Chapter
8
David
T. Suzuki
The
most powerful force shaping society, our lifestyles and expectations today is
science when applied by industry, medicine and the military. New scientific insights, ideas and
techniques pervade every aspect of our lives, changing not only our aspirations
and the way we do things, but altering the way we perceive the world, and our
notions of who we are, how we got here and where we are going. Yet with rare exceptions, scientists are
virtually invisible in the popular media in debates and reports on economic,
social and even environmental issues.
As both a scientist and a journalist in the print and electronic media, I have constantly had to reflect on the nature of the relationship between science and society and the responsibilities that accompany to the role of scientist. In recounting my personal experiences, I hope some insights may be conveyed in this complex issue. I was privileged to receive an exceptional liberal arts education at an outstanding undergraduate college and an intense training as a grad student and post-doctoral fellow, yet was totally unprepared for the questions that I encountered in my chosen discipline of genetics. But let me start at the beginning.
Growing Up in British Columbia
Early
in this century, my grandparents emigrated to Canada. Both of my parents were born in Vancouver, British Columbia, as
was I in 1936. On December 7, 1941,
when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, my life was changed forever. The racism that had festered in B.C. ever
since Japanese and Chinese came to the province as cheap labor in the late
1800s could now be vented openly under the guise of self-defence and
patriotism. But my family felt itself
Canadian to the core. We had never
visited Japan; English was our spoken language at home. In the months following Pearl Harbor, the
Canadian government moved to control the perceived threat of its Japanese
population by invoking the War Measures Act against all people of Japanese
ancestry. Under conditions of extreme
threat to state, this legislation enables the government to suspend all rights
of citizenship, including the right to speak out in public. Private property and possessions can be
confiscated and bank accounts frozen, while individuals can be rounded up and
incarcerated indefinitely without trial or communication.
The
War Measures Act is a heinous piece of legislation because it's easy to
guarantee all kinds of rights and freedoms when times are good, but those
guarantees only matter when times are difficult. That's what men and women fought and died to protect, but when
put to a serious test by World War II, Canada failed miserably. Twenty-two thousand Japanese, most Canadian
citizens by birth, were rounded up and sent to internment camps in abandoned
settlements deep in the Rocky Mountains.
Each evacuee was allowed to take seventy pounds of personal belongings with
them. My father was shipped to a camp
to build the trans-Canada highway and was finally reunited with us a year
later.
As
the war drew to an end, the internees were offered a choice: renounce Canadian
citizenship and take a free one way ticket to Japan or remain in Canada by
getting out of British Columbia and moving east of the Rocky Mountains. Bitter and disillusioned, most internees
signed to "repatriate" to Japan.
As Canadians by birth, my parents were a small minority who chose to
stay in Canada.
Pearl
Harbor, incarceration and expulsion from B.C. shaped my personal psychic demons
- a knee-jerk aversion to any perceived discrimination or bigotry and a
compulsive need to try to excell at whatever I did to prove my worth.
My
family was impoverished by the loss of all their savings, our home and almost
all of our possessions. We ended up
working as farmhands in southern Ontario where we children were taught that
hard work and education were the way to extricate ourselves from poverty.
Education
Fortunately,
I did well enough in school to earn a scholarship to Amherst College where,
motivated by outstanding students and dedicated teachers, my horizons were
expanded by a curriculum that required me to take at least 40% of my upper
level courses in the humanities even though I was an honors science
student. I was able to take advantage
of the requirement by taking courses in such subjects as classical music,
religion, political science, English literature and modern history.
All
through my childhood, fishing and camping had been my great joy and I became an
avid insect collector as a teenager.
Beetles were the focus of my special fascination. So at Amherst I knew that biology would be
my specialty. In my junior year, I took
two courses - embryology and genetics - that enthralled me with the exquisite
beauty and elegance of development and heredity. They set me on my research path.
