Cocktail Party Physics

a lab of their own

Well after Groundhog Day, the cocktail party's founder, long in absentia, emerges from under her nice shady rock, rubs her eyes and blinks in the bright sunshine, and demands a mint julep for her trouble. Okay, a mojito or pisco sour will do just as well. I just need a bracing pick-me-up after being deluged for weeks on end, with no time for blogging (although I have been hoisting the bloggy banner, still, over at Twisted Physics). My fellow bloggers have been equally under the gun; if it weren't for the intrepid Lee, we might have gone dark completely the last few months!

Sure, the new job is uber-demanding, but the Spousal Unit and I decided things weren't insane enough with his-and-hers book-writin', his ongoing physics research, and my matchmaking between Hollywood and science, and thereby embarked on a home-buying adventure. In the current economic climate, such a path is fraught with anxiety-inducing peril. Yet we have emerged victorious and are moving into our new townhouse in Echo Park this Friday. And I have a new assistant starting on Monday to relieve some of the administrative pressures of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. (Jen-Luc Piquant has been AWOL shooting her own cyber-movie but she assures me she'll be moving into post-production next week, so everyone will be back on board!)

There are umpteen topics for future blog posts in the works; my fodder file runneth over. But I had to re-emerge from my unplanned blogospheric exile to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day. For those not "in the know," Ada (as I prefer to think of her) was known in her day as "the enchantress of numbers," and helped inventor Charles Babbage refine his designs for his thinking machines -- precursors to our modern computers, way back in the 19th century.

Babbage was pretty eccentric -- a typical inventor -- and people tended to love or hate him. He was an ugly, toad-like man, according to contemporary accounts. Indeed, the poet Thomas Carlyle (one of the loathers) described him as "a cross between a frog and viper." Charles Darwin, however, was a fan. And so was young Ada Lovelace, who counted among the rare few to fully grasp the significance of Babbage's "thinking machines" while others were ridiculing the single-minded little man for his obsession.

Ada was a rare creature for her day; women just weren't encouraged to study math or the sciences; it was just too, too unfeminine, don't you know, and really dashed a girl's marriage prospects in the bargain. No sane man wanted a brainiac for a wife in Victorian England. But Ada had a few things going for her: first, she had a privileged position in society, being the daughter of the famed Romantic poet Lord Byron and a well-born mother.

However, she never actually knew her father; her mother's family saw to that. They didn't want the nefarious Byron wanton-ness rubbing off on the young girl. That's the second reason she had an advantage: to counter the perceived "wilder" aspects of her character inherited from the dissolute poet, young Ada was actually encouraged to study math and science. Those subjects were believed to have a tempering effect on "Romantic excesses."

Finally, she had a strong role model in Mary Somerville, the so-called "Queen of Science," her overcame her own family's objections to become a great populizer of scientific treatises by LaPlace ad Newton, for example. Somerville was one of the first women to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society (the other was Caroline Herschel, sister to famed astronomer William Herschel), and took young Ada under her wing.

For all her accomplishments, however, Somerville still had very traditional ideas. She encouraged Ada to work at sewing, not just sums, insisting that "a mathematician can do other things besides studying x's and y's." (True enough, but it's telling that Somerville didn't encourage Ada to, say, become a detective, or a ship's captain, or even a lowly actuary -- roles traditionally reserved for men.) Ada, in contrast, embraced her literary lineage and called herself a "poetical scientist," one who united reason with imagination. She dreamed of developing a "calculus of the nervous system", demonstrating mathematically "how the brain gives rise to thought, and nerves give rise to feelings." She fell short of that vsionary goal, but that's why she found Babbage's work so compelling.

In the end, alas, poor Ada did prove to have inherited some fraction of the Byron wildness. Benjamin Woolley's excellent biography, The Bride of Science, poignantly recounts the more tragic aspects of Ada's life, including ill-fated love affairs and near-elopement. By 1851, she'd figured out that her math skills could be useful in betting on horses, devising an elaborate gambling scheme that proved disastrous; she lost a great deal of money on those ponies. And she died in her thirties of ovarian cancer. She certainly deserves some measure of honor in the historical pantheon of women in math and science.

But Ada Lovelace Day isn't just about honoring Ada herself. The idea is also to honor other women scientists and mathematicians who bucked social pressures to follow their bliss. There are any number of good candidates to choose from -- hell, every woman physicist I know is a candidate, including co-blogger Diandra -- but upon reflection, I'd like to take this opportunity to honor Shirley Jackson, currently president of Rensselaer Institute of Technology in Troy, NY, right next to Albany. She has the distinction of being the first black woman to earn a PhD in physics from MIT, back in 1973 -- just one of a lifetime of "firsts." I wrote a profile of Jackson back in 2000 for Industrial Physicist magazine, and traveled up to RPI for an in-person interview. I've never forgotten it; Jackson was that extraordinary.

The daughter of a postal supervisor and a social worker, Jackson inherited her father's acumen in math, and both parents fostered her innate curiosity. She designed her own scientific experiments in the family's backyard as a child -- all of Nature was her laboratory. She conducted nutritional experiments on mice (her father built the cages for the little creatures) and kept honeybees under the family porch, adjusting their habitats, diets and exposure to light and logging in her observations in a journal. She has compared experimentation to "a good mystery novel, a tangible unfolding narrative of what [makes] Nature tick.... And best of all, I was at the controls... changing the plot and scenery according to the directions of my own interests."

Jackson proved to be a stellar student, one of only two black women admitted to MIT in 1964. If you just charted her rise by perusing her resume, she moved easily from success to success: a PhD in elementary particle physics, postdocs at Fermilab and SLAC, then a switch to condensed matter physics and a few years at Bell Labs studying the behavior of electrons on the surface of liquid helium films.

From there, she branched out into public service -- "I'd always been raised to believe that if one had talent and opportunity, one should not be striving strictly for oneself," she told me -- chairing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But she missed interacting with students, and accepted the presidency of RPI, where she has reigned with grace and aplomb for nearly a decade. (In fact, she just voluntarily took a 5% pay cut, donating the savings to a student scholarship fund to cope with the current nasty economic environment. AIG scumbags, take notice!)

However, "It hasn't always been a smooth road for her, and people don't often see that aspect," MIT physicist Milly Dresselhaus told me back in 2000. Dresselhaus was Jackson's mentor at MIT back in the 1960s; even as a professor, there were plenty of male students who refused to take physics from a woman. Dresselhaus persevered, and so did Jackson, despite social isolation -- nobody would be her study partner -- verbal abuse, and even a vague reference to a "shooting incident."

Jackson was understandably reluctant to dwell too much on the pain and injustices of the past in our interview, and I hated having to even ask such questions -- basically amounting to, "So, um, what's it like to be black, and a woman, at MIT in the 1960s?" (Answer: not a hell of a lot of fun!) In a fair and just world, this would simply not be relevant; but we do not live in a fair and just world. So I asked those questions -- awkward, embarrassed, stymied by white liberal guilt, and resenting the questions on her behalf -- and Jackson graciously answered, choosing her words carefully, gently setting the neophyte science writer straight on a few things about life as the ultimate "Other" in physics.

Honestly, I was impressed by her lack of bitterness. It had to have been lonely, not to mention discouraging. One of her professors actually advised her that "colored girls should learn a trade." Jackson didn't take that advice, but she did acquire some measure of perspective by volunteering (in her copious spare time -- not!) at Boston City Hospital's pediatrics unit, to better "understand what real trouble is." And she kept at her studies, because "If I give up, what have I done but allow the other guy to win?"

One of my favorite anecdotes was one she told to illustrate why it's important not to be too easily offended. Sometimes what seems like overt racism/sexism is simply poor social skills or awkward phrasing (we all suffer sometimes from foot-in-mouth syndrome). Case in point: she applied for a summer job at MIT in a physics lab as an undergraduate. She didn't have any specific lab experience, but the professor asked, "Well, can you cook?" When she said yes, he told her she was hired. Jackson, confused, replied, "To do what?" It was not, as it happens, to whip up some tasty grits for his breakfast each morning; rather, the professor assumed that if she could cook, she had the practical skills necessary to learn her way easily around the lab.

I also liked Jackson's take on affirmative action; at the time, it had become synonymous with meeting racial quotes regardless of merit, and many women and minorities disliked being tagged as someone with an unfair advantage. Of course, the whole point of affirmative action was to promote a more level playing field. Jackson certainly benefited from affirmative action (although it did not make her journey any easier from a socio-political standapoint). She prefers to talk about "affirmative outreach," a phrase that preserves the original altruistic intent of the policy while removing the stigma of favored treatment.

Some kind of policy was needed; women in math and science (especially hard sciences like physics) have historically been incredibly rare, and even 50 years ago, their percentages were in the low single digits. The numbers aren't as dire as they used to be. Back in 1975, for instance, lss than 8 percent of bachelor's degrees in physics went to women. By 2002, that number had risen to 22%. And the number of physics PhDs earned by women has climbed from less than 4% in 1975 to around 15% in 2002. (There are probably more current statistics available from the American Institute of Physics, which regularly tracks these demographics.)

The number of women physicists who are also black? You can probably count them on your fingers and toes. If they are more numerous today, it's because Shirley Jackson and other courageous women like her blazed a trail and gave young girls the role models they needed to believe they could succeed. Jackson always quotes her father to her students: "Aim for the stars so that you can reach the treetops." That is, if you don't aim high, you don't go very far. Aim high, my sisters. Be strong.

by invitation only

I thought I'd start out the new year with a little old news and and old, old rant. Just let me just get on my flameproof suit before I get going.  Please read carefully before you turn on the flamethrower. A little background, first. I recently decided to give up my ties to organized religion without completely eschewing some sort of spirituality (though that's not the current topic), and one of the reasons I finally got fed up was the rampant misogyny and exclusivity practiced by most organized religion. In short, I got tired of being told that because my 23rd chromosome pair happened to by XX and not XY and my genitalia internal rather than external, that I was somehow unfit for duty.

It's not just religion, obviously, that's misogynistic, but it's always been interesting to me that this is one of the characteristics that religion and science—often so antithetical to each other—share, and for so many of the same reasons. Of course, this is because both spring out of the culture around them and are carried out and structured by the people in that culture who have the power to make the structure. Need I say that for thousands of this years, this has been, almost exclusively, men? So if men decide women are too inferior in whatever way to have a personal relationship with God either through study of the texts or through participating in the mysteries (exemplified by Milton's "He for God only, she for God in him.") little wonder scientists should (even unconsciously) think the same way about what many see as a new, improved replacement system.

The reasoning, though, is strikingly similar and you'd think male scientists would pay more attention to that. Of course, it's to their advantage not to. It's convenient for them to claim that women's brains are not made for math (an old saw rapidly being dulled) or that we don't do science the way it "should be done," i.e., the way men do it. Probably true, but not necessarily bad or wrong. Just different. I'm not talking about the scientific method here, but about the culture of science and the way men and women approach problem-solving. This is a factor not just in the scientific establishment, but in medicine and business as well.

And of course, there are social and cultural pressures on women now that men don't have to deal with, as the Gender Equity report by the American Physical Society (pdf) I recently helped edit shows quite clearly. This is a factor just as often conveniently forgotten in the interpretations of key scriptures that seem to ban women from positions of authority in the church, while just as conveniently ignoring the scriptures that show them in those positions.

