selling science: how the press covers science and technology

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� 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

THE BOOKS

Hugh Munby, Peter Chin, and Andre´a Mueller, Section Editors

Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology(revised edition), byDorothy Nelkin, 1995. W. H. Freeman Co., New York. x� 217 pp. ISBN 0-71672-595-9

Dorothy Nelkin became interested in the idea for this book while studying public atti-tudes towards science and technology—and particularly towards technological contro-versies. She found that scientists and engineers attributed negative public attitudes topopular press coverage but had no evidence of them, ironically. Interestingly, these criticsdid not point to schools as sources of these negative public perceptions. In any event, shedecided to see how science and technology were presented in the press and to considerwhy these matters were treated the way they were. Her ideas were first presented in 1987,and 8 years later she wrote a revised edition. She notes many changes in the years betweenthe editions: the increased scale of science raised questions of costs, biological researchraised questions about ethics, fraud increased mistrust, and continued incidents of tech-nological risk turned individual controversies into a generic concern. The press, she con-tends, has dramatized these trends in order to compete in a changedmedia industry: scandalis news.Nelkin wonders why would the press want to report science anyway given the many

other stories that could interest the average reader. Furthermore, she says, scientists resentthe press. Nonetheless, science is reported; but as Nelkin argues, the reports are based onfalse ideas about how the work is done and about what the results can offer to decisionmaking. The media, she says, seeks “order and certainty.” When told that these are not tobe had from science in the process of assessing risk, the media assumes a cover-up: sciencehas the answers but we are not being told; keep digging!But a misunderstanding of science by the media is not the only problem. There is the

view in the business press, Nelkin says that those who raise questions of risk are “crackpotsand scare mongers.” Such need to be discounted and the rest reassured. It is one thing forthe press to miss the point; it is another thing to get the point all to well and promote apositive attitude to science. Nelkin concludes her chapter on the perils of progress byemphasizing the failure of the media to understand risk, but she might have also under-scored that the media not only “reports,” but it reports selectively from selective sources.The science page is one thing; the business page another. The question thus arises, “Whodecides what gets into the paper?” Nelkin sees no grand design: “While editors play acritical role in shaping the news, their influence appears more a result of incrementaldecision than of grand design” (p. 108). She attributes media performance to the cultureof the journalistic trade itself. But why stop at the influence of the editor and the cultureof journalists as influences on how science is reported? What about the interests of theowner? The advertisers? The business elite? Others?Science reporting, journalists told Nelkin, had to be jazzed up and kept simple. The

editor ofScience Digest,she notes, “[H]ad assumed that in a high-tech world people would

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. . . For most people [science] was a required course [that] made you feel stupid’”(p. 112). But this is the least of it. Nelkin points to class bias in reporting; reporters talkto the people involved in their stories who are most like themselves and who are like thosethey imagine will read what they write: the middle class. Worse, the supposed detachmentof the scientific enterprise is reflected in the lack of journalistic effort to understand andreport the political context of stories. The media is thus open to manipulation, she says,for being naive: “Attention turns to conflicts of interest only in response to scandals ordisputes” (p. 98).In the face of what is perceived to be press misrepresentation, scientific institutions have

hired press advisers in order to control the flow of news. Nelkin notes that these efforts tocontrol information have high social costs. In Michigan, for example, “The press tookover two years to report on . . . a fireretardant, PBB, . . . accidentally mixed withcattle feed. . . . Local reporters who relied on state agencies as sources of expertise weresimply reassured that the problem was contained” (p. 157). Where does the evil lie in thisstory, I can’t help asking. Nelkin says “hype” has its costs. The public does not appreciatethe way science gets done: “Thus science in the press becomes a form of sport, a ‘race’between scientists. . . . [People] are ill-prepared to deal with scientific information whenit directly affects their interests” (p. 162).One might add that what does not get told also has its costs; so do stories that are thinly

veiled propaganda. Nelkin concludes that people ought to get from the media what theyneed to know to act wisely both for themselves and for the body politic. This can happen,she contends, only when scientists open their doors and when journalists report on thepolitical context of science and on the nature of the role that science plays in technology.But part of the answer lies with those who consume what is on offer in the media. Wheredo citizens get the ability to detect hype and propaganda in the media? From the mediaitself? What about the education of the citizen in this story?Thoughts about schooling kept coming to mind as I read this book. Were teachers like

journalists? Did the scientific and government establishment treat education like it treatsjournalists, by providing propaganda for its cause for consumption in schools and text-books? Did students develop their taste for “gee whizzery” in school and were they pre-pared unwittingly to accept myths about science and technology and to suffer willinglythe consequent alienation?There have been studies on how people perceive the value of their experience of science