As
a senior in the fall of 1957, along with the world I was electrified by the
announcement that the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik into
orbit. In the agonizing months that
followed, American rockets failed to match the Soviets as it was realized how
advanced the Soviet Union was in science, mathematics and engineering. As U.S. President, Lyndon Johnson and then
John Kennedy embarked on a race to catch up and beat the Soviets to the moon,
billions of dollars were poured into the newly formed NASA and rapidly growing
university science faculties.
I
enrolled in the PhD program in zoology at the University of Chicago in a golden
period of enthusiasm and expansion in science.
Genetics and the natural sciences were exploding with vigor and
excitement. Even though I was a Canadian,
I was a beneficiary of the enthusiasm of those heady days in the United States.
Becoming a Scientist
As
students, we were embued with a sense that science was the best way to
understand and explain the workings of the world. We were taught and believed that through science, the curtains of
ignorance were pushed back to reveal the deepest secrets of the cosmos. Nothing lay beyond our enquiring minds, the
only limit to finding answers was research money. As a geneticist studying the insect Drosophila, a fruitfly, I
joined a small band of specialists called "chromosome mechanics" who
exploited specially-engineered mutations and chromosomes to devise elegant
experiments for probing Drosophila's secrets.
As budding scientists in the early '60s, we took pride in the fact that
we were probing basic phenomena like cell division and chromosome organization
and felt ourselves superior to ecologists and other scientists in applied areas
such as medical and human genetics.
Through
graduate school I acquired the belief that science could eliminate superstition
and ignorance, providing us with an understanding of the biophysical forces
impinging on our lives. Through a
better understanding of mutation, recombination and gene activity, I believed,
we would eventually be able to manage many hereditary problems that afflict all
humankind. I was part of a community
who believed that greater scientific understanding would improve the lot of
society and all humanity. Science would
confer the insights needed to predict and control the important forces affecting
us in our daily lives.
I
became a research associate in the Biology Division of the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, working in the lab of the brilliant
geneticist, Dan Lindsley. Born out of
the Manhattan Project, the Biology Division had attracted a group of world
renowned scientists in many disciplines.
That year at Oak Ridge was filled with freely shared knowledge and
excitement and became my ideal of science at its best, a community held
together by enthusiasm amd a thirst to learn through experimentation.
In
the early '60s, there were job opportunities for the asking as university
science departments exploded with federal funds. But one result of my experience with the Japanese-Canadian
evacuation was a deep concern about bigotry.
In Oak Ridge, segregation both overt and hidden was everywhere. I joined the NAACP and developed an
excessive revulsion against the prejudice so apparent around me. In the United States I had received an
outstanding education, made lifelong friendships and enjoyed incredible generosity
and hospitality, but nevertheless chose to return to the Canada which had
incarcerated and expelled my family from B.C.
It was still my home and I wanted to work to make it a better place.
I
returned to Canada in 1962 to the Department of Genetics at the University of
Alberta in Edmonton. It was a shock to
find that at a time when my American peers were routinely receiving $20,000 to
40,000 research grants, the average beginning Canadian researcher might start
at $3,500! My first grant came in at $4,200,
a larger sum than most, I was told, because I had a year of postdoctoral
experience. Fortunately, my Oak Ridge
experience enabled me to apply for and receive a substantial grant from the
U.S.A.E.C. that enabled me to get my lab up and running.
Television - An Interesting Diversion
The
University of Alberta broadcast material on a local community channel on a
weekly series of one hour programs called Your
University Speaks. It was broadcast
on Sunday mornings and I was sure had a miniscule audience. I was asked to be on a show and apparently
did well because I was invited back and eventually did eight programs on
various aspects of genetics.
After appearing on Your
University Speaks, I was astonished to find that there were actually
viewers when they commented on my performances. My family never owned a television set during my boyhood. They bought the first one long after I had
gone away to college so watching TV had never been part of my boyhood. But I realized that television was potentially
a very powerful educative tool. And I
had learned that a camera pointed at my face was not intimidating, something
I've come to appreciate as I've watched eminent scientists crumble in front of
a TV lens.
