Science and Writing and Writing Science

I like science a lot. And I like writing, a lot, although not everyone knows that because my fine undergraduate institution completely turned me off of the humanities (with the excellent exception of history). But I'm not interested in writing about science. Why not? Maybe I should be? Why am I prejudiced against science writing and is this prejudice well-founded?

I think my awareness of science writing began with a negative impression. When I was fifteen, I stupidly decided to go to some Nobel Laureate Symposium at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a stupendous waste of time, and the worst part is that I missed school for it (I suppose it doesn't matter too much now, but it is embarassing to remember). One of the speakers involved there was science writer K.C. Cole, who told a pretty bad story about a friend of hers, was generally socially awkward, and really annoyed me. She was introduced as a science writer. At the time I didn't even know what a science writer was, but from that point on science writers and embarassing emotions have been inextricably associated in my mind.

Subsequent experiences that involved actually writing science, mostly in the form of psuedo-grant proposals to get the Undergraduate Research programs to give me money were reasonably pleasant and successful. Hey, I was proposing the research I was going to do! And of course on paper it would all work! However, when it came time at the end of summers to write reports of my research, there was always a tension between being honest about what I did and making my research look good. And that's where I saw that for many people honesty didn't quite fly out the window, but did get negelected, a bit, for the sake of artistry.

But see, artistry is what writing is all about. The great thing about fiction is that it doesn't have to be real. In fact, it's not supposed to be real because then it wouldn't be fiction. Fiction-at least good fiction--just has to entertain. That's it. Voila. Nothing real, no honesty required, at least not in the literal sense. Some peevish folks--and I am among them-- might request that fiction be "believable" or "true to life" but those are mere luxuries and preference, not hard rules.

I realize that not all writing is fiction. In fact, the writing that we learned in high school, writing essays and research reports and whatnot, was most definitely not fiction. Incidentally, that's the writing that my teachers in high school liked me for, the writing that let me to beleive that I'm not a sucky writer. But the writing that I've always loved was fiction, in the form of big long books that go on and on telling their beautiful made up tales. And even the columns I used to write for the school newspaper didn't have hard rules about truthfullneess. I expressed my opinion, tried to be honest, and never lied, but it was impossible to be completely dishonest about something because I was just expressing my opinion.

In science, there should be hard rules. Such as, first of all, No Lying. No Fiction. No making up pretty stuff that sounds good. And more importantly, no covering up your lack of progress with the tale of exciting applications. [I guess I should note that when I talk about writing science, I am speaking more generally about presenting science--it can include oral presentation as well. This is how my undergraduate Writing and Rhetoric classes have skewed me.] I undertand that people who present science to a more general audince, one that isn't going to go work on your same research question, want to tell a neat story. But I also know, from being in the middle of things, that neat stories are hard to come by. That's why research exists and why research groups are still doing their work. But I can't help but feel that people who present their research at colloquia are not giving me the fully honest story, but rather a dressed up and prettified version of the truth.

And so, because the writing I most love is antithetical to the way I think science should be written, I've developed an aversion to science writing. But maybe I should, instead, try to find ways to write about science that I don't find to be repulsive. I could then convince myself that I am doing a great public service. Robert suggested something about working on educational science for elementary school kids. Science education is important, and is also pretty crappy because it's not very deep. It needs work.