Science produces the goods over and over for a number of reasons. First of all, real science is not based on majority vote or popularity. The influence of politics, ego, and money may exist, but in the end evidence and experiments determine what is real. And there is no trusting anyone when it comes to important matters of science. Evidence must be available for scrutiny by other scientists, and experiments must be reproduced by others if the idea is to stick. Another great feature of science is that anyone can do it. While it may be impossible to land a prestigious professorship at Harvard without the right credentials and connections, it"s not difficult at all to demolish an incorrect theory and establish a correct one, no matter what credentials you have. If you really do have the goods and can prove it, then the world"s scientists will listen and accept the new reality staring them in the face. This is where many of those who push the creationism/intelligent design agenda show themselves to be blatantly dishonest. If it were real science, then it would be established in the scientific community first with discoveries, evidence, and experiments-openly doc.u.mented in respected journals-for all to a.n.a.lyze. Only then would it filter down to high school cla.s.srooms. Proponents of creationism/intelligent design apparently know that it will never happen this way because it"s not real science. So they focus on marketing, political campaigning, and legal cases. Their actions speak louder than words. Real science-for all its faults, mistakes, frauds, and failures-works. It confirms reality while weeding out false claims and bad ideas, which is probably why so many paranormal and pseudoscience peddlers fear to go anywhere near the scientific method.
While professional scientists do tend to be very smart people with high levels of education, of course, they certainly should not be viewed as some sort of inerrant demiG.o.ds among us. In the same way that many highly intelligent people can believe in unlikely things such as psychics and ghosts, scientists can have downright kooky ideas bouncing around in their skulls as well. For example:1 Aristotle thought the brain"s primary purpose was to cool the blood.
Astronomer Percival Lowell believed Martians built irrigation ca.n.a.ls on Mars.
Nuclear physicist Edward Teller thought we should use nuclear bombs to excavate a new harbor in Alaska and to crack open the Moon in order to study its interior.
n.o.bel laureate Linus Pauling was convinced that megadoses of vitamin C could cure cancer.
Not only can scientists be wrong, they also can be bad, very bad. The infamous "Tuskegee experiment" was a forty-year study of nearly four hundred Alabama men who had syphilis. Even when treatment became available for these men, researchers made the decision to continue the study without telling them that penicillin could help them. This decision was not only devastating for the men but also for their wives and children.
In 2010 it was revealed that scientists in the 1940s infected Guatemalan prisoners, prost.i.tutes, and others with venereal diseases in order to study them. The Pan American Health Organization knew about the experiments, according to Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom.2 I suspect that I will be haunted forever by the interview I conducted with Eva Mozes Kor. As a young girl imprisoned at Auschwitz, she had to endure a series of painful scientific experiments conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele. Several years ago I interviewed "the Father of the H-bomb," Edward Teller. I recall feeling uncomfortable when he defended his prominent role in developing weapons many times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. He declared that I would be speaking Russian if not for American nuclear weapons. This may have been a fair point, but I was disappointed that he did not seem to recognize the great danger that some scientists have imposed on all of us by creating weapons capable of destroying civilization.
It is important to understand and remember that science is a tool that can be used for good or bad. As much as I love science and admire many scientists, I never forget that there is nothing inherently good or safe about science. Yes, it is the source of lifesaving vaccines and it brings us those stirring images of distant galaxies, but it is also where napalm and weaponized anthrax come from, too. Apart from the rules and standards we decide to impose on it, science cannot be counted on to be a force for good only. This is why I stop well short of idolizing all scientists and adopting science as my ersatz religion. I"ve been a science lecturer and I continue to do my best to popularize and explain science to others through my writing. But I never suggest that it"s perfect, safe, or a risk-free path to utopia. Science may give us that wonderful Star Trek future, or it may deliver doomsday.
I love that good scientists openly admit that they can give us only a tentative version of reality and truth. They don"t keep it a secret that everything is up for revision, correction, or rejection in science. Unlike politicians and religious leaders, scientists change their minds and rewrite the textbooks all the time. They do this because they believe in science not as a permanent, fixed set of laws written into stone, but rather as an ongoing process of discovery. I have no doubts that a number of scientific facts that I think are correct today will turn out to be incorrect in the future. This is why I have always made sure to include disclaimers when giving science lectures to students: "According to the best current evidence" punctuates many of my statements. I want people, especially younger students, to know that science is nowhere near finished, that there is plenty of work left to do. No one should think of scientists as another priesthood that possesses some ultimate truth. A good scientist is one who wallows in failure and is never quite 100 percent sure of anything.
Science has been able to give us so much because it relies on evidence and experiments to make discoveries and answer questions. Scientists are able to do great work because they accept failures and learn from them. Do not allow yourself to be fooled; there is no perfection here, no purity, and no safety from evil. But in science there is always another wonderful and important discovery waiting just around the corner. It"s also the best way we have of determing what is real and what is probably not real. It"s the best thing we have to help us navigate through our mysterious, complex, and often-dangerous existence. Never forget that what is most important about science is not who made the big discoveries, but how they did it.
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Brockman, John. What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Today"s Leading Thinkers Rethink Everything. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009.
Brooks, Michael. Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science. London: Profile Books, 2011.
Brooks, Michael. 13 Things That Don"t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time. New York: Vintage, 2009.
Hanlon, Michael. 10 Questions Science Can"t Answer (Yet): A Guide to the Scientific Wilderness. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Marks, Jonathan. Why I Am Not a Scientist. Berkley: University of California Press, 2009.