There are also some striking similarities between the two areas in their jealous guarding of knowledge. In both cases, men are are frequently the gatekeepers of the more esoteric aspects of knowledge (see, physicists), intentionally or unintentionally. Personally, I think this is partly because guys like secret societies and all that. They're forever making exclusionary clubs, from the Royal Society to the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks. But religion and science are public endeavors, affecting all of us. (Just look at the Evangelical Right's influence on elections in the U.S., if you don't believe me.) Faith that asks no questions is merely blind, stupid obedience; science that allows no free sharing of knowledge is not just bad science, but dangerously blind itself. In both cases the idea that "it's too complicated for you to understand" is used to keep the general public from asking uncomfortable questions: "Why is Junia, a woman, called an apostle?"  or, "What are we going to do with the waste generated by nuclear power?" Ultimately, both science and religion are closely bound up in the culture, politics, and social mores of the society around them and reflect those values. Claiming that either of them is neutral or value-free is delusional.

All this is by way of saying that Richard Dawkins' selection of writers for the new Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is damned odd, if not downright insulting. For one thing, there's nary a mere science writer among them; they're almost all scientists, even Rachel Carson, who started her career as a biologist. This is one example of the "father knows best" attitude so many scientists have toward the public: only scientists can truly communicate the beauty and wonder and complexity of science to the rest of you ninnies. This is far from the truth. It is, in fact, usually a hell of a lot easier to teach good writers about science than it is to teach most scientists to write well, particularly for the public. Most of them have a tendency to include too many advanced details that chase people away, rather than broad, interesting ideas that draw them in. My fellow Cocktail Party Physics blogger Jen waxes eloquent about this frequently in our conversations and here on the blog. The advanced details are important, but you don't start out with those for people with no or little background in the subject, and getting the concepts if you're not a scientist is far more important than understanding the technical details right away. Scientists often have a bad case of "can't see the forest for the trees" when it comes to writing for the public, particularly in their own subject.

And, of course, there are too few women, three, to be precise: biologist Rachel Carson, Helena Cronin, a philosopher who works in sex selection (and who happens to think there are more smart men than smart women—to be fair, she also thinks there are more dumb men than dumb women); and Barbara Gamow, not a scientist, but wife of physicist George Gamow, who is included because of the poem she wrote in response to one of George's lectures. How cute. I say this not to denigrate Barbara Gamow, who was, like many women married to male scientists, extremely supportive of her husband's work and no doubt a sounding board for it, but to illustrate the attitude prevalent about women's role in science (which oddly reflects their view of women's place in art, too): strictly supportive; observer not participator; muse not partner.

Rachel Carson got in, I suspect, because she's hard to ignore; she was so prolific (and a fellow alumna of my alma mater!) and so pivotal in the early days of the ecology movement. But where's biologist Lynn Margulies, who, with James Lovelock, developed the Gaia theory? She's a wonderful writer. Where is primatologist Dian Fossey? Hello? Gorillas in the Mist anyone? Child psychologist Anna Freud? Primatologist/ethologist/anthropologist Jane Goodall, who, like Fossey, wrote extensively for the public? For that matter, where's Margaret Mead? I see physician Lewis Thomas on the list (one of my favorite writers, though he wrote as much about life as about science) but not doctors Perri Klass or Michelle Harrison. Where's oceanographer Sylvia Earle? Or forensic anthropologist Emily Craig? And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

And we haven't even gotten to the non-scientist, women science writers: Natalie Angier, Dava Sobel, Heather Pringle,or Mary Roach, to name a few, not to mention my eminent and articulate Cocktail Party Physics co-bloggers.

Hawkins' selection is pretty heavy on evolution (no surprise, given that he's an evolutionary biologist), genetics (again, no surprise), physics, neuroscience, and biological systems. There's not much chemistry, straight-up biology, medicine, and no ocean science or any of the so-called "soft" sciences like sociology or anthropology. If what he was aiming for was a balanced picture of the wonders of modern science, this book is hardly that, but it's not even a balanced picture of the best science writing. Like the hard sciences, it's very male-dominated (and white males at that). Enough with Peter Medawar already. He's not that brilliant. He's taking up space with his multiple selections that could easily have been given to a woman or two, scientist or not.

Dawkins could have done much for women scientists everywhere by recognizing their work in this volume. Instead, he just dragged out a lot of the old war horses: Eiseley, Watson & Crick, Gould, Thomas, Hoyle, Haldane, Snow. That's fine to a point in an anthology like this. One does need to include the classics and the big guns like Hawking and Einstein. But if you're going to include the likes of Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, Brian Greene, Lee Smolin and Kenneth Ford (Full disclosure: I used to work for him), all fine choices in their own right, then you need to include some contemporary women scientists or science writers too, dammit. If we want science to matter to everyone, we have to include everyone.

Why make a fuss over this? Because this is how women (and minorities) are systematically pushed out of history and out of the present consciousness, in exactly the same way we were pushed out of recognition of a place in the early church: simply by excluding us first from memory and then from the party itself. That's all it takes. Just ignore us. But don't expect us to like it. Or to keep quiet about it.

paradigm shift

If it's Saturday, it must be -- um, Palo Alto? Seriously, October has been so crazed that I had to think a moment when I woke up this morning to remember which city/time zone I was in. That's why blogging has been light to virtually non-existent: it's tough to be coherent and entertaining when you're barely hanging on to your own physical bearings. But this is the last travel I'm doing for the rest of the year, and I have TONS of fantastic fodder waiting to be spun into bloggy gold (or at least a cheap alloy with a shiny finish).

In the meantime, I'm at the annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers, having been invited by science writer extraordinaire KC Cole (now a professor at the University of Southern California) to participate in a panel discussion: "What's Science Got to Do With It? Thinking Outside the Lab." I also attended a morning session as an audience member: "Geeks, Freaks and Deadlines: Writing About Technology and the Humans Who Love It," which featured Wired's Adam Rogers and Annalee Newitz, who heads the phenomenal io9 blog. Both the short presentations and followup discussions in both panels was substantive and thought-provoking, and honestly, I'm still processing everything I heard. So this post is going to be a bit of a brain dump of random but related thoughts, which will hopefully one day coalesce into sharp, penetrating insight.

First, the morning panel. Tom Abate, a reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle who also writes a blog called "The Tech Chronicles," kicked things off with a frank assessment of what he calls the "media ecosystem," and what this means for science and tech writing. The traditional science writer is "an endangered species." The old model of a staff reporter assigned to the science beat who just had to worry about the writing is a thing of the past in today's multimedia empire. Now, he says, science writers must be more of a one-man band: learning Photo-Shop to create graphics and finesse photos to accompany those articles; researching online resources to hyperlink; finding supplementary audio/video material; writing a short blog post illuminating an aspect of the story that didn't make it into the final version; and so forth. The science writer of the future must be flexible, adaptable and multi-talented in many different media formats in order to stay competitive.

I particularly liked this statement: "We have to be the people who make sense of the world and put the new events into proper context." That's a big part of what's often missing in science stories in daily newspapers and wire services. There is neither time to develop that critical context, or space, in today's ultra-abbreviated formats, but it's difficult to genuinely appreciate the significance of scientific discoveries with no sense of what came before.

More importantly, with the rise of the Internet and the blogosphere in particular, anyone who wants one can have a voice. That's the beauty of democracy, but it does mean that there's an inevitable intermediate phase with lots of noise and various voices jockeying for position. This makes some people nervous, but eventually this dissonance subsides and the good stuff emerges from the muddle. I think Tom is correct that writers (or "voices," to be more generically multimedia) will be needed to help move this process along, by sifting through all the noise, picking out the nuggets, and shaping that raw material into a coherent, informative yet broadly appealing narrative.

It was fun not only meeting Annalee at long last -- I'm a huge io9 fan, and loved the anthology she edited, She's Such a Geek -- but also hearing about her personal journey as a microcosm of the evolution of technology writing. She started a Webzine just for fun, and one thing led to another until voila! She was a bona fide science writer and blogger. Most notably, she and Adam both pointed out that technology writing in, say, the early 1990s was a lot like traditional science writing: a focus on research, new applications, and the technical minutiae of bringing those high-tech products to market. Now, technology writing overlaps with lots of other different areas, so it can be a tough call for an editor to know where to place a story that has elements of business, technology, true crime, pop culture, or politics -- and sometimes all of those at once. Thank god for "Lifestyle" sections!

Annalee also, no doubt, set one questioner on the road to Cyber-crime when he asked how one might go about generating fake "unique" hits, rather than just hitting the page over and over again from the same IP address: "You want a 'bot farm," a.k.a., zombie computers, each with a different IP address that registers one click on a site per computer. Duly noted. Jen-Luc Piquant is on the case. Expect to see the cocktail party's traffic soar in coming months.

There are many reasons for the meteoric rise of the blogosphere, but a large part of its appeal stems from the fact that it's more of a two-way conversation, an interactive community, and provides a more efficient, easily disseminated feedback loop than ever before. And that in turn is changing how newspapers, magazines, TV and radio view their online content. Per Tom: "Interactive/online journalism is the future." It's challenging to figure out what resonates with readers -- unless you take the easy way out and resort to over-the-top rhetoric to provoke a response -- but the payoff can be enormous. Tom told of how he recently created an online interactive element tied to the recent $700 billion bailout bill passed by Congress, to put it in terms an everyday American could grasp: eg, how many homes in Florida could you buy with that? How many football fields? It was two guys spending an afternoon crunching some simple numbers, but the reader response was tremendous. (Annalee chimed in with a paean to the well-known traffic-generating phenomenon of Top Ten Lists -- an io9 staple, along with their regular "space porn" photos.)

Tom made the argument that in some ways, online journalism is actually more authoritative -- or at least more easily held accountable -- because you can link to original technical papers, reports and source material -- an online version of footnotes and references. The format is also useful for combating errors and inaccuracies in science stories. Once an error has been pointed out, it can be corrected immediately, and permanently. Tom particularly bemoaned some of his earlier print stories, in which errors were still showing up on archives 20 years later. Online, those corrections can be made in a few minutes. And while blogs tend to be highly opinionated, the way things are shaping up, the online media might just look a lot like a traditional newspaper in the end, with a mix of news and opinion, clearly labeled as such, with lively commentary ("letters to the editor").

He also threw out an intriguing scenario of flipping the current news model that focuses on the print version first, then replicating it online with extras. Instead, perhaps the news could be reported primarily online for the initial "vetting phase" by readers, and only after corrections had been made, would a filtered version finally appear in print. Personally, I think newspapers are still struggling with the whole online news concept, and are not yet taking full advantage of the hyperlinking capabilities in particular. Too often, the links are to prior articles within their own pages, when source material is what the savvy Internet reader craves. It's built-in accountability, if done right. And that should be a good thing.

As for the much-discussed business models for "new media," Adam said that obviously, the current ones are going to evolve into something else. Annalee concurred, but added that these might not be totally new models, just updated versions of the older ones. For example, io9 is affiliated with Gawker, and benefits from its parent site's deep pockets and huge advertising base. So it has paid staffers, and gets most of its revenue from advertising, much like the current TV system. (A Gawker model weakness, Tom pointed out, is its lack of classified ads. But I thought Craigs List and E-Bay pretty much have a lock on that sector these days.) Josh Marshall, who runs Talking Points Memo, has adopted a more non-profit, public radio approach: asking for donations from devoted readers. In fact, readers contributed his travel expenses to cover this year's Democrat and Republican National Conventions. I'll be interested to see how these models evolve in the next few years, particularly as paid staff bloggers become less of an exception, and more the norm.

RE: advice to aspiring science writers, Tom echoed my own sentiments perfectly when he pointed out that Annalee had essentially invented her current position by exposing the world to her work online while still in college through a Webzine called Bad Subjects, that started out on Gopher -- remember Gopher? -- and is still around today in a much more graphics and multimedia friendly format. (It only took 15 years to achieve her "overnight success.") Aspiring science writers: start a blog. Get your voice out there, start honing your craft, and if you're good, science editors will sit up and take notice. Or someone will.

