Richard Feynman once said "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." That’s somewhat at odds with current thinking, I’d say.
This week, Amazon released their
pick of the science books of 2008. I was very chuffed to find out that
13 Things has made it in at number 8. But what was really interesting is that the seven before it were all written by academics. In fact, the only hack in the top 10 besides me was Carl Zimmer.
I get the sense, from conversations with publishers and agents, that the book industry thinks it’s better to get its science straight from the horse’s mouth. Big name academics are a bigger draw to the public that journalists writing about science. In one sense, I can understand that.
But I also find it worrying (and not
just because I don’t like competition). It is, I think, part of the process that I see creeping up on the science industry: the death of the critical voice.
I’m not going to go big on this just yet, as I want to dig into it properly at some point in the near future. But here’s something to think about. It’s an extract from Paul Feyerabend’s 1975 essay
How to Defend Society Against Science:
“In society at large the judgement of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago…. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer.”
In other words, if you're getting your science from scientists, you're perhaps not getting the whole story. Which is exactly what 13 Things is all about.
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