{"id":2769,"date":"2008-07-24T08:58:18","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T08:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/07\/24\/nova-sciencenow\/"},"modified":"2008-07-24T08:58:18","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T08:58:18","slug":"nova-sciencenow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/07\/24\/nova-sciencenow\/","title":{"rendered":"NOVA ScienceNOW"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think there were ads running on ScienceBlogs for PBS’s new science “magazine” show NOVA ScienceNOW<\/a><\/cite>, which premiered a while back. I never got around to watching it until last night when I caught the start of it completely by accident (quite literally– I dropped a book on top of the tv remote, and it changed the channel to PBS…).<\/p>\n

Neil deGrasse Tyson acts as the host of the show, introducing 10-15 minute pieces about reasonably topical issues in science. Some of these are original to the show– in the first, Tyson squelches around a swamp looking for leeches with a colleague from the AMNH– and others appear to be derived from other sources– the segment on SETI was essentially identical to a clip I blogged back in April<\/a>. Tyson also had a commentary segment at the very end (well, just before the ten minutes of pitches and promos that PBS tacks on the end of everything).<\/p>\n

On the whole, I thought it was an very good package. There were some elements that I’m kind of ambivalent about, but it serves as a good illustration of the issues in science communication that have taken up so many blog posts around here, both pro and con.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The one major problem here is that I’m not the audience for this show. The show is very consciously pitched at people who don’t have a background in science, and as a result there are bits that don’t play very well for me. I can appreciate what they’re doing, and recognize when they’re doing it well, but I don’t have the gut-level reaction to it that they’re shooting for.<\/p>\n

Most of the show is done extremely well, though, and could serve as a textbook for mass science communication in keeping with all those arguments about framing. The segment about leeches was really well done in this regard, featuring both a patient whose fingers were saved by treatment with leeches, and a biologist whose passion for his subject was clear (but not in a creepy way). Seth Shostak’s radio demo for the SETI piece was very effective, and the stem cell thing was another example of excellent framing, with two kids suffering from sickle-cell anemia to anchor the story about possible treatments based on stem cells. In all of those, the scientists interviewed came off really well.<\/p>\n

The one major mis-step was in the piece about deep ocean exploration, which featured a weird interlude about the personal life of the main scientist. I didn’t mind the stories about how she became interested in biology, but the bit about how she and her husband met felt really out of place. It played like a too-obvious “Look! Scientists are human, too!” insertion, and a slightly desperate attempt to get a human-interest angle into a story about freaky deep-sea creatures.<\/p>\n

The parts I was most ambivalent about, though, were the host segments. Neil deGrasse Tyson appears in a bunch of weird CGI-assisted scenarios– buried in a haystack to introduce the SETI segment, talking about cheesecake to introduce stem cells, voicing a cartoon for the deep sea thing– that felt really cheesey and condescending. Tyson is a great sport about it, but the whole thing was a little too Sesame Street<\/cite> for me. (Says the guy who talks to his dog, I know, I know…)<\/p>\n

This isn’t a problem confined to PBS, of course. The same device is used again and again in all the science-y shows on the Discovery Channel and elsewhere. It must be effective for somebody, or at least somebody must think it’s effective, but it really doesn’t work for me. Which is a big part of why I don’t watch more pop-science shows, to be honest.<\/p>\n

But then, as I said above, I’m not the person that this show needs to work for. I’m already sold on science, and don’t need to be convinced that it’s cool, even biology. I’d love to know what people without science backgrounds think about the show– it certainly looks like something that should work well, but it’s hard for me to judge that.<\/p>\n

I also wonder how effective this can really be for mass science communication, given that it’s a separate hour-long show clearly labeled as a science program. Somehow, I doubt that the folks who normally tune in to PBS for BBC costume dramas are going to be watching this, but those are the people who need to be reached by science outreach. I wonder if, from a practical perspective, these segments might not work better as part of some more general news program, slipped in with something that is more likely to reach humanities types.<\/p>\n

As I said, the segments themselves are an excellent example of how to do science communication on film. If you want to know how it’s done, watch this show (available streaming on the Web site).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think there were ads running on ScienceBlogs for PBS’s new science “magazine” show NOVA ScienceNOW, which premiered a while back. I never got around to watching it until last night when I caught the start of it completely by accident (quite literally– I dropped a book on top of the tv remote, and it… Continue reading NOVA ScienceNOW<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-television","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}