594 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1431 



The layman has for so long been fed, under 

 the guise of science, upon mere information 

 that has, so far as he can see, no significant use 

 or . relation to anything with which he or his 

 neighbors are in any way concerned, that he 

 has acquired a false idea of what science really 

 is. He is prone to regard scientists as vision- 

 ary, unpractical freaks who spend their time 

 in hunting up queer facts and in dreaming 

 fantastic dreams, as harmless imbeciles who 

 putter around at things that are of no interest 

 to any one else, who from a depraved taste talk 

 a jargon that others can not understand, and 

 who once in a while by pure chance stumble 

 upon something that some more sensible indi- 

 vidual is able to put to some real use. This 

 false conception should be rectified. In my 

 opinion this can not be done by the simple 

 process of offering the layman a larger or a 

 more varied diet of mere information, even 

 though this diet is guaranteed to conform to all 

 the pure food laws. It must be done by dri- 

 ving home the fact that the prime object of 

 science is the establishing of relations between 

 facts, the facts themselves being merely inci- 

 dental to that, and in many eases of no other 

 interest whatever; and by showing him that 

 the facts that are presented for his considera- 

 tion have significant relations to those he 

 already knows and of which he appreciates the 

 importance. 



I realize that the preparation of articles 

 suited to these j)urposes is difficult, and I sym- 

 pathize with Dr. Slosson in the difficulty he is 

 experiencing in getting them; but the presence 

 of difficulties should not deter us from facing 

 the issue squarely and trying to meet it. Arti- 

 cles setting forth relations between facts can 

 not be reeled off by the yard, their preparation 

 is slow and laborious; also it is a ^vork purely 

 of love, other recompense than the joy of the 

 work being insignificant. Consequently, such 

 articles can be expected only from those scien- 

 tists whose daily work of getting a living is 

 such that they have considerable leisure. Does 

 this not in part explain why Dr. Slosson finds 

 more writers of good popular science in Eng- 

 land than in this country? 



Be this as it may, I am convinced that the 

 layman's keen interest in science will awake 



when, and only when, he has been brought to 

 recognize that science is concerned primarily 

 in the establishing of relations, and that there- 

 by he will be enabled to forecast and to control 

 future events with ever greater and greater 

 certainty. 



N. Erxest Dorsey 

 404 Maryland Building, 

 Washington, D. C. 



To THE Editor op Science: Certain scien- 

 tific men are attacking us editors of daily and 

 Sunday newspapers and charging us with fab- 

 rication and exaggeration in our presentation 

 of scientific matter for popular reading. As 

 the editor of the Sunday magazine section of 

 a metropolitan newspaper which has for many 

 years been doing its best to keep the general 

 public informed of the latest developments in 

 science, permit me to present the other side of 

 the case. 



In my earnest eff^orts to publish the truth, the 

 whole truth and nothing but the truth about 

 such matters, I have over and over again asked 

 men who are eminent in their specialties to write 

 articles for me. But, with a few rare excep- 

 tions, the articles they have furnished me have 

 been failures, because written in a style that, 

 however appropriate for a purely scientific 

 magazine, Avas utterly unsuitable for the aver- 

 age reader, because filled with technicalities 

 which only the highly educated -could be ex- 

 pected to understand. The fault I have to find 

 with our American men of science when writing 

 of tlieir specialties is that they fail to present 

 their ideas in the simple language and with the 

 clarity of expression which are so necessary if 

 one is going to awaken the interest of the "man 

 in the street." In this respect, they are far 

 behind their British, French and Italian 

 fellows. 



So far as the 'New York Sunday World 

 Magazine, over which I have authority, is con- 

 cerned, it has been our persistent policy for the 

 last ten years to print nothing except that for 

 which we have the very best authority obtain- 

 able. We devote two pages every Sunday to 

 scientific matter, the greater part of which is 

 quoted literally from the scientific and medical 

 magazines. Besides this, when any highly im- 



