What comes into your head when you read the phrase, "The World". A map? A photograph of the Earth taken from space? Go ahead. There are no wrong answers here. That is to say, that most of the answers are either all equally right – or, just as likely, equally not quite right, but not totally wrong.

You could just as easily think of an atom of silicon as you could about geography or geopolitics. Or could you? What does Florida look like? If a picture doesn't immediately jump into your head, there's an answer for that; we can look up in a book of maps. And, there's enough of these maps, each of them near enough to being identical, that we can all agree on the shape of the sunshine state. But, what does an atom look like? You don't know, even if you were shown all those diagrams that look like little solar systems. (That's ok, neither do I.) Partly because those diagrams aren't anything like a true representation of what an atom looks like; but mostly because of the size of them. Light behaves very differently when you get down to that scale, to such a degree in fact that the whole concept of "looking" drastically changes.

That's not to say that we can't describe what an atom is, or how it behaves. There are people who can. The problem is, in order to be as accurate as possible, those people have to use some pretty fancy mathematics to do it. The odds are pretty good that you and I wouldn't understand it.

Or, if you happen to be the kind of person who understands that sort of thing, perhaps you could do me a favor and give me an in depth description of cell mitosis? And, if by some miracle, you understand both of those things well enough to talk to a trained scientist on both those topics, maybe you wouldn't mind explaining exactly how to build an Ethernet card?

The point is this: you live in a world you don't understand. Everything outside of your specialized area of expertise, you've got to take somebody's word for. Let's take a look at our geography example for instance. It doesn't take much specialized knowledge to understand a map, but what if, for some reason, you don't trust the millions of maps of Florida that currently exist, so you decide to map it yourself? Now you're talking about the specialized discipline of cartography. How long do you suppose it would take for you to learn all that? Let's say you decide to go ahead and do it anyway and, after a couple of years, you've got a map of Florida. Only 49 more states to go. And then you can get started on the rest of the world.

Ok, you might say. Who cares what Florida really looks like as long as the maps are good enough for me to get from Miami to Fort Lauderdale? Come to that, who cares about the details of atoms, mitosis and Ethernet anyway? That's exactly what people were saying before July 16th, 1945. Or before 1761, when Giovanni Morgagni laid the foundations of modern cancer research. Or before Bob Metcalfe built the first Ethernet network in Palo Alto in 1973.

There's no question that the things you don't understand can have a profound effect on your life. The problem is that, whatever it is you do know about any number of subjects, that knowledge has to be taken on faith, right?

Maybe not. You know that the current map of Florida is probably pretty accurate. Why? Is it because so many people agree on it? If that's your standard, tell that to the several million people who, until relatively recently, thought the Earth was flat.

Nevertheless, you'd be on the right track. It's not so much about how many of the general public agree on something that makes it a fact, because the great masses, though they are much, much, much smarter than they're often given credit for, can also be very wrong.

Experts are a different matter. Getting them to agree completely on any topic in any subject is almost impossible. They may all have remarkably similar views of course, but just as often, they diverge on the essential questions, argue with each other, and try to prove the others wrong. So, somebody draws a map of Florida and shows it to other cartographers. If they disagree (and, at the beginning of the exploration of almost any subject, they're bound to), they'll undertake the work necessary to prove the first guy wrong. So now, somebody else comes up with a map. And still other people disagree with it, and start doing their own research into the problem.

Keep on going through this process, and what happens? The maps keep getting better. It might take awhile before they perfect it (if such a thing is possible), but eventually, they'll all be satisfied enough to print the damn things and let us all get on with our Spring Break. It's skepticism that drives these improvements.

You may not know enough about cartography yourself to prove that Florida looks like what it looks like but, if you have access to the experts and you are aware of the arguments, refinements, and eventual agreement of those experts, you can be pretty confident that you'll get from point A to point B (or even Point Florida) without too much trouble.

So it goes with the rest of science, the back-bone of everything around you – all the modern advances that make our lives so much easier and more comfortable than those of our ancestors. You know that when you buy a light bulb, for example, the fundamental principles of its design have been worked out well enough that you can be almost certain that it will light up when you put it in the right socket. (Well, most of the time.)