in school. For example, David Layton studied how people in the UK assessed the valueof information they received from experts and of their school science in quite difficultpersonal decisions about issues in which science was implicated—like Down syndrome,nuclear waste processing, or recycling. Two problems were found: what the experts saiddid not answer the questions these people were asking, and the people were not wellprepared to sift through the miasma to extract nuggets of value. This picture of bafflingexperts and alienated citizens is not a happy one. It raises questions about how those incontrol construe their communicative role, and about the contribution science educationmakes to the capacity of citizens to deal with issues that bedevil them.Nelkin raises the same questions: Why do journalists believe that science is a source of

authority for human decisions to the exclusion of other considerations? Why do they thinkthat those who consume their work think so as well? Why this over-awed view of science?Even Nelkin suffers from it. The bulk of what she notes as issues for public concern haveto do more with technology than science. The real selling is the selling of new technologies.One does not have to go too far to see how this is so: agribusiness alone would supply along list of current technologies that are highly touted and controversial. The establishment

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terests in new technologies. I see the journalistic trade and those who inform it temptedby those interests, and like her, I see no grand conspiracy—just a settled unwitting statusquo. Schools are not immune to the retailing of technocentric propaganda. As schoolbudgets decline, the temptation is to use materials produced by corporate interests as wellas by commercial media. In what context are these materials being used in school? Arethey consumed uncritically?Nelkin’s book offers us a well-researched study of the temptation of the media to swal-

low the myths on offer and thus to obscure the truth. Her prescription for the media is thesame that one might urge for schools: take a hard look at the stories you tell. It takescourage to do this because the supposed authority of science and teachers (and the mediaand scientists) is diminished, and there is less security for students, parents, and admin-istrators when themyths are questioned. Life without myths is hard. Newmyths are needed.New heroes. The luddites, a group early aware of the dangers of technocentrism, had themythical Ned Ludd to rally to. What then might be a modern version of technologicalliteracy for citizens and the media? The challenge of Nelkin’s book for science and tech-nology education is to invent new myths of the well-educated citizen and to rally teachersand students to a more liberating view of their work and journalists of theirs.

JOHN OLSONFaculty of EducationQueen’s UniversityKingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada

DNA Pioneers and Their Legacy,by Ulf Lagerkvist, 1998. Yale University Press, NewHaven, CT. xi� 156 pp. ISBN 0-300-07184-1.

DNA Pioneers and Their Legacyis a vivid book meant to insert the personalities ofgreat men into the education of scientists. Lagerkvist, himself a scientist, reconstructs theprehistory of DNA research through brief biographies of path-breaking scientists. Sincehis purpose is to discuss pioneers rather than actual practitioners, it is irrelevant to Lager-kvist that the scientist or doctor in question would recognize his research as DNA research.Therefore, the author begins his story with Paracelsus, briefly discusses the spontaneousgeneration debate among medical scientists in the nineteenth century, and spends muchtime on the practice of German physiology. The book takes the reader chronologically upto the discovery of DNA polymerase by Arthur Kornberg and his research team in the1960s. The book is based on scientific autobiographies, obituaries, memorial lectures,scientific works, and a few histories of science. Several formal portraits and photographsof scientists are included, as well as a snapshot of Kornberg surrounded by his family.Chapter 1, “A Scientist’s View of Science,” introduces Lagerkvist’s assessment of the

duty of the scientist to speak to the public. The author states his central questions: Whatmakes science so fascinating to particular individuals? What personal qualities are neededto succeed in the enterprise? Lagerkvist then briefly describes the social nature of scientificresearch as evidenced in the student–mentor relationship. The rest of the chapter containsa more idiosyncratic discussion of scientific risk, of the Catholic Church, of secrecy, andof the need for responsible popularization. The author ends the chapter by expressing his