Those sent to a camp a.s.sociated with an industrial plant run by the SS economic branch were usually worked to a state of enfeeblement before being sent to the gas chambers, though the old, the weak, and the young might be ga.s.sed immediately. Auschwitz, the large camp in Poland, served both purposes. Those sent to the extermination camps, like Treblinka and Sobibor, were ga.s.sed on arrival. In this way, by the end of 1943, about 40 percent of the world"s Jewish population, some six million people, had been put to death.
-John Keegan, The Second World War If five to six million Jews were not killed, where did all those people go?
-Michael Shermer I have always been deeply troubled by the Holocaust. Any ma.s.s killing is a horrible event, of course, but the manner in which Hitler"s "Final Solution" was undertaken seems to d.a.m.n us all. The efficiency and creative use of technology made it more than just another one of history"s bloodbaths. It was the industrialization of murder, so disturbingly modern in its planning and execution. I suspect I may process the Holocaust differently than most. I"m not a Jew but I feel pain and loss; I am not a n.a.z.i but I feel shame and guilt. The world calls it genocide. But I see it as suicide. Take a peek over our false walls, the ones built of manufactured divisions called race, nations, and religions, and you will see too that it was people killing people, one more episode of a dysfunctional species cutting its own throat.
During a visit to Jerusalem, I spent an afternoon at the Yad Veshem Holocaust History Museum. It was a miserably hot day. Appropriate, I figured. Comfort would be rude in that place. I remember draining the last drops from my water bottle and thinking, it was good that the Holocaust will never be forgotten. I only wished that the murdered Native Americans of the Americas and the Caribbean had a memorial somewhere as impressive as this one. The Africans who were shipped to the New World as cargo should be remembered in this way too. Every shameful chapter of history, every bloodbath, ought to have a prominent monument and museum somewhere in the world. Yes, it would take up a lot of real estate, but maybe the sight of so many tangible reminders of our worst failures would shock us into confronting our depraved past and finally resolving to mature and do better.
The architecture, landscaping, photos, artifacts, statues, and somber silence blend seamlessly to great effect at Yad Veshem. Together they annihilate ignorance and indifference. I was imprisoned for several minutes by the black-and-white photograph of an adorable little child who never got to grow up because he was born on the wrong side of Hitler. Looking back on my visit, it"s difficult to imagine anyone not being moved by the weight of the place. But, of course, there are millions of people around the world today who would equate Yad Veshem to Disney World. For them it"s a fantasyland for propaganda and profit. These people are known as Holocaust deniers, and they accuse mainstream historians of stupidity at best, complicity with fraud at worst. It"s all a hoax, they say, perpetrated by Jews upon the world for political and economic gain. This is a staggering claim. Given the evidence for the Holocaust and all the pain attached to it, this makes the Moon-landing-hoax claim seem almost reasonable. The Holocaust never happened? Hitler wasn"t trying to eliminate Jews from Europe? Six million Jews never died? All those dead bodies never piled up in pits and gas chambers? n.a.z.i prison camps were not murder factories? Are the deniers serious?
While no one person can bear witness to an event that spanned several years and multiple countries, a collection of voices is difficult to deny. I have personally spoken to several people who lived through key events in World War II. They certainly have no doubts about the reality of the Holocaust. Carwood Lipton saw more combat than most as a sergeant in Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division. He enjoyed a bit of fame as a prominent character in the Tom Hanks/HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Lipton told me that during the war he arrived at Landsberg prison camp in Germany, shortly after another group of US soldiers had liberated it. What he saw horrified him, and the experience never completely released its grip on him. I asked him what he thinks about people who deny that the Holocaust happened.
"Oh...[long pause] it was absolutely terrible. They [Holocaust deniers] should have been there to see it. The smell was terrible. I can still remember the smell."1 Lipton and other Easy Company veterans attended special private screenings of Band of Brothers episodes in 2001. He chose not to watch episode nine, however. That was the one about the horrors discovered at Landsberg. "I just didn"t want to bring back those memories," he explained.
In 2002, I interviewed Armin Lehmann, a member of the Hitler Youth in Germany who won the Iron Cross for bravery in combat against the Russians. At age sixteen he served as. .h.i.tler"s personal courier in the Berlin bunker during the final days of the war in Europe. Lehmann described to me a disturbing childhood in which young schoolchildren had their heads measured to confirm the n.a.z.i ideology of racial superiority. He and his cla.s.smates were taught propaganda designed to make them fear and despise Jews. "Jews were presented as evil people who were out to destroy the world," he said.2 Lehmann told me that he feels the percentage of Germans who knew about the Holocaust while it was happening is "debatable."
"Most say they did not know," he said. "But in retrospect, all of the signs and signals were there. I think more should have known than admit it."
Barbara LeDermann was a childhood friend of Anne Frank. In 1943, the Germans began rounding up all Jews in Amsterdam for transport to "labor camps." Barbara had heard, however, that these were in reality places where Jews go to be killed, so she made the bold decision to go into hiding. But she didn"t do it the way Anne Frank did. Barbara decided to hide in plain sight by changing her last name and pretending to be a non-Jewish German girl. It worked. She was able to live with non-Jewish friends and avoid the fate of her parents and younger sister-all of whom died in prison camps. Years later, Barbara was recognized as a hero by many for her role with the Jewish underground. During the war, she had risked her life to deliver food and newspapers to Jewish families in hiding.
