The simplification of science for the public is probably done with good intentions. The educator wishes to relate the topic to something the individual member of the public already understands. This is fine when they are face to face, but when they are not the information has to be passed by some other medium - such as in written form, by displays, by television, etc. But the educator does not know what the educatee already understands, and the educatee has no way of asking for information (or is too shy to find a way to ask).

Far too often the public is not given the scientific evidence and allowed to work things out for themselves - but they are fed an interpretation and that is not the same thing. There is a similar trend in news reporting - there is often more air time given to speculation before a big event than the factual coverage when the event actually takes place.

So the science is simplified to a form that the average person understands. But people are individuals not averages. So the sensible educator has to decide on a target audience and find out what they want to know. They can do this by surveying the punters.

"A fundamental feature of the curricula in science and engineering disciplines is that they are often viewed as 'linear subjects' in that many are designed on the basis that students need to understand A before they can go on to study B and C" (Exley 1999, p266). As a result teachers think they should keep B and C hidden from the students who have not understood A. And if it is someone else's job to teach B and C it makes life a whole lot easier for them!

The simplification of science in school education is done probably for the benefit of the teachers - partly so that non-specialists can teach specialist topics and also so that there can be "right" answers to be marked in standardised testing (Jorgenson & Vanosdall 2002).

The problem is that this leads eventually to the disillusionment of the students when the teacher has to admit "what you were told last year is wrong - now I am going to teach you what really happens". Thus we find for example that electricity actually flows from negative to positive and that chemical reactions can be reversed.

Science is dynamic, ever changing and ever advancing. Things we don't understand today we may discover the answer to tomorrow. Within my branch of geology new fossils are found that can radically change our views, and amateurs can find these just as easily as the professional. But the tendency is teach science as something that is complete and static, rather than engage the students and public in hands on inquiry-based science (Zinicola & Devlin-Scherer 2001). This way students can be tested, teachers don't have to answer "I don't know" and museum displays have a life of twenty years.

But to me it is the mystery of science that makes it interesting. If our scientific knowledge was complete we would not need scientists, we would just be the passive recipients of orthodox knowledge: it would be boring; very boring.

I think that geology and science are fun and like to pass that fun on to others, partly in gratitude to those who have been kind enough to give me their time and help.

The study of geology and the natural (or field) sciences has always involved the collecting of specimens. Once the scientist has collected and studied the specimens it is natural to want to share them with others through displays. This led to the founding of private museums (such as the Mortimer Museum in Driffield), museums run by learned Societies (such as the Museums of the Hull Lit. and Phil. and the Yorkshire Philosophical Society) and eventually municipal museums (Ensom 1994, Horne 1989). Concerns over conservation have considerably reduced collecting in zoology and botany, it is still important in geology and archaeology. Collecting as part of archaeology tends to be professionalised, in so much as digs are led by professionals and the finds generally go into the public domain rather than private collections; in geology there are still many private collectors who these days are self regulated by the recognition of site conservation (SSSIs and RIGS).

Museums have two main functions - curatorial and educational. The curatorial task is to collect, catalogue and conserve specimens and archives and make these available for research. Many of the collections originate from the work of learned societies in the 19th Century (Wyse Jackson 1999). In geology museum and University "research" collections play a vital role in the science. The collections include specimens collected from sites that are no longer accessible and status specimens such as type specimens of fossils that act as a standard by which all other specimens are named.

The educational role is mainly through public displays - these form perhaps one of the earliest forms of "open learning". The individual visitors visit from choice and select the information in the displays that is interesting to them. For years, up until perhaps the late 1960s, museum displays of geology consisted of specimens in cases with labels naming them. The emphasis was on the object or specimen, and these were arranged in such a way that the visitor had to make an effort to see the connections between them.

Compared with modern displays these old fashioned displays had one advantage for the interested geological visitor - the specimens on display were named in detail and could thus act as a scientific standard for comparison with ones own collection. Thankfully some of these displays still exist and the display cabinets and drawers are 'listed' along with their buildings at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences (Dawn 2002).

In more recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the educational role of museums.

"Defining the target audience, for the practical purposes of design, is an exceptionally difficult task in a public museum. One advantage of a learning hierarchy is that it includes all the steps in the story of the exhibition, beginning with the most basic.... Nevertheless, it is also important to provide sufficient information for the quicker, better informed visitor so that they do not have to work laboriously from one end to the other, with no freedom to 'skip' familiar material." (Miles and Foot 1979, p221).