You never know where these sorts of things will lead. It might seem counter-intuitive at first, but it's the 21st century equivalent of writing stories for free weekly newspapers for peanuts just to build up one's clips and resume. Heck, John Scalzi published his first science fiction novel online, and now he's got shiny prestigious awards and fantastic sales figures, as well as a hugely popular blog. I get this question a lot, and I always say the same thing: I've gotten more work because of the blog that I write for free, than by any other means. It's my writing lab, the place where I sift through the fodder to find the potential gems that may one day fit into an article or book. The fact that folks like to read it sometimes is a much-appreciated (and frankly humbling) bonus.

I think we're already moving past the denial phase of bloggy influence among the mainstream media, although there's still some resistance in certain quarters -- and a tendency to view bloggers as second-class citizens. This is another aspect of getting rid of pointless categorizations. "All blogging means is you're using blogging software," Annalee said, admonishing upcoming writers to "Get used to it -- you will be writing on the Web." Adam spoke on similar lines: "Don't be mislead by medium. Were talking about genres. It's about what we cover, not how we cover it. Your practices are what makes you a journalist, so don't be nervous (or apologetic!) about being 'just a blogger.'

"The hardening of the categories" is a common lament of KC Cole, who adopted it as her mantra for her very successful "Categorically Not!" lecture series/events, that bring together scientists, artists, writers, actors, dancers, and so forth together along a common theme. (The Spousal Unit participated in one with the theme "Mistakes," and talked about the different kinds of mistakes made in science.) That's why she wanted to have an NASW panel on the power of thinking outside the lab. Everyone on the panel -- Adam Frank, Paul Preuss, KC, and my good friend Diandra Leslie-Pelecky (The Physics of NASCAR) -- made excellent points, to which I cannot do justice because I was too busy participating to take copious notes. So I'll just focus on my own points to conclude, with the caveat that many of these were echoed, eloquently, by my fellow panelists.

I started off by re-phrasing Adam Rogers' question: "Just what is a science story these days, anyway?" The answer is that it can be so much more than traditional science writing, which -- while still necessary -- tends to "preach to the converted." At a time when all media is struggling and newspapers have killed off their science sections, how do we get science to the folks who don't read Discover, New Scientist, or Scientific American? The best strategy is to work it into existing sections: where's the science angle in the hot business story of the day? What ratings-smashing new TV series can be tied into the latest scientific research? What sorts of cultural and lifestyle issues might have a scientific component? The idea is to move away from the standard reportage of the latest arXiv papers and press releases to find science in the nooks and crannies of the world around us: what I call "found physics."

Freelance science writers in particular are always needing to find not just an unusual story, but a fresh compelling angle, told with a strong narrative. Take vacuum technology: it's an essential component of most scientific research, but taken on its own, it's awfully dry and boring. (Diandra disagrees, but she's in the minority.) Some possible ways to deal with a potentially soul-destroying story assignment on vacuum technology include placing it within the context of a broader story on really cool research to make it a bit more interesting. Alternatively, you could take an historical approach, talking about early traveling demonstrations using animals trapped a glass container as the air is slowly pumped out. Or you could answer a niggling question, like, how long could you survive in the vacuum of space, and what would happen to you if exposed too long?

[UPDATE: There's one important point I forgot to include last night, and that's some helpful tips for finding those unusual angles. During the Q&A, Adam Frank and I both suggested fostering and/or rediscovering a childlike sense of wonder. "Take a walk in the woods," he suggested, and start looking for the science that will be all around you. You can do the same thing for any environment in which you happen to find yourself: Disneyland (amusement park physics is all the rage), a sporting event, a live taping for a TV show, etc. Science is everywhere; we've just gotten so used to its pervasiveness, that we tend to take it for granted. (To paraphrase my favorite exchange from Eric Roston's recent appearance on the Colbert Report plugging his new book, The Carbon Age: "It's ubiquitous." "No, it's EVERYWHERE!")

For instance, I shared an anecdote from early in my science writing career, the epiphany when I realized I was finally, officially, a science geek. I was riding a shuttle bus back to my hotel from a physics conference where I'd listened to a press conference on the physics of granular media. We passed a construction site where a huge machine was dumping sand into a gigantic pile. As I watched, the sand pile peaked and "avalanched," as the sand redistributed into a shorter pile with a broader base and started building up to a peak again. I pointed and exclaimed to my seatmate: "Look! Self-organized criticality!" And I had my real-world tie-in for a discussion of the dynamics of granular media.

Diandra supplemented those suggestions by emphasizing the need to listen to your target audience and hone in on what they really want to know -- in the case of NASCAR, it's "Why isn't my favorite driver winning?" Physics has the answer, and Diandra was happy to provide it on her blog and in her book. NASCAR fans are passionately devoted to their sport, and their drivers -- really it's almost a religion -- and that means they will slog throgh even science-y treatises on aspects of aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science and the like to find an answer to that burning question. Hard-core sci-fi fans show the same devotion and enthusiasm.

Follow the passion, and you'll find a powerful medium for your message -- and that includes the stuff you're passionate about. One of the reasons The Physics of the Buffyverse turned out so well (at least I was happy with it) is because I am genuine fan of the show, and that passion and enthusiasm informed my writing. Diandra wasn't a big NASCAR fan when she started out, but she wanted to know the answer to a burning question -- why did one race car crash for no apparent reason? -- and forged into the brave new world of stock car racing to find out. She broadened her horizons, sought out new experiences, and learned as much about herself as she did about NASCAR in the process. Go forth, and do likewise. Living in a science bubble is not, in the long run, going to serve you well as a science writer in the new multimedia online world.]

It's late and I'm running out of steam, so I'll skip over the remaining salient specifics and cut to the chase. Putting physics (and science more broadly) back into the broader culture -- instead of fostering the prevailing notion that it is somehow scary and separate -- is the raison d'etre of this blog. I believe it's an important facet of effective scientific outreach, but more pragmatically, it can help make science writers more competitive in a constricting market -- by opening up new markets, hopefully in more mainstream media outlets. We need less hardening of the categories.

There has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth in recent years bemoaning the "death of science writing," but it's really just the demise of an old paradigm that no longer fits the world we live in. I'm as saddened by the killing of science sections in newspapers as any other science writer, but at some point the mourning's gotta end, and we have to move on. The world is changing, and our industry is changing with it. Change is inevitable; we can't control it. But we can control how we respond to it and adapt accordingly, and how we do this defines us. Yes, we are losing one thing, but we are gaining a new opportunity to reinvent science writing for the future. Right now, we're kinda struggling to find a foothold in the brave new multimedia world, but that won't last forever. So reports of the death of science writing are greatly exaggerated. I predict it will rise like a phoenix from the ashes, in a new and glorious incarnation. And I can't wait to see what happens.

a thousand paper cuts

It's a rare occasion when I go off on a bona fide rant, but I feel I must say something to the physics community, solely out of love (which means some of you won't want to hear it): what's with all the sour grapes of late, people? Maybe it was just an unfortunate coincidence, but almost everywhere I turned this past week, I was confronted with the grumpy toxic outpourings of various nattering nabobs of negativity. Even Jen-Luc Piquant lost patience with all the sniping, and she's faux-French, and thus naturally elitist, as well as a skilled connoisseur of the artfully disdainful put-down. Seriously, she can make other avatars cry with just a raised eyebrow and a dismissive shrug of her perpetually black-clad shoulders.

It wasn't constructive criticism either, just pointless griping about petty stuff. People were bitching about how physics students clearly have too much time on their hands if they're making silly YouTube videos; how dumb the ATLAS videos employing a Star Wars motif were (personally, I found them amusing and informative); and about how frivolous events like next week's Physics Singalong at the APS March Meeting in New Orleans, or Talk Like a Physicist Day, are silly and pointless and why are we celebrating scientific jargon anyway? And also? The Big Bang Theory sitcom will singlehandedly rot your brain and destroy science because of all the negative stereotypes. Just so you know. (I'm leaving out a few other instances because the above should be enough to make the point.)

I'm not suggesting we all become perky little Pollyanna cheerleaders -- ick, how horrid would that be? -- and frankly, one or two instances like those cited above in any given week would have little effect on my mood. No biggie. Let My People Bitch. But cumulatively, all in one week? It felt like the slow lingering death of my soul from a thousand paper cuts. Clearly I didn't get the memo about the approaching dark cloud of gloomy pessimism with scattered showers of snide disdain. Silly me, always out of the loop. I guess it made me a little hyper-aware of how prevalent these attitudes can become, very quickly -- and we give very little thought to how this might be perceived by those on the outside looking in.

You know, it's a really big playground out there, folks, and nobody is forcing you to play in any particular sandbox. Just politely opt out and find another sandbox more to your liking. It's as simple as that. What I just don't get is the compulsion to piss all over someone else's sandbox and spoil their fun, because you don't happen to like what they're doing, or had a particularly bad day. What, you don't like something, so nobody else should either? Get over it already.

I care deeply about the science community, and the field of physics in particular: it's filled with incredibly smart, altruistic, hard-working and good-hearted folks of great substance and depth, who also have a sense of humor and like to have fun on occasion. (*gasp* Haul out the smelling salts!) A big part of what I try to do, both here at the cocktail party and in the Real World (TM), is to convince those outside of physics that this is a community worth knowing, even embracing -- whether or not someone wants to become a professional scientist or not. It's very disheartening when there is a sudden wave of collective sourness that reinforces the (false) stereotype of physicists as dour, humorless buzzkills. This sort of thing does far more to damage the public perception of physicists than The Big Bang Theory, Talk Like a Physicist Day, silly YouTube videos, or March Meeting physics singalongs combined ever could.

Of course, it would be a shame to waste all that accumulated bile, so why not find a more productive outlet, and more deserving targets, for all that negative energy? For instance, vent your spleen over the latest round of devastating budget cuts by dashing off angry letters and emails to your government representatives -- or even your local newspaper -- whenever a foul mood strikes you. The American Physical Society, for starters, has a whole suite of advocacy tools, enabling you to write to Congress, join a science coalition, and even organize grassroots efforts on behalf of science locally. There are all kinds of groups and individuals working tirelessly behind the scenes to improve the situation, but a continuing collective outcry couldn't hurt, too.

In addition to the Department of Energy's ongoing woes, the uncertain fate of major projects like LISA, and the plight of Arecibo (just to name a few), news broke on Thursday that the UK is closing down Jodrell Bank, a venerable radio astronomy observatory in England. I'm sure other countries also have serious funding woes. Frankly, if things continue on the current draconian path in the US, there won't be much of a meaningful physics enterprise left in a few decades or so. A nostalgic physics singalong might seem just the ticket when PhD physicists find themselves forced to work in the local Tastee-Freez because all the major research facilities have been closed down for lack of funding. So channel your discontent and rage in such a way as to effect meaningful change if you feel the urge to vent.

Once you've got that out of your system, consider more positive efforts to effect change. That'll help keep more disgruntled bile from building up inside you, necessitating another outburst to clear the air. If you're in the Bay Area, maybe you could volunteer to help a local grade schooler participate in this year's Tech Challenge at the Tech Museum of Innovation, which centers on finding imaginative solutions to provide safe drinking water, especially in developing countries. Or consider reaching out to your local schools to help students appreciate the glories of science.

