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Publicity and the PhysicistRobert D. Potter Citation: Review of Scientific Instruments 4, 261 (1933); doi: 10.1063/1.1749114 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1749114 View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/rsi/4/5?ver=pdfcov Published by the AIP Publishing Articles you may be interested in Physicists tackle public issues Phys. Today 34, 9 (1981); 10.1063/1.2914594 A public physicist Phys. Teach. 18, 616 (1980); 10.1119/1.2340633 Public policy careers for physicists AIP Conf. Proc. 39, 213 (1978); 10.1063/1.31098 Physicists and Public Policy Phys. Today 20, 128 (1967); 10.1063/1.3034053 The Physicist and the Public Rev. Sci. Instrum. 15, 165 (1944); 10.1063/1.1770261
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MAY, 1933 R. S. 1. VOLUME 4
PHYSICS FORUM
Publicity and Physics
T HE word "publicity" has an ugly sound, having been associated with propaganda
of doubtful public benefit. The expressions: "publicizing," "public relations" and even "education" have sometimes been set in its place. The word shall be used here, however, because it is the original word describing the idea, and it is the idea-not the word--that needs to be talked about. The constructive idea of publicity is that only those human activities which have broad human interest will receive the recognition and support of the human race. Whatever else physics is, it is a human activity, and has no value except as such.
To discuss the value of physics to the human race is well beyond the scope of this editorial. It has a subjective value to the scholar of physics and an objective value in the life and work of the world. Most professional physicists are sensible of both values and they desire first, greater opportunities for their science to give value and, second, to share the feeling of value with others. They want, in other words, to make more people
know about and take an interest in physics, and more people, institutions, and industries to apply the lessons and principles of physics.
Incidentally, they quite properly want more financial support for the extension of research facilities for the simple reason that physics is founded on research.
Thus, physicists do want publicity for physics and they want its human relationship emphasized. Only so may they carve out their niche in the public consciousness, and only by virtue of such consciousness are physicists given jobs, laboratories, apparatus and funds.
The Institute of Physics is attempting in some measure to carry out the constructive idea of publicity on behalf of physics. It will try to avoid the undesirable individual circumstances that frequently arise. It has already succeeded in attracting financial support from public institutions. For the further understanding of the present state of publicity and physics, a newspaper writer who is also a physicist has kindly contributed the following editorial. H. A. B.
Publicity and the Physicist
PUBLICITY in its relationship to the physicist the science. Terminology, in some instances, has is a single phase of the more general subject reached a stage where physicists themselves are
-publicity and science. The topic is especially unable to agree on the proper meanings. With important to the science of physics at the present the growth of the new quantum theory and the time. Dr. Karl T. Compton, in these pages in the disappearance of mechanistic models like the February issue, and the writer of the preceding Bohr atom, the science is becoming increasingly editorial have shown that publicity can influence difficult to report in the press. Add to this the the growth of physics in this country and aid in remembrance of past mistakes in science-reperpetuating the institutions and activities of porting and the difficulty of the project becomes physics as self-sustaining entities. clear.
Publicizing physics is no simple task. New Whether publicity is welcomed, tolerated or discoveries continually add to the complexity of condemned by the individual physicist it IS
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certainly something that cannot be ignored today. Newspapers have learned that science stories have reader interest and now assign reporters to cover scientific meetings. The physicist who once had to think only of the statements he made to colleagues in precise technical phrases with the aid of mathematics, is now likely to wake up the next morning and find his address or paper front-page material. The technical phrases have been translated into the layman's language and the mathematics dropped because of newspaper mechanical necessities.
Errors have occurred in the past and still occasionally occur in this process of newspaper "evolution," but it is an encouraging sign that mistakes are less frequent today than five years ago. The still-existent troubles between the press and science-with the physicist as the immediate example-are not all the fault of the press. Physicists, with few exceptions, can do much more than they have in the past to prevent the occurrence of the triumverate of past errors: misquotation, misinterpretation and misplaced emphasis.
Cooperation can overcome these three for, although the editors of newspapers realize the value of science news, the difficult task of obtaining and writing it is in the hands of reporters. They come by command rather than desire. They must get a story. Whether it comes from the physicists or from the reporters' imagination wiIl depend on the cooperation they receive. Just how the story will turn out depends on the amount of spoon-feeding that is administered to, and digested by, the reporter.
Consider the error of misquotation. A reporter at a physical society can do little more than sit by and jot down fragmentary notes, or, at the most, a few sentences. A few rare individuals may have a knowledge of shorthand but the great majority use their own particular form of abbreviated longhand. Misquotation can be reduced by the speaker if an extra copy of the address or paper is at hand for perusal by the reporters so that quotations may be copied directly from it. This may not be exactly feasible for mathematical papers (one thinks of quantum mechanics) but here a short condensed abstract of the meaning of the paper will be helpful. Such a popular abstract will help the reporter by
supplying the necessary amount of background on the topic which he does not have, and cannot look up in the few hours between the address and the newspaper deadline.
