Cosmology: I seem to have yanked particle physicist Lawrence Krauss's chain

In a recent post, "Science at the end of the world: Lawrence Krauss addresses the 2009 Sudbury, Ontario, meeting of the Canadian Science Writers' Association", I doubted his "particle physicist" prescriptions for science journalism.

Essentially, he thought a lot of problems would be cleared up if we started with the assumption that there is only one side to many science stories. Well yes, it would simplify matters, but ...

He also thought it his duty to tell us his opinions on many issues in religion and politics.

I pointed out here that it is the duty of a journalist to seek a variety of perspectives on an issue. I followed that up by talking about the scientists who spoke at the conference who truly impressed me: He who knows something gains respect. He who knows everything ...

Anyway, Dr. Krauss felt it worth his while to respond here at Salvo (where I had put up a stub leading to the post). He suggested that I should have been at a meeting of religious writers.

In fact, my complaint was precisely that there was too much about religion and politics in his address - to say nothing of altogether too much certainty about a universe where we only know about 5% of the total mass.

Here is what I said in reply:

As I pointed out in a recent post, it was Krauss who brought up a lot of dreck about religion in his talk Sunday night - after I had listened to real science all morning at Dynamic Earth!

When we went down to the mine, to SNOLAB and SNOLAB Plus the following Tuesday, no one talked about religion at all.

In fact, those scientists, unlike Krauss were humble in the face of the facts, and never claimed that they knew all that he claims to knows about the cosmos, as well as government, school systems, et cetera.

They certainly restored my faith in science.

Krauss isn't fooling anyone. That's why he grouses that Canada is beginning to fear science (= fear listening to people like him instead of people like the SNO Plus physicists).

He then went on to reply again, saying the same sorts of things:

I spent a fair amount of time trying to specifically discuss inherent tensions in science reporting, and then explain what he have been learning about the universe.. and even pointed out the key things we don't understand.. I had not met ms o'leary before but she does a disservice to journalism by her reporting.

L. Krauss

He did spend a fair amount of time on science reporting (to no good effect, in my view) and on key things we don't understand - but with a level of certainty and an admixture of religion and politics that seemed quite out of place to me. Especially because - as noted above - the whole thing had been done much better, earlier in the day, by a local physicist.

Well, I was not going to bother with this any more because if my In Tray were a work of nature, it would be formally classified as a natural disaster. However, Dr. Krauss also went to Uncommon Descent, where I am a community blogger, and posted similar comments. He complains of "inaccuracies and distortions".

Again, I replied:

Dr. Krauss does not - in my view - clearly understand that journalism is the first draft of history.

No one who practises the craft should start out knowing exactly who is right and who is wrong. It is never as simple as that, and approaching it that way is a good way to be wrong.

And the more things one is absolutely certain of, the more likely one is to be wrong.

My sense is, Dr. Krauss probably isn't used to people who analyze what he is saying seriously, especially when he is prescribing for fields other than his own.

In reality, a great many of the people at that conference were science communication bureaucrats on government salary. They do not need to think about the problems of news reporting in the way that I do.

Anyway, I am now going back to the ol' In Tray, all the heavier for new stories from the Sudbury meet.

See also: Humanity killing the Universe? (More of Dr. Krauss's views)

Science at the end of the world: Lawrence Krauss addresses the 2009 meeting of the Canadian Science Writers' Association

Particle physicist Lawrence M. Krauss* addressed the gathering at the Canadian Science Writers' Association conference at Science North in Sudbury, May 24, 2009.

I made some notes of his remarks in "Star Trek Physics" in a darkened cave, the Inco Cave at Science North, though I do not have a transcript.

His talk was billed Star Trek Physics, and the PowerPoint revealed physics bloopers spotted in Star Trek, the X-files, and other film resources.

It was certainly entertaining, but not riveting, at least for me. Anyone who gets their physics from sources clearly labelled science fiction or UFOlogy, well ...

But Dr. Krauss had advice for science communicators:

1. Don't assume your audience is interested. "Don't expect interest, create it."

2. Science is dull, hard, and unrelated to the real world. Communicators must work against that. ("Remember how boring science can seem.")

3. "Most people perceive themselves as fundamentally uninterested in science."

