Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Significance Junkies
or on those dreary Sunday morning programmes in which middleaged
white people sit around agreeing with each other? When is
the last time you heard an intelligent comment on science by a
President of the United States? Why in all America is there no TV
drama that has as its hero someone devoted to figuring out how
the Universe works? When a highly publicized murder trial has
everyone casually mentioning DNA testing, where are the primetime
network specials devoted to nucleic acids and heredity? I
can't even recall seeing an accurate and comprehensible description
on television of how television works.
By far the most effective means of raising interest in science is
television. But this enormously powerful medium is doing close to
nothing to convey the joys and methods of science, while its 'mad
scientist' engine continues to huff and puff away.
In American polls in the early 1990s, two-thirds of all adults had
no idea what the 'information superhighway' was; 42 per cent
didn't know where Japan is; and 38 per cent were ignorant of the
term 'holocaust'. But the proportion was in the high 90s who had
heard of the Menendez, Bobbit and O.J. Simpson criminal cases;
99 per cent had heard that the singer Michael Jackson had
allegedly sexually molested a boy. The United States may be the
best-entertained nation on Earth, but a steep price is being paid.
Surveys in Canada and the United States in the same period
show that television viewers wish there were more science programming.
In North America, often there's a good science
programme in the 'Nova' series of the Public Broadcasting
System, and occasionally on the Discovery or Learning Channels,
or the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Bill Nye's 'The Science
Guy' programmes for young children on PBS are fast-paced,
feature arresting graphics, range over many realms of science, and
sometimes even illuminate the process of discovery. But the depth
of public interest in science engrossingly and accurately presented
- to say nothing of the immense good that would result from
better public understanding of science - is not yet reflected in
network programming.
How could we put more science on television? Here are some
possibilities:
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