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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
• The wonders and methods of science routinely presented on
news and talk programmes. There's real human drama in the
process of discovery.
• A series called 'Solved Mysteries', in which tremulous speculations
have rational resolutions, including puzzling cases in
forensic medicine and epidemiology.
• 'Ring My Bells Again' - a series in which we relive the media
and the public falling hook, line and sinker for a coordinated
government lie. The first two episodes might be the Bay of
Tonkin 'incident' and the systematic irradiation of unsuspecting
and unprotected American civilians and military personnel in
the alleged requirements of 'national defence' following 1945.
• A separate series on fundamental misunderstandings and mistakes
made by famous scientists, national leaders and religious
figures.
• Regular exposes of pernicious pseudoscience, and audienceparticipation
'how-to' programmes: how to bend spoons, read
minds, appear to foretell the future, perform psychic surgery,
do cold reads, and press the TV viewers' personal buttons.
How we're bamboozled: learn by doing.
• A state-of-the-art computer graphics facility to prepare in advance
scientific visuals for a wide range of news contingencies.
• A set of inexpensive televised debates, each perhaps an hour
long, with a computer graphics budget for each side provided
by the producers, rigorous standards of evidence required by
the moderator, and the widest range of topics broached. They
could address issues where the scientific evidence is overwhelming,
as on the matter of the shape of the Earth; controversial
matters where the answer is less clear, such as the
survival of one's personality after death, or abortion, or animal
rights, or genetic engineering; or any of the presumptive
pseudosciences mentioned in this book.
There is a pressing national need for more public knowledge of
science. Television cannot provide it all by itself. But if we want to
make short-term improvements in the understanding of science,
television is the place to start.
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