620 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1432 



work in agricultural subjects gives promise of 

 very sound and rapid growth in agricultural 

 research. 



W. H. Chandler 

 New Toek State 



College of Agricultuke 



THE WRITING OF POPULAR SCIENCE 



To THE Editor op Sciexce: The letters of 

 Dr. Dorsey and Dr. Slosson, which have ap- 

 peared in Science, raise questions that have 

 perplexed both scientists and editors of popular 

 scientific magazines. Neither Dr. Dorsey nor 

 Dr. Slosson, in my opinion, has struck at the 

 root of the matter. 



So long as the standards of American jour- 

 nalism are what they are, it will be difficult to 

 enlist the whole-hearted cooperation of scien- 

 tific men in popularizing the results of their 

 researches. A distinguished biologist put the 

 matter thus to me a few years ago : "We do not 

 mind being popularized, but ive do mind being 

 made ridiculous!" 



And there we have the whole truth in a 

 nut-shell. Consider these facts which have come 

 under my notice: 



In the basement of the Bureau of Standards 

 is an electric furnace used for conducting ex- 

 periments at high temperatures. A Washing- 

 ton reporter, in quest of good red journalistic 

 meat, was permitted to see that furnace in 

 operation. On the following day there ap- 

 peared an article from his pen in a Washington 

 newspaper under the title, "Bureau of Stand- 

 ards Has Little Hell in Basement." Is it any 

 wonder that the men in the Bureau of Stand- 

 ards look at him askance now? 



During the days when Halley's comet was 

 the subject of almost daily newspaper articles, 

 about twenty Chicago reporters camped on the 

 grounds of the Terkes Observatory. Fearing 

 complete misrepresentation of the work that 

 they were doing, the members of the observa- 

 tory staff granted no interviews. Finally, one 

 ingenious reporter suggested that he be per- 

 mitted to photograph the entire staff on the 

 steps of the observatory. Inasmuch as all the 

 reporters had been treated rather haughtily, it 

 seemed as if this harmless request might be 

 granted. Accordingly, the staff posed. Two 

 daj-s later, there appeared in a Chicago news- 



paper a photograph of one of the astronomers 

 — a distinguished telescopic observer — seated at 

 the eye piece of the huge Yerkes refractor, but 

 in a position outrageously absurd. His photo- 

 graph had been cut out of that made on tne 

 observatorj' steps, pasted upon a lifeless pic- 

 ture of the refractor, and the whole reproduced, 

 with results that astonished every astronomical 

 observer who saw the newspaper. The observa- 

 tory staff was kept busy explaining to its col- 

 leagues all over the country how this absurdity 

 was perpetrated. 



Washington scientists surely have not for- 

 gotten the great injustice done to Samuel P. 

 Langley at the time when his historically im- 

 portant experiments with his man-carrying air- 

 plane were conducted. If ever a scientist's life 

 was embittered and shortened by gross news- 

 paper misrepresentation, it was Langley's. 



Our newspapers and magazines are right in 

 demanding what they call "human interest." It 

 is what science does for mankind that is inter- 

 esting. The best popularizers of science have 

 always been humanly interesting — particularly 

 the men who have had theories to propound 

 which were not readily accepted by their col- 

 leagues. 



The campaign waged by Darwin and his col- 

 leagues was a conspicuous example of sound 

 popularization. But our newspapers and mag- 

 azines ride human interest too hard. The one 

 thing that seemed to strike our reporters about 

 Einstein was the fact that he smoked a pipe 

 and that his hair was disheveled. At the mo- 

 ment, I do not recall more than tivo articles on 

 Einstein in the newspapers that pointed out 

 the tremendous practical significance of his 

 theory of relativity — the fact that chemists, 

 physicists, engineers and astronomers must 

 henceforth reckon with time, space and motion 

 in a new way. What Edison eats for breakfast 

 seems to be of more importance than what 

 Edison has actually achieved. So long as our 

 newspapers publish simply gossip and the news 

 of death and destruction, we have little to hope 

 from them. If anyone were to write a history 

 of the United States one hundred years hence, 

 with no other information before him than that 

 contained in current newspapers, he would 

 inevitably draw the conclusion that Americans 

 of our day led scandalous private lives and 