You, through the people you elect and send letters to when you want to have your say, have to make decisions about what kind of advances we'll make in the future. Should we pursue stem cell research? Should we teach evolution in schools? Even though most of us aren't biochemists or zoologists, we probably have opinions on these subjects, and those opinions determine who we hire to make and implement laws. Seems like the source of our information would be pretty important.

The problem there, however, is that we just don't get much information about those subjects. Depending on the papers you read, the TV programs you watch, or even the clergy-people you listen to every week, you might know, for example, that very few serious, trained scientists disagree that evolution is a fact. The odds are that, depending again on where you get your information, you might think that evolution is an unproven theory – a term about which it is often incorrectly implied is no better than an out and out guess.

Whatever your opinion about these specific topics happens to be isn't necessarily germane to the larger picture, because any scientific topic you could care to mention could have a tremendous impact on your life, no matter how insignificant it seems right now. What's important is this: We need to have access to the arguments of the experts. And we do, although it's woefully inadequate when it comes time to make important decisions. The media are the ones who tell us this stuff. In the news business, it's called science reporting.

Yet, we don't get much of that. Mostly what winds up being classified as "science reporting" is just news about technology. And, very often, that news is written with the intent of getting us all jazzed up about some great new product for us to buy. As an eminent astronomer once observed, you'd be lucky to see an item about real science in your local newspaper once in a week; but the astrology column is published every day.

There are two basic problems here. The first is that news about science isn't, for the lack of a better word, "sexy". The second is – well, have you ever actually talked to a scientist? Some of them find it very difficult to explain what it is that they're working on in layman's terms. Worse, some of them can't even be bothered to try because, in the end, they couldn't care less what you, as an uninformed person, might have to say about it. To the latter example, there can only be one response: Screw them. After all, who do they think is paying for all of that research that they're doing, anyway?

There have been precious few successful populists of science. Carl Sagan was one of them. Albert Einstein, while not doing much direct work in this area, was a popular celebrity in his day. Right now, the best thing we've got is Brian Greene. Sagan, in his day, was vilified for cultivating publicity. Greene, on the other hand, seems to have escaped that criticism for the most part, but he doesn't seem to have appeared on the Tonight Show either. (It looks like he was once on The Late Show, however.)

One might think that having more populist scientists could solve the first problem, the fact that the media has difficulty translating scientific jargon into something that we could all understand. But, I think that these issues are important enough that the media shouldn't be sitting around waiting for somebody to do this for them. A science reporter should be able to do more than rewrite a press release for the latest video game console.

The other thing that needs to happen is that we, the news consuming public, must demand access to the scientific discussions of our day. We need a metaphorical kicking down of the doors. And, if you think that we don't because you've already made up your mind about things like stem cells and evolution – whether you think they're totally wrong or totally right – let met put it to you this way. What if I told you that I didn't believe that cutting taxes has any affect whatsoever on economic growth, and, therefore wanted corporations to be taxed at 99% of their profits. Would you want me making decisions about who we elect to public office? Would you care then? Would you see me as a dangerous, close minded person who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a voting booth?

Perhaps not. For the record, my ideas about taxation and economic growth are a bit more nuanced than that. But then again, I only know what my experts tell me. Thank goodness there are whole newspapers devoted to that sort of thing. Better still: Even papers that aren't solely focused on that subject have entire daily sections devoted to it.

None of this is intending to suggest that you simply go along with the eventual concensus of the experts. As I've implied, it's a healthy sense of skepticism that pushes progress along. But, without the access to the information and explainations that good science reporting provides, how do you even know what questions to ask? Or even that there are questions that should be asked? Even knowing all of this, that's only a start. It's a two way street, after all. How are the experts to know, cut off as they are from the general public, what it is that we want from them unless we're given a chance to respond to whatever it is that they're doing?

All I can tell you is that we are being left out of some of the most important decisions ever made, because we either don't know about, or care about, or even understand them. But, we can be told about them, and at that point we can at least make a choice about whether or not we should care. And, as for whether or not we'll understand what it is that we've been told... well, we won't know until it happens, won't we?

-B. C. Silvia
-4/27/05