Opportunities to make a difference abound! Why, just last Monday, Neil Turok, cosmologist extraordinaire and this year's recipient of the TED award gave a blackboard lunch talk here at KITP describing a particularly intriguing project. In 2003, Turok founded the African Institute for Mathematical Science in Wuizenberg (AIMS). It's "a post-graduate education center supporting the development of mathematics and science across the African continent." (There have been articles about it in all the major science mags by now, and even a few major newspapers.) Turok was born in South Africa. His parents were jailed for opposing apartheid when he was just a kid, and the family lived for a time in abject poverty in Kenya and Tanzania, respectively. Not that he's bitter: he loved the astonishing landscape, and it was a bit of a blow when the family moved to "gray, depressing England," although his educational opportunities were far superior.

Turok has made the most of those opportunities and risen to dizzying professional heights. But he hasn't forgotten where he came from -- in fact, he's still in touch with his childhood math teacher. AIMS is his attempt to give something back to Africa, a continent where the educational system is "truly Victorian" and more than a little divorced from reality -- in part because there's no money to do actual experiments. Yet there is a vast amount of untapped intellectual talent.

Turok told of how he spent a stretch living in a mining town at 17 before heading off to college, where inhabitants lived "a brutal life, with almost no prospects." But the kids were bright and highly motivated. For instance, when he asked students to estimate the height of a building, one boy solved the problem by measuring a single brick, counting the number of bricks to the top, and multiplying to get the answer. Turok's "wish" -- a tradition granted to TED award recipients, plus you get to make your wish "in a room full of billionaires" -- is that "the next Einstein will come from Africa." And he maintains that while Africa needs physics, "Physics also needs Africa" -- precisely because of all that untapped talent.

Frustrated at the lack of any measurable impact from the traditional aid-giving models on Africa's plight, Turok found a new model. He bought an old hotel for $100K practically on the beach, and refurbished it. (He could always consider a career as a real estate mogul should this physics thing not pan out. The town is now a major tourist destination, and thus prime real estate; the value of the building has skyrocketed.) Now 50 or so students -- college graduates, the best and the brightest from all over the continent -- live in for nine months each year for what amounts to "a 24-hour learning environment." Some students have dubbed it "the house of no sleep." This isn't obligatory, mind you: the students are just so fired about about what they're learning, and the instructors so thrilled to find such hyper-motivated students, that nobody wants to waste precious hours doing much of anything else.

Turok invites the best minds, and best lecturers, in the world in math and physics to serve three-week stints (also living in) as instructors, supplemented by more permanent tutors to ensure some continuity. The emphasis is on interactive teaching and learning, with constant feedback within the classroom, and on problem-solving rather than grades and exams. (Apparently the invited lecturers often find their teaching styles completely transformed once they return home.) After their stint at AIMS, the students go on to earn master's or PhD degrees in their chosen fields, ideally returning to Africa after they're done to help others like them in turn -- which means building up a solid scientific enterprise and infrastructure in those countries, so these promising young minds can make a living. That's why Turok wants to expand his model to add a "wealth building" component through things like entrepreneurial partnerships, and also by establishing similar centers in other African countries.

The first group of students should be finishing up their degrees in the next year or so. It will be interesting to see where they all end up. Now Turok is trying to replicate the AIMS model throughout Africa. He and his partners have been investigating prospective new sites, and settled on sites in Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Madagascar, and the Sudan. (He admits the latter is a controversial choice, and negotiations are being handled delicately to avoid official association of the planned center with the draconian Sudanese government). Turok is working hard to raise the requisite $10 million endowments to provide $10K scholarships for students at each center, with each country's government ideally paying for operating costs (except for Sudan), thereby giving them a sense of local ownership and involvement.

He has no shortage of volunteers willing to spend three weeks at an African tourist resort town teaching math and physics; there's currently a waiting list of 400 or so, and competition for the three-week slots is pretty fierce. What he's really looking for are physicists willing to make a major time commitment and spend a year living at one of the new centers, helping to get things up and running.  As Turok put it, the idea is to dream big, shoot for the stars, and while you probably won't reach those unrealistic targets, you might just hit the moon.

We need more visionaries like Turok in physics. I'm guessing anyone who volunteers for such a year-long stint will have a life-changing experience, and when they return, they won't even notice silly things like physics sitcoms or YouTube videos made by overworked physics majors, much less feel compelled to sneer at them. (They might even decide -- correctly, in my opinion -- they're just harmless fun: a way of dissipating tension or blowing off steam after a lot of very hard work.) That's really the point of this post. Instead of a thousand tiny paper cuts tearing each other down, let's shoot for a thousand small individual efforts to collectively make a difference in our communities -- wherever they may be.

genie in a bottle

One of Val Kilmer's less stellar roles was as Simon Templar in 1997's The Saint. Templar is a master thief and master of disguise who takes on assumed names associated with Catholic Saints. (Simon Templar was, apparently, the patron saint of magic.) Eventually, he's hired by a Russian industrialist (always evil characters) to steal a formula for cold fusion from a pretty young female scientist, thereby having access to the secret of heating millions of homes with a few gallons of water. This being Hollywood, he falls in love with her instead, and together they bring limitless energy to the world at large, using nothing but electrodes in a jar of heavy water. Ain't love grand?

The film's scientific premise is right up there with the presentation of sonoluminescence as a powerful energy source in Chain Reaction. The main difference is that sonoluminescence -- while nowhere near the stage of development depicted onscreen -- is nonetheless a well-respected, well-funded field of study, whereas cold fusion has pretty much languished along the edges of the lunatic fringe since its alleged "discovery" almost 20 years ago. It has a handful of supporters among scientists, but the field boasts a far greater number of crackpots who inevitably undermine the rare occasions when a bona fide result is obtained in such experiments. Prevailing opinion is that the vast majority of cold fusion research falls under the rubric of "pathological science": the results are always on the verge of a stunning validation, and whenever said validation fails (again) to materialize, there is always a handy rationale for why it isn't really a definitive failure.

As recently as 2000, TIME magazine listed cold fusion as one of the "worst ideas" of the 20th century. You' might never know that if your introduction to cold fusion was last week's short article in Wired by Mark Anderson, reporting on a recent small convocation of diehard cold fusion advocates. Chances are, you'd come away feeling that these plucky, anti-establishment rebel scientists are thisclose (as close as Kilmer and his co-star in the still shot at right, generating their own form of heat) to achieving a cheap, plentiful supply of energy based on simple high school chemistry -- if only that stodgy, closed-minded, mean scientific establishment would stop making fun of them and provide sufficient funding resources.

It's admittedly a compelling narrative -- everyone loves seeing an underdog prevail -- it just isn't true. The real story of cold fusion is every bit as fascinating and provocative, even tragic in places, but not nearly as black and white. It's less about scientific villainy, and more about all-too-human foibles. That's why there have been several full-length books written on the subject. Like a great deal of science, cold fusion doesn't lend itself to the broad strokes and sound bite syntax of most popular science reporting. That doesn't mean a reporter shouldn't try to temper the latest claims of cold fusion's stubborn proponents with some context gleaned from its checkered history.

I'm sympathetic to the challenge Anderson faced in writing the article, given his space limitations, but he doesn't seem to have done much due diligence about including any skeptical context, or even the obligatory opposing view. Everything he needed is readily available online, including original video footage of the infamous 1989 press conference that started it all, coverage in both the science trade press and mainstream media, and the full reports from the Department of Energy, which conducted official reviews in both 1989 and 2004. A quick online trip to Amazon would have yielded a couple of popular science books offering both pro (Eugene Mallove's Fire From Ice) and con (Gary Taubes' Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion) viewpoints. I'm not asking Anderson to include all of that, but can't we have just a little skepticism? Pretty please?

It's all the more distressing coming on the heels of a lengthy 2004 feature in Wired by Charles Platt that painted an even more unflattering portrait of the scientific establishment, describing its resistance to the notion of cold fusion as "a colossal conspiracy of denial," rather than professional scientists merely rejecting something due to lack of convincing empirical evidence. Clearly, Wired has picked the more simplistic, underdog "framing" narrative: cold fusion scientists have been deeply wronged by an overly skeptical entrenched "establishment," and any day now they will be vindicated and save the world with their revolutionary new energy source. Hollywood should love it.

(In fairness, the magazine's cold fusion coverage is still better than Popular Mechanics, which ran a despicable piece of fear-mongering cover story in 2004 claiming that terrorists could use cold fusion to build their own hydrogen bombs. For an example of truly stellar reporting on the topic, see Sharon Weinberger's November 21, 2004, feature for The Washington Post, which is the most balanced and nuanced treatment of the cold fusion controversy I've yet read in the mainstream media outlets.)

Here's a bit of background for readers with only a passing familiarity with the controversy. Way back in 1989, two chemists at the University of Utah named Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann believed they had succeeded in producing nuclear fusion in a jar -- without the need to recreate the temperatures and pressures found in the centers of stars which run on "hot" fusion. We can achieve hot nuclear fusion, but it requires more energy than it gives back, so it's pretty much an energy sinkhole for the time being (although the physicists are working the problem, yes they are!). Anyway, their finding was counter to everything known to date about nuclear fusion, both in theory and experiment.

Generally, when there's a significant breakthrough in science, it's written up in a formal paper containing all the information needed for other scientists to replicate the experiment and test the results -- because reproducibility is one of the most fundamental elements of the scientific method. That paper is submitted to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, and if enough reviewers give it a thumb's up, the paper is published, and other scientists can critique and/or build upon their work. The system is imperfect -- egos and rivalries can get in the way -- but over the long haul, it has served science well. It's an equally accepted maxim that the more potentially revolutionary the result, the greater the burden of proof: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted by the scientific community. And cold fusion was a truly extraordinary claim.

Pons and Fleischmann, for whatever reason, ignored the established protocol and jumped right into the public domain, announcing their results in a March 23 press conference -- even as they were applying for patents for what they believed would become a hugely lucrative industry. Those pending patent applications were cited as the reason they couldn't reveal all the details of their experiment or provide appropriate documentation of their results -- which meant their results couldn't be tested and verified by other scientists. Basically, they wanted it both ways: they wanted scientific glory for their work, while hoarding the details in hopes of reaping a fortune in proprietary patent rights.

The Utah press release made the situation worse by indulging in unfortunate hyperbole, hailing the breakthrough as something that would provide "an inexhaustible source of energy." (Scientists are all too familiar with this tendency of academic media departments.) Now, anyone who's covered science as a reporter knows to be wary when such a claim is made: we're all for new and improved energy sources, but inexhaustible? Nature just doesn't work that way; it sounded more like that perennial bugbear, perpetual motion, rather than any kind of serious science. The New York Times was suitably cautious, and initially refused to run the story, but the Wall Street Journal's Jerry Bishop and his editors apparently just saw the dollar signs and published a euphoric front-page article on the breakthrough. Soon other major newspapers followed suit, and it was a media feeding frenzy.

Scientists -- especially physicists -- shared the Times' skepticism, in part because of the manner in which Pons and Fleischmann had made their announcement. "Conventional science requires you to play by certain rules," retired Los Alamos scientist turned underground cold fusion researcher Edmund Storms is quoted in the 2004 Wired feature as saying. "First, thou shalt not announce thy results via a press conference. Second, thou shalt not exaggerate the results. Third, thou shalt tell other scientists precisely what thou did. They broke all of those rules." The world may love a rebel, but the unwritten "rules" of scientific culture are in place for very good reasons -- and if you break them, it's best to have a damned good reason of your own for doing so, or at least killer experimental results with all the requisite documentation in hand for independent verification. Is it any wonder Pons and Fleischmann faced a rather cool reception?

