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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Efforts like that to 'sell' science - by dumbing it down, using 'gonzo' presentation, etc. - signals that the author believes there is little intrinsic value in the science, little of actual interest. Like a bad tasting medicine, it must be consumed with sugar.

There is an enormous amount of intrinsic value and highly engaging content in science. Scientists need to have the courage of their convictions, and express what they find so interesting and beautiful about it.

I'm very interested, but when I anticipate such presentations I run: I expect they will displace the interesting stuff with the presentation, and/or it will distract from or obscure it, sometimes unbearably. I don't want to eat delicious food with spoons full of sugar.

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Not true in this case! I'm the author, and I believe the exact opposite about science - that there's astonishing value in learning about the work being done right now, that it's easy to miss so much of it simply because of the amount of information we all consume, and that the scientific process has a lot to teach the world about putting aside ideas of "right" and "wrong" in favour of keeping an open mind and holding our opinions lightly. But also: I'm happy if I can just point anyone towards those doing the actual scientific work, because I'm just a middleman here. If someone thinks I'm an idiot but clicks through to the research itself - that's a win too.

Thank you for responding! To be clear, I was talking about the parent comment's suggestion, not your essay.

All I know is my personal experience: I struggled through years of science journalism, popular scientific coverage, etc. It was almost all as I described: like bad-tasting medicine coated with sugar or cherry flavor or whatever. Ugh.

Then on a lark one day, I subscribed to Nature (for others, that's considered one of the world's two leading science journals, along with Science). The front of Nature is not research papers but coverage of research and other issues - no sugar or cherry flavor or strained analogies - just coverage of what is valuable. I loved it! It was, and is, incredible. And I learned in an hour far more than I learned from reading 10x the 'science journalism'.

I'm an audience of one, so maybe it doesn't apply, but I don't see science journalism having great success in the general public. Most people roll their eyes if I try to talk about anything, and are deeply unaware. As a recent example, someone I know - with a graduate degree, who is generally well-informed - thought the International Space Station was somewhere beyond Mars. Think of all the knowledge you need to be missing in order to believe that (in what orbit? why? how do we get crew there and back?, etc.), and it's a belief about something relatively commonly in the news.

Ah, apologies. Got it. Thank you!

Yes, I agree with you there about some science journalism, and in particular the tabloid variety. When you read quality writing like you'd find at Nature, Aeon/Psyche etc, which values the ideas for themselves rather than for what outrageously speculative headline can be squeezed out of them for "the man on the street", you can see a huge difference in the way it's being communicated. And you're right - it's not as successful, because the good stuff isn't negative-emotionally triggering (unless the worst kinds of tabloids get their hands on it).

Negativity bias deranks science stories that are all about careful, quiet optimism and cautious hopefulness. That's a huge, huge problem - especially as our curiosity seems to grow out of positive rather than negative emotional responses to information. (Anhedonia, strongly correlated with depression, is the inability to feel pleasure, and it includes the inability to take pleasure in learning something new - ie. it kills your curiosity).

Anyway, I'm rambling. Thank you for this thoughtful clarification!

> When you read quality writing like you'd find at Nature, Aeon/Psyche etc, which values the ideas for themselves rather than for what outrageously speculative headline can be squeezed out of them for "the man on the street", you can see a huge difference in the way it's being communicated. And you're right - it's not as successful, because the good stuff isn't negative-emotionally triggering (unless the worst kinds of tabloids get their hands on it).

To be clear, to anyone reading, I guess that the approach used in Nature, which values ideas for themselves, would be more successful with the general public; it's just not used.

> guess that the approach used in Nature, which values ideas for themselves, would be more successful with the general public; it's just not used.

I sadly have to disagree. As much as I'd rather not. After university I worked as a junior editor for an online site with > 10 million uniques per month. Shortly after joining I was handed over the "science" section (double, triple, quadruple the quotes). I tried to make it more about current scientific ideas, the big findings of the past and less about 'Hitler living on the dark side of the moon', 'Aliens visiting earth', 'This dietary idea will make you loose weight fast' and all the other bullshit one reads in tabloid.

No clicks. Advertising revenue down the drain. The audience had no interest in scientific ideas and great findings. They wanted entertainment.

Maybe I just wasn't able to deliver modern scientific research with enough entertainment value. At least not compared to described topics above.

I know. This is just anecdata from a random guy on the internet. YMMV.

> This is just anecdata from a random guy on the internet.

You actually have some experience. Thank you.

I wonder what Isaac Asimov, a great science communicator, would think of contemporary science journalism.

> Efforts like that to 'sell' science - by dumbing it down, using 'gonzo' presentation, etc. - signals that the author believes there is little intrinsic value in the science, little of actual interest. Like a bad tasting medicine, it must be consumed with sugar.

You know, I've read some history that was written to read well, and I've read some that was unbelievably dry but that I slogged through anyway because I was interested in the topic.

There's plenty of room for writing that isn't unpleasant to read.

I agree, but it's not a trade-off; it's not one or the other. You can have excellent, engaging writing that values the topic deeply. I would say that the dumbed-down presentation I describe makes for worse reading; that's what I had a hard time reading. What I read in Nature, in my example, is much more enjoyable to read.

I remember well-written history much better than the dryly written.

> There is an enormous amount of intrinsic value and highly engaging content in science.

Some find this kind of articles highly engaging. What you're calling for is rigorous, and I do not believe that pop-sci needs to be rigorous and matter-of-fact to have value. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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