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cause these possible bans are unnamed, the reader can only speculate from the book’scontext that Lagerkvist is referring to regulations on genetic engineering or tissue cultureresearch.The prehistory of biochemistry is traced in Chapter 2, as the author surveys the works

of Paracelsus, Lavoisier, Pasteur, and Liebig. The foundations necessary for nucleic acidresearch are located in the origins of chemistry, in the spontaneous generation controversy,and in the discovery of proteins. Chapter 3 completes the prehistory of nucleic acids bydetailing their biochemical discovery by Friedrich Miescher in nineteenth century Ger-many. Miescher’s family life, education, and marriage are discussed. Miescher is portrayedas an intense young scientist, introspective, modest, and never quite self-assured. Lager-kvist describes in some detail the mentoring relationships between Miescher and his uncle,Wilhelm His. The climax of the chapter is Miescher’s isolating nuclein from leukocytesderived from the bandages of patients at the university hospital at Tu¨bingen. The remainderof the chapter then asks why Miescher neither recognized the importance of nuclein norcontinued to work on nucleic acids. Indeed, Lagerkvist sees it as “ironic and sad” thatMiescher’s eulogies focused on his work on nutrition and physiology rather than on thediscovery of nuclein. Here, Lagerkvist falls into an unfortunate trap. Nowadays, we knowthat nuclein is a form of DNA, the carrier of genetic information, so its discovery seemsextraordinarily important to us. But to Miescher’s contemporaries, nuclein representedsimply another cellular component. Thus, because Lagerkvist seeks an explanation ofMiescher’s turn away from nucleic acids in his personality, a more plausible explanationmight be found in the interests of nineteenth century biochemists and physiologists.Chapter 4 brings the reader more clearly into nucleic acid research and researchers. The

accomplishments and personalities of Albrecht Kossel, Emil Fischer, and Phoebus Leveneare described in some detail. Lagerkvist discusses the birthplace, childhood, religion, ed-ucation, marriage, and family life of each of the scientists in addition to their scientificwork. Kossel’s characterization of nucleic acids as consisting of a base, a carbohydrate,and a phosphate is presented as his inheritance from Miescher. Unlike Miescher, how-ever, Kossel was celebrated by the scientific community for his work on the chemistry ofthe cell nucleus, and he received the Nobel Prize in 1910. The author similarly laudsFischer’s organic synthesis of various purines and pyrimidines. Levene receives harshertreatment as the father of the tetranucleotide theory of nucleic acid structure. Lagerkvistargues that Levene’s tetranucleotide theory led the history of DNA research astray forseveral decades by implying that DNA lacked the complexity to be the carrier of geneticinformation.The last two chapters contain a familiar presentation of the scientific discoveries leading

to James Watson and Francis Crick’s elucidation of the structure of DNA in 1953. InChapter 5, “The Dawn of Molecular Genetics,” the author traces the changing concept ofa gene from Johann Mendel to Archibald Garrod to T. H. Morgan. Oswald Avery emergesas a shy, modest star in establishing DNA as the transforming principle. The treatment ofthe other characters is more uneven; it is unclear what criteria Lagerkvist uses to decidewhether to limit his discussion to scientific accomplishments or to expand into a personalityanalysis. It is also worth noting that Lagerkvist adopts the narrative devices of a Greekdrama when telling the DNA story. Watson and Crick emerge as adeus ex machina,descending from the heavens to reveal the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin and ErwinChargaff, on the other hand, are portrayed as “two tragic figures off in a dark corner” (p.131). Here, as in many other parts of the book, Lagerkvist has exceeded the boundariesof providing character portraits of great scientists and has moved his narrative fully intothe realm of mythology. After these narrative excesses, Chapter 6 is a more restrainedmemoir portraying the works of the author’s friend and colleague, Arthur Kornberg. In

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of Kornberg as a great man as well as a scientist.The question of audience is never quite resolved in this book. At the beginning of the

preface, the author first remarks that he intends to fill a void in the education of biochem-istry and molecular biology graduate students by instilling them with a sense of the per-sonalities of the great pioneers in their fields. Later in the preface, however, he states thathis book “is intended for everyone who wants a popularized and simplified look at howit all started” (p. x). Yet later on the same page, he offers his hope that the book willinspire readers to plunge further into the history of nucleic acids. The author’s choice ofsources, however, is hardly helpful on this point. Of the 50 sources listed in the bibliog-raphy, 17 are in German and 1 in French, making them largely inaccessible to an English-speaking undergraduate or popular audience. Furthermore, although a few histories ofmolecular genetics, DNA research, and biochemistry are mentioned, many of the sourcesare brief obituaries or memorial lectures that may not further the reader’s curiosity. Adivision of the bibliography into two sections, one for sources cited and one for furtherreading, might have been more effective. Finally, the storytelling format and the roman-ticized portrayal of scientific research may not appeal to graduate students, while under-graduates or popular readersmay be discouraged by the occasional use of technical language.Some readers may be put off by the author’s prose style. More troublesome, however,

