Sexed-up science

As if to emulate the magnificent monarch emerging from its chrysalis of pale anonymity, science is doing its best to become "sexy".

It sometimes seems that its star, which once blazed a brilliant path across the public imagination, has fizzled out; and that the golden age of science wherein the technical and engineering competence of men and women caught up with and sometimes exceeded the dreams of generations that had gone before - the discovery of DNA, the arrival of man on the moon, the advent of television, the rise and rise of the computer - has been in hibernation.

This is more than likely a function of the status of science in the fickle hierarchies of popular culture than objective fact, but as in politics, so in science and much else, perception is akin to reality.

To those for whom a rational, scientific understanding of the physical and living worlds we inhabit is a necessary corollary of civilised and progressive society, the drive to make science more accessible, to make it clear, and allow it to recapture the human imagination, is entirely understandable.

It is also laudable.

But care needs to be taken that in "popularising science" - which, incidentally is one of the valuable and timely Masters degree course streams offered by the Centre for Science Communication at the University of Otago - its long-term credibility is not prejudiced.

Popularising does not, nor must not mean dumbing down, nor wantonly exaggerating, nor being seduced into the sound-bite mentality most lately punctuated by wittering tweets in an age of Twitter.

In alliance with the old maxim "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous", the thrust to bend science to popular norms and expectations can produce disheartening and counterproductive results.

Nothing quite so clearly demonstrates the need for science education as "Climate Change", one of the great conundrums of the times, particularly as it relates to the impact of human activity upon it.

And in this, it has to be said, some scientists, either through impoverished understanding of modern communications, through vanity, inflated egos or time-honoured arrogance, have not covered their various disciplines in glory.

Indeed, it might be argued that the popularisation of "Climate Change" provides an excellent case study for inclusion in a "how not to" manual.

Some months back, news broke of the computer hacking of emails belonging to scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom.

This affair, dubbed "Climategate" revealed how one or two of the scientists appeared to be conspiring to exclude scientific opinions with which they did not agree - or which were at variance with accepted opinion on aspects of climate change - from being considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Rightly, it caused a furore, played into the hands of those who believe man-made climate change is a global conspiracy, and undermined the popular perception of the science by a factor exponentially greater than would have been the case had the dissenting research been included in the first place.

Then last week, "Glaciergate" broke when United Nations climate researchers admitted they had grossly exaggerated, and included in a supposedly peer-reviewed report, the speed at which the Himalayas' glaciers would disappear as a result of climate change.

The offending statements in the report, emanating from a study by the environmental lobby group WWF, were based on a solitary remark about the declining state of Himalayan glaciers by an Indian scientist.

The fact that the study was produced by a lobby group should have given the report-writing scientists pause in the first place.

There is solid evidence that Himalayan glaciers could be imperilled by climate change, just not on anything like the time-scale claimed.

But again, for whatever reason - hubris, human fallibility, political pressure? - the haste of the authors to include shonky "evidence" conforming to expected or desired outcomes, undermines the authority of the entire enterprise.

It may have been more shocking or "sexy" to suggest the glaciers might melt within 50 years, rather than several hundred, given certain climate-change scenarios, but it is not good science.

For whatever else people might wish it to be, science is seldom sexy; rather it is sober, exacting, demanding, exhaustive, often unrewarding and frequently dull.

And in an age that increasingly venerates the ephemeral, the quixotic, the bizarre and the unashamedly populist, its aloof, grounded integrity is needed more than ever.