The Presentation Means Everything

My senior year of college, I was at a karaoke bar standing at a table in the back watching probably one of the most impressive karaoke sessions that bar had ever seen. She strutted up onto the wooden stage with Lady Gaga announcing her arrival with Bad Romance. Complete with impressive French for a San Diego bar–this girl captivated me.

What further captivated me was the red-faced man swaying next to me engaging in a topic that he clearly wanted a fight on: “do you believe the moon landing was real?”

Questions like these are a red flag. Obviously for the content, but especially for the way they are presented. The incredulous tone of questioning reality can mean two things: (1) the intelligent and educated friend taking a drunken skeptical look through the haze of the marine layer on a Saturday night seeking an epistemological conquest; or (2) the high school dropout who hasn’t read a book in 15 years and, oh yeah, he does coke in the morning. Unfortunately, I was dealing with the latter.

It would take time for me to realize that everything becomes a conspiracy theory when you don’t know how anything works. It would also take me a while to realize that science communication requires an implicit amount of trust that skeptics simply do not have. I use the term “skeptics” loosely. In Static Information, I clarify that I hesitate using labels as I am weary of their use. Definitions (1) and (2) above clarify the definition of skeptics I am using in this article…loosely.

I am not currently aware of the most recent statistics reporting the percentage of people who believe the moon landing is fake; however, this mode of skepticism seems so deeply entrenched in our society that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s at least 5%. This is my conservative estimate stemming from the statistic that approximately 20%-30% of people believe in at least one conspiracy theory. My father is one of the 20%; though, this is not necessarily surprising as the songs he grew up on say things like “space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement.”

We might be tempted to ask: How does at least 20% of the population begin questioning things like moon landings and vaccines?

I don’t think this question accurately depicts the root issue. I am a scientist at heart, a staunch empiricist, and I implicitly trust the scientific method; though, I try to be self-aware enough to know that science has certainly had its misgivings. Therefore, the question we should be asking is how did science fail us so egregiously?

I recently finished Accessory to War by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang. This is my third book by Tyson and of course, it did not disappoint. From the man who brought us the death of Pluto as a planet, he now presents the inextricable link between science, astrophysics, the military, and war: alive and well. The tone is informative with underlying caution which checks out being written in 2018 when our fearless leader threatened nuclear “fire and fury” on North Korea.

Here, Tyson does not attempt to disprove conspiracies. Unlike Sagan’s Cosmos and Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow, Accessory to War emphasizes our government’s use and profit of the scientific enterprise. One of the reasons why I think science has failed. Granted, I do not think that science in and of itself is at fault for being exploited. Science as science is an endeavor and as are most endeavors, they are for the sake of doing it. It is not a means to an end, but rather the meaning and the end.

Tyson outlines the beginnings of the telescope and how it was used for seafaring and Galileo locating distant moons. Interestingly enough, my gut reaction here is to say that science has been perverted. That the initial intention of science is for the sake of science (developing the telescope is beauty in and of itself). My second gut reaction that generally keeps me in check advises me that the phrase “science has been perverted” is too broad a statement to hold value. In fact, it may be completely meaningless, because hasn’t everything? If to pervert is to corrupt or distort an original meaning or plan, then what is not perverted?

So, let’s take a step back then. Scientists were at one time called Natural Philosophers. Aristotle worked just as much on the natural sciences (chemistry, botany, and biology) as he did on developing the concept of eudaimonia. But, as things got more and more specialized, science and philosophy became more and more distant. Stephen Hawking’s inspiring The Theory of Everything outlines the potential unification of science and philosophy once again and it is something that I would dedicate my whole life to if I could because I believe he is correct. Science did not become perverted, it just lost it’s purpose. Unifying science with its purpose again would help defend allegations like “it’s perverted” and give it a reason to be better. Right now, it has no reason to be good.

And when something has no reason to be good, people do not trust it. When we see powerful men in politics with private companies exploiting space for private means and using this exploitation to help fund government agencies like military, we have no reason to trust it. Why? Because something that is good to do in and of itself is separate from something that is good to do because there is some ulterior motive. Especially if that motive is something that we may not even be privy to.

When I think back on that night in San Diego, I think about what I could have done differently. Could I have recommended Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Carl Sagan? Brian Greene? Would name dropping ancient philosophers and contemporary string theorists helped? As much as I would love to say that appealing to an authority is something that helps your cause, in certain crowds, I am not confident that it does. So what the hell do we do?

Unfortunately, I cannot solve the world’s problems within the scope of Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. In fact, I cannot solve the world’s problems in one night in San Diego. This brief, yet (I’d argue) formative, experience of mine brought me to the conclusion that our personal worldviews take us a lot of different directions and those directions may not be all accounted for by just citing a few sources. Would I argue that this is less of an education thing and more of a worldview thing? I would personally say yes. Does that mean that education can thus only do so much to remedy this fact? It’s complicated. To breakdown a worldview and rear it back up in the light of something better and more defined takes serious man-hours. What I call playing the long game is really just asking questions about what why someone thinks the way they do. It’s not telling them they’re wrong necessarily, but rather it’s asking what leads them to that conclusion in the first place.

Sound exhausting? It is.

This gets at the heart of effective science communication. Inflammatory statements like “the God delusion” despite being grand and catchy may not reach the desired audience (being the people who might need to hear it). In fact, it may cause people to get antagonistic toward anything that questions them. Just because of a title of a book! People like to lead themselves to their own conclusions and more often than not they also hate being called out on things they may be wrong about. Effective science communication at its very basic parts is something that steers its audience to a conclusion while letting them believe that they are getting to that conclusion themselves. Evidence may mean nothing, but the presentation may mean everything.

Once again, Tyson leaves me better than I was before. I sat on this article for weeks trying to figure out what to say and how to say it all because Tyson reminded me that the way we present information is just as important as the information itself. Read on and give this one a try, if not for the content at least for the presentation.