"I never knew about gas chambers back then," Barbara said. "If people told me about things like that I wouldn"t believe it. It is beyond comprehension. Who could believe that there were people who could do that to innocent people? After the war I used to go to the railway station, hoping to see my family. But they were never there. It took me a long time to accept that they were never coming back."3 Finally, there is Eva Mozes Kor. I don"t usually cry during interviews, but I teared up as this little woman described how the infamous n.a.z.i doctor Josef Mengele injected her with toxins and germs as part of cruel experiments he conducted on twins at Auschwitz. Eva was ten years old.
"The first night I was there [Auschwitz prison camp] I went to the latrine and found three dead children on the floor.... Mengele was the G.o.d of Auschwitz. We always knew that when he came in we would have to be very still and do whatever he needed us to do. He would come in, morning after morning, to count us and see how many guinea pigs he had."4 Eva said she was measured and examined for hours at a time. Sometimes the nurses would take so much blood from her that she would faint. She says she learned later this was part of a study to determine how much blood wounded soldiers could lose before dying.
"They would inject me with a minimum of five injections, three times a week. Those were the deadly ones. The majority of twins died in these experiments. Once a twin was injected with a germ, the other twin would be kept nearby under surveillance. When the twin that had been injected with the germ died, the other twin would be killed so that Mengele could do comparative autopsies."
Eva and her sister survived the Holocaust. The rest of their family did not.
It is important to understand that Holocaust deniers are not necessarily screaming neo-n.a.z.i skinheads who show up at public rallies wearing SS uniforms. I have attended neo-n.a.z.i and Ku Klux Klan meetings in Florida, and many of the people I saw who were cheering on the memory of Hitler and scoffing at every mention of the Holocaust did not look anything like the stereotypical foaming-at-the-mouth racist. Many of them could have pa.s.sed me on the street and I never would have imagined that they were pa.s.sionate Holocaust deniers. It turns out that most of the people who drive this movement by writing the books and speaking at conferences tend to present themselves in public as very polite and sophisticated people.
Science historian and skeptic Michael Shermer researched the movement for a book and says the deniers are "relatively pleasant" in public.5 Who knows what is going on in the privacy of their minds, but most of them talk primarily about honoring the truth, checking facts, and doing proper history. While a.n.a.lyzing their process of reaching and defending their positions, Shermer recognized tactics nearly identical to those used by many creationists and intelligent design proponents in their battles against modern biology:6 They concentrate on their opponents" weak points rather than strengthening their own position and focusing on it.
They exploit errors by mainstream scholars and suggest that if some things are wrong, everything must be wrong.
They take quotations out of context to bolster their position.
They claim that debate among mainstream scholars on specific points suggests disagreement about the validity of the entire subject.
They focus on the unknown and ignore what is known. They point to data that fit their claims and ignore data that do not fit.
Shermer argues that, just as it is with the theory of evolution, there is no one piece of evidence that proves the Holocaust happened. We know it happened through a "convergence of evidence."
"Deniers seem to think that if they can just find one tiny crack in the Holocaust structure, the entire edifice will come tumbling down," Shermer explains. "This is the fundamental flaw in their reasoning. The Holocaust was not a single event. The Holocaust was thousands of events in tens of thousands of places, and is proven by millions of bits of data that converge on one conclusion. The Holocaust cannot be disproved by minor errors or inconsistencies here and there, for the simple reason that it was never proved by these lone bits of data in the first place."7 It makes sense to side with the evidence, especially when there is so much of it. In this case, it"s overwhelming: There are blueprints of crematoria and gas chambers; d.a.m.ning doc.u.ments; numerous quotes from n.a.z.i leaders about exterminating Jews; thousands of photographs; and, most important of all, we have thousands of chilling testimonies from survivors and those who lost family members. We also have testimonies from some of the killers themselves. The Holocaust happened.
"My wife is Jewish, so I know from personal experience the loss of family members who simply disappeared and cannot be found," said historian Nick Wynne. "It has a profound effect on surviving family members. Dwight Eisenhower knew that the world would have a hard time believing the Holocaust happened, so he ordered that the death camps be filmed for posterity and to disprove the deniers. Historians should be prepared to deal with the deniers by acc.u.mulating as much information as possible. Should they be silenced? No, everyone has the right to believe and say what they want-even if they"re wrong! That"s the essence of freedom of speech."8 As repugnant and just plain wrong as Holocaust deniers may be, Wynne is correct. Attempting to legally muzzle them is not the solution. People should have the right to believe and say incorrect and offensive things. The best way to respond to Holocaust deniers is not with subpoenas and indictments but with education and evidence-based reb.u.t.tals. Dragging deniers into courtrooms and making public spectacles of them-as was done in Canada with Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel-rewards their provocations by giving them undeserved relevance and an aura of importance. It is the claims themselves, not the people who make them, that need to be defeated. This can only be done by slaying the lies and distortions with superior evidence and personal testimonies-two things the Holocaust has plenty of.
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Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1987.
Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing a.s.sault on Truth and Memory. New York: Plume, 1994.
Posner, Gerald. Mengele: The Complete Story. Lanham, MD: Cooper Square Press, 2000.
Shermer, Michael, and Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Berkley: University of California Press, 2009.
I believe the biggest problem to solving global warming is the role of money in politics, the undue sway of special interests.... Policy decisions are being deliberated every day by those without full knowledge of the science, and often with intentional misinformation sp.a.w.ned by special interests.