Even
as I was moonlighting in television, I was obsessed with research. But it was difficult to be hamstrung by the
lack of research support which I felt reflected a public, and hence a
government, that was uninformed about the role and importance of science in
society. Television, I began to think,
could be used to inform people about the nature of scientific enquiry, the
insights we were gaining and the sheer joy and excitement of discovery. It's something I continue to incorporate
into my programs today but my interest at the time was to show how science
revealed answers to questions we ask about the world, thereby replacing
ignorance with information. I wanted to
convey that science is an activity that nations do as part of culture. As a country claiming to be civilized,
Canada, I argued, must support a topnotch, vibrant community of scientists.
Educated by Students
As
the most junior member of the Genetics Department, I was assigned to teach
genetics to a group of agriculture students.
To my surprise and delight, they worked as hard as they played. And they constantly pushed me for the
agricultural implications of genetics with questions about the green
revolution, ways to improve milk output or weight gain by gene engineering and perpetuation and amplification of animals by
cloning. As a snobby basic scientist, I
hadn't paid attention to the practical consequences of genetics and so was
forced to read and discover a vast, interesting literature.
One
winter in Edmonton motivated me to move to the University of British
Columbia. There most students in my
class were pre-meds who would quiz me about medical genetics, human heredity
and the possiblity of genetically engineering people. As with the aggies, the pre-meds forced me to read more. Even though I had received top training in
genetics and a liberal arts education, I hadn't been prepared in any way to
grapple with the issue of science and society.
At
one point, I was invited to give a talk about genetic engineering to students
in a campus dorm. I explored the
implications of DNA transfer by transformation and transduction and the
possibility of cloning. My talk
provoked a student who demanded to know why, if there are such terrible
possibilities that arise from new techniques, I was still doing research in
genetics. I answered glibly that I was
doing basic research into mechanisms of cell division and chromosome behaviour
in Drosophila, not applied work. The
student immediately countered that knowledge is like a huge pool of
information. Like water added to a
lake, a scientific report raises the level of knowledge but becomes
disseminated throughout the body of information. So when a practical application is drawn from that body of
knowledge, there is no way to distinguish what critical increment had made it
possible. Ideas and insights are built
on the collective base of accumulated knowledge so the distinction between
practical and basic is artificial. He
was right and spurred me to read more widely.
The Expurgated Part of History
To
my shock, I discovered that eugenics, the attempt to apply hereditary
principles to improve the human genetic condition, had been created and
supported by leading geneticists of the day.
Eugenics was considered a legitimate scientific discipline complete with
its own journals, societies, university courses and textbooks. Among the traits eugenicists claimed to be
hereditary were tuberculosis, syphilis, sloth, indolence, drunkenness,
criminality and deceit. Indeed, Edward
East, a distinguished Harvard professor and President of the Genetics Society
of America, once wrote: "In reality, the negro is inferior to the
White. This is not hypothesis or
supposition; it is a crude statement of actual fact."
Genetics
was a young discipline in the life sciences, marking its beginnings in
1900. As geneticists elucidated
principles governing heredity and found that they were universal, there was an
understandable sense of excitement and exuberance. Intoxicated with their insights, geneticists believed themselves on
the verge of elucidating rules that could be applied to eliminate hereditary
disease and abnormalities while increasing the level of intelligence and
ability. Extrapolating freely from
studies on inheritance of physical traits like flower colour in plants or wing
shape in flies, geneticists reached conclusions about inheritance of
intelligence and behaviour in which their beliefs and values were often
proclaimed as scientifically demonstrable fact. But words like "superior" and "inferior",
"better" and "worse" reflect value judgments, not scientifically meaningful assessments.
