From Eureka, our new science and
environment magazine

Many of us who are professional scientists spend some time as amateur communicators, presenting our work to general audiences. I confess that I find it hard to explain, in clear language, even something in my specialist field that I understand well. This deepens my respect for journalists who have to cover sciences unfamiliar to them, working to tight deadlines.

My own field, astronomy and cosmology, interests a wide public. There is a natural fascination with the big questions — Was there a beginning? How did life emerge? Is there life in space? and so forth. I would derive far less satisfaction from my work if it interested only a few other specialists.

Presenting our work to a general audience is a salutary lesson for scientists. It helps us to see our work in perspective and keep the “big picture” in view. Researchers don’t usually shoot directly for a grand goal, they focus on a bite-sized problem that seems timely and tractable. But this methodology carries a risk. They may forget that they are wearing blinkers and that their piecemeal efforts are worthwhile only in so far as they are steps towards answering some fundamental question.

Great science didn’t always need interpreters. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was a bestseller — readily accessible, even fine literature — as well as an epochal contribution to science. Its impact on general culture was immediate and profound and, of course, resonates even more today.

That, though, was an exception. Gregor Mendel’s 1866 paper Experiments with Plant Hybrids, which reported the research conducted in his monastery garden, was not properly appreciated for decades. It is a scientific tragedy that Darwin never learnt about Mendel’s work, which laid the foundations of modern genetics.

The works of a present-day Mendel would not languish in a remote library. Most scientific papers now appear on the web and can be retrieved within seconds. However, the expansion of scientific activity creates an information overload that neither Darwin nor Mendel confronted.

Millions of scientific papers are published every year. They are addressed to fellow specialists and have few readers. Moreover, the gulf between what is written for specialists and what is accessible to the average reader is widening. I doubt that any 21st-century theory could be presented in such a compelling and accessible way as Darwin’s was. The bar is especially high when ideas can be fully expressed only in mathematical language. Newton’s great work, the Principia, highly mathematical and written in Latin, was heavy going even for his distinguished 17th-century contemporaries, such as Edmond Halley, of comet fame.

Even outside mathematics, though, science seems forbidding because of technicalities and jargon. Specialists need to master these, but it’s the key ideas, not the details, that matter to everyone else. You can appreciate the essence of science without being a scientist in the same way that you can appreciate music without being able to read a score or play an instrument.

Those who are unable to enjoy the vision of nature offered by Darwinism and modern cosmology — the chain of complexity that has led from a still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars, biospheres and a human brain able to ponder the wonder of it all — are, I fear, as culturally deprived as the tone-deaf. This common vision should transcend all differences of nationality and faith. Science is the one truly global culture. Protons, proteins and Pythagoras’ theorem are the same from China to Peru.

Narrowly practical people may be unconcerned about the cosmos, or about evolution. They are, though, interested in what science tells us about such things as health and diet. Such everyday matters are anything but simple to scientists. Reports of controversies over these subjects should neither exaggerate uncertainties nor gloss over them. This is a difficult line to draw, particularly when institutional or commercial pressures distort the debate. It is serious if people forgo conventional treatment because of credulity about alternative medicine, if their hopes are cruelly raised by false claims of miracle cures or if confusion about relative risks distorts their healthcare choices (as happened over the MMR vaccine).

Science isn’t dogma: its assertions are sometimes tentative, sometimes compelling. The hardest situation to portray is where there is a strong consensus, but some dissent. Controversy, confrontations and scepticism about orthodoxy have such public appeal. Noisy controversy, though, is not necessarily a sign of evenly balanced arguments. Readers need an indication of whether a stance is widely supported or whether it is disputed by 99.9 per cent of other specialists. Of course, the establishment is sometimes routed and a maverick vindicated — we all enjoy seeing this happen. Such cases are, though, rarer than the public are led to think.

The open debate in this country involving scientists, Parliament and the public led to a generally admired legal framework on embryos and stem cells. Conversely, the GM debate went wrong because it was left too late — opinion had polarised, with eco-campaigners on one side and commercial interests on the other. It is necessary to engage with the public well before any legislation or commercial developments.

The applications and priorities of science should not be decided by scientists alone. There are political, economic and ethical dimensions. All citizens need to address questions such as: is the world really getting warmer, and why? Will London be flooded by rising sea levels? Should we build nuclear power stations — or windmills? Will there be designer babies? Will computers take over our thinking?

If such debate is to rise above tabloid slogans, everyone needs some emotional and intellectual grasp of what science can and cannot do, and a realistic perception of risks. For that to happen skilled communicators who can distil and interpret science are more essential than ever.

Martin Rees is the Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He was created Baron Rees of Ludlow in 2005 and sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords

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