-James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren I am convinced that global warming is real and that our industrialized civilization is the cause or at least a key contributing factor. I don"t believe it will bring about our extinction or the total collapse of civilization, but I do think it will be devastating for some and costly for all one way or another. I could be wrong, of course, but currently this seems to be the most sensible position one can hold, based on what I have read and heard over the last thirty years from scientists who are directly involved in researching this issue. But the reality of global warming is not what this chapter is about. For the moment, let"s not concern ourselves with whether or not it"s a real phenomenon. Instead, let"s deal with how illogically and irresponsibly politicians, the news media, and the general public have dealt with the global warming issue to date.
Being a liberal or a conservative, Democrat or Republican, should not have anything to do with how one thinks about whether or not global warming is real. This is a real-world issue with potentially dire consequences for billions of people. Inexcusably, however, global warming has been something that most people a.s.sess first and foremost in terms of political tribe affiliation. This is profoundly irresponsible. It makes no sense to draw conclusions about scientific evidence and ideas based on whether it is liberal or conservative politicians who first side with the scientists who bring it to light. Shouldn"t reality and responsibility to the world be the priority? Liberals should be skeptical of global warming and a.n.a.lyze it honestly and intelligently like anyone else might. And conservatives should have sense enough to get their science from scientists rather than from politicians. If liberals are convinced of global warming"s legitimacy, then they should be most concerned about promoting science and defending scientists against unreasonable attacks on their credibility, not toeing the party line in a childish political skirmish. Conservatives should be smart enough to know that politicians with law degrees and science illiterates who happen to have their own radio and TV shows should not be anyone"s go-to source on serious science matters. Earth"s climate potentially impacts all life everywhere-including conservatives and liberals alike. Clearly a rapidly changing global climate is more important than picking candidate A or candidate B in the next election. This is about figuring out what is happening with our climate and what is coming in our collective future. Don"t you think this is one issue that should rise above childish playground politics? After all, climate and greenhouse gas emissions are not political. They are not liberal or conservative. Our reactions to them through new legislation and changed behavior can be political, of course, but the climate and gases themselves are not.
Polls have confirmed the obvious repeatedly: For most Americans, political slant strongly influences how they think about global warming. A recent survey found that 73 percent of Democrats believe greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, but only 28 percent of Republicans believe it.1 Again, this chapter is not debating whether global warming is real and human-caused. It"s about people deciding how they feel about this important science issue based, not on science, but on shallow politics. Even if we a.s.sume here that global warming is real, as I believe, Democrats who accept it only because their political leaders do are not much better than Republicans who reject it because of their leaders. It sounds obvious, but millions just don"t get it so it bears repeating: people should rely on science when a.s.sessing the validity of scientific issues, not politics.
Sadly, people in general, regardless of political affiliation, are losing trust in the scientific consensus on global warming. It seems that the illogical and stubborn nature of this relentless debate seems to have eroded public trust in science overall to the point that the level of understanding and acceptance of what most scientists say about global warming has fallen among Democrats, Republicans, and independent voters across the board in recent years.2 It appears that it"s not just the Republican or conservative perspective that is compelling to people, the "don"t bother listening to scientists" mantra has traction everywhere in America. Right or wrong, it would not be so depressing if people were rejecting global warming after thinking about it independently, objectively, and rationally. But that"s not what is happening. They are being bludgeoned into either conformity or apathy by the whirlwind of political shouting and antiscience rhetoric.
There are many factors one could blame for the tragic politicization and intellectual corruption of an important scientific issue, but I point to just one-Al Gore. The former vice president was the wrong man at the wrong time. Despite whatever good intentions he may have had, Gore as the point man for global warming crippled the issue from the start due to his prominent status over on one half of the playpen of American politics. He was a politician, first and foremost, so he was divisive and suspicious to millions before he even said one word on the issue. Truth, reality, and science would never be allowed to overshadow the view that he was a Democrat and therefore any agenda he pushed was seen by millions as Democratic and not Republican. So, of course, the global and borderless challenge of global warming immediately morphed into a partisan shouting match based on political allegiance rather than science. It"s probably not fair to fault Gore for this. It"s unlikely that he could have foreseen his negative impact on this issue. One could also argue that he at least raised awareness, a good thing. But to the degree that the awareness he raised has been largely drowned out by the most immature political babbling and squabbling imaginable, I don"t see his efforts as a net gain. If the global-warming issue had been pushed early on by a more neutral crusader, I believe we would be in a better place right now.
In the minds of many Americans, Al Gore is a running joke. To them he is the inventor of both the Internet and global warming, a profit-and ego-obsessed man who has promoted history"s greatest hoax. It"s clear how many people think: If you are a conservative and don"t like Gore, then you can"t possibly believe in his issue of global warming. Because of Gore"s role as poster boy, climate change became just another political pinata for the children who run America to take turns whacking. It"s not about scientists trying to warn us, some believe. It"s about a Democrat trying to sell us something bogus for his own gain. Meanwhile, of course, the world keeps warming.
The truth, of course, is that Gore did not invent or discover global warming. He didn"t even contribute any key research. He is a nonscientist who seized an issue that he apparently felt was important and worth pushing. Perhaps he also believed that it would benefit him politically to do this. He is a politician, after all. Given the way this has played out over the last couple decades, it seems clear to me that it would have been better if Gore had never become the public face of global warming. That role should have gone to a key scientist or key scientists who were immersed in the problem. After all, they are the people who understand it better than anyone and they are not politicians first and foremost. This is not to say that scientists didn"t try to tell the world. I can recall reading about global warming as far back as the 1980s. But most people don"t follow science news. It took Gore"s involvement to put it on the radar and get the yelling started, but that meant little listening and less thinking would follow. Perhaps if the general public was less concerned with celebrity affairs and sports results and more attentive when it comes to important science news, people would have been aware of the global-warming issue long before it was attached to a political figure that half of America would never trust.