To
my horror, I learned that Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor of death at
Auschwitz, was a human geneticist who held peer-reviewed research grants to
study twins at the death camp. Race
purification, a key part of Nazi policy, rested on the extravagant claims of
geneticists and was tacitly, if not overtly, supported by geneticists in
Germany. Thus, the Holocaust could be
attributed in part as the consequence of the exuberant boasts of geneticists
earlier in the century. Not
surprisingly, in revulsion against the consequences of Nazi policy, by the end
of the war, the accepted wisdom in genetics was that human behavior and
intelligence were primarily an expression of environmental factors.
Adding
to my shock, I began to realize that the underlying rationale that had
justified the incarceration of Japanese-Canadians had also been genetics. Transcripts from Parliament reveal the
British Columbia Member of Parliament, A.W. Neill, ranting in 1937 "To
cross an individual of the white race with an individual of a yellow race, is
to produce in nine cases of ten, a mongrel wastrel with the worst qualities of
both races." While not quite a
Mendelian ratio, it was, nevertheless, an apparently quantified claim. In February, 1941, Neill told the Prime
Minister "We in British Columbia are firmly convinced that once a Jap,
always a Jap." Implicit in Neill's
proclamation was a belief in the hereditary nature of perceived racial traits
such as perfidy and deceit. Thus,
bigotry was cloaked behind the legitimizing claims of scientists. At the very least, this lesson from recent
history warns us about the hazards of extending the boundaries of claims beyond
the immediate experiments. As
scientists in the infant field of molecular genetics dazzle us with their
latest discoveries, their exuberant claims echo similar sentiments from decades
before.
Social Responsibility of Scientists
As
I learned of this part of history, the grotesque intersection of two great
passions in my life - genetics and human rights - was an agonizing
confrontation with the issue of science and society. I realized that scientists are first and foremost human beings
with all of the foibles, idiosyncracies, talents and shortcomings of any other
group of individuals. Our perspective
is shaped by self-interest, training and professional aspirations and it is
easy to become so enthralled with our work that without reflection we make
grand claims about the potential power and utility of our discoveries and
ideas. However, we can no more
transcend the personal beliefs, values and idiosyncracies that shape our
perspective any more than any other group of people. Thus the only way to temper the claims and rush to apply ideas is
to engage in serious discussion with an informed public. After all, they are free of the
self-interest of scientists yet will be impacted by the consequences. And their taxes help fund the research in
the first place.
But
one problem is that scientists work with arcane tools, terminology and concepts
that few non-scientists can penetrate.
Scientists are bilingual, speaking both scientific jargon and the
vernacular of society. So they have a
special role to play, as translaters from jargon-laden descriptions to everyday
language and demystifyers of the nature of scientific activity.
After
moving to Vancouver in 1963, my lab expanded rapidly and I was caught up in the
excitement that comes from interesting research and an ambition to
publish. Somehow people in television
in Vancouver had heard about my involvement with Your University Speaks and I began to receive invitations to talk
about research in my field, do book reviews or comment on new
"breakthroughs". But I was
consumed with enthusiasm over work going on in my lab. We had embarked on research that
demonstrated that temperature-sensitive mutatations that had already proved to
be powerful research tools in micro-organisms could also be readily induced and
studied in Drosophila. The ability to
control the expression of a mutation simply by changing temperatures proved to
be very useful in a variety of
ways. Nevertheless, I also decided to
try to get a television program to explore the issues that arose from the
impact of science on society.
Fortunately, I recieved the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship from the
National Research Council of Canada. It
is awarded to the "outstanding Canadian research scientist under the age
of". It paid for someone to be
hired to teach my courses so I could devote full time to research. I was able to hold it for three years and it
enabled me to explore television. I
proposed a series called Interface:
Science and Society to British Columbia's education channel. I was able to interview outstanding
scientists ranging from Carl Sagan to (? woman Nobel prizewinner) to Jonathan
Beckwith. In 1969, the CBC approved a
nationally broadcast series to be called Suzuki
on Science. We explored ideas at
the cutting edge of research by interviewing top scientists. But the budget was so small, it was
basically "talking heads" which are anathema for television. After two seasons, I quit the series and
assumed that my career in television was over.