4. Confront misconceptions: it's the only way people remember.

Now, I have reservations about career academic scientists advising journalists how to communicate, or high school science teachers how to teach. They tend to emit platitudes that are too general to be put into practice, and therefore too general to fail.

Take the advice offered above, for example: Few journalists doubt that we must create interest. (If we doubted, our editors would swiftly correct us.) Our readers typically do hard and boring jobs all day, so the idea that jobs in science are hard and boring would not - in principle - surprise them. However, in my experience, most readers are interested in science when they see its relevance to their lives. Yes, confronting misconceptions can be useful, but much of the time, huge gaps in our knowledge are a bigger problem than misconceptions - and we cannot easily fill in those gaps, either.

Dr. Krauss went on to say that there is an innate tension between journalism and science. The problem is, "journalists think there are two sides to every story." According to him, this is not true: "Most times, one side is simply wrong."

Oh well, that's all right then. Having been informed that one side is simply wrong, the journalist can forget about getting a range of opinion and simply act as a shill for the approved view.

The beauty of that strategy is that if there are problems with the approved view, the journalist is guaranteed never to find out, so she will always be sure she and her sources are right.

Dr. Krauss later conceded that "The editors are the bad guys." Yes, indeed, in the sense that editors often come up with additional people for us writers to interview, people who offer additional perspectives. They, like us, see most stories as having many sides, not just one, so they are guilty of multiple sins, and we are complicit (when we are doing our job, that is).

He also told us that fear of science is growing in Canada. I have lived here all my life, and I cannot confirm that. This is the home of the Canadarm and the Blackberry, after all. In fact, one of the very interesting presentations that same day was on Canada's proposed contribution to plans to mine the moon for moon base supplies, but more on that later. Canadians are - in my view, understandably, in these times - skeptical of high-budget schemes and far-fetched ideas. They want to know what the payload is. But that is a different matter.

While insisting that science doesn't undermine religion in principle (who said it did?), Dr. Krauss made clear that "In many ways I hope it does" and his talk was full of asides making very clear his views on political, religious, and social issues - which entirely belied his claims. Also, like many visiting United States residents I have listened to, he assumed that everyone here cares what he thinks about US politics. Not only do I not care who he voted for in the last US election, I imagine he does not care who I voted for to be mayor of Toronto. I did not seek anyone out to tell them, and would be pleased if he would do the same.

Much of the latter part of Dr. Krauss's talk was dedicated to the proposition that he knows exactly how the universe began and how it will end, and that Earth is entirely insignificant.

(The fact that Earth is the only known home of life of any kind - and of intelligent life - must apparently not be significant, though the reason why not was never made clear.)

In Dr. Krauss's view, the only reasonable view of the universe is that it is flat, and there are only a few little details to be ironed out. It was there that I wondered whether my colleagues - mostly salaried science bureaucrats, I suspect, not freelancers - had caught on. Many scientists don't think that the universe is flat. Are they also people whose side of the story journalists should not cover?

I asked Dr. Krauss during the question period about string theory, which he opposes. Of course he spoke dismissively of it. I don't get string theory either, but I don't plan on deciding that there is only one side of the story there either.

Walking back to my hotel, I was sure that Dr. Krauss reminded me of something, and later realized what it was:

In science, small, persistent effects cannot be ignored. Sometimes they force a revision of major paradigms. For example, Lord Kelvin remarked in 1900 that there were just “two little dark clouds” on the horizon of Newtonian classical physics of the day, namely, Michelson and Morley’s measurements of the velocity of light and the phenomenon of blackbody radiation. Kelvin was certain that these troubling little clouds would be blown away shortly.149 Yet all of modern physics—relativity and quantum mechanics—derives from these two little dark clouds. (The Spiritual Brain, p. 173)

It's always those little things that trip us up.

Later, I was embarrassed to overhear an animated conversation by two colleagues, one of whom claimed to see "some value" in religion, as long as it just makes you feel good and tricks you into behaving better and makes no truth claims. The perfect upper, right? Whereas any speculation is okay if it is called "science" and advanced with a great deal of assurance, and warnings against thinking that there could be two sides to the story.

(Note: Go here for update.)

*Note: At his site, Dr. Krauss describes himself as follows:

an internationally known theoretical physicist
a bestselling author
a frequent editorialist
a sought-after lecturer
a radio commentator
moderately photogenic
a profiled persona
and much more...