Eventually they published a full-length (over 50 pages!) paper with all of the necessary details, but it was rushed, sloppy, and contained at least one egregious error concerning their analysis of the gamma ray spectra. This did not help strengthen their already shaky case. Still, they might have been grudgingly forgiven their poor scientific manners and initial awkward missteps if their work had been verified. Scientists love a good underdog story as much as anybody, and there's numerous examples in history of lone scientists  with poor social skills laboring against the doubts of colleagues and dire financial straits to prove their pet theory. (And they win! Yay for science!)

The problem was, hundreds of researchers all over the world scurried to reproduce the experiments, and invariably failed. Sure, there were a couple of glimmers of hope here and there: teams at Texas A&M and the Georgia Institute of Technology excitedly reported results of excess heat and neutron production, respectively, in April, but withdrew those results almost immediately, citing "lack of evidence." By the end of 1989, a panel of experts had conducted a Department of Energy review of the matter, and concluded there was no basis for the claims. As far as mainstream science was concerned, that was the final nail in cold fusion's coffin.

But like a lot of pseudoscience -- to which it is frequently compared -- cold fusion refuses to die. It's tough not to admire the steely resolve of cold fusion advocates, who have faced derision, suffered in their careers, and labored to build their own scientific enterprise from scratch: their own meetings, their own journals, their own community. (Then again, there's a whiff of, "Fine! If we can't play in the big sandbox, we'll just go make our own!") Alas, those are ideal conditions for crackpots to flourish, so they've got some strange bedfellows, but they've also got a handful of otherwise respectable scientists conducting their own experiments in cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann reportedly had a bitter falling out and parted ways in 1995. Fleischmann is still collaborating on cold fusion research in the UK, but Pons has become something of a recluse. The new dynamic duo of cold fusion is SRI International chemist Michael McKubre and MIT physicist Peter Hagelstein.

Gradually, the "serious" researchers started presenting papers at meetings other than their own, including those of the American Physical Society. Those researchers chipped away at the tarnished reputation of their chosen field, publishing peer-reviewed papers now and then on purported evidence of "low-energy nuclear reactions." Eventually, the DOE decided, in fairness, to take another look at the accumulated evidence over the last 15 years and re-evaluate the cold fusion controversy. This time, they relented just a little: they still didn't find the evidence sufficiently convincing to launch a federally-funded research program. The panel split on the issue of whether subsequent experiments had validated the occasional production of "excess heat," citing poor experimental design, documentation, background control, etc., as muddying their determinations. (Out of 18 members, 12 found no conclusive evidence, five found the evidence somewhat convincing, and only one was completely convinced.) But they felt that funding agencies should consider funding proposed projects on a case-by-case basis, provided those proposals "meet accepted scientific standards and undergo the rigors of peer review."

See? I told you it was a complicated story. That's why I'd normally be sympathetic to Wired's Anderson, faced with the task of conveying the salient points in a short news article. (There's no excuse for Pratt's fawning 2004 feature; is there anyone more zealous than a former skeptic turned convert?)  Your average reporter doesn't have time to do exhaustive research on such a short news article, and frankly, your average reader doesn't want to wade through all the gory technical details. Nonetheless, Anderson could have tracked down at least one skeptical, yet fair-minded, source, to show he had some rudimentary grasp of the complexity of the situation.  Here's a few specific sentences that are badly in need of context:

"Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence...."

I find Anderson's use of the word "canon" here interesting; it implies that something is established beyond question, which cold fusion most certainly is not. More to the point, this is a misleading statement, since very few of those 3000 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Certainly some of them were, but this fact should be noted, even just in passing. And don't just take my word for it. Per WaPo's Weinberger, "[T]he most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality." She even cites a supporter who calls the collection of papers "toxic waste." That's hardly a resounding endorsement; it certainly wouldn't qualify as a "canon."

"Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times."

Again, this is misleading. It's true that over the past two decades, there have been reports of what appear to be excess bursts of energy in various experiments. But even Hagelstein admits to continued experimental inconsistency; some "results" have never been reproduced. Cold fusion's claims of verification are based on a bizarre kind of statistical rationale: sure, most of the results are negative, but they have now amassed such a statistically significant sampling of instances of claimed excess heat that at least some of those results must be valid, and any lack of the effect is due to flawed experiments. The WaPo article cites esteemed nuclear physicist Richard Garwin as a source for its dismissal of that tortured argument: "It's absurd to claim that experiments that seem to support cold fusion are valid, while those that don't are flawed." There are a few more mainstream scientists around these days who are willing to concede there might be something of marginal interest going on, but most remain unconvinced that it's bona fide cold fusion. And hardly anyone holds out any hope of it ever becoming a viable energy source.

"Compared to the warehouses worth of billion-dollar gadgetry needed to run 'hot fusion,' cold fusion research is cheap to fund. And yet cash is the primary limiting factor holding the research back."

It's disingenuous to dismiss cold fusion's difficulties as nothing more than a funding problem. Its biggest problem is the lack of reproducibility, even in the experiments of the most respected members of the cold fusion community. McKubre, for instance, admits to Weinberger that out of 50,000 hours of experiments, only 50 recorded instances have occurred that "unmistakably" produced excess heat. That's just not good enough. Science must maintain its integrity -- if only to counter the inevitable human frailties of its practitioners -- and that means we can't lower the bar of standards for reproducibility just because palladium is a "quixotic" metal, riddled with unpredictable, unevenly distributed impurities. Seriously, that's one of the main excuses given by cold fusion advocates as to why they get such inconsistent results. Materials issues are a bitch, experimentally, it's true, but cold fusion is not the only field faced with overcoming those challenges, so why should its experimental inconsistencies be excused on those grounds? 

As for that "excess heat," it's nothing to get excited about just yet, since it's a very small amount indeed. Anderson quotes cold fusionist Mitchell Swartz as saying the question now is not whether the experiments can generate excess heat, "It's can we can get a kilowatt? Can we get a small car moving on this stuff?" Heck, if they could just boil some water, that would be a tremendous accomplishment. The late Scottish physicist Douglas Morrison was one of the rare skeptical attendees of the annual cold fusion conferences until his death inn 2001. Each year, he would listen to the extravagant claims, then stand and make a simple request: "Please can I have a cup of tea?" It was a bit cheeky of him, but he made his point: cold fusion talks a good game, yet even the simplest applied energy task remains well beyond its reach.

And what of the implied vast scientific conspiracy to squelch further research and kill the field entirely (perhaps to ensure that the major investments in hot fusion research don't become obsolete)? The "evidence" for that is mostly  anecdotal hearsay -- i.e., not true evidence at all. Science undeniably has its politics, its bitter rivalries, petty jealousies, and its turf wars. There's some hefty egos involved, and feelings tend to run a bit high on both sides of the controversy. Scientists aren't always very polite in their disagreements, either. On the whole, though, cooler heads ultimately prevail in the public sphere, however much heated rhetoric is flung around in private.

I've personally heard physicists dismiss Hagelstein as an embarrassment to MIT. (Hagelstein has countered by describing the mainstream scientific community as a closed-minded "mafia," that only publishes the work of the official "family" of scientists.) Caltech physicist Steven Koonin famously denounced Pons and Fleischmann as "delusional" at an APS April meeting, and Princeton physicist Will Happer has described them as "incompetent boobs." Happer also objected strenuously to Robert Jahn's controversial PEAR project in psychic research, solely on scientific grounds. Yet he has repeatedly stated, on the record, that however much he disagreed with Jahn's science, he supported his right to conduct that research. I'll indulge in a bit of conjecture here myself: I suspect that despite Happer's harsh disdain for the scientific caliber of Pons and Fleischmann, and his skepticism of the validity of the field in general, he would still support the right of cold fusion scientists to conduct their research. (He just doesn't think the government needs to pay for it.)

The ever-irascible Bob Park, author of Voodoo Science and editor of the weekly electronic newsletter, What's New, has been one of the fiercest of cold fusion's often-vitriolic critics. Yet he has corresponded with many cold fusion scientists over the years, and welcomed the second DOE review. He still thinks it's most likely a bunch of bad science, but conceded to the WaPo, "Maybe there is... some funny reaction going on.... If there is, it may solve some puzzles, but it won't be important." Also quoted is Hagelstein's MIT colleague, Milly Dresselhaus: "I think scientists should be open-minded. Historically, many things get overturned with time." She stops short of recommending federal funding, however, especially in these cash-strapped times: "When you feel poor, you don't invest in long shots. This is kind of a long shot."

Cold fusion has had its day in court, so to speak, not once, but twice, and some skeptical scientists have been willing to listen to a few of the more reputable claims. Garwin was a member of the 1989 DOE review panel, and subsequently visited McKubre's lab at SRI in 1993. Far from dismissing the work outright, he praised the lab for its "serious and competent work," and found no huge blunder in the experimental setups. (That's something that sets McKubre's work apart from the vast majority of cold fusion experiments, which caused Garwin to gripe to the WaPo, "People who can't do a good sophomore experiment are suddenly free to suggest that the discrepancies in their results come from unexplained, basic, earth-shaking, heat-producing phenomena.") But he did identify any number of possible problems with the setup, as well as some measurement errors, concluding bluntly, "Did not support any finding of 'excess heat.'"

In short, individual scientists might have indulged in harsh derision about cold fusion over the years, and promising young physicists like Hagelstein have indeed paid a professional price for their choice of research. (Note that it was Hagelstein's choice.) That doesn't amount to a cabal-like conspiracy n the part of the scientific establishment -- a notion that provides the linchpin of an emerging "cold fusion mythology" being fostered by -- among other things -- unquestioning articles in popular science magazines, and it has little basis in reality. The scientific community as a whole has not unfairly dismissed the claims: it simply remains unconvinced by the erratic evidence that has been presented to it. Should cold fusion advocates one day beat the odds and provide truly reproducible, compelling evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions, the stodgy old scientific establishment might grumble a bit, but ultimately it will accept those findings and alter its theories accordingly. Because that's what the scientific method is all about.

Perhaps the most telling anecdote comes at the end of the WaPo article, where McKubre cites the multiple pop culture references to cold fusion as evidence that cold fusion is losing its stigma as a suspect pseudoscience. In fictional worlds, he insists, cold fusion is a fact. "It's a fantasy fact. That's nearly as good as reality." Here's a free media-savvy tip for scientists: That's the kind of  inane statement you never want to make on the record to a reporter, particularly when you're being grilled about a controversial subject like cold fusion. In this case, it serves no purpose other than to lend credence to Park's assertion earlier in the article that cold fusion's advocates want to believe the world is a certain way, when there simply isn't sufficient evidence to support what they so dearly want to believe.

I like science fiction and fantasy as much as the next person, and I'll be the first to trumpet the fact that real world science feeds off sci-fi to design new technologies and gain inspiration, before inspiring sci-fi authors with new fundamental breakthroughs that spark their creativity in turn. It's the perfect symbiotic relationship. But that's a far cry from claiming that because something is "real" in a cartoon universe, it's only a matter of time before real-world scientists make similar breakthroughs.  While writing The Physics of the Buffyverse, I concluded that the most basic mechanism in that fictional world was an infinite supply of extra "mystical energy" that allowed for phenomena that would be impossible in our universe. But I didn't extrapolate that observation to conclude that someday we, too, would have access to a similar energy source and scientists just needed to identify it and figure out how to tap into it. Because the Buffyverse is a fantasy world, and we don't live in a fantasy world. Quod erat demonstratum, or, more colloquially: Duh, squared.

just don't quote me

There's a fascinating discussion over at Tara's place regarding scientists and their frequent reluctance to answer interview requests from the media. I commented on this already on Aetiology, but the issue is multi-faceted enough that I think it warrants some reworking and expansion into a separate post. After all, getting scientists and journalists to talk about their respective differences, and the frustrations that sometimes arise because of them, is an important first step in perhaps fostering a better working relationship between the two groups. Because frankly, we need each other, whether we care to admit that or not.