In
Canada, the premier science program was a series of half hour programs called The Nature of Things that had originated
in 1960. The series did not have a host
and each show covered a single topic, often on natural history, without a
host. In 1974, Jim Murray, the
executive producer of The Nature of
Things, proposed a new series to be called Science Magazine. Each half
hour program of Science Magazine
would carry two to five reports on unrelated topics presented in a magazine
format. I was asked to host the series
and it was an instant success. Audience
analysis revealed the magazine format was especially appealing to younger
viewers who were increasingly restless and conditioned to flit from topic to
topic. For me the problem with short
items in a magazine format was that there was less opportunity to explore
deeper ramifications of ideas. Each
report was hyped with a breathless sense of "golly, gee whiz, what will
they think of next?"
After
five years, The Nature of Things and
Science Magazine were fused into one
series of one hour programs called collectively, The Nature of Things with David Suzuki which I have hosted since
1979. The show is the longest running
series on the CBC and has been broadcast in more than 80 nations.
Venture into Radio
In
1975, I was asked to host a weekly one hour science on CBC radio. Quirks
and Quarks was an immediate success, garnering a large and loyal audience
by radio standards. I hosted the
program for its first four years and it continues as one of CBC radio's
flagship programs to this day.
Public
radio in Canada is still a potent force, garnering a fiercely loyal audience. Unlike television which is carefully staged
and often contrived, radio is spontaneous and warm with opportunity for humour
and surprise. In television, the
visuals overwhelm and dominate the senses while radio requires the active
participation of the listener. The
human brain is a creative organ and with radio, words can elicit an infinity of
responses and the most abstract ideas can be followed through a listener's
imagination. Television shies away from
ideas that cannot be illustrated with pictures. The CBC radio audience is older, better educated and
professional. Unfortunately, the radio
audience is dwarfed by the reach of television.
Hard Choices - Research or Media?
Science
for me had always been a full time passion that extended far beyond a regular
working day five times a week. But to
do radio and television well meant a full time committment too. As long as I wasn't teaching, I could keep
up with the lab and remain involved with the media. But as the media involvement increased, it cut into research
time. UBC hired Tom Grigliatti, one of
my top PhD students, after he had spent a year of postdoctoral study at
Yale. Tom shared the lab with me and to
my relief, very quickly carried the research into new areas. Eventually, I was able to remove myself
completely from research and lecturing.
The scientific community gives lip service to the need to have public discussions about science. But in my experience, scientists have a harder time acting on it. Once when acting as the moderator of an all-day panel on genetics, I introduced James Watson and then asked his opinion on social implications of molecular research. To my amazement, he lashed out in a stinging attack on what he perceived as my biases. Both Richard Feynman and Philip Morrison bristled when I suggested that scientists have an obligation that goes beyond mere civil duties of all other citizens. Scientists are reluctant to participate in programs in which there is serious questioning or legitimate criticism of certain aspects of science. Scientists readily claim potential benefits of their work but when faced with serious public debate, are reluctant to explore the negative consequences or accept special responsibilities.
As
a journalist who has asked critical questions of science and scientists, I have
felt deep resentment if not outright hostility from my colleagues. I cannot say what motivates the resentment
but it is real. In my experience,
popularization of science and rigorous discussion of science's limits and hazards
are not considered worthy academic activities.
Technology's Unpredictable Consequences
The
year I began my second career in television (1962) coincided with the
publication of Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring. Though she was vilified by
scientists working in the chemical industry, she was right and galvanized
massive public concern that became the environmental movement. Her seminal book pointed out that
technology, however beneficial, invariably had costs and because our knowledge
about how the world works is so limited, we are seldom able to anticipate
beforehand, what those costs will be.
