Science is represented in the media in radio programmes, television news, documentaries, feature films, popular magazines, fiction, computer games and so forth. Sometimes the aim is to communicate or explain science, and sometimes science is just used as context of for plot purposes.
Read about science in public discourse and the media
A key aspect of the nature of science is the theoretical and so strictly provisional nature of scientific knowledge.
"Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought. In this system single experiences must be correlated with the theoretic structure in such a way that the resulting coordination is unique and convincing.
Einstein, 1940
The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is man-made. It is the result of an extremely laborious process of adaptation: hypothetical, never completely final, always subject to question and doubt.'"
Science is not just interested in facts, but in seeking overall patterns and explanations. Scientific theories and models are always under-determined by the data available (it is always possible to think up another explanation of available data) and the available data may be partial, inaccurate or simply wrong.
Read about the nature of scientific knowledge
Read about the limits of science
This has not always been appreciated by scientists!
"…I dare affirm that there is as much certainty in [the origin of colours] as in any other part of Opticks. For what I shall tell concerning them is not an Hypothesis but most rigid consequence, not conjectured by barely interfering 'tis thus because not otherwise or because it satisfies all phenomena (the Philosophers universal Topick,) but evinced by ye mediation of experiments concluding directly & without any suspicion of doubt."
Isaac Newton
These days, it is not considered appropriate for scientists to suggest their conclusions are certain in their technical writings. Indeed it might be seen as arrogant. Author Karl Sabbagh has highlighted overly forceful language n a papepr written by a botanist who is now widely considered to have planted (literally, as well as metaphorically) some of his finds,
As I read Heslop Harrison's article for the first time, I was immediately struck by a particular characteristic of the language… 'We were forced to the opinion', he says…Over the next few paragraphs, similar examples occur: 'demonstrated conclusively', 'so striking', 'this we had demonstrated was almost certainly the explanation', 'nothing is more certain', 'explicable only', and so on, and so on."
Sabbagh, 2016/1999
p.18
"Nothing is more certain" than such language is antithetical to the idea that science produces knowleddge claims that remain open to review.
The challenge in science teaching
One of the great challenges for science teachers is to get across to learners the comparability of the two ideas that:
- science produces trustworthy and reliable knowledge that is usually the best basis for understanding and acting in the natural world; but
- that knowledge is always in principle open to revision in the light of new evidence or new ways of understanding the data as evidence
So, for example, science does not currently have a full understanding of climate change, BUT only a fool would use that as a reason not to use our current best understandings as the basis for our policies.
Learners often struggle with these ideas – for example, considering that scientist move from 'theories' which are just guesses to proven and so certain knowledge (e.g., Taber, Billingsley, Riga & Newdick, 2015).
Unfortunately, the nature of scientific knowledge is often misrepresented in the media. Sometimes journalist do not appreciate the nature of scientific knowledge. Moreover, scientists sometimes talk as if they do not appreciate the provisional nature of scientific knowledge.
This can only mean one thing…
Some years ago I wrote about the tendency in science documentaries for the narrative to be driven by links that claimed "…this could only mean…" (Taber, 2007). This was presumably down to those writing the programmes wanting to present a simple narrative.
When scientist make similar claims they may be showing hubris, but I expect they are actually talking in a way that other scientists would implicitly interpret as intended to suggest a confident explanation based on current evidence that had no serious mooted contenders.
Examples of scientific omniscience in the media
Sadly I've continued to notice examples of poor representation of scientific knowledge in the media…
| Topic | Comment | Source |
| Climate change | "…we now can attribute, with absolute certainty, the increase in global mean temperature to the increase in greenhouse gases because our burning of fossil fuels…" | Dr Friederike Otto speaking on radio programme 'Science in action' |
| COVID-19 pandemic | "…that phrase 'almost certainly due to lack of vaccine', I mean that sounds like a bit of guesswork…" | Journalist Nick Robinson interviewing Dr Raghib Ali |
| Early universe | "…you can actually precisely measure – measure the red shift, measure the distance – a hundred percent conclusively." | Associate Professor Steve Finke talking on radio programme 'Science in Action' |
| Homo erectus | "…we knew for sure that [an engraving on a shell] must have been made by Homo erectus" | Prof. José Joordens talking on radio programme 'In our time' |
| Impact craters | "There are certain diagnostic observations that have to be an impact crater, and they are all related to pressure. So, if you find minerals that are shocked, like quartz that have multiple types of deformation attached to them they record pressures that are not something that can happen in an earth, on a plate tectonic or volcanic, environment . You know, so, that's the kind of things you look, and if you find those it's proof positive it's an impact crater." | Prof. Sean P. S. Gulick, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, talking on an episode of BBC's 'Science in Action' |
Some historical absolutes:
How can we make absolute statements that would seem to require the historical record to be complete – sometimes even in terms of what every human being has ever said or thought!