Tara's main points about why scientists frequently don't respond promptly to requests for interviews are very well taken. I'm well aware of how busy researchers are, how frequently they travel, and how crazed their schedules can get while on the road, especially when one figures in erratic email access. That's why I'm so damn grateful when they take the time to sit down with me, like East Carolina University physicist George Bissinger did recently at the ASA meeting in Salt Lake City. (He chatted for almost a full hour, in the midst of an action-packed day, and gave me the crux of my story in the process. Thanks, George! I shall strive to be worthy of your generosity.) Scientists get a LOT of emails -- perhaps even more than journalists. I've seen it firsthand with Future Spouse, who feels a genuine sense of accomplishment when he winnows his unanswered emails down to a mere 60 or so, even though it takes valuable time away from his research to do so. I'm sure some of the people still waiting for a reply occasionally feel like they're trying to interact with dark matter or something. (Trust me, the dark matter NEVER returns phone calls or emails. We only have indirect evidence that it even exists.)

Still, Tara says she prefers to be contacted by email, and I suspect most scientists would concur. That's certainly my first avenue of attack, so to speak, when seeking interviews, and it's also my preference when it comes to other people contacting me. But then, I mainly write books and magazine articles, which have substantially longer lead times than, say, a daily newspaper or TV news. Some journalists simply don't have the luxury of sending an exploratory email and waiting patiently for a couple of weeks until a scientist has time to respond, then figuring out a mutually good time to schedule a telephone interview. Under the gun of a tight deadline, cold-calling might be the only realistic approach. It's certainly not the ideal one.

Things get a bit sticky later on in Tara's post, particularly when it comes to scientists' fear of being disastrously misquoted or misrepresented in an article. Now, this is a very real concern. It happens all the friggin' time, and not just with scientists. Every one of us who has engaged in any kind of media exposure has a horror story or two to tell.

For instance, Future Spouse and I were among those featured in a Valentine's Day article in the New York Times, about couples who met during business conferences (in our case, the 2006 APS April meeting in Dallas). The reporter -- a highly respected professional, and published author -- did his due diligence, and contacted me prior to publication for some minor fact-checking. I clarified a few factual errors. In writing. But the reporter was traveling at the time, and the editor(s) in charge were, apparently, less diligent. Almost none of the corrections were made -- or were made incorrectly, even though they had the correct information right in front of them. In writing! There's absolutely no excuse for that, other than "Oops! Our bad!"

In another article for a different publication, the assigned reporter produced a "profile" of me so far removed from my actual personality that even my closest friends admitted that, had they not known it was about me, they never would have recognized me. My quotes were totally mangled, usually harmlessly, although in one case,  it was misconstrued to convey almost the exact opposite of what I'd actually said. So I speak from the heart when I assure all you scientists: I've been there, and I feel your pain. The difference is, I consider this kind of experience the equivalent of war stories, to be ruefully shared over cocktails or coffee with colleagues in solidarity, whereas  according to Tara, scientists have a very real fear that their professional image will be irrevocably tarnished by such an experience:

"We spend a lot of time crafting our own articles describing our work, adding the requisite disclaimers, alternative explanations, etc., but all that can be undone by a misleading article (or even a misleading headline, which may be no fault of the reporter).... [E]ach new interview is a gamble, so while it has the potential to bring our work to a larger audience, it also has the potential to mischaracterize our work, or piss off a colleague who disagrees with our interpretation of the data."

This, I think, gets to the crux of the matter when it comes to the longstanding tension between scientists and journalists. It's a multi-faceted issue, and feelings tend to run high, so it's not surprising that this is the aspect of Tara's post that generated the most heated debate. Honestly, I don't quite get it. It strikes me as a contradiction: on the one hand, scientists loathe mainstream journalism because reporters never get anything right, and yet they're afraid a random article will carry sufficient credibility to damage their careers? It makes no logical sense. Newspapers are not peer-reviewed journals; they should not -- and in my opinion do not -- carry as much weight as a scientific paper published in a refereed journal, which should be the only kind of publication that matters when one's research is being critiqued by one's peers. Unless one's peers are looking for ammo to make cheap shots for political or personal reasons -- in which case, they'll find it regardless of whatever article appears. That's bad scientific manners, not a direct result of bad journalism.

The scientists' comments at Aetiology are quite telling: frustration, and often anger and outrage, at the media's stubborn refusal to behave like a peer-reviewed journal and allow scientists more control over the information being disseminated.  Many helpful suggestions were made to minimize the chances of being misquoted: only responding to emailed questions, so one's responses are in writing, for example, or insisting on being allowed to review one's quotes before publication. (One guy apparently tapes his end of the conversation and compares the final quotes with his own taped record. Now that's obsessive.) Dave Mosher had the best suggestion:

"As a science journalist, I can tell you the best thing to do, as an academic getting interviewed and wanted to guide the interview somewhat, is to have analogies cocked, locked and loaded.... [R]eporters go nuts for pre-thought-out analogies/explanations because it's quotable material, and could in fact be the center of the article.... So cranking them out before you speak with someone is a great way to maintain some control of what reporters quote you on."

But the harsh truth is, no strategy is 100% effective, and misquoting and misrepresentation will still occasionally occur. (And no, it wasn't better in "the good ol' days." Take a gander at archives from daily newspapers from the 1920s, or 19th century England, if you don't believe me.) Science communication will always be a double-edged sword in that respect: you trade increased exposure for your research, and fostering a link with the general public through the media, for absolute control over the information that's disseminated. Period. So, um, get over it already.

One particularly angry commenter was Drugmonkey, who wrote:

"So the answer to a journalist is "stop lying." Stop thinking that constructing an article to make whatever point you want based on totally misrepresenting quotes is ok. Start trying to communicate the *truth* of what people say to you, you know, report what happened rather than what you wish happened because it "made a better story." Then maybe scientists will return your call."

Clearly, Drugmonkey has been hurt, badly hurt I tell you, by someone in the mean, nasty media. Let's get a bit more perspective, shall we? It's the rare (and very bad) reporter who deliberately sets out to "lie" in an article. However, it is that reporter's job to shape an article into a strong narrative; that's just good science communication, good story-telling, good writing. It should be based on actual fact, but "truth"? That's a bit more elusive. What Drugmonkey considers the "truth" might be different from what another scientist, or what the journalist, feels is the "truth." Even the most objective scientific data is open to different interpretations, and a big part of any journalistic endeavor is to present more than one side to the story -- the "balance" scientists seem to hate so much. Yeah, yeah, I know this really backfires in extreme cases like Intelligent Design and global warming, but most of the time the model works pretty well. At least the journalist has the benefit of having interviewed several people to obtain a broader view of the matter.

He or she might not always succeed in nailing a story to the satisfaction of all the scientists quoted therein, but a good journalist will always try to go that extra mile to ensure a reasonable degree of accuracy. That said, every reporter occasionally cleans up, or massages, quotes. People don't always speak as clearly as they write, and even with written replies, the journalistic format rarely allows for as much context or details as the average scientist desires. Those column inches are precious real estate and every word has to count. Plus, at any moment before hitting the presses, an article can be hacked even further to make room for the all-important advertising revenue. One commenter rather huffily insisted, "Scientists do know what it is like to write something for publication," but said commenter fails to appreciate the substantial difference between a scientific paper or journal article, and the average newspaper story. It's apples and oranges (although they are both fruit).

Policies vary from publication to publication on letting scientists review articles or individual quotes prior to publication. The Industrial Physicist, for which I wrote for 10 years before it shuttered, always extended this courtesy  -- as a courtesy, mind you, not as a right -- but Discover, Salon, and just about any other mainstream media outlet specifically forbid a reporter from doing so. It really is about journalistic integrity. Believe me, politicians would LOVE to be able to review articles or quotes before they appear in print, the better to spin their carefully cultivated public images. Why should scientists get special treatment? Because they can be trusted to be "objective"? I think not. Scientists are human beings, and they have the same vanities, petty jealousies, and less-than-admirable motives as the rest of the human race, which interferes with their best intentions about as often as occurs in the population at large. It's part of our system of checks and balances that the free press remains just that: free.

In short, the scientific community in general needs to be a bit more sophisticated about its attitude towards journalism -- starting with gaining a clearer idea of how journalism actually works, and what its primarily objectives are (hint: they are not the same objectives as science). It is not, and never shall be, just like publishing in scientific journals. And there's nothing wrong with that. It is what it is.

As for Tara's frank assessment that there's no "reward" for scientists -- especially young scientists -- to participate in interviews for the press, well, I understand her reluctance, to some extent. There's definitely a negative perception of scientists who participate in public outreach and are quoted frequently in the media -- and more than a little snide commentary behind their backs. (Sniffs Jen-Luc Piquant, "Jealous much?") I can only appeal to your altruism. So I'll just say this: Scientists decry the sad state of science literacy in this country, they complain that much of the "real" science being done is never reported, and they bewail the fact that newspapers are killing off science sections right and left. (I join them in the wailing and gnashing of teeth on that score, and raise them the odd rending of the garment.) But they don't want to return reporters' phone calls because it might tarnish their academic image? Again, it makes no logical sense.

If you don't want to consent to interviews, that's your prerogative. I, for one, am sympathetic to all the reasons Tara and her commenters discussed on her recent blog post. But on the flip side, you then forfeit your right to complain about poor science coverage -- because (as I've said before in a prior post) you are a big part of the problem.

he said, she said

Ooh! Blog fight! Several folks over at ScienceBlogs are in a tizzy over a post by Razib at Gene Expressions, who expressed his surprise at encountering a hot young woman  (or, as he prefers to phrase it, "a smokin' chica") interested in science fiction at a wine bar recently. Shelley at Retrospectacle and Tara at Aetiology took umbrage at his thoughtless remarks, specifically the underlying assumption that a "hot female" can't or shouldn't be a certain way -- in this case, interested in something as geeky as science fiction. (P.Z. and the mysterious "Dr. Joan Bushwell" have also eloquently weighed in with their takes on the dust-up.)

On the whole, the discussion has been reasonably civil, but Razib rather predictably retreated into defensive mode, claiming he never said no such thing, and even if he did, it was taken out of context and besides, statistics would bear him out. So there. Razib's counter-argument might have been more convincing if he hadn't bragged in his own comment thread about having a "smokin' hot chica" all his own -- which in turn elicited the blogging equivalent of "high fives" from certain less-evolved male readers. *sigh*  Because everyone knows that having a hot girlfriend legitimizes one's manliness in a way a science degree never could. Jen-Luc Piquant thinks it's rather sad that a smart, talented guy like Razib is so insecure, he has to draw a big chunk of his self-esteem from the relative hotness of his girlfriend. He even commented on Tara's blog that seeing an attractive woman discussing science fiction in public "was a positive thing for me" -- a kind of social affirmation. That said, I think Razib is sincere when he claims to be confused as to why his comments have caused such a ruckus. There's a subtlety to the issue that young guys in particular seem to miss. Repeatedly.

