Science is a sober business. It鈥檚 about curing cancer and heart disease. It鈥檚
about eradicating poverty and feeding the world. It鈥檚 about making us live
longer.
This, at least, is how most scientists justify science. By default, science
that doesn鈥檛 benefit people either physically or economically is seen as less
serious and therefore less substantial鈥攁nd less worthy of funding.
Many of us who participate in this 鈥渙ther鈥� science, the benefits of which are
neither immediate nor obvious, justify our work by calling it 鈥減ure鈥� or 鈥渂asic鈥�.
We argue to potential backers that our seemingly arcane activities will somehow
reap tangible physical or fiscal benefits.
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The truth is that many of us鈥攆rom astronomers to zoologists鈥攌now
that the work we devote our lives to may never yield any practical dividends.
Secretly we feel like charlatans when we petition public and private agencies to
support our endeavours by holding out hopes of hitting pay dirt. Although we
rarely say it out loud, the real reason we do the research comes down to one
thing: it鈥檚 fun.
Take my research. For more than a quarter of a century, I have studied the
morphology and behaviour of tadpoles. A bit esoteric, you say? On the contrary:
I was first drawn to these beasts because they looked so funny. And they have
kept me entertained for years.
For my PhD thesis, I indulged myself in a profoundly impractical study of the
insides of tadpole mouths. In contrast to their smooth and simple exterior,
their insides are phantasmagoric landscapes of hills, valleys, folds and flaps.
To me they were, and still are, works of art. Each session at my microscope is
the opening of a new art gallery.
I鈥檒l go even further. The entertainment value afforded by my kind of science
can, in certain circumstances, be a credible rationale for the activity. It鈥檚
important precisely because it鈥檚 such a delight. Before I justify that further,
consider how much science shares with popular entertainment.
There are many parallels. Both involve great anticipation鈥攖hose magic
moments we all yearn for. In a hockey game, it comes in the last period when the
game is tied and the home team has the puck. In opera, it may be the soprano鈥檚
aria in the third act. In science, it could be the elation you feel when a
reporter gene corroborates your introduced DNA sequence in a transgenic
organism. Or the moment a stain reveals separate bands on an electrophoretic
gel. Or that point when an action potential confirms a drug鈥檚 effect in an
electrophysiological preparation. Just as when the home team scores or the fat
lady sings, at moments like these we feel like cheering.
杏吧原创s like myself who are primarily teachers have to treat our research
like going to the theatre or a hockey match鈥攖hat is, relegate it to our
鈥渇ree鈥� time. Nevertheless it is our own time, and we can package it as we like.
For a lot of us, research could be called a hobby, with all the positive and
negative connotations that that implies.
This brings us back to the irksome question of justification. If much of
science is a diversion, a fascinating sideline we do for pleasure, how is it
worthy of public funding? Just because we get our kicks out of watching labelled
cells fluoresce, or peaks appear in spectrographic analyses, that scarcely
obliges others to pay our 鈥渁dmission fee鈥�.
And yet it can. Entertainment is, as we鈥檝e seen, vital in itself as a break
from dull duty. If 鈥渋mpractical鈥� science can entertain researchers, then it can
also entertain others. It can even be honourably marketed for its entertainment
value. Indeed it often is, with the result that fascinating science now fills
magazines and television documentaries across the world.
Yet scientists are still nervous about exploiting this side to their
discipline. Take this charming irony. NASA and its partners justify sending
astronauts into orbit by claiming that research on humans in weightlessness
could lead to cures for osteoporosis and other degenerative diseases. So far,
though, no medical breakthroughs have come from crewed space flights. Meanwhile,
one of the few commercially successful products from the space shuttle programme
has been a series of IMAX movies about the Earth and the sky鈥攁nd the
shuttle itself.
It doesn鈥檛 stop at the cinema. Luckily for scientists, we live in a golden
age of information, even when this is of little practical value. And science is
the great progenitor of new information in the modern world. So it makes sense
that science is a growing part of the huge entertainment market. Not counting
consumer electronics, the entertainment industry worldwide generates a whopping
$480 billion a year.
There are numerous opportunities for pure scientists to be part of and profit
from the entertainment world, though few know how to enter the field. Generally,
a scientist who can enthral undergraduates in the classroom can equally well wow
a broader audience. A bigger problem is that many scientists view popularised
science with disdain. They argue that they will lose credibility with fellow
scientists if they spend time on radio or TV or in print.
This is hogwash. It鈥檚 little more than pseudo-elitist hypocrisy when a
scientist considers it appropriate to beg for research grants from taxpayers,
but inappropriate to tell the same public, in an entertaining fashion and in
words they鈥檒l understand, what is so exciting about their scientific
discoveries.
The popular science writer Paul Hoffman in his book The Man Who Loved
Only Numbers quotes Albert Einstein thus: 鈥淥ne of the strongest motives
that lead men [and women] to . . . science is to escape from everyday life with
its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness.鈥� If escapist science is good enough
for Einstein, it鈥檚 good enough for me. Let the show begin.