When Thomas Hager, author of The Alchemy of Air, visited N.C. State this week to speak at convocation, he said he was impressed by the attention the book received not only from students majoring in STEM fields, but from those in majors unrelated to science as well.
The Alchemy of Air is a biography of the Haber-Bosch process, which turned “air into bread” using the chemical reaction of nitrogen fixation and saved billions of lives by allowing humans to produce more food and sustain more life than ever before. At the same time, however, the chemical reactions that produced the fertilizer that gave rise to a food revolution were used to produce gunpowder and other explosives, killing millions in global conflict.
As a scientific journalist, Hager is part of a relatively small group of journalists who are trained in science and can effectively communicate advances in the field to the public.
In a world where any news, good or bad, is a few clicks away, Hager said it has become very difficult for scientific journalists to compete with less-in-depth global news that provides instant gratification.
“It makes it difficult to communicate science effectively,” Hager said. “I started out with the crusading way that if you used science but were trained as a journalist, you could turn that around.”
But today, much of what used to be the responsibility of scientific journalists has been taken over by 24-hour cable news.
“Those programs and others like NPR are great for attracting interest, but depth is the real problem there,” Hager said.
In the past, Hager said, scientists could find work as journalists at many newspapers, but since the newspaper market has been struggling to keep up with the internet, it no longer has the budget for these journalists.
“Science requires time if you want to do it right, it doesn’t lend itself to headlines,” Hager said. “You can’t make it compelling to people in a sound byte or a short interview.”
Looking ahead at scientific journalism, Hager said he doesn’t believe in predicting the future.
“Maybe there’ll be a renaissance in the field of people doing good work,” Hager said. “If present trends continue that won’t happen, people will not look for it because they aren’t interested.”
Hager said the solution to science illiteracy, while a complicated problem, can be tackled by improving the way people are exposed to science at a young age. According to Hager, improving science literacy will cause an expansion in the market of science journalism.
“People have to be educated on how interesting science is and how it affects their lives,” Hager said. “If people are educated that way, by the time they’ll be out of college they’ll read more long-form science. Right now the market for science writing is relatively small. Most people don’t want to read about it.”
Hager said that although undergraduate research is an effective way for students to engage in real science, the problem is that almost all students who conduct scientific research are students studying science.
“Those aren’t the people who need to get interested in science, they’re already interested in science,” Hager said. “Part of what I’ve been evangelizing during this trip is that if people are introduced to scientific ways of thinking and are given a basic grounding of what science really is and what it does, not just guys who are naturally drawn to science. It’s everybody else who are not interested in science,” Hager said.
