Politics in Science Writing

In both Specter's "The Deadliest Virus" and Weinberg's "The Crisis of Big Science," the authors used policies set in place by government as a method of persuasion. This was fascinating to me as most scientists I know think that the science they work on is in and of itself significant enough to create persuadable interest. In regard to "Th Crisis of Big Science," Weinberg is obviously bitter about the funding cut that the SSC took. In order to convey this distaste to his audience, he argues that "What motivates legislators is the immediate economic interests of their constituents. Big laboratories bring jobs and money into their neighborhood, so they attract the active support of legislators form that state, and the apathy or hostility from many other members of Congress" (234). Understandably, this is true. As a society, we are far more concerned with the immediate impact of a policy change. The long history of humans learning about the laws of nature isn't immediately beneficial to society, so why care about it?

Similarly, "The Deadliest Virus" talks about a topic which creates a sense of fear in it's audience. No one wants to hear about the 60% death rate of Avian flu, so we should just push it to the back corner and not talk about it until it's threat is immediate. We can see how this problem creates issues when epidemics DO break out in the areas currently affected by Ebola. For decades, ebola has just been a speck on our radar. It was something you read about in text books to learn about hemmhoragic fever. Funding for research on the virus was low because there was more need for funds elsewhere. When the virus did break out, we had nothing but a limited number of vials of an antiviral that was still in experimental phases.

Both of these articles made specific moves which I found interesting, but also seemingly obvious: When you are writing about something seemingly dull, connect it to home. Make your writing make people worry, or thing, or question what they already know. This move was effective in making these articles interesting and captivating. I'm still not all that concerned about contracting Ebola, but I'm more aware of how immediate dangers or threats motivate an audience.

Hot Coffee ;)

1) When I entered college, I definitely thought that as an English Writing major, I would be learning the rules to follow as a writer. I would say my opinion on this idea has changed greatly. Now, I am not saying that there are types of writing that don't have rules. For instance, if I am writing a grant, or writing a technical instructions manual, there are guidelines that I should probably follow if I want to end up with an effective piece. However, in all reality, that is exactly what I am learning as a writing student; how to write effectively. For most of what I write, this means that, for the most part, I won't have to follow "rules" per say. Instead, what I write will have more of an aim of effectiveness via wording, style, composition, delivery method, and of course, my use of rhetoric. Now, when I see "rules" set out for writing, I want to break them just to prove that I can be effective AND a bad-ass rule breaker.

2) Personal opinion IS writing. Writing cannot exist WITHOUT personal opinion. Personal opinion cannot be separated from anything that comes from a human source, which on this world, is everything. If I write an instruction manual for say, "How To Make a Grilled Cheese Sandwich,"(boring, yes) it is my personal opinion that you should turn on the stove at some point if you want the cheese to melt. It is my personal opinion that your main ingredients are going to be butter, bread, and cheese. It would be incredible to imagine a type of writing that did not include personal opinion, but I also think that it would be impossible... But I guess that's just my personal opinion... *pause for audience to laugh for at LEAST 5 minutes* No laughs? mmkay moving on.

3) I'm not sure if I can actually answer this last question, because according to my last answer, everything is personal opinion. Therefore, any place or scene of writing associates with personal opinion for me... So I'm not going to answer it... Instead, in honor of national coffee day, I'm going to leave you with this

September 18th

In reading chapter 4 of A Field Guide for Science Writers, I had a few thoughts. My first one was that if we are using an AB/BC format for writing, whether it is in sentence form, paragraph form, or story form, aren't we cheating? I feel as if having a format in any type of writing is highly restrictive and disrespectful to writers as a whole. I want my reader to be able to understand what I'm writing about not because I repeat the last word or phrase of one sentence at the beginning of the text, but because I know what I am talking about to the point that I am able to tell it as a story rather than a list of factoids. This moves me nicely on to the next thought I had while reading this chapter. I love the idea of writing difficult and complex topics as if they are a story. People understand stories, they are part of the foundation of our civilization, so why not write one. Instead of focusing on being able to put my story in an "easy" format for a reader to understand, I think I will focus on becoming a good story-teller of all stories.

