Why Carl Sagan Was Denied Membership in the National Academy of Sciences | Hacker News Reader

Why Carl Sagan Was Denied Membership in the National Academy of Sciences

discovermagazine.com

36 pointsmagnio10 comments

Interesting, but it doesn't actually explain why he was denied membership -- other than the obvious "didn't get enough votes" reason, with some speculations about why.

Original title of article is 'Kinship with the stars'.

The short answer is that Sagan was denied membership because he devoted much of his professional efforts to the popularization of science, as opposed to conducting and publishing original scientific.

As the article notes, this is somewhat counterintuitive because most scientists recognize the need for science to be popularly understood and appreciated.

By the time he passed, Carl Sagan probably had a net worth of $20M. I'll wager his career and economic success is a major element of peer-disdain (and envy), and "the short answer" is a mostly false, made-up reason to save face.

I kind of doubt that was the issue. Money is not the most important thing to most successful scientists. Impact and legacy dominate the motivations of senior researchers.

Which is part of the issue with science communicators. They have huge impact; Sagan’s fame was way out of proportion to the scope of his contributions from original research. He’s undoubtedly more well-known than almost any Nobel Prize winner.

I think there is also a category issue. If the members of the National Academy consider it a professional organization of the top working researchers, then a “science communicator” who has not distinguished themselves with original research simply would not fit the category (in their minds).

> Sagan’s fame was way out of proportion to the scope of his contributions from original research.

The same could be said about Stephan Jay Gould. The same could be said about Albert Einstein, and it would be truer of Einstein than Sagan (when one studies History of Science, it is a shock to discover nearly all of the insights attributed to Einstein were not his own: In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light c with respect to any inertial frame is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source. But he didn't just pull this rabbit out of his hat. There is a long history of science of at least the notion of the finite speed of light, and Einstein is standing on the shoulders of giants when he publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, and heavily relied on the work of three mathematicians to develop General Relativity, and a forth for his work on Black Holes. But neither Relativity nor the constancy of the speed of light were Einstein's ideas, and not remotely so. History just gave him all the credit.)

I like Gould and Einstein as much as anyone, but I don't quite follow the logic of Sagan's unpopularity among peers. It isn't like Sagan did nothing at all, nor even very little: he pioneered planetary science and exobiology. And only one of those alone should be enough credential! Carl Sagan pretty much single-handedly (with the help of Sir David Attenborough) popularized science. This isn't science, but had he done nothing else whatsoever, this would have been enough to justify his notoriety, and in itself is important (just how many did Sagan influence to study science in advanced education? and careers in science? I expect, more than any other yet). Sagan was a huge contributor to our understanding of Mars, but was pretty much the very first to realize just what was going on with Venus' atmosphere, which makes his work pivotal in the revolution in Earth's climate science, not to mention his astute theories about liquid on Titan's surface, and water in Europa.

Again, I don't quite get the notions that Carl Sagan didn't contribute enough, or that he was weak in hard science. But it is easy to understand his puny human scientist-peers that toiled their career away in obscurity and retired with a mortgage.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is pretty darn famous. I don't know anything of his contributions, but I'm not sure it matters. How could anyone not like him? The only answer I can fathom is his (presumed) economic success. IOW, envy.

> The same could be said about Albert Einstein

While you could think that "photoelectric effect" and "special relativity" were simply "due up" and somebody would have eventually worked them out, "general relativity" was definitely Einstein.

"General Relativity" was a bolt out of the blue that took forever to assimilate the predictions of and to experimentally verify.

The photoelectric effect and special relativity were "in the air," so to speak, the elements were there, others were closing in, and had Einstein not published when he did, someone else would have within 5 years or less. But general relativity, experts have estimated, would have taken far longer. But would it have really have only appeared decades later if not for Einstein? Was it pure Einstein, as if some loner maverick that worked it all out all by himself completely in isolation? I'm not sure why anyone would believe that... legend, because the legend was notoriously weak in math. Rarely does anyone remember Einstein's friend, mathematician Marcel Grossman, who "facilitated Einstein's unique synthesis of mathematical and theoretical physics in... the general theory of relativity."[1]

Believe me, I am also in awe of Einstein's remarkable insight. But what I am saying is he was and probably still is more famous than The Beatles for publishing a theory, and, granted, a theory that has held up to all scrutiny, yet the only practical application (I'm aware of) is GPS (which is really great, but it isn't Something or whatever, The Long and Winding Road, etc.) We can wax poetic about how there is art in science, but Einstein's work is not really art, its definitely theoretical physics. Technically, Cosmos was art, and we did sing his songs, though getting the lyrics wrong with "billons and billions." I'm not sure Sagan compares to Einstein, it's just my original objection, that the fame attached to the person is entirely non-proportional to the work (how ever much) or its importance (how ever great).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Grossmann#Collaboration...

Newton I think was a more-so solo breakthrough effort. Einstein had Hilbert nipping at his heels on relativity.

But comparing people in this way is really pointless other than to remind insecurity, need, jealousy is everybody's problem

The committee didn't think him of a serious enough researcher.

[1997]

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