CONCLUSION

A New Mission for American Science

IN SEPTEMBER 2008, THE MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, started up the test runs that will eventually allow it to smash together protons at an unprecedented speed. The resulting data may ultimately help scientists achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of matter and the universe, and perhaps allow them to discover the mysterious Higgs boson (sometimes dubbed the “God particle”), thereby determining whether particle physics’ current “standard model” is correct.

The collider represents a major step forward in the march of science: The profundity of the questions it could answer is hard to overstate. We’re talking, literally, about trying to glimpse the true nature of reality. So the fact that the quest is not happening in the United States is deeply symbolic—and saddening. The LHC is instead a project of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and funded by European governments. In contrast, Congress killed funding for the nation’s planned Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, amid budgetary concerns and a growing sense that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need to invest in such massive projects had declined.

That the LHC project is happening abroad, however, has not prevented it from becoming the source of a great deal of paranoid pseudo-scientific silliness. Although repeatedly dismissed by physicists, concerns abound that the collider will somehow create mini black holes that will grow to envelop us all or generate “strangelet” particles that transform everything else into their particular form of nastiness. Lawsuits have been filed to stop its operation; CERN researchers have received death threats. And earlier this year, Hollywood released the film version of Angels & Demons, the 2000 novel by The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown whose plot turns on villains trying to use antimatter taken from CERN to destroy the Vatican. CERN has endeavored to set the record straight, but the likelihood its Web page will equal the Ron Howard-Tom Hanks movie in viewership is about the same as the probability of the LHC sucking us all into a vacuum.

Is this the future of science we want to see? Do we want to see research and knowledge advance, but have a public that does not necessarily follow or come along, and at many moments in fact actively resists, or reacts with shock and alarm? As Carl Sagan put it in The Demon-Haunted World:

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

At present we’re marching steadily toward that outcome. The number of burgeoning scientific fields in which new knowledge threatens to trigger a backlash, because of its potential to transform our societies and our world, is astounding. In the next few decades, pharmaceutical companies may begin producing pills that significantly lengthen the human life span, providing many benefits but also possibly disrupting a key foundation of society—the relationship between the young and the old. Biotech firms will likely develop synthetic life in the laboratory (cue up the Frankenstein movie, please), microscopic organisms characterized by the minimal amount of DNA necessary to make them functional, and perhaps engineered to serve particular environmental purposes.

And that’s just the beginning. New developments in neuroscience may someday make possible, on a scientific basis, synthetic “telepathy.” If you can capture a brain state well enough to digitize its informational content in a computer, then what’s to stop you from analyzing its “thoughts” or even beaming that information to another brain? The military is already interested. Although scientists themselves protest that such things are a long way off—and warn against hype, a caution we should take very seriously—we also know that science constantly surprises us. If neuroscience doesn’t bring about the shock, some other field will.

Meanwhile, as global warming worsens, many scientists have begun weighing the prospects of “geoengineering”: artificially turning down the planetary thermostat. The means of doing so already lie within our grasp—for instance, a geoengineering scheme aiming to mimic a volcanic eruption (known to cool down the earth) by infusing the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide particles could probably be implemented next year. Of course, no one can predict what the full ramifications would be: Such an intervention would definitely decrease global temperatures, but what other effects would it have? It could change rainfall patterns, deplete the ozone layer, and who knows what else. Active geoengineering would likely result in mass protests in the streets, if not open war between countries that would prefer a balmier global temperature (think Russia) and those who stand to fry, like the United States. But will that stop some government from trying it?

The above represents a very small sample of a much longer list of potential challenges and opportunities that science and technology will pose for us in the decades to come. Incomprehensibly big changes are coming, and we need a strong rapprochement between science and our society before the next high-profile crack-up occurs. We must systematically reconnect the world of science with the rest of America, and especially its most influential sectors. We need much more respect, and much more dialogue, between separate spheres, so that when the next spate of controversies arrive, they don’t threaten to tear us apart.