is his reliance on stock scientific stereotypes. The reader encounters the distractedMiescherwho, much to his wife’s horror, uses his Se`vres china for glassware (p. 53); Kossel, whodreamt of being a scientist “even as a schoolboy” (p. 68), and Fischer, who “could alwaysescape to his uncle’s house and have a refreshing fight with his male cousins” if his sisterswere “too coddling” (p. 79). It is fitting that the book ends with the image of Kornbergwhisking the wife of a colleague off to a psychiatric clinic, having encountered her in themidst of a psychotic episode brought on by childbirth. Young women scientists readingthis book will find no role models other than patient wives and dotingmothers. Consideringthe emphasis that Lagerkvist places on the student–mentor relationship, the absence ofwomen from the volume is especially unfortunate.Educators may find small gems in Lagerkvist’s portrayal of the student–mentor rela-

tionship in the nineteenth century German academy. Indeed, the third and fourth chaptersof the book are by far the strongest. The author’s discussion of the interactions ofMiescher,Kossel, and Fischer with leading German scientists, including Felix Hoppe-Seyler andKarl Ludwig, is especially helpful. The book also succeeds in briefly familiarizing thereader with the names of the main characters in DNA research. The volume is less suc-cessful in conveying the personalities of these men. By the fifth and sixth chapters, theauthor must deal with so many characters that he simply cannot describe the personalcharacteristics, or even the education, of most of the scientists. The first chapter’s attemptto characterize the personality of Paracelsus is equally futile. In short,DNA Pioneersprovides a concise catalog of some of the scientists involved in laying the foundations fortwentieth century molecular genetics. I would be extremely reluctant to teach the volume,however, without first discussing the role of scientific stereotypes andmythologized heroesin the history of science.

AUDRA J. WOLFEDepartment of History and Sociology of ScienceUniversity of PennsylvaniaLogan Hall, Suite 303249 South 36th StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19104, USA

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Top of testBase of textConnecting Research in Physics Education with Teacher Education,edited by Andre´e

Tiberghien, E. Leonard Jossem, and Jorge Barojas, 1998. International Commission onPhysics Education. ISBN 0-9507510-3-0 (English Edition).

Physics education research is the driving force behind an increasing number of changes,some subtle and some boldly innovative, to the way introductory physics is being taughtin secondary schools, colleges, and universities. This book, undertaken on behalf of theInternational Commission on Physics Education (ICPE) of the International Union of Pureand Applied Physics, with support from UNESCO, aims to make available the results ofresearch in physics education worldwide to physics educators working with pre- or in-service physics teachers. The reviewed version is in English but further editions in French,Spanish, and Japanese are planned.The book is in electronic format, provided on floppy disk.1 A click on the icon launches

your browser application enabling you to browse, read, or print relevant chapters. Browsinghas the advantage of allowing the user to access material in a nonlinear fashion. To furtherassist the user, each section has an introduction that summarizes the content of chaptersin that particular section. All chapters have two-way hyperlinks to the index. The ICPEgrants users permission to copy and use the contents for pedagogical purposes, providedthat neither text nor graphics are altered in any way. The book is also available for down-loading from the World Wide Web at the URL http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/�jossem/icpe/books.html.Each of the 16 chapters has been contributed by one or more renowned people in the

field of physics or physics education. As well, the authors have provided brief commentson a related chapter so that a wider range of perspectives has been offered. A brief biog-raphy of each author is included at the end of the book. The editors point out that physicseducation is a relatively recent field of research and it is difficult to find results that aredirectly useable in practice. The editors suggest that there is a need to differentiate amongthe practice of the discipline, the teaching of the discipline, and research on the teachingand learning of that discipline. In the first section of the book, the editors emphasize theneed for links between research in physics education and teacher education for both therelevance of research and the effectiveness of education. They explain how they havegrouped the chapters into four major sections to enable teacher educators to become awareof the variety and richness of research in physics education. The sections are “Perspectiveson Physics,” “Students’ Knowledge and Learning,” “Teachers’ Attitudes and Practices,”and “Curriculum Development, Assessment and Teaching Situations.”“Perspectives on Physics” is composed of three chapters. The first, by Anthony French,

provides a succinct overview of the historical development of the broad set of beliefs thatwe might call physics knowledge. Martin Keieger’s previously published article, “ThePhysicist’s Toolkit,” describes how scientific work can be likened to a craft for which apractitioner has an appropriate “toolkit” enabling him or her to investigate, understand,and represent the natural world. The tools variously consist of mathematical and diagram-matic tools as well as several aspects of the “rhetoric of physics.” A third perspective isoffered by Roger Stuewer who stresses the importance of students having an understandingor even empathy for the historical setting in which physics knowledge was developed. Theway physicists describe history as “linear . . . which meshes so well with their logical

1 The copy used for this review was not the final product. There are no page numbers (making referencingdifficult) and there are numerous small typographical and formatting corrections still to be made (more in somechapters than others).

