discoveries like the structure of DNA were well down the list.

      The tool builders get recognized pretty well where it counts.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I would rather have (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xaotikdesigns ( 2662531 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @05:01PM (#48806231) Homepage Journal
    Scientists become celebrities than celebrities becoming scientists (Jenny McCarthy for one)...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ottibus ( 753944 )

      Scientists become celebrities than celebrities becoming scientists

      With the possible exception of Brian May :)

  • Having a real scientist as a TV spokesmodel isn't all bad, but it just seems to be terribly overdone. I get tired of seeing folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson and especially Michio Kaku (who thankfully was omitted from TFS) on TV. When they appear, each is presented as "the guy who knows everything." Micho Kaku has a particularly smug, know-it-all, condescending presentation that grows old in light of his seeming omnipresence on the science-related channels.

    The fact is, though, that true scientists are speci

    • To be fair, the topics they get to speak about are usually very basic, so if they are related to their fields at all, I guess they DO know those things.

      For me, this is why I can't really stand watching them:
      I have never seen them talk about anything really new, or interesting.
      In every TV segment, they start off from zero and never get very far, or into much detail.
      I guess as actual scientists they do have their own research projects, or at least interests in more advanced topics. It would be interesting to

  • Say what? (Score:3, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @05:12PM (#48806317)

    ... scientists such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson ...

    One of these names is not like the others,
    One of these names just doesn't belong.
    Can you tell me which name is not like the others,
    Before I finish this song?

    (okay, maybe it should be "two of these names...")

    • Re:Say what? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gman003 ( 1693318 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @06:10PM (#48806809)

      Let's see here:
      Albert Einstein - Nobel-winning physicist
      Richard Feynman - Nobel-winning physicist, later used his celebrity power to popularize physics through his books
      Carl Sagan - Astrophysicist (PhD thesis was "Physical Study of Planets", much of his work involved determining environmental conditions on other planets and moons), simultaneously was a television host and science celebrity
      Stephen Hawking - Physicist (PhD thesis was on singularities in spacetime), author, and occasionally played himself on TV.
      Neil deGrasse Tyson - Astrophysicist (PhD thesis was on star distribution in the galactic bulge), author, television host and science celebrity.

      Well, Einstein's the only one who (AFAIK) was not a major pop writer. Tyson's the only one with a Twitter feed. Hawking's the only one with a physical disability, and Feynman was the only one to do engineering as well as science. So I'm actually not sure who you think is different from all the others.

    • Why is this modded informative? It is neither informative or even interesting. I guess mods are back on crack like the good old days.

  • It's not about the presenter. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sbaker ( 47485 ) * on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @05:19PM (#48806363) Homepage

    Einstein and Feynman were both nobel prize winners and Hawkins has Sir Isaac Newton's mathematics chair - we probably shouldn't downplay their achievements!

    Carl Sagan was on the slippery slope. He certainly did some good science - but he's hardly up there with the previous three. Tyson has a few decent papers to his name, and his career isn't over yet - but I don't think he's coming close to the others in terms of science achievements.

    Einstein was the world's worst communicator. Feynman and Hawkins are better - Sagan was astounding and Tyson may be yet better.

    I suppose we might be concerned that there is a pattern here. We're taking people who are better communicators in preference to those who really know their stuff.

    But honestly, does it matter? The presenter of a show reads from a script - (s)he is basically an actor. If the author of the script sticks to an accurate portrayal of what's written by the hard-core scientists - then why not pick an engaging personality to present it to us?

    The critical part of the cycle is the person who decides WHICH science gets discussed. De Grasse Tyson is often talking about tacheons, wormholes and white holes and other claptrap that's horribly speculative, wildly unusupported, and very probably untrue. As an astrophysicist, he should know better - but as a TV presenter, he does a reasonable job of reading the script.

    I'd prefer to have a complete non-scientist who is a supreme communicator be given a script written by good script writers from material handed to them by the hard core scientists behind the scenes - than to rely on a lower-tier scientist (or a high-tier scientist with poor communications skills) to do the entire job.

        -- Steve

    • Re:It's not about the presenter. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @05:50PM (#48806659)

      I'd prefer to have a complete non-scientist who is a supreme communicator be given a script written by good script writers from material handed to them by the hard core scientists behind the scenes - than to rely on a lower-tier scientist (or a high-tier scientist with poor communications skills) to do the entire job.

      I see three problems with this.

      The first is trust, and science is all about trust and credibility. It doesn't matter how good the actor is, if the audience knows they're just reading a script then they're not going to have the same credibility as a real scientist who really understands what they're talking about. I mean Morgan Freeman is a great actor with an unreal voice, but I don't think he could have done Cosmos as well as Tyson.