To some extent local museums are seen by local authorities as a resource for school teachers. As a result the displays are aimed to support the non-specialist school teacher and meet the educational needs of pre-16 school children, without stimulating them to ask the teacher difficult questions. I remember wondering why one museum had given the just two catalogue numbers to its display specimens - KS2 or KS3!

The effect is to produce a display which passively presents science rather than engages the visitor (school-children) in an appreciation of the dynamics of science (Zinicola & Devlin-Sherer 2001). It also ignores the museums role in "informal learning" for adults (Lerdeman & Niess 1998).

"Frequently, the level of communication is aimed at an optimal mental age of a 12 year old. Quite apart from being a gross insult to many 12 year-olds, the net result is to trivialise exhibitions. What they overlooked is that people, both young and old, appreciate quality information and lots of real objects" (Macnamara and Bevan 2001).

There is still debate over whether science museums should entertain visitors, be tied to the school curriculum or provide a wider view of education (Shields 1993). But "the main focus [in science learning] of providers and policy makers continues to be younger people" (Carlton 2001).

There are some encouraging signs that the trend is starting to change (H Gould 2002) with lifelong learning initiatives in museums. Some museums have aimed their displays at family parties rather than the school trip, encouraging grandparents to engage the interest of the children (Reynolds 1997).

By pseudoscience I mean bad popular science, presented to the public without any critical attempt to discuss alternative interpretations of the results.

Example- The National I Q test.

Resources -

What about the resources that are given to the sciences? How do they compare to the arts and humanities? Do the sciences receive equal resources in the public domain?

Let us look at three levels of education:

University Degree level:

As a very crude indicator of resources devoted to the teaching of Sciences, Arts and Humanities I counted the number of lecturers in each Department at the University of Hull. (see appendix below for method).

This gives a figure of 34% devoted to science, maths, computing and engineering - about a third of the lecturing staff.

When we look at the provision of part time non-degree courses for adults (traditional adult education) we get as figure of just over 14%.

Then consider how much museum space is devoted to the sciences in Hull compared to Art and History. Well I do not have the details, but just go and look at the amount of space in the art gallery and then see how small the geology display is in the Hull and East Riding Museum (HERM) and the biology on display at the Town Docks Museum. And also consider how crowded the geology display is compared to the open spaces of the Ferens Art Gallery.

What percentage of their resources do libraries devote to the sciences. It is probably less than 10 percent of branch libraries. Though central libraries of big cities rend to include more science and technology in their reference libraries.

There are whole segments of the weekend newspapers devoted to the Arts. Huge amounts to politics and economics and very little space for the sciences. Nield (2002) though does make the point that science news is competing with other news (even if that news is mostly about celebrities) and that scientists are not that good at feeding the press with information in a media friendly way.

There are radio channels devoted to music of various sorts, regular review programmes about literature and the performing arts, plenty of politics and economics and only one or two science programmes on Radio Four.

Television is a bit different - with "terrestrial" "free to air" channels being dominated by soaps and quiz shows. The media lends itself to dramas and documentaries. But there is still not a huge amount of science present, I would guess at under five percent of the programming. It is true that there are now some satellite and cable channels devoted to the sciences and technology.

My point is that looking at these three levels of "learning resource" there is a considerable decline in the percentage of the resource devoted to Science from the higher educational standard to the general public.

There have been conflicts between the study of science and Christian theology for a long time. Universities used to be controlled by the established church until the mid-19th Century (Bligh 1990) and early geological academics such as Buckland were ordained ministers (Osborn 1998, Corfield 2001). Scientific investigations of evolution, the age of the earth, the origin of the earth and stratigraphy were controversial. The influence of the Church declined and the teaching of science became accepted. During the second half of the 20th Century science and religion seemed to become separated.