Here"s a scenario to consider: What if a polarizing politician who happened to be a conservative, say George W. Bush or Sarah Palin, had made global warming their pet issue? What if that conservative politician produced and starred in an Oscar-winning doc.u.mentary and also pushed hard for related legislation and lifestyle changes? Given the nature of current American politics, is there any doubt that the poll figures would likely be reversed? A majority of Republicans would probably believe in global warming and most Democrats might deny it. Only the stubborn refusal to respect science likely would be the same.
To be clear, the problem here is not the arguing itself. Debate is healthy. Being skeptical and asking questions about something as important as climate change is a good thing. It should be challenged and questioned-everything should be challenged and questioned. But it"s not the science that is being debated in this case. It"s been a case of confirmation bias runing amok. Most people dismiss everything about global warming that contradicts their political position and accept everything that supports it. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck are not climate science experts-not even close-so it makes no sense that they should be trusted as leading minds on this issue by millions of Americans. Regardless of political party, everyone should be paying attention to what credible scientists are saying. It"s really not that difficult: expert opinion should be sought from experts. Relying on politicians who are shackled one way or the other by their tribe is a foolhardy way to go about figuring out a science issue. Their goal on most days is to defend and promote their position-whether it"s right or wrong. It"s even worse to rely on professional rabble rousers on radio and TV for the final word on important scientific matters. Have no doubts, their primary concern is advertising revenue, certainly not scientific accuracy or even the state of our planet. They succeed through controversy, mistrust, and division. They are not scientists. They do not do science. They do not know science. Scientists know science.
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Books Hansen, James. Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.
Mooney, Chris, and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
Pierce, Charles P. Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. New York: Anchor, 2010.
Schmidt, Gavin, and Joshua Wolfe. Climate Change: Picturing the Science. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.
Other Sources Climate Central, www.climatecentral.org.
For every five hours of cable news, one minute is devoted to science.
-Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum,
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy
Threatens Our Future
The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news, we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.
-David Brinkley Whom the G.o.ds would destroy, they first give TV.
-Arthur C. Clarke, Voices from the Sky I am deeply conflicted when it comes to today"s television news media. Ask me what I think of it and I"m likely to answer that it"s wonderful-but also terrible. It"s invaluable-yet mostly a waste of time. TV news is necessary for keeping people informed-and a primary reason so many people are astonishingly ignorant. It"s crucial to a healthy democracy-but also the cause of so many voters being seduced by idiot candidates.
I preach to my children that it is important to be aware of current events and follow the news every day. Read newspapers and watch TV news, I say. The more news, the better, I tell them. But, like all parents, I"m a hypocrite. Do as I say, not as I do. Over the years, my mind has migrated away from television news. It"s obviously more about entertainment, excitement, and fear than news and information. The goal of cable news executives is not to make me an informed citizen of Earth. Their mission is to tickle the dark reptilian depths of my brain and hook me so that they can then barter with my soul for advertising revenue. I suppose I could have spent the summer of 2011 keeping up with the Casey Anthony murder trial that seemed to captivate most of America. But I chose instead to use that time hanging out with my kids, reading, writing, and doing other things I felt were a more valuable use of my time. Isn"t it fitting, by the way, that in the same month ABC announced the cancellation of the fictional soap operas One Life to Live and All My Children, news departments were serving up the nonfictional soap opera of a troubled mother charged with killing her child? Why pay actors and screenwriters when you can just point cameras at human train wrecks and rake in the money? It"s also curious that so much attention was given to the Anthony case-centering on the death of one child-considering the fact that during the forty-two-day trial more than one million children under the age of five died in the developing world from malnutrition and preventable diseases. How much coverage of those child deaths did you see during the summer of 2011?
In the month of July 2011 alone, cable news and major network news covered the US government turmoil over raising the debt ceiling. While it was an important story, I would estimate that at least 90 percent of what aired was meaningless back-and-forth babbling between party loyalists that contributed nothing to understanding the issues or following the progress of the story. I wonder how many American TV news viewers were aware that in that same month of July nearly thirty thousand Somali children died in the worst famine East Africa had seen in twenty years.
These days I spend the bulk of my daily allotted "news download time" reading science magazines and visiting science news websites. I care about the world and sincerely want to know what is going on, but not so much that I"m willing to sit through news roundups that are mostly violent crimes, gossipy nonsense about celebrities, and political soundbites crafted for sixth-grade-level comprehension. There was a time when I thought that in addition to reading a daily newspaper it was my obligation as a thoughtful person to watch a lot of television news. I still like the idea that TV news is there and I do have it on most days as background noise when I"m shaving or whatever, but I can"t stomach very much of it in single sittings anymore.