For example, biologists could not have warned of biomagnification of
molecules up the food chain because they only learned of the phenomenon when
raptors like eagles began to disappear.
In the same way, we learned of radioactive fallout, electromagnetic
pulses and nuclear winter long after the first nuclear bombs were
exploded. Readily transmitted plasmids
carrying multiple drug resistance were discovered only years after antibiotics
were used as growth promoters in animal feed and over-prescribed to
humans.
Carson's
prescient warning was never more important than today when we seem so anxious
to apply every incremental discovery to market a new product or technique. It astounds me how readily scientists ignore
her message and the lessons of history in order to rush to market their
insights. When I graduated with a PhD
in 1961, genetics was an exciting area and I was filled with excitement over
the latest ideas of chromosome and gene structure and genetic regulation. When I tell students today about some of
those hot ideas from the '60s, they often snicker because in 1999, ideas and
concepts from 1961 seem naive and far off the mark. But those students are shocked when I tell tell them twenty years
from now when they are professors
and tell their students the greatest notions from 1999, their students will be
just as amused. The very nature of
science is that most of our current ideas are wrong, irrelevant or
unimportant. Science progresses by
demonstrating that our hypotheses and conjecture need to be overhauled, thrown
out or modified. It is not a
denigration of science to point this out, it is simply a statement about the
very nature of science. Scientism, the
belief in the authority of scientists, is undermined by the very nature of the
enterprise but scientists are prone to forget this.
Scientists
and the media are understandably enthusiastic about the insights we are gaining
and applications in many sectors.
Computers, telecommunications, space research and genetic engineering
are advancing at astonishing rates. In
our intoxication over new discoveries, we forget how much we have yet to
learn. I have been involved in many
battles over destruction of wilderness areas by logging, mining, damming and
development. I am often told that
silviculture is sufficiently advanced to enable us to destroy an ancient forest
and replace it with a "normal" forest, to produce high quantities of
fibre. But a tree plantation is not a
forest. We haven't even identified most
of the biophysical components of a forest - air, water, soil, microorganisms,
insects, etc, let alone how they are interconnected.
Ecologists
like E.O. Wilson point out that while systematists may have given names to 10
to 20% of the species on the planet, we have detailed knowledge about a
fraction of one percent of the ones that are identified. With such a minuscule information base, how
can anyone claim to be able to "manage" wild organisms or
ecosystems? Yet that is the basis of
our claims to be able to control the impact of large clearcuts, dams, mines,
etc and our faith in environmental assessments and cost/benefit analysis. There is simply no way that a scientific
basis can be claimed for these abilities.
The
great strength of scientists is in description. We make discoveries because everywhere we
look, our knowledge base is so tiny, we are bound to find out all kinds of
things. But this means that our
ignorance is so great we have virtually no capacity for prescription, that is, to suggest steps to correct problems that we
encounter. We have so much more to
learn to learn before we can feel confident in our predictive abilities. The one component in our surroundings that
we can try to control and manage is ourselves.
In the global ecocrisis, the challenge is not to try to shoehorn nature
into our economic and political priorities - we can't do it even when we try -
but to control human behaviour and actions that impinge on our surroundings.
Geneticists Should Take More Time
In
my area of knowledge, genetics, the past decades have been a time of tremendous
and understandable exuberance over the insights, techniques and applications
that are pouring out of the field.
Thus, it is proclaimed that the benefits of the Human Genome Project
will be an understanding of and treatments for a wide range of human problems
from cancer to schizophrenia. Yet we have known the molecular nature of sickle
cell anemia for almost half a century and we are a long way from curing
it. It is hubris to claim imminent
benefits from the HGP. DNA is a linear
sequence of information that must be transformed into multidimensional products
acting within a complex multicellular milieu over time. The notion that simply deciphering the
linear DNA sequence will confer the ability to understand and safely manipulate
higher levels of complexity and interaction is totally unwarranted at present.