Now the table seems to have become reversed - earth scientists and biologists are now concerned about the teaching of Creationism in schools (Institute of Biology 2002). Old Testament creation mythology is being given equal status to scientific evolution and earth history in some states of the USA and parts of Australia. Sometimes this it is presented as 'intelligent design' without naming the designer (Anon 2002 in Geology Today). A museum in San Diego has a display dedicated to the Creationists' version of earth history (Numbers 1995) giving a "scientific" version of earth history lasting 10 000 years rather than the scientifically accepted 4 500 000 000 years! This version of earth history is accepted by 45 percent of the American population (The Observer Magazine 24th November 2002, page 14; Harris 2005). The Museum of Earth History in Arkansas has displays of Adam and Eve living alongside herbivorous Tyrannosaurs in harmony, explains the extinction of the dinosaurs and the succession of sedimentary rocks in the Grand Canyon was due to the biblical Flood and informs visitors that some dinosaurs did survive the Flood because they were on Noah's Ark, only to be finally killed off in the Ice Age along with the mammoths (Harris 2005). And a school in Gateshead (U.K.) gives equal status in classes to the 'belief in the Creation' and the 'theory of evolution' [Radio 4 Today programme 28th April 2003]. The school is funded by the Vardy Foundation, an educational charity that takes over "failing" schools in the U.K. and the schools teach that evolution with a long geological past is a "faith position" rather than scientific fact. (Dawkins 2004, Adams 2004).

Most religions have creation myths and they have an important role within those traditions. But mythology has no place in science (Barbour 2002). The use of mythology in science only serves to confuse and the scientific investigation of myths does little to help religion. The use of scientific methods to prove or disprove the historical basis of events mentioned religious scriptures is tempting (e.g. Anon 2002 in Geoscientist) but I wonder if it is helpful in the long term. And attempts to prove or disprove the existence of God or gods by scientific means miss the point of religions and the really the two subjects should be kept separate in education (Institute of Biology 2002).

I suppose this a major issue for the semitic religions in which the teaching has been revealed by a single God - if the literal truth of the scriptures is shown to be historically inaccurate then the whole religion, teaching and structure would have no foundation for some of its followers. In religions that have more than one god that is less of a problem. There seems to be common threads to religious mythologies from quite diverse civilisations, and this seems to point to a original basic human need (Campbell 1985, 1995, Cousineau P et al. 1990).

It seems strange to me that fundamentalist Christians take the Jewish creation mythologies as an accurate account of earth history rather than a helpful metaphor. This all probably stems back to the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, which declared certain beliefs and scriptures to be heretical, established the Christian Calendar, set dates for festivals and formalised the role of the priesthood (Duncan 1998). The events at this Council continue to affect the lives of most westerners - such as causing the confusion over the date of the "Millenium" (Horne 2000) and unpredictable public holidays.

The dumbing down of science does not help scientists in their defence of evolution and a long earth history. If the public only see the recreations and interpretations that popular science provides then they will eventually realise that these are subjective and include 'educated guess-work'. For example we do not have any evidence about the colour of dinosaurs' skin; for most palaeontologists this is not a problem but to the makers of films and documentaries it is vitally important (Martill & Naish 2000). I have read a book by Jehovah's Witnesses that makes use of this problem, by reprinting published reconstructions of early man - with long hair or short hair, bearded or shaven .... and then pointing out that as the scientists cannot agree what hair style early man had then the whole story of human evolution must be guess work too!

Creationists seem to wish to prove their creation theories by disproving evolution evidence and the scientific dating of rock samples, and by discrediting other scientists. Badly written science, dumbing down and over-generalisations play into their hands. The very nature of the fossil record is fragmentary, but exaggerated claims for the importance of new finds tend to be bad for science even if they do give the expected news coverage for the financial backers!

Religions that do expect people to have a literal belief in their creation mythologies do not have such a problem with science. This view was expressed at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 (Fields 1986, p126-7). In essence religion and science are both methods to investigate our world and to try to understand the part we play in it.

[You can see for yourself by visiting there creationist web-sites:- Norm's Place http://www.homestead.com/normsplace/; Institute for Creation Research http://www.icr.org/;
Answers in Genesis http://www.answersingenesis.org/intro.asp; Creation Science Evangelism (Kent Hovind) http://www.drdino.com/]

When I went to school we did not start to study science until the age of 11. Geology, if it was available, was not studied until the age of 14 or 16. It was an exciting, new adventure. But I did become disillusioned at the start of 'A' level Chemistry when we were told to forget everything that we had learnt at 'O' level.

Now there is science in schools in all of the Key Stages. People born in 1984 have faced major changes to the examination and testing system throughout their education at school (McVeigh 2002). In the early stages science is taught mainly by non-scientists (Fleming 2001). In the later stages geology is taught by non-geologists. Over the last 15 years the Earth Science Teachers Association (ESTA - formerly the Geology Teachers Association) has produced teaching materials for use by non-geologists in schools. It may be co-incidence, but of the six geology teachers I know in schools and 6th-form colleges in and around Hull who used to teach 'A' level geology before the National Curriculum was introduced, only one teaches the subject and that it at AS level now.