Somewhere along the way I realized that my life was not being enhanced by watching metros.e.xual androids and former beauty queens fake concern while reporting on the deranged giraffe that bit off the nose of some tourist at the zoo earlier today. "Exclusive a.n.a.lysis from our Beverly Hills plastic surgeon correspondent after the break!" The reporting on environment, health, and science topics is almost always too shallow and designed to scare rather than educate. "Which is more dangerous, the flu or the flu vaccine? A concerned soccer mom weighs in on tonight"s "Health Zone" report." And many of the news packages are just plain pointless by any reasonable standard. "Should pets have their own Facebook accounts? Viewer tweets shed light on the controversy, next!" Nor am I necessarily better informed on important political issues after watching an endless parade of political hacks defend their respective parties at all costs, with little or no thought given to truth, reason, or what might be best for society. "Tune in at eleven! A former Republican campaign strategist and a former Democratic campaign strategist will tell us which party they think is doing the best job for America." I also don"t have time for all those professional pollsters who specialize in telling me what I am likely to think about things I don"t care about. "In this segment of "News Watch" we"ll look at the new survey that has everyone talking. It turns out that 37 percent of Americans think members of Congress are satisfied with the public"s perception of Congress." Politics in general is treated as a shallow sports compet.i.tion by television news, at the expense of sensible priorities and truth. For example, both sides of an issue are usually given equal amounts of time and respect-no matter if one side is completely illogical, untrue and in opposition to scientific fact. "This morning on Wake Up AM we"ll hear from two senators as they square off on an important and contentious issue: Does the Earth revolve around the Sun or vice versa?"
Finally, it"s a minor point, but what is it with hurricanes? Why do reporters keep standing out in them? It might have been cool when Dan Rather did it in 1961, but at some point in the 1970s or 1980s that routine became a terrible cliche and an insult to higher forms of life. "Tonight we say farewell and thank you to Hank, our beloved meteorologist, who was struck in the head by a flying toilet seat while bravely reporting on Hurricane Hematoma in Louisiana. We"ll miss you, buddy."
THEY AREN"T SHOWING YOU THE REAL WORLD.
The primary problem with most television news today is that it"s just nowhere near the reflection of reality that most viewers probably a.s.sume it is. Much is said about conservative and liberal biases in the news, but political favoritism is a trivial concern compared to the irrational fears and warped perspectives that TV generates. Political leanings are not the biggest problems with Fox News and MSNBC. The primary problems are that they illogically prioritize news coverage, cover politics like sports events, present tremendous amounts of nonsense as important news, fail on competent science reporting, and stoke fears unnecessarily. Anyone who doesn"t know how to a.s.sess television news for what it is and recognize the nonsense is likely to end up with a wildly inaccurate view of the world. Longtime skeptic investigator and journalist Benjamin Radford details many of the key problems with television news in his excellent book, Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us. He warns that sensationalism, predefining news, and selective news coverage have resulted in a "news bias" that leads viewers far astray from reality. Radford writes: Television, by its very nature, distorts the reality it claims to reflect and report on. Events are compressed, highlighted, sped up. Thus a person who occasionally watches sports highlights on TV will likely see more home runs and touchdowns than a person who attends local games regularly; television viewers are likely to see more murders than a police detective, more serious car crashes than a tow truck driver, and more plane crashes than a crash investigator.1 Radford also points out that TV news viewers are given "wildly disproportionate" coverage of crime compared to the amount of crime actually occurring. He cites studies that found crime devoured nearly a third of air time while topics such as education and race relations were given 2 percent or less.2 I"ve seen the problem of reality distortion from both sides of the television screen. For more than fifteen years I held a variety of jobs in journalism. Most of those years were in print journalism, but for a (mercifully) brief time I also worked in television news. Doing local TV reporting was fun, and I felt like it had some value to the community. But I was also one of those plastic-haired automatons who reads "news" from a teleprompter and pretends to be personally wounded while going through the laundry list of disasters and mayhem around the world. Of course the truth is that I was far too distracted by the challenge of correctly p.r.o.nouncing the names of exotic countries and vowel-heavy dictators to think much about the true horror of the events. I also had to be ready to gear up for that cheery toss to the sports anchor. It was all incredibly shallow, but so was I at the time, so I suppose it was a nice fit. The good news is that this part of my journalism career was short and I moved on before the makeup soaked in and I became addicted to quasi-celebrity status.
After the TV experience, I worked in various positions as a reporter, features writer, travel writer, sports editor, world news editor, and photographer for newspapers and magazines. It"s been a fun ride, one that is still not over as I continue to write a newspaper column that focuses on human rights, science, and skepticism. Journalism is a great way to learn new things and meet interesting people you otherwise never would cross paths with. And it really is a vital source of important information that our world needs. So I stop well short of condemning it, of course, but it really does need improving because the news media as it exists now-especially television news-breeds far too much ignorance and confusion about the real world.
My experience working in the news taught me how important it is as a news consumer to keep all those images, commentaries, and soundbites in proper perspective. I know better than to react too strongly to everything I see on a television news report because I know that I"m being presented with images selected specifically to get attention or deliver the greatest shock value. What we see on television is almost never a fair representation of what is really going on. I"m not suggesting that all reporters and videographers/photographers are being dishonest and intentionally fooling viewers. They are just doing their best to capture and present words and images that will catch the public"s eye and make an impression. Nothing wrong with that-it"s their job. We certainly can"t expect journalists and photographers to seek out the most mundane quotes and to aim their cameras at average images.