Carl Sagan opens up "The Demon-Haunted World" with "[Science] is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking." This, to me, tells me that if we tell science stories like we tell other stories, as writers, we won't have to try so hard to write for the lay-men. When we plug our science writings into an understandable format, we push it into a body of knowledge. When we tell it as a story, we relate to the general population's way of thinking.

Lewis Wolpert claims that "science often explains the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar." When we witness a apple falling out of a tree, we aren't surprised or perplexed. Most likely, we ignore the action and move along with our day. For a scientist, they see that apple fall, and they see gravity and aerodynamics and friction. The scientist assigns numbers and velocities and directions of acceleration specific to that apple. Everyone sees science every day, but how we interpret that science and how we describe that science sets the scientist apart from the writer. The scientist will explain what happens in nature with an intended audience of other scientists. The writer needs to interpret that information and reformat it for their audience of humanity. For the lay-man. For the non-scientist. In this way, stories make the most sense. As a writer, I am uncomfortable doing science writing in a format that some scientist, at some point in time, created so that the average citizen could understand what happening in nature. I refuse to belittle my writing to a formula. I would much rather tell a story about why the apple fell from the tree and how the forces that took place on the apple made it turn and tousle between the tree and the ground.

Sept 9th

Rhetoric and Reality in the Process of Scientific Inquiry by Graves really struck a chord with me as my background in education is very science heavy. I began my college education as a mechanical engineer and it took me 2 years to decide that that wasn't the right course of action for me. But what I observed in what is classified as a heavily objective field was passionate people studying what loved. Not to say that being passionate is a bad thing, but as humans, is it really possible to be passionate AND objective? Even John Smith points out this issue when he is quoted in this paper as saying "The nice thing about these instruments like the electron microscope or the laser scanning microscope is that what you choose to look at gives you different information about the sample."

Like most of the readings Doug has us do, after reading this post I was confused about not only rhetoric, but science and life in general.... So, that's something. But what interested me was this notion that even "physicists' understanding of their data- the facts- is constrained at some level by what we might call reality" (Graves 10). This takes me back to our first day of class when we discussed what 'science' really is. Is science a construct of ideas which we meld together into something reasonable that we, as humans, can grasp and understand? Or is science pre-existing and we really do move forward and discover more and more naturally occurring laws?

Fischer argues with the narrative paradigm that "the world is a set of stories which must be chosen among to live the good life in a process of continual recreation" (383). This, and intertextuality, suggest that nothing is original, instead just 'traces' of existing ideas. In this sense, is modern science our version of deities? Is physics our God, and explanation, of forces which we cannot explain? Is chemistry our God of who we are and how we exist? Is math our God of trying to tie it all together?
Heidegger is quoted as saying "We are a conversation... conversation and its unity support our existence" (382).

When science is rhetoric and rhetoric the art of persuasion, is science and science writing even capable of being objective?

"Scientific Controversy" by M. Polanyi was a tough article for me to grasp. Mostly because it didn't seem like direct science writing, rather an attempt at an explanation of how science writing is read and understood. "Heuristic passion seeks no personal possession. It sets out not to conquer, but to enrich the world. Yet such a move is also an attack. It raises claim and makes a tremendous demand on other men; for it asks that its gift to humanity be accepted by all" (194). I struggled with this opening as it seems somewhat circular to me. Heuristic, if I understand is one's ability to learn something or discover something on their own accord. I don't understand the claim that it is an attack or a tremendous demand, as some people may just not take a heuristic approach to things. This reading then moves on to claim that "scientific controversies never lie altogether within science" (194). All of my observations with scientific arguments support this claim. When a society begins to debate, or argue a scientific method, belief, or ideal, it seems to me that their "logic gap" is greatly centered around their beliefs outside of science. I wonder how much this comes into play when writing about science in a non-definative way. In other words, if I am not trying to persuade my "science" audience, but instead I am writing fiction or otherwise, is this an issue of human nature that I need to take into account? Do I need to factor in other's belief and value systems into the way in which I write fake science? 

This article's claim that "the elimination of personal knowledge from science would destroy science" (197) seems to support that I would indeed need to take those beliefs into consideration.

The term "logical gap" was used over and over in this article. What exactly does it mean by gap? How big does this gap need to be between groups in order to make a difference?