Consider the errors of misinterpretation. These can be avoided in two ways. One is to talk for a few minutes with the reporters, emphasizing the meaning of the paper or address. The other, equally important, is to teIl the reporters what the paper does not mean, for, in the short space of time available the reporter must cut through a mass of unusable detail and jump to the right conclusions. If he jumps wrong the fault, in part, lies with the physicists. Without this type of cooperation from the physicists, tentative statements made in the actual paper are bound to be printed occasionally as dogmatic assertions in the press, where they may bring undesirable professional ridicule to the person quoted.
There is a very good reason for such alteration of statement, by reporters. Newspaper readers like positive statements and reporters aim to please these readers. If experiments on radioactivity indicate that the earth may be 100,000,000 years old with an error of five percent, or five miIlion years, the newspapers will almost certainly report it as "Earth Is 100,000,000 Old." The five million either way is important to physicists as scientists but matters little to the reading public.
If the error in this experiment seems, to the speaker, important, his personal press conferenc~ after the address is the place to emphasize this. At such an informal talk too, it is possible to point the necessity of using occasional "may be's" instead of the more positive "is."
Last of the troubles between the press and physics is that of misplaced emphasis. A minor point in an address (often without real scientific import) wiIl be prominently mentioned in the headline or in the leading paragraphs.
The cure for this is the same as that for misinterpretation,-a short talk with the reporters. This will correct emphasis in the story itself but at the present time it can cure headline errors only indirectly. This is because the writing of headlines is in the hand of the copyreader who did not write the story and must follow certain newspaper rules to make a headline interesting and catching to the eye. A dull head turns the
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reader away from the story. An interesting head provokes enough interest to bring the reader to a full stop and make him read the story. So, in this matter of misplaced emphasis in headlines a charitable attitude on the part of the physicist seems, best at the present time. The day when a science editor of a paper writes all his own headlines has not yet arrived.
Possible misplacement of emphasis in the story itself should also be regarded leniently by physicists. Before criticizing too greatly, physicists should realize that newspaper reports of physics are not written particularly for their edification. A report on cosmic rays may seem incorrect to physicists but by scientists in other fields it may be read with keen interest. The inexactness accompanying shades of meaning in physical terms may be noticed by physicists but not by biologists, chemists or psychologists. In the same fashion a story on vitamines may read perfectly well to physicists but be criticized by biologists.
This lenient attitude toward newspaper science reports is especially important because the man on the streets, who supports the press, finds interesting facts in even the most elementary and antiquated topics of science. The mass-spectrograph of Dr. Kenneth T. Bainbridge, at the Bartol Research Foundation, is not important to science because its weight is two tons. Yet the newspaper reader will be keenly interested because his paper reports "scientists can weigh atoms on two-ton scale." The whole question here of isotopes and atomic weights (so important to chemists and physicists) is difficult to tell to the newspaper reader. If the emphasis is placed on the insignificant detail of the weight of the apparatus it is only because of this fact.
Leniency is desirable on one other matter. Occasionally a newspaper story on science will either read disjointedly or end with abruptness. This is not the fault of the reporter. It comes because the paper has just a certain amount of space for that story. That space cannot be
determined until the paper is made up, about forty-five minutes before it is on the streets. If the story is too long it must be "killed" somewhere. If all the important facts are at the beginning the last few paragraphs disappear. Or it may be cut in the middle. The make-up editor does this at the last minute. He cannot waste time being too careful about the smoothness of reading.
Physicists should realize that the newspaper must tell the story to a lay audience. If the reader has ever tried this he may recall that certain minor phases were given unduly great significance and relatively more important (but abstract) points mentioned casually, if at all.
To a lay audience experiments on superconductivity possess their greatest interest in the fact that science is able to cool gases and metals hundreds of degrees below zero. The means of doing this-long known to physicists-is more important to the laymen than the problems of crystal structure or magnetic permeability involved. If the newspapers concentrate on the "coldness" of such experiments rather than on the major scientific questions it is only because of their readers.
A consideration of these few points can do much to close the long-existent gap between the press and physics. The feud in part was caused by some of the reasons set forth here. The significant point is that the press has learned the value of science news. Their cooperation is evident. Physicists should now meet them halfway. In the New York area and in \Vashington it can be said that several of the troubles mentioned have been overcome by the American Institute of Physics and similiar organizations. The suggestions herein contained are for the individual physicists removed from such regions. Closer cooperation is certainly necessary and each physicist, individually, can advance physics by adopting a cooperative, tolerant attitude toward the press.
ROBERT D. POTTER
The "Positive Electron"
ON the second of August, 1932, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasa
dena, C. D. Anderson was using an expansion-
chamber in a long research on cosmic rays. Similar in principle and in its mode of operation to the hundreds of others built since C. T. R.
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