Journalists look for interesting people that stand out and say interesting things. Good photographers instinctively rush to the most eye-popping and powerful scene. Average or typical scenes repel them. I did it all the time. It"s automatic; it"s the job. In 1992, I roamed around Homestead, Florida, after category 5 Hurricane Andrew blew through. My cameraman and I sought out the most traumatized and emotional victims to interview because it made better TV. From everything they said on camera, we selected their most dramatic quotes to use in the final reports. For my on-camera stand-up bits, I blabbed away while posing in front of the most spectacular scenes of destruction we could find. I recall doing one stand-up in front of a gigantic tree that had been completely uprooted by the winds. It was great; it looked as though I could have been reporting on day three of the apocalypse or maybe a nuclear war. No attempt was made to present a balanced presentation of Homestead, Florida. We were not trying to be dishonest, but the fact is what we did was misleading to viewers who don"t understand how television news works. As bad as Homestead was, I suspect many of my viewers were left thinking it was even worse. We weren"t doing an academic research paper or a scientifically balanced a.s.sessment of a Florida town"s destruction. We wanted to show the absolute worst for dramatic effect. We definitely were not concerned with the median experience of storm survivors. We felt no obligation to show a fair or random sampling of the broad spectrum of destruction. Some houses survived the storm very well. As I recall, however, we didn"t shoot a single one of them. We made a conscious effort to show the most severe destruction we could find in order to impress our audience. Clearly our reporting was slanted to show the absolute worst of the event we covered. It was not reality.
This news media habit of presenting the extreme at every opportunity would not be so much of a problem if viewers understood it and processed what they see accordingly. But too many people think television news mirrors the real world in some vaguely accurate way when the truth is that it does not. For example, when people watch a cable news report about some disgruntled shoe salesman who dyed his pet ferret"s fur green, ate his iPod, and then set his wife"s hair on fire, they tremble in fear and then head to Walmart to buy more ammunition. They fail to consider the fact that about seven billion other people made it through the day without doing those things.
Any perception of the world based on TV news is bound to be horribly distorted. For example, try asking Americans who regularly watch TV news to name five of the most violent places in the world today. I have done this on a few occasions and found that their answers invariably match TV news coverage as opposed to reality. I hear Iraq and Afghanistan, of course. The "Middle East" always comes up. But then the answers become inconsistent and delivered without much confidence. Colombia sometimes comes up because of drug violence and, thanks to George Clooney, Darfur might get a mention. One guy said Detroit.
What is interesting is that every time I have asked people to list the world"s most violent places, I never once got the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for an answer. But how can this be when this central African country has been suffering death and destruction far beyond anything seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Colombia, or even Detroit? Precise statistics are impossible, but war in the DRC has claimed anywhere from three million to seven million lives over the last several years. It is likely the most deadly conflict since World War II. But few Americans know anything about it. They think Jerusalem is a more violent place. Why is this? Why does the DRC war draw a blank in the minds of so many Americans? I suspect the primary reason is because TV news doesn"t cover it anywhere near as intensely and consistently as they do other hot spots. If a few terrorist attacks in a particularly bad month kill fifty or a hundred people in Israel, for example, it will be all over CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS news. They will devote hours and hours of coverage, day after day, to it. But if fifty thousand people, half of them children, are killed in the DRC that same month, it probably wouldn"t get much more than thirty seconds. The problem is that there are not scores of major network journalists and camera crews roaming central Africa looking for stories. No video, no TV time. News media people defend this by saying it"s too expensive to send reporters everywhere. But shouldn"t combat correspondents be sent to where the death and destruction are greatest? a.s.suming that human lives are equally valid, shouldn"t an ongoing conflict that already has claimed a death toll in the millions top every news organization"s list of priorities?
BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID.
There is no denying that television news breeds irrational fear. Consider the example of terrorism. Americans have been on high alert since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, mostly because of the way TV has thoughtlessly catered to politicians who exploited the danger in order to consolidate power and win votes. Repeatedly watching images of buildings blowing up and falling down, the constant stream of soundbites about terrorism threats turned America into a nation of very scared people. But was the level of fear justified by the reality? The RAND-MIPT terrorism database shows 14,790 deaths due to terrorism worldwide from 1968 through April 2007. That equates to an average annual death toll of 379.3 Not good, of course, but compare this to the more than 40,000 people killed in automobile accidents each year in America. Heart disease is a far greater threat to American lives than al Qaeda. In his book, The Science of Fear, Daniel Gardner compares that figure of 379 terrorism deaths to other death rates. In 2003, in the United States alone, 497 people accidently suffocated to death in bed; 396 were accidently electrocuted; 515 drowned in swimming pools; and 16,503 Americans were killed by criminals who were not terrorists. Gardner also points out that the 397 terrorism deaths per year figure overstates the risk for Americans because most deaths from international terrorism occur in places like Kashmir and Pakistan, not in the United States. Between 1968 and 2007 in North America, 3,765 people have been killed by international terrorism. And that number includes the 9/11 attacks that took 2,977 lives. This death toll over nearly forty years is only slightly more than the number of Americans killed riding motor cycles in one single year. Another interesting revelation in Gardner"s book is that if you remove the Middle East and South Asia from the equation, there has been a worldwide decline in terrorism since the early 1990s.4 Based on television news coverage of the terrorism threat, however, one might think al Qaeda is everywhere, killing Americans and everyone else by the thousands. The TV news media sells fear. The good news is that you don"t have to buy it. If you want to, you really can choose to keep your mind in the real world.
PRESENTING BOTH SIDES OF A ONE-SIDED STORY.
Another major problem with news is that most journalists try to be fair. This is not necessarily because they are exceptionally fair-minded people. In most cases it"s probably for no other reason than they don"t want their bosses or the public accusing them of being biased-supposedly a mortal sin in journalism. Being fair and presenting both sides of an issue may sound like a no-brainer, but it"s not that simple.
