Celebra-scientists

By
Celebra-scientists (the popular television personality scientists) are annoying as all get out. I'm watching the National Geographic channel right now. There's an overly enthusiastic herpetologist (I didn't catch his name) running around the bush on various continents screaming like a five year old on Christmas morning every time he finds something. Then he goes rushing in to pick it up. "It" being a very large and/or poisonous snake. Mean while, the natives that he's using as guides and porters are standing well back of these animals that they have to live with every day knowing all too well exactly what they are capable of. I wonder what they think about the fuss and the film crews?

Celebra-scientists obviously play up to the cameras and for someone who's spent time toiling in the field and lab it really grates on the nerves. (I suppose it's also annoying because I'm generally a reserved person.) Science is exciting but not because you get to go crashing through the jungle facing death at every turn. It's exciting because you get to learn something about the world around you that you didn't know before. The made for television drama of celebra-scientists seems to me to be a betrayal of scientific principal. You observe, you hypothesize, you test your hypothesis, you get your results, and then you do it all over again. You don't go screaming you head off every time you find something.

I totally understand being excited about and dedicated to your field of study. I myself can't help poking in the leaf litter or getting up close and personal with the plant life whenever I go for a walk in the woods (by design I'm not interested in things that are mobile other than to know which things I need to walk/run away from). Many a soul has been subjected to a lecture about this or that plant or fungus by me. I particularly enjoy pointing out things like poison ivy and poisonous mushrooms to unsuspecting city folk.

When these celebra-scientists calm down and get into the nitty gritty of what they study it's fun to watch. But when they're doing the gonzo crazy kid thing it makes me cringe. We've already got a glut of extreme this or that for people who are extremely bored with life. I really don't think we need extreme science too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

What's in a flower?

By
Specifically hydrangea flowers. In this post I pointed out that anthocyanin (a family of plant pigments) appears blue at high pH, red at low pH and is responsible for the wide variety of colours in hydrangea flowers. Ilona pointed out that , "in hydrangeas you lower the ph for blue flowers (more acid) and raise it for pink (more alkaline)." I did a bit of checking and found that this is the case . At lower soil pH hydrangea flowers do appear blue and at higher soil pH they appear red. But soil pH is not the only thing that affects the colour of hydrangea flowers. It appears that pH inside the plant cell has an affect as well: Sepal Color Variation of Hydrangea macrophylla and Vacuolar pH Measured with a Proton-Selective Microelectrode Anthocyanin changes its color depending on pH (Goto 1987, Brouillard 1988, Goto and Kondo 1991). In strong acidic conditions it shows red, in neutral, purple and in alkaline, blue. But generally the vacuolar pH of plant cells is weakly aci
Read more

Treating autism as traumatic brain injury

By
I've been doing research into autism, dyspraxia, how the normal brain works, and how an autistic/dyspraxic brain works (or doesn't work). Traumatic injury to different parts of the brain can cause the same problems suffered by autistic and dyspraxic children. Compare this list of the functions of different parts of the brain and the problems caused by injuries to those areas with these descriptions of dyspraxia and autism. What is Developmental Dyspraxia? Developmental dyspraxia is a disorder characterized by an impairment in the ability to plan and carry out sensory and motor tasks. Generally, individuals with the disorder appear "out of sync" with their environment. Symptoms vary and may include poor balance and coordination, clumsiness, vision problems, perception difficulties, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulty with reading, writing, and speaking, poor social skills, poor posture, and poor short-term memory. Although individuals with the disorder may b
Read more

Battlestar Galactica needs more colour?

By
Here are the letters I mentioned in the previous post. The one that started it (I'm guessing these letters were written after the show's first airing at the end of 2003): Galactica Needs More Diversity The problem I had with Battlestar Galactica was there were no major and very few minor African American characters. There were no Black men in the show at all or if they were, they had virtually no screentime. In the original series, Boomer and Tigh were both played by African American actors. In this rendition of Battlestar, those characters were played by Asian and White actors. In the Caprica city, there no African American extras. On the Galactica's bridge, there was only one African American actress. Another Black actress could be found playing a religious official that swore in the new President of the colonies. This was very troubling to me. Do you not want African Americans to watch your show? Do you want to project the idea that African Americans are not part of the
Read more