Scientific celebrity has its dangers

We need communicators but also trust

             Scientific errors are in the air.  Three stories have made it into the national newspapers in recent months:  problematic images in 15-year-old papers from the lab of former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, possible misconduct in the papers on dishonesty by Harvard Business School’s Franceso Gino and Duke’s Dan Ariely, and problems with research on superconductivity by the University of Rochester’s Ranga Dias.  In recent weeks, the dishonesty story on Gino and Ariely has really captured the attention of the national media, sparking a massive piece in the New Yorker.  One reason is obvious:  Gino is at Harvard, which always attracts media attention.  But Gino and Ariely have something in common with other scholars who have had similar challenges:  personal celebrity.  Although we certainly need scientific figures that help humanize and communicate science for the public, history suggests that crossing over into the mainstream consciousness can sometimes make it easier – and more enticing -- for critics to undermine the scientific process.

                A very relevant story is chronicled in detail by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their landmark book, Merchants of Doubt.  In the early 1980s, the US was engaged in a tense debate about the buildup of nuclear weapons in the cold war with the Soviet Union.  A nuclear freeze movement, led in part by bishops in the US Catholic Church, was mobilizing strong opposition to proliferation.  (I have a personal connection to this, because the leader of the nuclear freeze movement in the church was my first cousin once removed (i.e., my mom’s first cousin), Joseph Bernardin. You can decide if there’s a family resemblance.)

In an effort to counter the movement, President Ronald Reagan proposed the “Star Wars” initiative, which would mount laser battle stations in space that could purportedly destroy nuclear weapons before they hit the US.  (Later estimates would suggest that this would require 2,400 battle stations at a cost of $1B each in 1980s dollars.)  

                In the middle of this debate, Carl Sagan – who had attained worldwide celebrity as the host of public television’s Cosmos – came forward with the idea that dust generated from nuclear war would plunge the entire planet into a “nuclear winter” that would be unsurvivable.  The first paper on this was published in Science and suggested that the temperature of the earth would drop as much as 35°C, making a nuclear war unwinnable.  But Sagan made a crucial error.  Before the paper was published, Sagan published an alarming essay in the widely circulated magazine Parade, painting a devastating picture of life following nuclear war and calling on Americans to oppose Reagan’s plans.  A few months later, other scientists began looking at Sagan’s original paper and concluded that improvements in the model Sagan used meant the temperature drop was more like 10-20°C, still devastating but not as dire as Sagan originally predicted.  Even though this followed the normal course of iteration and refinement that defines science, the advocates for nuclear proliferation and Star Wars now had all they needed to attack the nuclear winter hypothesis as fear mongering by stumbling scientists with a political agenda.

                This story is worth remembering in light of the episodes that are around today, particularly that of Gino and Ariely.  Both have attained a celebrity similar to that of Sagan – best-selling popular books, TED talks, major consulting work with corporate America, and in the case of Ariely, a scripted television show based on his ideas.  This has given them more incentive to sell their research – and made it alluring for a national press to expose the idea that it all may be too good to be true.  Further investigation will show whether their errors were intentional or simply the normal course of revision and correction in science (the distinction is important but is not the point of this column).  But either way, their intense celebrity has brought an awkward and bright spotlight onto their work and created an episode that those seeking to undermine science will use for years to come.

                It is common for folks in science policy to state that the solution to public skepticism is to have more scientists who are trained to communicate their work to the public.  But the story of Gino and Ariely – and Sagan 40 years ago – raises an important danger.  Sagan didn’t commit fraud, but overselling his research — and doing so prematurely — combined with his fame was a gift to advocates of Reagan’s space fantasy.  Gino and Ariely have certainly succeeded at communicating their research to the public, and their universities have rewarded them for their fame.  But by flying so close to the sun, they made the potential fall delicious and dangerous. 

            This problem doesn’t have a simple solution.  At the very same time, we need scientists who are speaking to a wider public and also need to inoculate science against critiques that we are indecisive and always uncertain.  The only solution is a long term one:  scientists speaking to wide audiences and the journalists who cover them have to be unsatisfyingly tentative.  Science is a process and the outcomes are what we know now.  It could always change, even if that doesn’t always make for great copy or riveting videos.