2 Dec 1998, The Daily Telegraph

Help guide us through the universe

Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, launches this year's Daily Telegraph BASF Young Science Writer competition.

By SIR Martin Rees

IF YOU ask scientists what they're doing, the answer won't be "Finding the origin of the universe", "Seeking the cure for cancer" or suchlike. It will involve something very specialised, a small piece of the jigsaw that builds up the big picture.

But if they have judged right, it won't be a trivial problem - indeed it will be the most difficult that they are likely to make progress on. The great zoologist Sir Peter Medawar famously described scientific research as "the art of the soluble". "Scientists", he wrote, "get no credit for failing to solve a problem beyond their capacities. They earn at best the kindly contempt reserved for utopian politicians."

Unless they are cranks or geniuses, scientists don't shoot directly for a grand goal - they focus on bite-sized problems that seem timely and tractable. But this strategy (though prudent) carries an occupational risk: we may forget we're wearing blinkers and fail to see our own work in its proper perspective. The American physicist Robert Wilson spent months carrying our meticulous measurements with a microwave antenna which eventually revealed the "afterglow of creation" - the "echo" of the Big Bang with which our universe began.

Wilson was one of the rare scientists with the luck and talent to make a really great discovery, but afterwards he acknowledged that its importance didn't sink in until he read a "popular" description of it in the New York Times.

I would personally derive far less satisfaction from my research if it interested only a few other academics. Presenting one's work to non-specialists isn't easy. We often do it badly, but the experience helps us to see our work in a broader context. Similarly, the efforts of journalists can put a key discovery in perspective, converting an arcane paper published in an obscure journal into a tale that can inspire others.

That is why this competition to encourage young people to take up science writing is so important and why I am helping to launch it today.

Popular science writing can address wider issues. When I give talks about astronomy and cosmology, the questions that interest people most are the truly "fundamental" ones that I can't answer: "Is there life in space?", "Is the universe infinite?" or "Why didn't the Big Bang happen sooner?"

People often raise general concerns about the way science is going and the impact it may have; they wonder whether taxpayers get value for money from the research they support. More intellectual audiences wonder about the basic nature of science: how objective can we be? And how creative? Is science genuinely a progressive enterprise? What are its limits and are we anywhere near them?

Astronomers are perhaps luckier than most scientists in that their subject attracts wide interest, and its discoveries are accessible. The microworld of particles, for instance, is far more recondite and counter-intuitive. The great physicist Niels Bohr said that anyone who wasn't astonished by quantum mechanics hadn't understood it.

Bohr made another remark which is relevant to efforts to popularise science: "Speak as clearly as you think, but no more so." That's a good maxim - though he himself took caution to excess by mumbling inaudibly and incomprehensibly!

It is hard to explain, in simple language, even a scientific concept that you understand well. My own (not always effective) attempts have deepened my respect for science reporters, who have to assimilate quickly, with a looming deadline, a topic that they may be quite unfamiliar with.

In my own field, Patrick Moore is the master. He describes himself modestly as an amateur astronomer, but as a communicator he's a real professional - able to speak into a microphone without hesitation, deviation or repetition at a moment's notice.

Over-sensational claims are a hazard for those reporting on discovery. Some researchers themselves (and the agencies that sponsor them) "hype up" new discoveries to attract press interest. Nasa is the worst offender: Two years ago, President Clinton was persuaded to acclaim the alleged fossil life from Mars in extravagant terms.

Maybe it matters little what people believe about Darwinism or cosmology. But we should be more concerned that misleading or over-confident claims on any topic of practical import don't gain wide currency. Hopes of miracle cures can be raised; risks can be either exaggerated, or else glossed over for commercial pressures. Science popularisers - perhaps even those who enter this competition - have to be as sceptical of some scientific claims as reporters routinely are of politicians.

It's unusual for science to earn newspaper headlines. Coverage that has to be restricted to crisp newsworthy breakthroughs in any case distorts the way science develops. Scientific advances are usually gradual and cumulative, and better suited to feature articles, or documentaries - or even to books, for which the latent demand is surprisingly strong.

Millions bought (even if they didn't read) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. His personal predicament - the trapped mind roaming the cosmos - caught the public imagination. It wouldn't have been the same if he had instead been a pundit on (say) microbiology or chemistry.

More surprising was the commercial success of another book by an equally eminent theorist - Sir Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind. This book is a fascinating romp through Penrose's eclectic enthusiasms - enjoyable and enlightening when taken a la carte. But it was a surprising best-seller, as much of it is heavy going.

The sales pitch "Great scientist says mind is more than a mere machine" was plainly alluring. Many who bought the book must have got a nasty surprise when they opened it. However, it does underline how public interest extends far beyond the practical or the "relevant".

Serious books on cosmology, Darwinism, human origins, consciousness and (even more surprisingly) pure mathematics find a ready market. That's the good news for anyone who wants to enter this competition. But books on pyramidology, visitations by aliens, coded messages in the Bible, and suchlike do even better: a symptom of a fascination with the paranormal and "New Age" concepts.

It is depressing that these are so often featured uncritically in the media, distracting attention from more genuine advances.

For non-specialists, it is tricky to demarcate well-based ideas from flaky speculation. For just this reason, it's crucially important not to blur this distinction when writing articles for a general readership. Otherwise credulous readers may take too much on trust, whereas hard-nosed sceptics may reject all scientific claims, without appreciating that some have firm empirical support.

There's a tendency in recent science writing, especially books from the US, to be chatty, laced with gossip and biographical detail. But are scientists as interesting as their science? The lives of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Richard Feynman are of interest, but is that true of the routine practitioner? I wondered about this when recently reading Voyage to the Great Attractor, by Alan Dressler, a book that recounts how the author and six collaborators drew remarkable conclusions about the dark matter in the universe by mapping the motions of galaxies.

Dressler describes the ups and downs of this boisterous collaboration in great personal detail, tracing his co-workers' lives almost back to their toilet training. I enjoyed this background information, because I knew all the characters. But would the typical reader care about personalities? When I raised these doubts with Dressler, he replied that he envisaged his readers as non-scientists, many of whom may once have had vague aspirations to be astronomers, and he thought they would like to read about people just like them who actually did so.

MOST scientists are quite ordinary, and their lives unremarkable. But occasionally they exemplify the link between genius and madness; these "eccentrics" are more enticing biographees.

Two mathematicians have had this treatment in recent books: Paul Erdos, the obsessive itinerant Hungarian (who described himself as "a machine for turning coffee into theorems"), and John Nash, a pioneer of game theory, who resurfaced in his Sixties, after 30 years of insanity, to receive a Nobel prize.

There seems, gratifyingly, to be no single "formula" for science writing - many themes are still under-exploited. Turning out even 700 words seems a daunting task if you're faced with a clean sheet of paper or a blank screen, but less so if you have done enough reading and interviewing on a subject to become inspired.

For research students who enter the competition, science (and how you do it) is probably more interesting than personal autobiography. But if, in later life, you become both brilliant and crazy, you can hope that someone else writes a best-seller about you.

Sir Martin Rees is Royal Society Professor at Cambridge and Astronomer Royal. His most recent book, Before the Beginning (Simon and Schuster) is now available in paperback.

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