GIGO

May you live in interesting times.

It is said that this is an ancient Chinese curse. Over the last week, I must have heard at least a dozen people paraphrase it, remarking on the interesting times that we're living in and wondering why they were being so "blessed".

The phrase is common amongst researchers at the various DSIR establishments. Despite all the public cheerfulness concerning their restructuring, there's a great deal of worry out there.

It is equally common amongst journalists, nervously eyeing the diminishing number of their colleagues in employment.

Things may well become less interesting for the rest of us -- in the common sense of the word -- if more journalists in newspaper and radio lose their jobs. With fewer people to cover the ground, we have even less chance of seeing local science stories in the newspaper or hearing them on the radio.

At a recent media day I attended, the journalists there were unanimous in saying that the science round is one of the first to be dropped in favour of continuing coverage of the courts, politics and education.

The one science-related area which stands a chance is that of health, partly because it's a controversial area these days and partly because editors can relate to health stories. It's something they know about, unlike genetic engineering, synchrotrons or knot theory.

The classic approach to interesting an editor in a science story is to say it's about a cure for baldness, piles or impotence, on the assumption that the average editor will be suffering from one, if not all three.^*

You've got far more chance of getting people interested in science's cousin, technology, especially with the "Boy's Own Popular Mechanics Gee Whiz" approach exemplified by things like Beyond 2000. Beyond 2000 frustrates me because it served to push our own excellent science series Fast Forward off the air. It is also particularly weak when examining science itself, as opposed to the latest gadget.

I remember watching with horror a report on an astronomer who reckoned magnetic interactions between Saturn and the Earth determined a person's occupation at the moment of birth. Even the most minimal of checking would have shown the statistical work on which the claims were based had been discredited some years ago.

Not surprisingly, the report noted that the astronomer had not had any support from his scientific colleagues for his views. It went on to call him a new Newton, Galileo or Einstein, crying in the wilderness.

With reports like that going to air, it's hardly surprising that scientists can be reluctant to talk to journalists. It's a pity -- they've got so many interesting things to talk about... ^*Not true in the case of the NZSM editor, fortunately.