Most of all, we need science to reestablish its core relevance to American life, to enjoy the standing and visibility it had in the late 1950s and early 1960s (with full accommodation of the lessons learned since then). Otherwise, we’ll simply repeat the cycle of ongoing scientific research that few people understand, interrupted by occasional public shock and outrage, and then followed in turn by more societal slumber once everyone forgets again—the politicians most of all—what the scientists are up to.

 

One can scarcely doubt that the causes of the disconnects we’ve highlighted are diverse. But that doesn’t mean those of us who lament them—those of us who are either the scientific community’s allies or its actual members—can be satisfied to lay blame elsewhere without taking action of our own. We must all rally toward a single goal: Without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America’s citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need—and currently lack—is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms.

The kind of communication we need has, ultimately, very little to do with the in-house conversations about science that currently occur all the time on blogs, and in specialized magazines that serve the scientific community and those who care about it. We have nothing against media directed specifically at those who already nourish an interest in science: We write for such outlets, and we read them. But the past fifty years, and the lessons of previous science-communication efforts, plainly show the danger of simply assuming such information will be enough. Meanwhile, the current crisis of science in the media is the gravest warning yet that unless scientists themselves engage, no one else can be relied upon to do it for them.

At the same time, as we move into the Obama administration, the scientific community must avoid another trap: complacency. Already, we’re detecting the sentiment that after eight years of George W. Bush’s “war on science,” we’ve finally been saved. There’s a real risk that scientists, energized as never before by the abuses of the Bush administration, will lapse into relaxed detachment from the rest of society as Obama begins to govern.

That would be the gravest of errors. First of all, scientists must remain active to ensure that science policy remains a priority in the Obama administration, far beyond a few critical areas, such as energy policy, that our new president has already highlighted. It is still too easy today for science to fall off the radar, and we are far from achieving anything like the changes we need to see to feel truly justified in resting on our laurels. The scientific community has decades of catching up to do when it comes to cementing its place in American society. Maybe we might think about taking a rest if the percentage of Americans subscribing to young-Earth creationism dips below 20—but until then, we must be constantly vigilant.

Let’s also avoid the mistaken idea that university-based changes will be all that we need. Yes, universities need to do far more to reward outreach and should train science students to conduct it. But equally important, or perhaps even more so, is inspiring the science grass roots and using the Internet to channel its pent-up energy and enthusiasm, as demonstrated by the ScienceDebate2008 initiative. Science needs tens of thousands of supporters calling for debates during election season, sending e-mail blasts to members of Congress when there’s a particular outrage or a bill to support, and raising money through small donations over the Web (as the Obama campaign famously did, and as ScienceDebate has begun to do) to support further outreach and mobilization.

When you contrast how quickly ScienceDebate2008 emerged on the scene with how slowly universities and scientific institutions have sometimes reacted to change or political problems, it’s obvious we are entering an entirely new universe for science-centered activism.

 

Certainly, we have no wish to exonerate politicians, the media, or the entertainment industry for failing to help us understand and appreciate science, or to forgive the conservative religious community for so regularly attacking it. But the fact remains that scientists, and the people who care about their work, know best what is being missed, why it matters, and indeed, how the science-society gap places our entire future at risk. Moreover, they have the talent, the knowledge, and in many cases the resources to turn things around.

So what are we waiting for? It’s time to have more vision. We must set the course for how we want to improve our world, rather than simply reacting to the shifting priorities of various political constituencies or administrations. And our mission is simply massive. Long after his “two cultures” lecture, C. P. Snow expressed the nature of change we need succinctly, yet powerfully:

We require a common culture in which science is an essential component. Otherwise we shall never see the possibilities, either for evil or good.

We agree, and we take this assertion even further. Science is not merely culture’s “essential component,” and we don’t just have to mend the rift between science and culture: We have to create a perfect union. Science itself must become the common culture. Like Sagan, and like Snow, we’re certain our future depends on it.