For someone to be understood when writing about science, he or she has to lie.
This is the playful but dead serious thesis of Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, an American theoretical physicist, in “The Lies of Science Writing,” an essay he wrote for the December 4, 2010 issue of the
Wall Street Journal.
“I don’t mean lie in the sense of intentionally misleading people,” Krauss says. “I mean that because math is the language of science, scientists who want to translate their work into popular parlance have to use verbal or pictorial metaphors that are necessarily inexact.”
Krauss cites as an example the famous “selfish gene” metaphor used by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “This is a brilliant and simple way to explain that natural selection relies on the self-perpetuation of genes that promote higher rates of survival. But for some critics, it suggests an intentionality that is absent in the process of evolution. Others worry that it implies an immoral world where selfishness wins out.”
But even with such reservations against metaphors, Krauss doesn’t rule out their use in explaining science: “When used effectively, an apt metaphor can enhance the real purpose in writing about science for the public: provoking interest and a desire to learn more. Good teaching, after all, is really a matter of seduction. You have to tailor your material to win your audience’s attention.”
Read Lawrence Krauss’s “The Lies of Science Writing” in the Wall Street Journal now!RELATED READING:In “10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology,” an article he wrote for the December 29, 2010 issue of
The New York Times, Sam Grobart makes some easily doable—and mostly free—things to do to improve your technological life. “Altogether, they should take about two hours,” he says. “If you do them, those two hours will pay off handsomely in both increased free time and diminished anxiety and frustration.”
Read Sam Grobart’s “10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology” in The New York Times now!