The whole exchange reminds me of a conversation I had about a year ago with Kimba, one of my best friends, and a hardcore Geek Boy. One day I called him on a verbal tic: every time he mentioned one of his male friends in conversation, he'd feel compelled to toss in, "And his girlfriend's really hot, too." Kimba isn't sexist; he admires and respects intelligence in women, and has a heart of gold. So I expressed surprise at his constant knee-jerk commentary concerning the physical appearance of his pals' female companions. Why, I asked, was this at all significant to his male friends' overall worthiness? After all, the obvious implication is that attractive women are trophies that magically confer status and respect on the men who have them on their arms. Like Razib, Kimba's first response was to get defensive, profess his innocence, and insist I was misinterpreting his words. But eventually he admitted I had a point, and that he hadn't been aware of his own latent biases.

One reason it's tough for some guys to see this kind of thing, is that most of them haven't been subjected since birth to the "can't do" attitudes frequently directed at young girls and women. Every single one of us has some such tale. Girls play with dolls, not guns. Girls don't like math, or science. Girls aren't as good at sports (certainly not good enough to compete against men, even those who happen to be athletically gifted). Girls don't like drag racing/monster trucks/boxing, yadda, yadda, yadda. Or if they do, it's because they're freaks, or ugly, or in some way undesirable per the prevailing "norms" of popular society.

Invariably, the "can't do" attitude is accompanied by some argument of the "innate ability" variety: boys are just "naturally" more inclined to have certain interests, behave in certain ways, excel at certain subjects, and there are all kinds of "scientific studies" cited to back up these kinds of assertions. Apparently they're just innately better at everything, which is why a woman excelling in just about any male-dominated sphere is often met with disbelieving astonishment. Even the frickin' Discovery Channel store offers gender-specific Christmas gift guides, featuring science kits and erector sets for boys, and jewelry making, lip gloss and similar toys for girls.

These arguments and attitudes are nonsense, of course -- even Razib would agree. But then he shouldn't be surprised at the reaction his comments provoked. Don't go pushing that particular button, dude, unless you're prepared to face the consequences. Because we hear it over, and over, and over again, and after awhile, we just get sick of it. Gender stereotyping is real. It matters. And frankly, it really pisses us off, and occasionally spurs us to go on the warpath. As Tara wrote, "Maybe if society wasn't so generally negative about it when women do things that are typically associated with men (holy cow, there's a girl reading SF! Take a picture before she escapes!), women wouldn't feel so out of place doing it in the open."

Which is not to say geek boys don't suffer negative stereotyping and social stigmatization, too, particularly in high school -- ergo, the fascination with scoring a "smokin' chica" to validate themselves in the eyes of the world. In Razib's defense, there's nothing wrong with appreciating female (or male) attractiveness, and desiring an attractive partner. Let's face it, attractiveness matters to all of us to some extent. I have yet to hear anybody say of their partner, "Yeah, s/he is smart, funny, successful and a good person... if only s/he were uglier." Heck, even Wired runs an annual "sexy geeks" contest, although it's rather telling that the female candidates have racked up tons more votes than the male candidates. Clearly, it's the geek guys, not the women, who are most concerned with voting. Thank god for the always-fabulous SkepChicks, who keep things nicely balanced by offering both a SkepChick and a SkepDude calendar -- where else could we see Phil Plait naked?

Speaking of geeky attractiveness, tomorrow, December 15, is "Reveal Your Blog Crush Day" (hat tip to Angela Gunn). Here's your chance to confess the identity of your own favorite "smokin' hot" blogger -- of either gender. I jumped the gun a bit on that one; everyone already knows about my blog crush.

figures of speech

Arrrr! Shiver me timbers! We weren't going to post anything today, but it's Talk Like a Pirate Day! How can we resist? Jen-Luc Piquant has donned her best pirate garb in honor of the occasion, and has been boning up on her piratical syntax via this handy online training video. Everyone who's anyone is linking to it like crazy, because, in case you haven't heard, there's a bona fide pirate movement sweeping the land. We have waxed poetical about the science of pirates in a prior post, enthusing over Gideon DeFoe's whimsical Pirates! series, and recently stumbled across this handy reference tool listing famous pirates throughout the ages..

Every holiday needs a commercial tie-in, and manufacturers of fine pirate gear and other related products are no doubt making a capitalist killing, all in the name legal plunder. However, there's no excuse for crass marketing ploys like this one, found courtesy of the twisted piratical mind of P.Z. Myers. So, so wrong, in so many different ways.... And yet, Jen-Luc Piquant points out that said "feminine products" would most likely have been welcomed by the notorious Anne Bonney, the most famous female pirate in history. It's tough to live day in and day out onboard a ship with a bunch of swarthy swabbies, and no doubt there were days when Anne felt "less than fresh."

Needless to say, Jen-Luc Piquant greatly admires Anne Bonney, and considers her something of a kindred spirit for her rebellious independence. (Although bear in mind that Jen-Luc suffers from an acute narcissistic personality disorder; it's unlikely Bonney was anything like her.) It's a rip-roaring yarn: Born sometime between 1697 and 1705, Anne was the daughter of an Irish attorney who revealed her wild side early on, purportedly stabbing a servant girl in the belly with a table knife at the tender age of 13. Small wonder she eloped three years later with a sailor and small-time pirate named James Bonney, thereby embarking on a life filled with adventure and unsavory companions.

Eventually she left her husband to go a-pirating with her lover, Calico Jack Rackham, disguised (at least at first) as a man. She even had a best friend in fellow female plunderer Mary Read. According to Wikipedia, Anne "was by all accounts competent, good in combat, and respected within pirate ranks." In fact, when their ship was attacked by Jamaican troops in October 1720, Anne and Mary fought better, and more fiercely, than their male compatriots -- in part because the men were too sloshed to put up much resistance.

Everyone ended up in a stank Jamaican prison, and sentenced to hanging. (Far from being supportive, Anne apparently told Calico Jack, when he asked to see her one last time, that while she was sorry for his ultimate fate, "If you had fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog." Ouch!) Anne and Mary tried to plead pregnancy (apparently they really were pregnant), but this only bought them temporary reprieve until they gave birth. Mary died of fever shortly after giving birth (so did her baby), but Anne disappeared from historical record, and most historians believe she must have set up a new life somewhere under an assumed name. There is no record of her death. She hardly seems the sort who would have faded into quiet obscurity, but for all we know, she ended her days by a cozy hearth fire, knitting baby booties for her score of grandkids. We'd like to think that if nothing else, she continued to indulge occasionally in salty pirate speech.

While we don't have a built-in pirate mode here at Cocktail Party Physics, you can translate this, and any other blog post, into Pirate Speak from here. The day's festivities got us to thinking about what it would take to institute an annual Talk Like a Physicist Day. I think we need one. C'mon, let's pillage the concept and make it our own. How cool would it be to have physics-mania sweep the nation, with everyone going crazy for scientific gear, competing for the wildest demos, and vying over who can best mimic that inimitable Physicist-Speak? Here's a few rudimentary, off-the-cuff pointers for daring neophytes willing to take the plunge.

1. Never say anything in clear, direct English if you can obfuscate it with technical jargon. (This also works beautifully in literary criticism; just check out the writings of Jacques Lacan.) For instance, if someone asks you how, exactly, radio signals are encoded, toss off this jaunty phrase: "Oh, you just modulate the amplitude of the sine wave!" All the scientists out there understand this immediately, but trust me, to the average American, the sentence conveys no actual meaning, even though they listen to their radios every day.

2. Use terms like "orders of magnitude" to describe significant differences of scale.

3. A particularly challenging task is not "difficult"; rather, the problems to be overcome are "nontrivial," probably because of large (and therefore difficult to predict/calculate) "perturbations."

4. It's not that the course of true love never runs smooth; it is filled with turbulence and bifurcations.

That's just a random sampling of some of the most common physicist turns of phrase; you get the idea. Feel free to suggest your own favorite examples of impenetrable Physics Speak. We can collect them into a handy Talk Like a Physicist lexicon, maintained on its very own Website (somebody reserve that domain name, stat!). And can a training film on YouTube be far behind?

faking it

My "blog fodder" file is bursting with fascinating, thought-provoking half-finished posts on all manner of super-cool topics. But it's just too damned hot for my brain to function sufficiently to actually bring one of these posts to fruition. My neurons are quite literally wilting. Besides, it's Friday. So I thought I'd give the little gray cells a break and indulge in one of those online quizzes that always seem to be making the rounds of the blogosphere: in this case, one entitled, "How Nerdy Are You?" Really, how hard could it be, given how totally uncool I was in high school? I figured, "Easy A."

I didn't even finish. Seriously. Halfway through, I realized I no longer even understood the questions sufficiently to come up with a feasible answer, even though it was all multiple choice. It was like one of those recurrent nightmares where you're suddenly back in high school, wander into the classroom, and are hit with a pop quiz. Not only have you not studied for this quiz, but the test paper, when it's handed out, is either blank or written in some strange foreign language. There's a moment of horrifying clarity: You Are Going To Fail. And then you wake up in a cold sweat.

Apparently, I am not even close to being a true Nerd. Or even a hardcore GeekGrrl. This seems a vital prerequisite for someone in my profession of science writing. If only I could figure out how to, you know, "fake it" whenever it's to my advantage to be deemed a geek. Fortunately for me and other Geek Wannabes, some Uber-Geek in the blogosphere named Penguin Pete has a handy guide on "How To Totally Fake Being a Geek." (Jen-Luc Piquant is far more geeky than I am, and intuited immediately that Penguin Pete's moniker is a reference to Linux and its telltale penguin logo.) Per Pete, it's ultimately all about attitude: "To fake it, you have to feign interests and opinions, and then be smugly confident that your 'choices' are superior to the mainstream's."

Still, in order to be convincingly smug, it helps to have some insider tips, particularly when it comes to things like math and computer programming. Also calculators: the older the model, the better; it's all about one-upmanship, after all. Penguin Pete recommends a slide rule, or possibly carrying around a portable abacus: "Slide your beads around... and comment how you saw these things in a whole new light after you read Feynman about computing cube roots on them." Brilliant! There's even a useful cheat sheet on counting bases; I now can pretend to understand the word "hexadecimal." Can't wait to drop it into the conversation at my next cocktail party.

When it comes to computer stuff, I'm not too unhip: I know better than to have an AOL account, I use a Mac, and Firefox is my preferred browser. I have a passing familiarity with the various programming languages that are out there, even though I can't keep them straight, and couldn't begin to list them according to Penguin Pete's accepted hierarchy. Furthermore, Apple has switched to Intel chips, so I can no longer "heap scorn" on Intel commercials with any convincing degree of self-righteousness. And not being a hard-core programmer, I'm stuck with the Mac standard operating system. Even the comparatively user-friendly Linux is beyond me. But no matter, Pete assures me I can fake geekdom just by uttering the following phrase: "I run Yggdrasil on a PDP-11. Boy, it was a bitch installing all that from tape!" I have no idea what this means. It appears to be a reference to Norse mythology. Who knew Odin and Thor had computers?

Sadly, I also play all the wrong computer games. I kick ass at SCRABBLE, and do pretty well with my Poker Academy 2 Texas Hold 'Em software, but these are not, it seems, acceptable options in the Geekosphere. (At least I'm not downloading Monopoly onto my cell phone. Yet. It's kinda tempting.) Instead, I should be playing any game ending in "Quest" or "Craft", or engaging in first-person-shooting games. I do know about Role Playing Games (RPGs), but have never actually played one, and frankly I find the whole concept a bit strange. I once went to the big Otokan anime convention in Baltimore and checked out a few of the RPG sessions. The Ranma people were pretending to know martial arts and engaging in half-hearted "matches." It struck me as a bit sad, but they were certainly better than the vampire fans of Kindred: The Embraced. For the "Kindred," the whole point was to "blend" with the "humans" in attendance, so they pretty much walked around in normal clothing, with knowing smirks on their faces. If attitude is paramount, they were the pinnacle of geekdom.

