NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/physics/19160

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-18 | 3.7 KB

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From: [e-mail] (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Communicating Physics (was Re: Detecting crackpots - for laymen?)
Date: 18 Nov 1992 10:50 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Michael Tobis) writes...
>
>I think that the question of how to distinguish nonsense from science is
>a very serious one, though I am not sure this is the appropriate forum
>to discuss it. Physicists do tend to think of themselves as an elite,
>rather than in the public employ, and tend to be particularly weak in
>conveying their ideas to the public.

I'm not so sure that this is true.  Ask a random person on the street
to tell you anything about modern biology - something you couldn't find
in a textbook written in 1950.  How about chemistry?  I think you would
find many more people who could tell you lots of qualitative stuff
about physics in the last 40 years than either of these other hard
sciences.  The Big Bang and the CMBR, quarks, high Tc superconductivity,
supernova observations, chaos, etc. are all, I think, widely known parts of
modern physics.

>This is certainly due in part to
>the nature of the material, but one might wish that more effort could be
>made. Judging from this newsgroup my assiduous reading of pop physics
>(and my feeble attempts to get something out of the Scientific American
>articles on particle physics) have still left me forty years behind on
>even a qualitative understanding of current topics.

It's difficult even for physicists to deal competently with much of
modern physics.  The reason, I think, is that it has not been synthesized
into enough clear well-established results.  Theory is far ahead of
experiment in most of particle physics and cosmology.  That means that
there is a forest of competing ideas and models, without enough data
to send most of them to the grave that they will ultimately deserve.
Meanwhile, we are faced with trying to understand many ideas which
may fade away completely never to be seen again.  (Can you say "technipions"?)

Also, the ideas which are currently being discussed by working physicists
are not necessarily mature and well-formed.  They are often tenuous,
hinted at by conflicting but suggestive data, and, to make matters worse,
probably wrong.

I think that most physicists shy away from trying to communicate this complex
web of incomplete ideas and inconsistent data.  It is much easier to
talk about 1960's physics.  There is also a mathematical barrier that can
be difficult to overcome.  Much of what motivates new ideas in high energy
physics are mathematical considerations, or at least highly mathematical
physical considerations.

Personally, I think that the market is flooded with well-written books
for the layman on interesting physics subjects.  But this is clearly not
enough to educate the general public.  I think that we need more outreach -
community lectures and demonstrations, inviting the public into our
labs to see what we do, going into the public schools to help teachers
expose their students to what goes on out on the cutting edge, etc.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase            "It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
[e-mail]         although I have no right to say so, having
                 been a single cell so long ago myself that I
                 have no memory at all of that stage of my
                 life." - Lewis Thomas