It has been suggested to me recently, by a Key Stage 2 teacher, that one reason for the decline in interest in science is the fact that the teaching in the National Curriculum is repetitive - the same subject matter is repeated at each stage in increasing depth. Inevitably the bright students spot this and start to question the content, because the teachers are admitting that they did not tell the whole truth in the previous stage, and may even have lied.

"Research by Chris King and the Earth Science Education Unit at the University of Keele .... has revealed [that the] earth science content in the science curriculum (now c. 4.5%) has fallen steadily; most teachers of earth sciences are biology, chemistry or physics specialists ... who themselves received little or no earth science teaching ...[including] very little practical or fieldwork ... [and that the] main sources of teachers' information are pupil textbooks (many containing errors) and their colleagues." (Anon in Geoscientist February 2003).

I know that I am writing about the dumbing down of science and generally think that it is wrong. But there is a serious case to be made for explaining things to people in the way that they understand.

This happens in religious training, for instance. In Buddhism it is known as "skillful means" and refers to presenting a simplified view in order to help the trainee/student progress. There are examples of this described in scriptures such as 'the parable of the burning house' from chapter 3 of the Lotus Sutra (Kato et al 1975) and "the most Excellent Mirror Samadhi" by Tung shan Liang chieh (translation in Kennet 1990). Or as Rev. Master Jiyu Kennet put it in one of her many recorded talks: "the truth, the whole truth and anything else that works".

The aim of religious teaching and training is different from probably all academic disciplines. "For religion is essentially something that is found within man not outside him" (Kennet 2002). The external forms of religion are metaphors for that internal personal quest - they are there to help but cannot do the work for you. It is by the quietening of external stimuli that the seeker makes progress; or as Dogen (1227) puts it "All you have to do is cease from erudition, withdraw within and reflect upon yourself".

The difference between this and dumbing down is that it is part of a path and used by a skilful teacher who has a long-term or even lifelong relationship with the trainee. When we dumb down and then present that to the public without assessing their individual needs, that partial truth is mistakenly seen to be the whole truth.

Dumbing down is a vicious circle -

Are we doing science any favours by dumbing it down in an attempt to make it digestible to the public? By trying to make science appear to be simple when the public knows it is hard to understand are we not increasing the divide between the scientists and the public? It allows poor science to thrive and opens the door to pseudo-science and creationism.

Is part of the problem the fact there are often intermediaries between the research scientist and the public - the journalist, the museum display designer, the non-specialist teacher &c., who are reinterpreting the conclusions into a public friendly form without knowledge or understanding of the primary research?

I wonder if the problems we are starting to experience in the Sciences in Higher Education due to the dumbing down:-

• Annual controversies about the standards of 'A' levels (e.g. Bright and Mcveigh 2002).
• Falling applications for first degrees in sciences and mathematics.
• Universities changing courses and trying to make them sound more attractive to potential students.
• Lowering of qualifications required for admission onto first degrees.
• Science and Mathematics foundation courses at franchised colleges.
• Increasing numbers of re-sits for University exams.
• Concerns over the quality of PhD science students (French 2002).
• Bursaries to attract scientists into teaching.
• Qualification drift - employers demanding higher qualifications in order to get the "top people"; for example Masters Degree in now necessary for many science jobs whereas a Bachelors degree would have been expected twenty years ago (Livingstone 2002).
• Increasing concern about the communication of science to the public and how this affects government policies in the long term (British Association 2002).

Scientific ignorance is not just a British phenomenon - a recent survey by National Geographic found that 83 percent of young adult Americans could not locate Afghanistan on a map even though their country had recently invaded it and overthrown the government (Radford 2002) subsequently leading to a 1400 percent increase in Afghanistan's opium prodution to provide 75 percent of world production (The OM index, Observer Magazine, 5th October 2003, page 12) !

One of my heroes is Thomas Sheppard the first curator of Hull Museums and prolific author (Horne 1986). He was an enthusiast who "acquired" huge museum collections for the city. He passed on his skills to the next generation and pointed them in the direction of experts for further advice. He was innovative; planning a museum of shops and buildings later copied in York. He was a great publicist, perhaps using his personality to promote public understanding, and probably would have been a great TV presenter. But for such a larger than life character there are few obituaries, either because of paper shortages, or because he had made enemies or because he was dismissed as not having produced any original research (Horne 1986). Was he a plagiarist or populariser? In some ways it does not really mater - if he caught the public imagination and reached a wider audience. His sister indicates that he had problems writing (Horne 1999) due to 'his lack if educational privileges'.