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scientific discovery. Stuewer argues that students need to understand the social context inwhich physics knowledge is developed and validated.The second major section, “Students’ Knowledge and Learning,” has five chapters. The

bulk of research in the field of physics education over the last two decades has focusedon describing children’s intuitive physics ideas. Limited space has no doubt prevented theeditors from including a detailed account of all relevant research results; however, thearticles included cover a comprehensive range of ideas. Lillian McDermott documents anumber of students’ alternative conceptions pertaining to mechanics and suggests severalinstructional strategies to help students with appropriate concept development. ReindersDuit and Christoph von Rho¨neck describe students’ understandings of electric circuits andbriefly suggest strategies to help teachers address student difficulties. Lawrance Viennotsimilarly describes students’ naive understandings of heat and temperature and suggeststhat some difficulties are attributed to student’s inadequate and nontransferable patterns ofreasoning. In the fourth chapter, Robin Millar examines the problems associated withstudents’ understanding of the process of scientific inquiry, citing the lack of professionalconsensus about “the scientific method” as a confounding factor for teachers trying to helpstudents develop appropriate research skills. Finally, a previously published and highlyregarded paper by Phil Scott, Hilary Asoko, and Rosalind Driver provides a review ofpedagogical strategies, which are based on a view of learning as conceptual change.“Teachers’ Attitudes and Practices” contains four chapters. The challenge that authors

address here is how to break the cycle of mediocrity in which teachers, themselves taughtphysics by passive transmission of knowledge, perpetuate the same, largely ineffective,form of instruction. Richard Gunstone and Richard White list some of the wide variety ofapproaches that have been used to explore teachers’ ideas and beliefs about science, teach-ing, and learning, and they outline some of the implications of this work for teachereducation. Susana de Souza Barros and Marcos F. Elia describe a range of teacher attitudesand competencies that influence the teaching process. They make suggestions for howmore appropriate attitudes might be engendered and subsequently enhanced through pro-fessional development. In a similar vein, Jacques De´Sautels andMarie Larochelle elaborateon the epistemological postures of science teachers and how traditional ideas can, if un-checked, be perpetuated through the teaching process. Daniel Gil-Perez and Anna MariaPessoa de Carvalho point out that physics teacher education must be separate from instruc-tion in physics content, especially if that instruction has a more traditional lecture andlaboratory format.The final section, “Curriculum Development, Assessment and Teaching Situations,”

describes the state of curriculum and assessment and how some change may be made. Thisarea, however, is limited by the small amount of research it draws upon. Piet Lijnse outlinesseveral previously popular physics curricula, but he makes the point that future designsneed simultaneous and equal input from physicists, physics teachers, and researchers ofphysics education. In documenting the various forms of evaluation and assessment thatare being implemented in different countries, Paul Black describes the constraints anddifficulties faced by teachers, especially since assessment is a powerful “regulator” of anyteaching activity. In the final two chapters, the authors propose curricula that account forstudents’ preconceptions and for how their knowledge might be advanced. MartineMe´heutproposes a developmental learning sequence for teaching students a prequantitative particlemodel of matter, and Dimitris Psillos proposes a sequence for teaching electricity.As one moves through the sections in the book, the amount of research supporting the

knowledge base decreases. The physics community largely agrees to the knowledge heldby physicists, although what counts as knowledge may be argued philosophically. Stu-

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Top of testBase of textdents’ naive conceptions in most areas of physics are also well known, or are becoming

so, but the pedagogical issues of how best to move students from naive to more scientificunderstandings are debatable. The processes of effecting change in the knowledge, skills,attitudes, and practices of pre- and in-service physics teachers are largely unresearched,yet these are crucial to pedagogical change at the school level. Finally, designing andimplementing curricula that combine all of the aforementioned elements are possibly theleast understood and arguably the most important task facing physics educators. In thepreface, Paul Black comments that “whilst this book may mark the completion of oneproject it should also signal the beginning of a longer-term and continuing project linkingtogether researchers in physics education with those who train physics teachers.”

SHELLEY YEODepartment of Applied PhysicsCurtin University of TechnologyPerth, WA, Australia

DAVID TREAGUSTScience and Mathematics Education CentreCurtin University of TechnologyPerth, WA, Australia

selling science: how the press covers science and technology

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