Grappling With Inaccessibility

Are you frightened by quarks? Do you think that RNA splicing is something done between reels of bad movies starring genetically altered space creatures? Would you rather read your horoscope than an article about a new quasar?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you're not alone.

As scientists search for the next planet, the "top quark" and more effective vaccines, they often need also to search for new words to describe their findings. And while some of their etymological innovations, like "DNA," are incorporated into daily usage, most are as incomprehensible to the non-Ph.D today as they were the day they were coined.

This increasingly esoteric vocabulary contributes to popular anti-scientific sentiment, whether on Mass. Ave. or on Capitol Hill. While non-scientists may be willing to support federal cancer research grants, they are unlikely to want $3 billion of taxpayer funds to go toward the often controversial Human Genome Project if they are unable to understand why it is significant, let alone what it is.

Numerous commentators pointed to a growing mistrust of the scientific establishment, following a Congressional probe in 1990 into universities' billing practices for government-sponsored research.

Investigators uncovered a number of fraudulent billing items, but the probe only served to underline already existing skepticism about science and scientists on the part of elected representatives and private citizens.

According to Cornell professor of sociology Donald P. Hayes, scientific jargon is becoming more difficult to understand not only for non-scientists but for many scientists as well.

Scientists need to subscribe to increasingly expensive science journals--subscriptions begin at a couple hundred dollars--because the scope of each is becoming increasingly limited, says Hayes, who has been studying issues related to the English language for more than a decade.

The sociologist published a report last April in the British science journal Nature which compared the difficulty of vocabulary used in situations such as mothers talking to their three-year-old children with a scientific journal article on a complex biochemical reaction.

Using modern international English language newspapers as a standard of zero difficulty, Hayes found that science journal articles, near zero in the 1930s and 40s, have soared to extremely high levels of difficulty in the decades since--and there's no end in sight, as papers become more and more complex and specialized.

Hayes says that scientists invited to Cornell's chemistry department sometimes only speak with four or five faculty members within their particular interest, just because their work is unintelligible even to fellow chemistry Ph.D's.

More specialties mean "very narrow specialists judging very broad specialists," says Hayes, and a reduction in the flow of ideas between areas like chemistry and other scientific fields.

"If your field of expertise has enormous depth but not as much breadth as it did before, there are less referees and people to review papers," he says. "If you want recognition, you have to write to those who can grant it."

And while Hayes is reluctant to consider the issue of the public's trust in the science establishment, calling it "a bit of hand waving," he says a lay person may have trouble understanding fully the differences of opinion between two groups of scientists on matters of public policy--and may therefore be less willing to allow tax funds to go to basic research.

Without "pressure" foundations like the American Cancer Society, which use education to convey the immediate need for scientific research funding, the lay person is lost in a smorgasbord of scientific information impossible to digest without the help of scientific writers.

"Science editors have a growing and important role to play as translators," says Hayes. But many don't have a very good background in science, he adds, and the sections of newspapers or magazines they write for are often subject to the whims of advertisers.

One such "translator," Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times science reporter Natalie K. Angier, says that a fallacy of science writing is that reporters "take what scientists give them and write."

"Often, scientists are not good at explaining what they are doing," says Angier. "I do a lot more than just translate. I have to gather information and use my own mind to put the pieces together."

Angier agrees with Hayes that scientific jargon has an appeal to researchers, who often need to find new words to describe a small part of a larger problem.

But she calls certain science papers "ridiculous," and jargon can also make her job--that of convincing her readers and editors that a given story is relevant to them--more difficult.

"It's hard to animate something that's basically invisible," she says of her writing of molecular biology. "What I try to do is go beyond saying the obvious, like this `could have importance,' and try to make what I'm writing about an interesting fictional character."

In addition to creating a "story from every story," Angier says the reader can often be convinced of the necessity for basic research when it makes advances possible in a specific area of science currently in the public eye.

AIDS research is a perfect example. Scientists isolated the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), relatively quickly, but only because there was 40 years of basic virology research preceding it.

"You keep trying to seduce and invite the reader," she says. "Any writer is an entertainer. How are you going to get people to read it?"

But being an entertainer in such a complex field is a difficult task, "an ongoing battle with scientists" who always assume the worst--that an ignorant reporter will get a detail wrong and destroy the story. Angier says scientists' mistrust of writers is unwarranted. "By and large, I find my colleagues to be incredibly well-trained and sophisticated about science," she says.

From the scientist's point of view, being a popularizer of science trying to "get the word out" can be frustrating, both because it takes away from valuable time at the bench or at the field station, or because writing for "the public" can incur the scorn of peers who claim a "sell-out."

But some world-class scientists can overcome this cyncical view, and take the time to infuse a love of science into the non-scientist. Baird Professor of Science E. O. Wilson, who has written a number of bestselling books on biology, most recently The Diversity of Life (1992), says his secret involves two methods of presentation.

First, he says, "take it from the top down." Ask the big, interesting questions first. For instance, "Where did life come from?" or "What is the significance of sexual reproduction?"

"I work through those [questions] first, then down through levels of explanation--anatomical, physiological, and genetic, and sometimes even molecular," says the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.

This method helps students to see the meaning of the technical skills they need to master, Wilson says, in contrast to the effect of books that reduce their readers' motivation to learn by presenting them with lists of dry facts.

"Where possible, use examples of immediate contemporary interest," he says. "Illustrate genetics, biochemistry, or evolutionary theory with human examples. Be prepared to pull in issues of contemporary concern--for example, abortion, genetic testing or ecological management."

For Wilson, "it's that simple," though not everyone may find it quite so easy to make science exciting, and best-selling, to readers. Other efforts at linking science and readership, and therefore revenue, are not always as successful.

Angier says that the weekly Science Times is seen as self-sustaining financially, thanks to regular placement of lucrative computer advertisements. On the whole, however, she is not optimistic about the outlook for newspaper science sections.

"Science sections go through boom and bust cycles," she says. "Right now they're in a slump."

But Hayes points out that scientific journals which have experimented with difficulty and specificity in their articles have seen a dramatic rise in subscriptions when articles are made less complex and of more general interest. And books by Wilson and world-renowned paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology, regularly reach the bestseller lists.

Non-scientists, then, have not been completely turned off of science by its increasing complexity, despite the fact that popular science writers must often sift through layers of information to find anything of interest or importance to them.

And the popular science writers, including Wilson, continue their efforts.

"If you work from the top down, the reader and student sees where it's all going," Wilson says.