Posted by: Robin Amer on October 21, 2005 05:08 PM | Comments (1)

David Kestenbaum has a hard job. He's a science reporter for NPR, and regularly reports on complex subjects like string theory, the storage of nuclear waste, and how centrifuge works. To do it he has to talk to some people called "scientists" who, unfortunately for the public, don't always speak English. At least, that was the overall premise of the discussion. Science is complicated. And scientists aren't always so good at explaining what it is they do or why it's important. And listeners...well, it's not that they're dumb, but in order to explain things like the genome of plants or the threat of avian flu, sometimes the reporter has to pretend that they are.

To illustrate this point, David played several pieces of tape, including some hilarious (and sad) tape of a Nobel Prize winning physicist struggling to explain what exactly he did to earn this highest of honors. Mostly it's unintelligible. David says one of his colleagues uses the standard of a "potato farmer in Rhodesia" when envisioning his average listener, to force himself to keep things simple. David takes it even further.

I use the standard of an illiterate, blind potato farmer in Rhodesia...or my uncle... who has a short attention span and is often drunk...You really have to kill yourself to get good tape when you have a complicated story. I mean really kill yourself. And then threaten to kill the other person. - David Kestenbaum

Basically, I see a set of issues here around the central issue of expertise. And what it apparently does to experts, putting them in a realm of communication, a language of great specificity, and, a set of concepts, which the average person sans Ph.D. does not have access to. So the reporter must act like a translator, and somehow move the concepts and ideas of rarified science into the language of casual conversation, in which centrifuge is explained by spinning an egg, plant genomes are explored by rooting through decorative cabbage patches in the middle of the night, and black holes swallow not mythical bits of "information," but entire Cadillacs. Like David said:

If you go to a science conference people are talking about things in this level of arcana and if you read about it in the press it's very simplified, and there's a gap between this. So I feel like this piece is about that gap.- David Kestenbaum

It's a valuable service. I don't have a Ph.D. in physics but I'd like to understand the ramifications of storing nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain. So hopefully people like David Kestenbaum can help me understand them. But I found myself frustrated at times, because of some of the suppositions being made by the reporter, on my behalf as a listener. David played one piece in which he had interviewed two scientists about the top 10 unanswered questions in physics. Number ten was something about the 11 dimensions of the universe implied by a branch of theoretical physics called string theory. But Number 9...

We'll spare you Question 9.

Huh? But what if I want to know what question 9 is, cause now you've got me curious? What is it about number 9 that makes it that much harder to explain than Number 10? And why is it o.k. for you to brush it aside so casually? And have you just abandoned your responsibility to me as a listener, even if I am your drunk uncle or an illiterate potato farmer?

I asked David during the session: are there some things that are just too complicated to be explained to lay people? And his answer was yes. And that makes me a little sad. Are my expectations too high? I'm curious to know what you think.

I don't think I'm dumbing it down. I think I'm putting it back into proper mode for communication. That's how things happen in the real world. When you hear the press conference version of it that's not how it actually happens. - David Kestenbaum

I tend to think the techniques (/gimmics/strategies) David and other successful reporters employ tend to work pretty well in endearing themselves to their listeners, and in creating moments of memorable pleasure in what would otherwise be a dry, boring piece. David's point was that If the scene is effective, you will remember the grain of scientific information contained within.

Scenes can't be gratuitous. Scenes have to make a point. If that fact is embedded in the scene, you remember it, because you remember the guy digging through the decorative cabbage bed on 11th street, and that maybe you can grow that plant in the arctic. - David Kestenbaum

But I'm not sure I buy that. One of my favorite NPR news pieces I heard in the last year was a science piece about venus fly traps. The reporter (Nell Boyce) goes to a scientist's house with a small venus fly trap in a paper bag and says, "Look, I brought you a present!" Then later, she sticks her finger in the plant and it clamps down and bites her, causing her to exclaim on tape. It's really fun. It's surprising. It's a great moment. But can I remember a single thing about the mechanics of a venus fly trap? No. Not a damn thing. So was the moment successful in its dual purpose of education and pleasure? I would say no. But then, maybe it proves David's point exactly. Maybe it's a bad moment because it didn't convey a bit of scientific knowledge I'll remember along with the piece.

One or two other great quotes from David on the subject of not being overly reliant on the same experts, once you find the ones that are good talkers.

Sometimes the problem is when you find someone who's good you just want to build an ISDN line into their house. What I hate is that we constantly have experts and academics on and I hate it. I just want real people. Sometimes when i pickup a journal i'll pick the guy with the weirdest name. Like it's Lovejoy and it's a story about birds mating. - David Kestenbaum

And, on length.

4 and a half minutes is a lot. If we were to sit here for 4 and a half minutes in silence it would feel incredibly long. And boring pieces feel incredibly long. - David Kestenbaum

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Posted by: mildred lehmann on October 22, 2005 02:15 AM