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GELFAND’S WORLD - Los Angeles was the site of two recent scientific events which went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media. They were events held for young scientists -- high school students mainly. The two events reveal a lot about our science education and about the way our media treat the idea of science itself.
The California Science and Engineering Fair was held in April, and the International Science and Engineering Fair was held over the past week. The CSEF is the culmination of many local and county level science fairs, whose outstanding students win the chance to compete at the state level. The ISEF invites students who have won at state and national science fairs. They come from all over the United States and all over the rest of the world. There were approximately 2000 such competitors at this year's ISEF, which was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
You might wonder how such fairs work. Think of tens of thousands of students doing some sort of science project over the past year. Some of them have a school teacher to mentor them, some find it possible to work in a university lab or other research institution, and some work at home, doing their book research online and at the library. Some of them become skilled at inventing and building the test equipment they need.
What they have in common is that they apply themselves to finding a project that is new and original, and then work to make that project into reality. They develop a scientific question and then ask themselves, "How can I test this hypothesis?" In order to get to the CSEF or the ISEF, they will have to develop experiments that are appropriate to the scientific question, do those experiments, analyze their results, and then explain what they have found.
This is where volunteer science fair judges such as yours truly come in. Judges listen to each student competitor in turn, then ask the student questions, and then repeat the process with the next competitor. At the end of the day, we adjourn to a closed room and discuss among ourselves the projects and the students who created those projects. We look for the best science or engineering. In each of these two fairs, each particular category (electrical engineering, cell biology, etc.) gave out awards. There is a certain amount of money involved, but for the most part, the winning students get to write, "Finalist in the International Science and Engineering Fair" or "CSEF Category Winner" on their college applications.
I'd like to mention one brief conversation I had with a young man who was a competitor at ISEF, and I am bringing this up to develop a larger point about public understanding and media treatment of science. The young man had done an interesting project (the details of which I will not go into), and we were discussing the science. Along the way, I asked where he had done the work, because we are always interested in what help the student got along the way. His answer: "LSU." This was interesting to me because almost everything I know about the Louisiana State University is how its football team did lately and whether the quarterback won the Heisman Trophy this time around.
And it occurred to me that this is unfair and ignorant. Universities are a lot of things and serve a lot of purposes, but of late they have been treated by the press for their little scandals (somebody paid off the sailing coach to get a kid admitted) or for the fact that protestors congregate on their premises (and a few of them get arrested) or for the fact that a few members of congress managed to find fault with the level to which a university president balances freedom of speech against freedom of religious identity.
What the press manages to miss is the fundamental functioning of a university and in particular, how this works for any of the many sub-schools and departments. I won't go into the details, but universities sponsor research labs by the thousands which engage in studies which have made possible the remarkable scientific age which is currently happening.
It's interesting that when established scientists talk about students or about young researchers, the term they often use is "doing the work." There is a lot of work involved in research, it costs money, and it takes a lot of hours of working that pipet or adjusting some machine. It can be a grudge and a grind, but it is necessary to do the work. The scientists are looking for young folks who are willing to do the work and thereby develop themselves as future scientists.
An aside: The public view of science, mirrored I suspect by too many journalists, is that science is something of a luxury that may on occasion yield up something interesting but impractical. But in the current era, this is exactly wrong. We are at a point where we understand a lot about cancer, but we don't yet have the molecular tools to make it disappear the way we can treat a cough or a sore throat. A lot of work has to be done to get to that point, and it will be through the science process -- the bit of brilliance and the long grind -- that we will eventually get there. Likewise, we -- the whole world -- are in a bind over increasing global temperatures and we need to do the work, spend the money, and make the sacrifices if we are going to get through it.
The modern research university is a giant and magnificent machine that has its politics and has its faults but generates scientific findings by the process of lots of people doing the work.
One other point before coming back to the twin science fairs: Due to the steady accumulation of scientific findings, the development of new technologies, and the long grind of getting the work done, the world of the 2020s is in an era of science. In every field, the ability to measure things, to compute results based on those measurements, and the ability to develop new products at the molecular level is not only developing, it is accelerating. There are a few frustrations (the development of practical fusion energy always seems to be another 25 years out) but in almost every other field, there is a remarkable level of development.
Let's think about what I have been saying about the modern system of research universities, and the science fairs and see if we can wrap it up in one bow.
Remember that student I was talking about who was not a football player, but rather had been doing some interesting science as a high school student? I actually looked up LSU just to make sure that I wasn't blowing smoke. I found one bit of graduate work from the chem department that caught my eye. I'll provide the link here, but what interested me was something that has to do with this CityWatch column. Back about a decade ago, I was writing about some scientific and medical problems that had not been solved. You can read the original column here. Or don't read any of it, but understand that one student at LSU has come up with an approach to a serious bacterial disease risk that faces anyone who gets admitted to a hospital. It's an infectious bacterial strain that has learned to resist most common antibiotics. Researchers have been trying lots of different approaches (you can read that old column of mine) and the LSU researchers have seemingly found and tested a new one.
And one young man made use of the same system of research labs to (perhaps) start a life in science or medicine.
In talking to former students who have become established researchers, it is interesting that some of them attest to the beneficial effects of doing a science project and how it got them started in a career. It allowed them to experience a way of thinking and a way of life that otherwise might have escaped them entirely, or until graduate school.
Coming full circle to the role of the media in telling the people about science and universities, it is clear that my own view is strongly skewed from what the newspapers and the nightly news tell us about the same subjects. For this point of view, I offer an analogy. Think about Cape Canaveral and what has gone out of it and, in fact, literally out of this world. You might add Vandenberg Air Force Base to the equation while you're at it. We sent men to the moon, unmanned vehicles to the surface of Mars, and probes out to Jupiter and beyond. Meanwhile, that huge fleet of communication satellites which allow you the use of your cell phone and your internet connection were also sent aloft.
Now think about the system of universities and consider that the scientists and engineers at those universities are part of this system. And then think about how the media would cover Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg if they were covering them the way they have been covering our universities.
We would see a headline like, "Airman arrested for being drunk outside the gates of Vandenberg; congressman calls for the resignation of the General in charge of the base." Seriously, isn't that exactly how the House of Representatives handled the presidents of MIT and Harvard?
But as the congress and the mass media find their little scandals to jump on, thousands of students are working on learning about science and putting their newfound knowledge to use. Eventually, some of them will be the scientific leaders we will rely upon in a dangerous and hotter world.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected].)