After
Arthur Jensen's claim that differences between Blacks and Whites in their
performance on IQ tests are genetically based, the scientific opinion that
human behaviour is affected primarily by environmental factors, began to shift
again towards a hereditarian basis.
This notion was reinforced by claims of researchers like Hans Eysenck,
Hans Krebs, Richard Herrnstein and others that such traits as IQ performance,
criminality, social problems, poverty and social class have a strong genetic
component. Such biological determinism
is reinforced by the frequent claims at yet another "breakthrough" in
discovering a new gene for alcoholism, manic depression, extroversion, risk
taking, shyness, homosexuality, and so on.
What is truly astonishing in these reports is the ready confusion
between correlation and causation. In virtually every case, scientists document correlations of an
allele or restriction enzyme fragment with a condition and then immediately
claim a demonstration of a causal relationship. Clearly scientists must be better informed about the nature of
their activity, the nature of proof, and the limits to enquiry.
History
is filled with examples of the fact that scientists are not immune from the
temptation to massage or select data, to buttress claims of discovery. If scientists are willing to employ
exaggeration, deceit or dishonesty merely for greater fame, promotion or
acceptance to medical school, we can only speculate on what people will do
under pressure from venture capitalists and vast sums of money.
The Dark History of Science
There
have been numerous examples of horrific atrocities committed under the guise of
scientific research. It's not just
studies performed under the Nazi or Japanese regimes. In Canada and the United States, people have been experimented
with without their knowledge or approval.
Treatment was withheld from syphilis patients at Tuskeegee, mental
patients were fed radioisotopes, unsuspecting populations have been exposed to
aerosols of bacterial agents, mentally and physically handicapped patients were
sterilized under the guise of eugenics, patients were treated with LSD, and so
on. These stories reveal human
fallibility of scientists and demand that we demystify our activities and allow
broad public participation in discussions about new techniques and ideas. It is not enough to engage only the scientific community or discussants
selected by the scientific establishment.
Scientists
haven't openly discussed the implications of funding sources and scientific
objectivity. Scientists working for
industry or government agencies are seldom free to make their results known to
the public when there are negative political or economic implications. In principle, universities are the last
bastion of openness and freedom of information exchange. Buffered from interference by tenure,
academics are positioned to explore the moral, ethical and social implications
of research. I remember interviewing
MIT's David Baltimore and Harvard's Mark Ptashne for Suzuki on Science when they were young radical scientists. They freely criticized Dow Chemical and
Monsanto for their production of napalm and agent orange for use in
Vietnam. Today, both of them are
eminent scientists involved in biotechnology and I wonder whether either would
be as critical of the two companies today.
After
the Arab Oil Embargo in 1974, the Alberta government decided to press ahead
with the construction of ten more oil extraction plants on the province's tar
sands deposits. Syncrude, the one plant
already in existence, put out 50 tonnes of sulfur dioxide a day. We decided to do a program on the ecological
implications of the new plants for The
Nature of Things and asked ecologists at both the Universities of Alberta
and Calgary for interviews on the consequences of increased acidity in the
atmosphere. No one would talk to us on
camera because they were all funded by the oil industry. The role of tenured university academics
involved with biotech companies remains to be discussed seriously from the
perspective of the public's right to know what's going on.
Information SuperHYPEway
Finally,
I must comment on the vaunted benefits of the information superhighway. Educators, entrepreneurs and politicians
sing the praises of the potential benefits of the information revolution. But what I see is a shattering of the world
we know through fragmentation of information into bits and pieces. People no longer understand how their lives
and the things they consume are linked to everything else in the world. We are no longer aware of the sources or
producers of food, clothing, material goods.
All of these are simply objects to be purchased without knowledge or
care for the condition of the workers who labored to make them available, the
ecological costs of their harvest, manufacture and transportation.
The
average person is now awash with information.