Fairness, defined as an even split of words or air time, is overrated and can be the worst possible objective in many instances. Attempts by journalists to be fair often leaves them with a warped view of reality just like their customers. For example, the controversy between modern biology and creationism/intelligent design in the United States is usually reported on as though it is a clash between two rival, but equally valid, scientific theories. But nothing could be further from the truth. Evolution and intelligent design are not equally valid scientific theories, and that should be made clear in the reporting. As any credible biologist can explain, creationism and intelligent design are not based on real science, have no compelling evidence, and offer no competent theories. I understand the social controversy and the need for balance if the story is about that particular aspect of the issue. But otherwise there is no place for the "other side of the story." Look at it this way: Should journalists give equal time for comments from Holocaust deniers every time they report on the Holocaust? Should medical journalists give psychics and tarot card readers equal time with neuroscientists when reporting on brain issues? Should reporters check in with astrologers every time they cover a NASA launch? Some topics do not warrant a "fair" hearing from multiple interests simply because some sides have not earned their way onto the playing field. Good journalists should be educated enough, honest enough, and brave enough to know this and report accordingly.
IS MISLEADING NEWS BETTER THAN NO NEWS?.
Despite my problems with it, I"m not calling for the end of television journalism. I understand that it does play a valuable role and I appreciate the many brilliant and brave people who report on important and dangerous events that are happening near and far. If not for the light they help shine, we would all be worse off. But is this really the best the industry can do?
For another view I sought out a veteran television news reporter and anchor whom I have known for years and respect a great deal. I asked her about what I see as TV news" misrepresentation of the world. She readily agreed that TV news is not a perfect reflection of reality. "I think that news by its very nature cannot provide an accurate view of the world," she explained. "It can provide snapshots of reality, but in and of itself, it can"t be your guide. The parts of life that are least newsworthy make up the majority of our days, and that is the way it is supposed to be. News is supposed to be about the aberrations, the extremes, the unusual."
Fair enough, but the cable news stories that fill the hours these days are usually not important aberrations or events. Lindsay Lohan"s troubles with the police may qualify as aberrations or extreme events, but are they more important than the malaria crisis in the developing world or the James Webb telescope? I would say no, yet millions of TV news viewers might be led to think otherwise, based on the way air time is allocated by news producers. It"s reasonable to describe TV news as "snapshots of reality" and therefore incapable of comprehensibly showing the world as it really is. But there is still the problem of too many snapshots of the wrong subjects as well as too much gossip, entertainment, and fearmongering packaged as important news.
For all its faults, television news is still immensely valuable. I"m honest enough to admit that a sensationalist, entertainment-based, and income-driven news media is better than no news media. Imperfect as it is, I wouldn"t want it to go away. Imagine how much worse the world could be if those in power never had to worry about how their evil deeds would play on CNN and the BBC. I simply wish more people would recognize television news for the exaggerated, distorted, and misleading view of the world that it is and not be so easily pulled down paths of fear and distortion. I also wish that the people who run major news broadcasting corporations could figure out a way to make their profits while also producing news that is intelligent and socially valuable.
So what is the solution for those who would like to avoid ending up with an abused mind that has been dimmed and misled by cable news? I don"t recommend a total news blackout because then you become one of those scary people who stumble around not knowing anything about anything. I do, however, advise cutting way back on daily TV news consumption because too much of it is simply mindless fodder that exists primarily to fill time until the next commercial. I still make sure to skim newspaper headlines and browse a few reputable news sites online every day. But I spend as little time as possible doing this. If something is obviously important, then I read the article, otherwise my eyes keep moving. I avoid giving significant chunks of my days to TV news, opting to check it only sporadically to make sure World War III didn"t kick off while I was cleaning the garage. I only watch TV news for extended periods when there is a major breaking news event or I feel the need to check in on the industry that almost stole my soul. What do I do with the time I save? I mostly read articles in science magazines. News and current events are more than the talking points of political parties and which celebrities are divorcing or languishing in rehab. News and current events also include the discovery of a new species or exoplanet. I love wading into new issues of Scientific American, National Geographic, New Scientist and Discover. In my view, the information I find in those publications is no less important, relevant, and entertaining as anything I might find in mainstream news. For example, I could be wrong, but I feel I"m much better off reading about a new breakthrough in primate studies than I am watching CNN"s in-depth coverage of congressional bl.u.s.tering and presidential soundbite deliveries.
I also read books. I wish more people appreciated the unique power of a book. Not because I happen to write books, but because I sincerely believe that books (most of them) are good for the world. One could make a case for the book being the most important and powerful invention of all time. Given the impact of the book on human history, it certainly has to make top ten, no doubt. Books are amazing little worlds that contain ideas and stories that never die, even when the authors do. Sadly, reading is not as valued or as common as some might a.s.sume. Did you know that once a third of American high school students graduate, they never read another book for the rest of their lives? Even worse, 42 percent of college graduates never read another book-ever. Perhaps most disheartening is the fact that more than three-fourths of American families did not buy or read a single book in all of 2007.5 One of my favorite books is The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. I first read it more than ten years ago but still flip through it occasionally. Whenever I read the words in that book I can "hear" Sagan speaking to me. Just by opening that book, he pays me a visit and shares some of his ideas, even though he died in 1996. If one is short on time and has only thirty minutes or so per day for reading, I suggest spending five of it doing a high-speed headline-skim of a couple of the most reputable news sites or newspapers, then use the remaining twenty-five minutes turning the pages of a good mindexpanding book or science magazine. High-quality nonfiction books and science magazines offer two things television news is unwilling or unable to provide much of these days: information presented in depth and a realistic perspective on the world.
GO DEEPER...