I published a feature in the Sydney Morning Herald today about a comic strip that appeared in newspapers all over the world for about 20 years from 1961. It was called Frontiers of Science and although it was a comic, it was seriously good science journalism. It’s currently being scanned up and displayed on the University of Sydney’s library website.
5 days a week, for over 900 weeks, the comic explained important and complex scientific ideas to an enormous audience. Peter Harowell, one of the people I spoke to about the comic, said that it represented a “high point” for science communication in the mainstream press. Why don’t we see this kind of serious (but entertaining) science communication today?
One episode gives a wonderful explanation of Special Relativity while others explain angular momentum, propositional logic and the workings of electron microscopes. There are also countless episodes which are quite funny by today’s standards. Some episodes propose quite unusual theories about the origins of life, the future of computer technology and the destiny of the human race.
Its a shame that you don’t see discussions of such abstract or esoteric topics in the mainstream press today – that we don’t see more “succour for nerds”. I’m not sure what the cause is. Is it because the public doesn’t have the same fascination with pure science? Or is it that the people hired by the mainstream papers don’t have the skills to present it?
I bet history would have something to say about this! Certainly the pop-history I’ve picked up from TV suggests public imagination just isn’t as fascinated by science as it used to be. We seemingly wouldn’t have the motivation to fund something like the moon landing in this day and age (also, lack of Cold War space race is a downer). And with no moon landing-eque events, we are trapped in a cycle of uninspired, world-weary realism. Playing on our ubiquitous iPhones and tiny computers and whatnot.
I think the large hadron collider was maybe a brief moment where broad public interest in pure science was rekindled? You know, until it died…
PS Nice article!
Yeah, I think that has something to do with it but I’m not sure that explains it completely. There’s a couple of other possibilities…
One issue is the fact that cutting edge physics today is just more complicated than in was 40 years ago. It’s harder to explain what we understand today about, say, the model of an atom than it was back then.
Also, I think maybe people are more skeptical about the claims of science. People had hopes that science would solve all our problems quite quickly (as you can see in the comic) but not only did it not do so, some uses of technology have created new problems.
But yes. Without the moon missions, I think it’s a bit harder to capture the public’s imagination.
Time to walk on Mars.
Maybe. Except for that moon missions were a massive waste of money and a Mars mission would be even more so. I reckon the papers should just print something like Frontiers again and since the science so cool, people will become interested.