I am often told about some amazing new fact or invention and when I ask
the source of that bit of knowledge, am told "I read it" or "I
saw it on TV". Usually the person
recounting the story cannot inform me whether it was in The National Enquirer or Scientific
American or shown on The Nature of
Things or Jerry Springer. Information becomes validated simply because
it exists.
When
I began my career in television, I knew the medium was a cesspool. I assumed that my programs would glisten
like jewels, attracting special attention from the audience. Instead, i discovered once in the cesspool,
one looks like a turd like everyone else.
The reason is that most people don't watch television carefully and
critically. The TV is usually left on
and the viewer roams the channels, snatching snippets and being distracted by
phones, visitors, snacks or crying babies.
By bedtime, a person's brain is a mush of factoids no longer anchored to
a source or context that informs us why it matters.
In
a world in which virtual reality is hyped as the coming mode of experience, I
find that the problem is that virtual experiences are BETTER than reality. We can experience the kinkiest of virtual
sex without fear of AIDS or being caught, we can have all of the nerve tingling
rush of a gunfight that we lose, we can live through the heart thumping high of
a car race and crash. I had always
assumed that my programs would convey a sense of wonder and delight of the natural
world but now I realize that television is a created reality. We may send a cameraperson to the Arctic or
Amazon for six months to do a natural history film. An editor then takes shots that often took agonizing hours, days
or even weeks to film and strings them together into a sequence that implies
that in the Arctic or Amazon, all hell breaks loose in a flurry of bird, mammal
and insect life. Yet as anyone who has
been to these places knows, it's not like that at all. The one thing nature needs to become
apparent in all its splendor and complexity is TIME. And the one thing television cannot tolerate is dead air because
the viewer is armed with a channel changer and the attention span of a
hummingbird. So all of us end up
competing for viewers by being more raucous, outrageous, shocking, unexpected,
etc to capture and hold a fragmenting audience. The victim of all this is reality.
Advice from the Trenches
I
am occasionally asked by fresh PhD graduates how they can "get into
television". I'm afraid my
personal history offers little in the way of useful guidance. Scientific research was my first love and
passion, but the fluke of my personal experiences with bigotry and racism led
me on an erratic path to the electronic media.
I did not set out to deliberately carve a career in television, I was
simply open to opportunities when they came up.
As
I approach retirement and reflect back over my career, I don't regret leaving
research. I had the excitement of
making discoveries that could be published in top journals and attract the interest
of my peers. I never went into
television to "become a star" so I have been surprised at becoming a
minor celebrity in Canada. Now with
hindsight, I realize that television is an ephemeral medium. Images and ideas pour out at viewers who are
distracted by all kinds of other things.
One program quickly fades in a person's mind after a night of watching
TV. Indeed, I am always amazed at how
often a person will hail me, wax ecstatic about my show and then mention a
particular topic he/she enjoyed. When I
reply that we've never done a show on that subject, they'll often think for a
minute, then reply "Oh. It must
have been Jerry Springer" or
"Oprah". I seem to get credit for anything vaguely
scientific regardless of where it appeared.
What has happened to me is over, specific issues come and go, but
viewers form an impression of the host.
That's what gave Edward R. Murrow, Barbara Walters or Walter Cronkite
such credibility. So where I had
thought that I was simply conveying information with which a viewer could be
empowered, instead I have been given the power of a large viewing
audience. Thus, politicians or
businesspeople respond to me in the knowledge that I have that viewership. It is an enormous responsibility to live up
to.
As
information channels open up and computers access information anywhere on the
planet, programs become increasingly short, strident, loud, kinky, sensational
or violent in order to keep an audience.
While
an appearance on one or two programs will probably vanish from public memory
with little lasting impression, scientists need to be a more persistent
presence in programs. Science is deeply
embedded in our culture and economy and scientists have to be considered
important participants in discussions and debates. So lest my personal history discourage other scientists from
becoming prospective media personalities, I urge you to consider it while
encouraging others who may be so inclined.