t" was supposed to do. Because of this confusion, the role was interpreted in different ways. Some used the time to respond to the scientific talks they had just heard, and offer a journalist's perspective on the subject matter or on the language and communication skills of the scientists. Others ignored the science presented in the sessions, and instead gave talks about how journalists work, how science media is changing, or how we might package our science into "stories" to better reach the public.
For example, at the end of a session on "Understanding the Distribution of Life in the Universe," Michael Lemonick of Time Magazine said there has been a "dumbing down" of science. Magazines are competing for the eyeballs of a public with an ever-decreasing attention span, and as a result the average length of a Time science story has become much shorter over the last decade.
|Cassini's powerful radar eyes have uncovered a geologic goldmine in a region called Xanadu on Saturn's moon Titan. The geologic features include river channels, mountains and hills, a crater and possible lakes.
In explaining which scientific developments will, or will not, become a story, Lemonick stressed that they must seem new. The Mars Exploration Rovers, he said, will never again be a big story in Time, no matter what new wonders they discover, because the story has already been done. This elicited groans from the audience. His presentation made me realize there are huge filters on what news gets out to the public, and made me appreciate that, fortunately, we do science for purposes other than generating stories in Time Magazine.
Lemonick's presentation contrasted with that of Leonard David, a reporter for the web-based Space.com, who said he loves to report on the details of scientific progress. I could see how this would contribute to the troubles of print magazines, as those seeking the deeper story will increasingly look to the web for science news. Online publications (including Astrobiology Magazine) are slowly sucking the eyeballs away from print journals.
Respondent Glennda Chui, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, said newspapers also are hurting because they must compete with the web, where people get their news for free. So newspapers are decreasing their reporting staffs, and it is now more likely that science will be reported by a general reporter, not a science writer. General reporters, she said, are often terrified when they go to scientific meetings. They don't know what we're talking about, or what is important in science.
During these sessions, some of the journalists complained that the science talks were too jargon-laden. Meanwhile, many scientists didn't know if we were supposed to be preparing our talks for other scientists, as we might do at a "normal" workshop, or for the many journalists, students and educators in attendance. The happy outcome was that most speakers split the difference, giving talks that were both rich in scientific content and relatively easy to understand.
|David Grinspoon, curator of astrobiology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and author of the book, “Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life.”
My talk was on the afternoon of the second day, in a session about the diversity of solar system planets. I had been asked to speak on "The Evolution of Mars, Venus, and Titan: Lessons for the Limits of Habitability". Since most of the names on the speaker list were scientists from various fields of astrobiology, I had prepared the kind of talk I give at scientific meetings. But after the first day, I stayed up late that night to re-write my talk: deleting slides, removing details, and cutting out technical terms that might be considered jargon.
As it turned out, I ran out of time and had to skip the "Titan" part of my talk, largely because I explained things in a more general way than I would for an audience of scientists. Cutting the jargon meant I had to drastically reduce the content.
This experience actually gave me an increased appreciation of the much-maligned "jargon". Specia