When it comes to pop culture, though, I can hold my own in the Geekosphere just fine. My DVD collection alone gives me stellar credentials. I own every complete season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel -- hell, I wrote a book about them -- plus Seasons 1 through 7 of The X Files (once David Duchovny left the show, the series was dead to me), and naturally all episodes of the tragically canceled Firefly (struck down in its prime), although Penguin Pete warns that the latter is so supercool, "Even its fans disown it for fear of being flamed by the other fans. It's like the name of a deity: never say it out loud."

As for movies: Blade Runner? Check. Monty Python movies? Holy Grail is one of my all-time faves, closely followed by Life of Brian. Rocky Horror Picture Show? I can sing along and do the "Time Warp" with the best of them. My anime tastes run to Fullmetal Alchemist and the recently discovered Naruto, although I've been known to enjoy the sublime silliness of Ranma. I am pining for The Tick to be released on DVD. Ninja Scroll moved me to tears. Plus, I have loads of books with vampires, planets, robots and equations on the covers. I've read Snow Crash, the entire Hitchhiker series, and Neuromancer (didn't love it -- I though Pattern Recognition was far better). My collection of graphic novels includes the entire Sandman oeuvre and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Anyone with a strong sense of curiosity is bound to have a few esoteric interests, but it never occurred to me to just make some up to improve my standings in the Geekosphere. Penguin Pete suggests uttering phrases like, "I collect cephalopod footprint fossils," just to savor the sudden respectful hush in the room. Except I think P.Z. Myers has that esoteric hobby cornered with his weekly cephalopod photo (can a pinup calendar or squid porn be far away?).

The only fault I can find with Penguin Pete's guide is in his list of scientific names to drop. He rightly excludes Einstein as way too mainstream, but c'mon -- Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Benjamin Franklin and Isaac Asimov are hardly obscure. Pete gets points for bringing up Buckminster Fuller and Blaise Pascal, but any true geek should also be familiar with names like Ludwig Boltzmann, Nikola Tesla, Michael Faraday, Alan Turing, and Charles Babbage, just to name a few. Bonus points if they also know about Sophie Germain, Ada Lovelace, and Emilie du Chatelet. (Marie Curie is too mainstream.)

Thanks to Penguin Pete, I re-took the Nerd quiz and emerged with a respectable score of 88%. Whew! Sure, I wasn't entirely honest in my answers, but I successfully pretended to knowledge I didn't have which Pete swears is the whole point of the exercise. So I feel I am well on my way to achieving at least the illusion of True Geek Status.

But I have my limits. I will never, ever wear sandals with socks. I don't care if all the lab folks are doing it, as reported by Alex Palazzo at the Daily Transcript. (Check out the photos of people flaunting the look -- oh, the horror!) Alex finds this trend as baffling as I do. In the comments section, Rob Knop (of Galactic Interactions) gamely tries to offer excuses for this most unforgivable fashion faux pas, but we're not buying it. No, Rob, no -- put the socks and sandals down and back away slowly. Go buy a nice pair of loafers or Doc Martens instead. Don't force Jen-Luc Piquant to come out to Vanderbilt and kidnap you for an emergency fashion intervention!

That goes for the rest of you sock-and-sandal-wearing criminals, too. Trust me, you don't want to be on our bad side. See, we also took the "Which Star Trek Character Are You" quiz. Jen-Luc Piquant, predictably, came out as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but I found that I am Worf: "You are trained in the art of combat and are usually intimidating." It's true -- here's proof:

bait and switch

We have received a couple of tongue-in-cheek complaints in the comments section accusing us of misleading our readers with our attempts at clever titles for posts. Specifically, Matt was expecting to see photos of a scantily clad Annette Funicello in yesterday's post entitled "Beach Blanket Bingo," and instead found nasty details about human feces and marauding hordes of jellyfish. (The use of the Jen-Luc "icky" avatar should have been his first clue.) He still fared better than poor Krig, who clicked on a post entitled "Fashionably Late to the Dating Game" and found a newsy item about scientific methods for dating archaeological artifacts, when he had hoped to receive dating advice of some sort. The implication in both cases is that we deliberately lure our readers hither with titillating titles, and then BAM! Just like that, we turn the tables and force them to read something edifying instead. Could these accusations be true? Can we really be that evil?

Yes. We can. We're all about the crafty bait and switch here at Cocktail Party Physics, and damned proud of it, too. Well, not so much me, but that Jen-Luc Piquant, she's got quite the mischievous streak and is a master of the Titular Tease. (It's a Faux-French thing.) She's not sorry, either, and has been chortling gleefully all evening at so successfully dashing her audience's expectations. But I feel some twinges of remorse, especially for the hapless Krig, who is apparently in such dire need of romantic advice that he is consulting the scientific blogosphere. Think about it, Krig: if science bloggers spent all their time dating, when would they have time to blog?

Okay, technically, I'm not a scientist, or even a hard-core GeekGrrl, despite my professional affiliations. (I cannot, at a moment's notice, rattle off my hard drive specifications, and would never dare replace my own hard drive, as it would require actually opening up my computer.) So maybe Krig figured I was one of those Beautiful People who lead charmed romantic lives. If so, I am sorry to disappoint. I was the designated nerdy "Brain" in high school: shy, awkward, two years in braces, no fashion sense, unstyled hair -- you get the picture. Boys never paid attention to me unless there was a scheduled exam, at which point I suddenly had several suitors vying to copy off my paper. When I opted to leave high school after my junior year and head straight to college, the advisor urged me to reconsider: "You'll miss senior prom!" I looked at her like she'd lost her marbles: couldn't she see that nobody would ever, in a million years, ask me to a mixer?

Despite such inauspicious beginnings, we have managed to date from time to time over the course of our misspent youth (and how thrilled we were when we finally had the chance to mis-spend it!), and even establish the occasional Stable Relationship as our early shyness waned and our latent social skills finally came to the fore. Eventually we developed a certain amount of stylish savoir faire, thanks to timely interventions by more fashion-conscious friends. We have emerged from our early gawky cocoon that much more confident, stronger and wiser. Perhaps, after all, we do have some enlightening thoughts for those of our readers who are also floundering in the unpredictable, turbulent waters of modern romance. So fear not, good Krig, today, Jen-Luc the Love Doctor is "In." Bear in mind, however, that the following dashed-off ruminations are based on our own peculiar, admittedly quirky tastes; your results may vary, depending on the Object of Your Desire.

We'll assume that Krig's got the basics covered: things like personal hygiene, mental stability, and the good sense to eschew polyester and plaid clothing (or, for Left Coasters, the dreaded white socks with Birkenstocks -- Aieee!). We'll also assume that Krig is (a) male, and (b) is seeking advice on male/female relationships, since it's the only area in which I can claim to have any firsthand expertise. (Although really, the same basic tips should apply, with just a bit of tweaking here and there to accommodate other sexual preferences.)

1. Improve Your Nonverbal Awareness. One of my favorite physics buttons/bumper stickers reads, "Flirt Harder -- I'm a Physicist." There's a certain degree of truth to this stereotype, although it must be said, most physicists, computer geeks, etc., seem to end up married or in relationships at some point, so they can't be as clueless as they're generally believed to be. Nonetheless, I've certainly seen this phenomenon firsthand. Case in point: A good, geek-friend of mine was at a party, chatting up an attractive young woman, who seemed, shall we say, "receptive" -- until he began arguing with her about the faulty logic of a random opinion she'd expressed. He pressed his point repeatedly, failing to recognize her growing frustration, until she finally stomped off to find someone less argumentative, leaving him to nurse his beer in solitude, comforting himself with the certainty that at least he'd been Right. (He was right; but he also went home alone. Hmm. Food for thought.) This type of behavior seems to stem from an inability to pick up nonverbal cues, which is fortunately a learned, rather than innate, skill, so there's hope for all us social inepts, past and present. Pay attention to the other person's reactions, both verbal language and body language, and respond accordingly.

2. Ditch the "List." We all have preconceived notions about what we think we want in a partner, and sometimes these can serve as useful guidelines. Certain constraints are needed, just like in a scientific experiment (or theory). But this can also impose overly-limiting biases and blind us to that perfect something, or someone, that might be right in front of us. Consider ditching the "list-making" approach to finding a romantic partner and try "looking outside the box" once in awhile.

3. Forget the "Rules". While you're ditching that list of preconceived notions, ditch that copy of GQ as well, along with any other publication that specializes in purveying advice that amounts to the male equivalent of "the Rules." You hate the Rules; you know you do. Why inflict their equivalent on any woman you're interested in dating? I've always said to female friends that the Rules might work, but only on "Rules" kinds of men. If you're a woman and all you care about is manipulating some poor schlub into marrying you, and you're not overly particular about which schlub you entrap, so long as he's halfway decent, then you're probably a "Rules Girl." The same is true for the male equivalent, although there the primary objective isn't so much marriage, as racking up as many random sexual encounters as possible. You'll probably get the caliber of companion you deserve in either case. And if you're a "Rules Sort," you probably won't mind.

Maybe this sounds like a pretty decent short-term tradeoff for frustrated folks like Krig, but consider this: If you're a physicist, or in any other similar high-tech field, chances are you follow the beat of your own drum in your professional life -- otherwise you would have long ago bowed to peer pressure and gone into business management or something a little less esoteric (and a bit more financially lucrative). You wouldn't compromise on what you really wanted in your research. Why wouldn't you take the same tack in your personal life (bearing in mind Point #2 about being willing to dispense with preconceived notions on occasion)? Jen-Luc warns that we are skirting dangerously close to Polonius' trite cliche in Hamlet, "To thine own self be true," but there's a lot to be said for being genuine and not apologizing for who you are. Along the same lines:

4. Don't Be Afraid of Romantic Gestures. There's nothing sexier than a man who's confident and comfortable in his own skin, and therefore isn't afraid to show a little affection and emotion at opportune moments. To paraphrase a famous line in the classic film, Say Anything: don't be a Guy. The world is full of Guys. Be a Man. Come to think of it, rent Say Anything for your date, and chances are you'll win major points. Most women of my era consider Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack's character in the film) to be the archetypal Romantic Ideal; we still get teary remembering that scene where he holds up the boombox outside his true love's bedroom window, playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" in order to win her back. *sniff*

One caveat: Romantic gestures work -- but only if they're sincere; anything that smacks of manipulation is likely to backfire. Another common mistake is to be unimaginative or uncreative. You don't need to hire a sky-writing plane or anything over-the-top like that. The traditional roses are just fine, as long as you include a few lines of a love poem by Donne (or your fave romantic poet of choice) to give it that personal, individualized touch. A possible exception is the physics grad student whose  notion of an initial romantic overture is to present his target with an equation scribbled on a napkin ("Here: I made this for you!"). This will probably only work if said target is also in the sciences -- and if so, that equation better be a good one, with or without accompanying roses.

So there you go, Krig; hope it helps. If you're in need of further insight from the male perspective, Brad Hoc has been known to dispense advice from time to time when not indulging in the delights of virtual bubble wrap, and it's usually pretty entertaining stuff. We invite other readers -- and other science bloggers -- to weigh in as well, because let's face it, you can never have too many Geek Love Doctors in the clinic.

As for Matt -- remember Matt, the frustrated Funicello fan? -- we can redress his grievance quite easily, courtesy of a handy dandy Google image search on the original 1965 flick Beach Blanket Bingo. Okay, so Annette isn't clad in a bikini; neither is Frankie Avalon. But there's nary a stinging jellyfish or bit of fecal matter to be found (beaches were cleaner in those innocent days). Enjoy!