| Subject | Quote | Source |
| arab astronomy | "…no Arab astronomer even dreamed of questioning the Ptolemaic theory." | Patrick Moore. (The Great Astronomical Revolution.) |
| Medawar's lectures on scientific induction | "Among his audience at the University of Pennsylvania in April, 1968, there were not only scientists but [also] historians of science, all of whom agreed that Sir Peter's exposition of the problem was the clearest they had ever heard." | George W. Corner {American physician and embryologist} |
| Michael Faraday | "No one surpassed [Michael Faraday] in the formulation of hypotheses." | Schwenk, E. (1994). My name is Becquerel. |
| Pascal | "It had been considered as a sacrilege to believe that a true vacuum, nothing, could exist in nature at all. An immaterial ether, it was thought, filled the universe. Now Pascal had proved that space is absolutely empty and that the earth is surrounded by a layer of air." | Schwenk, E. (1994). My name is Becquerel. |
| Solar system | "Although none of his writings have been preserved, Heraclides was certainly the first to suggest that Mercury and Venus actually turned [sic] around the Sun." | Hubert Krivine {physicist} |
Absolutes in scientists’ writing
| Topic | Quote | Scientist |
| Birds of prey | "Ornithologists must be correct in their assumption that this organisation of the environment was made by Nature in order to keep the raptors from seizing their own young." | Jakob von Uexküll |
| Kepler's laws | "Kepler put forward three laws of motion, universally known today as Kepler's laws." {"Il énonce les trois lois de ce mouvement, universellement appelés «lois de Kepler»…in the orignal French publication} [worldwide perhaps, 'universally'…seems (ironically!) a little…geocentric?] | Hubert Krivine {physicist] |
| Natural selection | "Little did [John Polkinghorne] realize, when he lectured in 1996, the the quintessential Darwinism, which he not only accepted without question but elevated to theological status, would be rigorously disproved within two years." | Wolfgang Smith {mathematician, physicist, philosopher of science} |
| Natural selection | "The empirical source of the theory [of descent by natural selection] was given the greatest possible prominence [by Darwin], but it sometimes appears to have been forgotten entirely in Haeckel's own conclusions. Nothing in the theory was for him merely hypothetical or probable; everything bore the stamp of strict apodictic or mathematical necessity. This kind of necessity was asserted even for those elements of the theory that were most difficult and problematic. 'The origin of new species by natural selection or, what is the same thing, through the cooperation of inheritance and adaptation in the struggle for existence, is consequently a mathematical necessity of nature that needs no further proof'." | Ernst Cassirer |
| Spectral lines | "[A] star emits light rays characteristic of the chemical elements that compose it. Their frequency is perfectly known: for example, sodium has two distinct rays [sic] with wavelengths 589 and 589.6 nanometres." | Hubert Krivine {physicist] |
| Syphilis | Syphilis is a "simple, local disease which never spreads to the human blood, is completely curable, never leaves permanent effects, and is never propagated by procreation and heredity" "no pathognomonic indication of syphilis will ever be found in the blood of those suffering from this disease" | Dr Joseph Hermann, physician-in-chief and head of the department of syphilis at the Imperial and Royal Hospital of Widen in Vienna [discussed by Ludwik Fleck] |
- it should be definitely accepted that the carbon-nitrogen cycle represents the process mainly responsible for solar energy generation (George Gamow)
- rotation of the Galaxy proved beyond doubt (George Gamow)
Work cited:
- Einstein, Albert (1940/1994) The fundamentals of theoretical physics. In Ideas and Opinions, New York: The Modern Library.
- Sabbagh, K. (2016/1999) A Rum Affair. A true story of botanical fraud. (New edition) Edinburgh: Birlinn
- Taber, K. S. (2007) Documentaries can only mean one thing, Physics Education, 42 (1), pp.6-7
- Taber, K. S., Billingsley, B., Riga, F., & Newdick, H. (2015). English secondary students' thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world – or just 'an idea someone has'. The Curriculum Journal, 1-34. doi: 10.1080/09585176.2015.1043926
