When Drama Goes Unrecognized

First, as a former submariner who, like many, has faced the possibility of losing my life in a submarine, let me offer my heartfelt thanks to those involved in the rescue of the Russian mini-submarine this weekend. While I did not get to follow this story as closely as I would have liked, it was never far from my mind. I was very relieved to learn that the rescue was successful. I can imagine the fate that could have befallen the crew and would wish it on no one.

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And speaking of imagination, I wish to address an interesting post on mainstream media (MSM) coverage of the mishap and rescue over at Ultraquiet No More.

Alex Nunez asks why a story like this one, with its obvious human interest and dramatic elements, apparently failed to capture the imagination of American journalists. As he points out, and even the briefest perusal of Ultraquiet No More will indicate, there was plenty of information out there with which to craft an interesting story. Government secrecy would not have been a major obstacle.

I have other nascent thoughts on this matter, but one immediately leaps out to this writer, who is now a research scientist: Our journalists are products of an education system that does not adequately teach even the rudiments of science or technology. A relatively simple example should suffice. Consider the following excerpt from a news story (HT: Venting Steam) about the winning project in a recent science fair.

Today, the young inventors say, U.S. drivers use about 7.9 billion gallons of fuel each year to run their air-conditioners, which draw power from the engine. By adopting their contraption - which taps into the electrical system, using fans to blow hot air through five Peltier chips and then releasing cold air - they say the country stands to save 3.9 billion gallons of fuel annually, or about $10 billion based on current gas prices.

Note that the writer seems to be implying that the Peltier chips save power because they use electricity, as if a car does not need to consume gasoline in order to produce it! The article claims the Peltier chips will save enormous amounts of money -- which they conceivably could -- but without explaining how. If this claim is true, the article would have had to say something to the effect that the new device was more efficient than a car's air-conditioner at cooling a given amount of air by a certain amount per gallon of gas used. But not even this sketch of an explanation is given. Do our young scientists not understand how a car works? Or was that the reporter? Or all? And how did this gaffe get past the editors of the paper?

Is this level of sophistication typical of newspaper and television journalists? I think so. Consider a couple of famous, outlandish claims that have been treated as scientific gospel by the MSM. (For more detail, see Robert Park's Voodoo Science.)

1. In 1989, outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times hailed "cold fusion" as a new source of nonpolluting energy. But this "discovery" had been reported prematurely to the media and the initial findings were never reproduced. Credit the news media with ignorance of the scientific review process on top of not asking for the extraordinary proof that this extraordinary claim demanded.
   
2. In 1989, a series of sensationalist articles in the New Yorker fanned fears among the public that living close to power lies increased one's risk of cancer. Other media outlets echoed this contention. In 1996, the National Academy of Sciences announced the results of an exhaustive, three-year review of the possible health effects of exposure to residential electromagnetic fields. A panel of scientists who had been working on the question unanimously concluded that, "the current body of evidence does not show that exposure to these fields presents a human health hazard."

By now, you might be asking what these stories have to do with the mini-submarine. Take them as examples of the typical degree of scientific sophistication -- or lack thereof -- of the news media. More recent media coverage of such scientific stories as the global warming debate indicates to me that nothing much has changed in this regard over the past decade.

Among journalists who are ignorant enough about science that a fishy claim does not sound fishy enough to raise even the first question, it would seem that the main consideration of whether to cover the story is whether it will be sensational. This judgement will be based on whatever implications are provided by a scientist for a given discovery. Thus, when a media-hungry scientist claims he can "solve the energy crisis" or that those power lines outside might cause children to develop leukemia, he gets the pass as a scientist and the story receives breathless coverage.

But suppose a story with an interesting scientific or technological angle comes up, but there's no scientist around telling the reporter about that angle? This is, I think, what we had with the Russian mini-submarine story. How long would the oxygen hold out? Why can't the crew just swim out? What does it take to pull a mini-submarine out of the depths anyway? How does the rescue equipment work? These questions can be dismissed as mundane or made interesting by placing them in their larger scientific context. As an example of the latter, I point out that the Discovery Channel makes exciting documentaries about such things as the raising of shipwrecks all the time. It's not as if such a story would fail to attract viewers if properly done. Still, though, the story will not be told by a journalist who fails to see it as interesting.

A reporter without an appreciation for even the basics of science or technology will fail to grasp just how much danger the Russian crew were in until rescued. To such a person, the story will sound ordinary and perhaps even boring. After all, don't people get rescued at sea all the time? And it's not like these guys got lost is it? We knew where they were the whole time, so where's the drama?

And so I'll tell a sea story by way of illustration. For various reasons, it has to be a little short on details, but here it is.

Back in my Navy days, I was on deployment when my submarine was involved in an underwater collision. Incidents like these are normally not reported widely right off the bat, but word leaked out about our mishap and so it appeared in the newspapers before official word could reach our families. Fortunately, it had been reported that there had been no loss of life on our boat. Unfortunately, there was not much else out there in the news and there was no reason not to suspect that the government was withholding information.

The most interesting thing to me on returning to the United States was to learn how my family reacted. I had assumed that it would have been my mother and my other female relatives who would have been most worried for me, while the men , like my dad and brothers would not have been quite as concerned.

But no. Quite the opposite was true. It was my father and the older of my brothers who were the most worried for me. Why? I think it's because much of the applied science pertinent to a submarine and much of the technology used is comprehensible to anyone who can understand the basic workings of a car engine. That would be my dad and my brother. And since they would be the ones best able to understand how a submarine works, they would also be the ones best able to appreciate how it could break.

It was my dad, in other words, whose imagination was best able to picture what could go wrong. Fortunately, my mother did not understand cars or machines in general and so was blissfully unable to conjure up doomsday scenarios.

And so I think we saw the same phenomenon here with the appraisal of this story by the MSM as a yawner not worthy of much attention.

That's too bad. It was high drama for those of us with imaginations honed by an appreciation of science and technology. So much for the prejudice of so many in the humanities against scientists, engineers, and technicians as lacking in imagination.

-- CAV