Also, I remember Dr Eric Robinson (recently retired from UCL) giving a lecture about urban geology. He said that he had spent several years writing a thesis about ostracods for his PhD that probably only a handful of people had read. It was a great achievement, but now he feels that using the geology of shop-fronts and buildings to generate public interest in geology is far more rewarding.

On an earlier occasion I saw him do just that. The lunchtime public lecture he was billed to present was poorly attended, so he led an impromptu walk without any preparation. Eventually there was a crocodile of thirty shoppers following him, enthralled by his enthusiasm.

The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) runs an annual Science Week, in which scientists and scientific societies run special events for the public. In the past grants have been available from COPUS. I have organised geological walks, field trips and 'road-shows' locally for Science Week. The response has generally been good, but March does not have the best weather to do geology!

It is also possible to break down boundaries and make links with non-scientists. I am particularly pleased to have held geological 'road-shows' in the Ferens Arts Gallery, but was concerned about damage to plant-life when over 300 people attended a 'Stones and Bones' (geology and local history) walk in a local cemetery! In other fields it is possible to make links between science and people's hobbies - biology with gardening, chemistry with home-brewing, geomorphology with walking and so on (see COPUS [2002], Turney 1998).

The new Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum in London allows the public to watch scientists carry out their research and the scientists to talk to the public (O'Connell 2002). And a new study has been launched to investigate and utilise the relationship between amateur and professional naturalists (anon 2002); perhaps this will help to break down some of the barriers that have slowly risen over the last century. Bob Davidson (2003) also documents the colaboration between amateur and academic palaeontologists in Scotland.

The increasing use of computer technologies offers a way forward. It is possible to produce different versions of the same material for different audiences. For instance I can publish geological information about a particular exposure using the same data and images in "beginners", popular, educational and academic versions on the World Wide Web. Interactive displays in museums can do the same - such as the option to "go deeper" to get more detailed information from the touch-screens at the Deep. There were also different versions of the 'Walking with Beasts' B.B.C. television series available to views with digital T.V. in 2002, offering viewers the following options "main feature" (the programmes transmitted on terrestrial television), "facts", "evidence" and "making of".

• I think that there is evidence for the dumbing down of science, but admit that it is hard to be objective about the topic.

• Scientists themselves are part of the problem by not communicating directly with the public.

• The other part of the problem is that the "public" is actually a huge diversity - it is wrong to assume that we should only speak to the "average" person.

• There are members of the public that do understand science and would like to know more.

• Enthusiastic scientists who take science to the public can make a difference.

Click here for references

Post script -

My main belief/conclusion is that if we want to make science interesting we should ham it up, not dumb it down!

Notes on the statistics:

The figures were compiled simply by counting the number of courses part-time adult courses offered by institutions, excluding part-time degree courses. It is not necessarily an indications of the number of students studying.

Bristol University figures exclude courses in British Sign Language and study tours.

Hull University figures exclude part time certificate and degree courses.

Leeds University figures includes six post-graduate courses.

Definitions used:

"Arts" - includes art, creative writing, drama, history of art, literature, and music.

"Languages" - all foreign languages including classical ones.

"Social Sciences" - includes counselling, culture, economics, geography, history, landscape studies, personal development, philosophy, politics, psychology, welfare and women's studies.

As a comparison the number of full time lecturing staff teaching at the University of Hull is given (compiled from the internal telephone directory 2001-2002). This is an indicator of the resources a balanced University puts into the teaching of each subject. This is not necessarily an indicator of the number of undergraduate students, in fact it is skewed against the sciences as the staff-student ratios expected for Arts, Humanities and Science are different. The "near-sciences" are sports science, maths and engineering. I have kept the scheme used for the part-time courses, which includes psychology and geography as social sciences, though they are listed as part of the Science faculty at the University of Hull. The medical school and education departments were ignored in the figures.

Sources:-

Bristol University - Continuing Education Courses for the Public September 2000 to January 2001. 136pp

Hull University - Part-Time Courses in the Region 2001/2002. 72pp

Leeds University - Part-Time Courses for Adults. West & North Yorkshire 2001-2002. 39pp

University of East Anglia, Norwich - Courses for everyone available part-time across Norfolk and Suffolk 2002-3. 88pp.

Click here for references

Copyright Mike Horne (2006)

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