      The second problem is that actor is useless outside the show, one of the advantages of giving people like Tyson and Sagan a public profile is they're in a position to speak on behalf of science outside the show. Your actor can narrate a documentary, but you're never going to be able to train them well enough to match go up against a kook on a panel show.

      Finally if you invest enough scientific credibility into that actor you really need to vet the actor since they don't have a scientific career to fall back on when the show is over. Do you really want that pretty face you've taught millions to trust to start shilling magic water when they're in desperate need of a paycheck?

      It's still doable and useful in some situations, but for a mass outreach scientific show I think a real scientist is preferable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      The presenter of a show reads from a script - (s)he is basically an actor.

      That may be true of the narrator of a documentary, but for anyone presenting live it matters whether they know the science or not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blueg3 ( 192743 )

      It depends. You can get anyone to read a script on a recorded television show, but that's usually not the point. You can't really do an interesting interview with someone who is a good communicator but isn't familiar with the subject matter.

      De Grasse Tyson is often talking about tacheons, wormholes and white holes and other claptrap that's horribly speculative, wildly unusupported, and very probably untrue.

      It depends. All of those are supported by theory. They're only "speculative" in that they are permitted by theory but have not been observed and, as a result, it's an interesting question as to whether or not they exist. (If they don't or can't exist, can that informatio

    • I'd prefer to have a complete non-scientist who is a supreme communicator be given a script written by good script writers from material handed to them by the hard core scientists behind the scenes - than to rely on a lower-tier scientist (or a high-tier scientist with poor communications skills) to do the entire job.

      Oh, now you're asking for David Attenborough.

      • Patrick Stewart and Morgan Freeman also rock as narrators for documentaries too, although Attenborough is probably the TOP of the list. I search torrents by his name all the time!
      • Actually David Attenborough graduated from Cambridge with a degree in natural sciences (specialising in geology and zoology). And, actually, I think that he makes for a far better model of science communicator than these modern loud mouths/wannabe philosophers.

        • And, actually, I think that he makes for a far better model of science communicator than these modern loud mouths/wannabe philosophers.

          Without a doubt.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Prune ( 557140 )
      I'm just glad they didn't add Penrose to that list. He's really lost his marbles in his old age -- such a shame.

    • Einstein was the world's worst communicator.

      Try some Edward Witten [youtube.com]

    • Einstein was a huge celebrity though. What I think is interesting is how society decides who is or isn't the celebrity. Sure, Einstein was a genius with groundbreaking theory, but then so were many of his peers. What about the other Nobel prize winners? Ok, those who didn't live in America weren't going to be easy for be famous to Americans, or elsewhere in the world if not on the movie reels; some cooperated with the Nazis; some were on top secret projects; etc. But overall it's like American decided

  • Ask some random person to name another WHOI scientist after Bob Ballard. Thought so. Even when he first started splitting his time between WHOI and NatGeo - many of the established scientists in the field could not comprehend why he would want to go on TV and gas on about ocean science. It was like he was speaking another language. After he got the vents stuff out in the mainstream, I happened to be in Woods Hole and saw that they had finally put together a WHOI exhibit on the work that was done. Under
  • If I had to guess, there are both positive and negative effects on celebrities as scientists, dependent upon enough factors that there's no good way to make a headline. The effects a celebrity scientist has are dependent upon why people identify with them, how the public reacts, and of course what the scientist does. If the results of celebrity scientists are making cool posters for dorm rooms and/or being eye candy, then yeah, they probably aren't doing much for it. But, if they are testifying before Congress to act on scientific data or fund research, or encouraging people to improve their critical thinking skills, they are immensely helpful. It's also important that they stay on that side of the line. Discovery Channel and shows on the Discovery Channel have had issues with that.

    If you really want to advance scientific literacy, you're going to have to dispel the idea that it's common for something to have virtually only positives or only negatives, as in reality, those kinds of things are quite rare.

  • While people who move the course of humanity forward make less than people who chase balls for a living, more press is needed badly.
    Imagine all the STEM people disappeared, humanity may collapse.

    Imagine all the athletes disappeared...not really a problem.

  • If by celebrity we mean that good scientists get famous for actual research and get patronage to run their labs free of government funding, then hell yes.

    If by celebrity we mean that their career as a "Scientist" means to be an advocate for one bit of research over others even well outside their own work, then probably not.

  • Tyson's TV skills (Score:3)

    by l0n3s0m3phr34k ( 2613107 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @08:00PM (#48807579)
    I watched an older show with Neil, he definitely has either had some coaching or something as he was almost as bad as W Bush in the first episode. It was some other science show on Netflix, and his ability to read the teleprompter was horrid. LOL just like a professor's first big class or recording. Luckily he has gotten 1000x better with it all, and now is just as good of a speaker as he is a scientist.

    TYSON / NYE 2016! Bring science to the Whitehouse! Write them in, save humanity from itself and superstition!

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