{"id":3202,"date":"2008-12-05T10:53:22","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T10:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/05\/shouting-heads-of-science\/"},"modified":"2008-12-05T10:53:22","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T10:53:22","slug":"shouting-heads-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/05\/shouting-heads-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Shouting Heads of Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the links in the previous post was to Josh’s thoughts<\/a> on the CNN science shutdown. Toward the end, he had an interesting note on why science doesn’t get more play:<\/p>\n

\n

This is especially bad for CNN, since so much of their airtime is taken up by talking heads yelling at one another. Science doesn’t work like that, and scientists fare poorly in a setting where rhetorical speed is valued over empirical evidence and fact-checking. This means that science is less likely to be covered at all, and when it is covered, it will be covered poorly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He’s right about CNN, but I wonder about the science part. I’m reading a book about the history of quantum mechanics at the moment, and it’s striking how much of the progress (on philosophical issues, at least) was made through debates and conversations. And I’ve certainly been present for and even part of a number of serious scientific discussions involving raised voices.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that vigorous debate has always been an important part of scientific progress. The question is, is there any way to fit this sort of thing into a tv-friendly format?<\/p>\n

“On the right, I’m Albert Einstein.” “On the left, I’m Neils Bohr.” “And this is… Crossfire!”<\/p>\n

OK, maybe that’s just silly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the links in the previous post was to Josh’s thoughts on the CNN science shutdown. Toward the end, he had an interesting note on why science doesn’t get more play: This is especially bad for CNN, since so much of their airtime is taken up by talking heads yelling at one another. Science… Continue reading Shouting Heads of Science?<\/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":[11,24,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-silliness","category-television","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","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=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}