“Science on the air” is an enjoyable and extremely well researched account of the origins of science programming in north American radio. From 1923 to the mid-50s, LaFollette takes us in a journey through the life and programs of many scientists, journalists and storytellers who chosed radio as a medium for science communication. A journey who allow the reader to visit many success, but also many incomprehension and missed opportunities, mainly by scientific institutions, who often failed to understand the potential of radio as a tool for science communication. It is a fully enjoyable journey, that leave the reader with an appetite to know how the US situation relates to other wonderful experiences around the world in the same years, and how those pioneer experiences influenced today's landscape

Matteo Merzagora

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SISSA – International School for Advanced Studies   Journal of Science Communication ISSN 1824 – 2049   http://jcom.sissa.it/  JCOM 8(1), March 2009  Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0  Review Science on air: a journey through early science programmes in US radio Matteo Merzagora  Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, Science on the air, The University of Chicago Press (2008).    ABSTRACT: “Science on the air” is an enjoyable and extremely well researched account of the origins of science programming in north American radio. From 1923 to the mid-50s, LaFollette takes us in a journey through the life and programs of many scientists, journalists and storytellers who chosed radio as a medium for science communication. A journey who allow the reader to visit many  success,  but  also  many  incomprehension  and  missed  opportunities,  mainly  by  scientific institutions,  who  often  failed  to  understand  the  potential  of  radio  as  a  tool  for  science communication. It is a fully enjoyable journey, that leave the reader with an appetite to know how the US situation relates to other wonderful experiences around the world in the same years, and how those pioneer experiences influenced today's landscape. When  browsing  through  the  rich  bibliography  of  Marcel  LaFollette's  book  Science  on  the  air,  one immediately observe three main features. Only a handful of books or papers quoted are published after 2000; almost no reference point to science and technology studies or science communication studies; almost  no  reference  concerns  studies  published  outside  the  Anglo-Saxon  world.  These  observations outline the three main drawbacks of the book.  But  it  is  worth  coming  back  to  them  only  after  having  reported  about  the  pleasure  of  reading  an informative,  well  documented,  well  written,  intelligent  account  of  a  little  known  facet  of  science communication history. In another recent book about science in radio broadcasting1 (focused on Europe and on present time) we denounced the void that surrounds the analysis of the role of the radio in science communication, if compared with the analysis of other media such as television or science centres, quoting LaFollette's earlier works as a notable exception. This new book is therefore highly welcomed. The corpus of LaFollette research concentrates on the early history of science in radio broadcasting in the United States (with a chapter devoted to television: we will not discuss it here, as LaFollette is reportedly working on a full book about science and early television and we look forward to review it): the book “chronicles the efforts of [those] popularizers, from 1923 to the mid-1950s, as they negotiated for  time  on  the  air”.  By  applying  all  the  best  practices  of  a  radio  report,  LaFollette  transform  a meticulous  work  in  the  archives  of  the  Science  Service  agency  and  other  science  popularisation experiences on air into a captivating account of the efforts, the achievements and the ideologies of a number of fascinating men (and too few women, as she does not fail to underline...). If their efforts and their achievements is what makes the reading of the book truly enjoyable, it is their ideology, or more simply their views about the role of the radio in science communication, that is probably of specific interest for the Jcom reader. Thanks to this account, we can appreciate how many different views of science communication can exists and have existed or cohexisted over the years. According to Austin Hobart Clark, for example, a curator of the Smithsonian Institution to whom we owe one of the first science chronicles in American radio, in 1923, science talks on the radio “must be wholly accurate, dignified, and without reference to controversial points”, which would “discredit” science. A principle used to justify avoiding talking about evolution,  for  example.  This  view  did  not  prevent  Clark  to  establish  a  long  lasting  personal  and professional friendship with Thornton Burgess, author of children books on nature, initiator of the Radio Nature League, who used the radio to mobilize young Americans in preservation efforts. Burgess (as M. Merzagora  2  several of the other characters of the cast) comes out of LaFollete account as a wonderful story teller whose stories we would love to listen in a multimedia version of the book... He and Clark managed to promote what we would now call “bottom-up” science, convinced that the radio medium “had significant potential  for  gathering  as  well  as  giving  out  scientific  information”,  for  example  by  asking  (and obtaining) the listeners to monitor an unusual flight of three species of white herons in 1925. Another friendship, the one between scientist William Emerson Ritter and newspaper publisher Edward Willis Scripps, is at the origin of the Science Service and its evolution toward an independent and influential news service. The two men understood the need of scientific institutions to conquer public support, and at the same time that “there are aspects of science that appeal strongly to popular interest. There is much that is curiosity-satisfying, much that is practically useful, much that is dramatic”. With an offer and a demand waiting to be connected, success was granted, but only if the right choices were made. For example, already in the 1920s it was possible to trace a discussion – which continued up to our time - on the importance to make use of professional science communicators (“highly intelligent and sympathetic... though not necessarily trained in science”) and/or of scientists experts in the contents, but that would need to be trained to gain “considerable sympathetic attention to the problem of the deeper social relation of science”, since “the obligation of science... to discover its own meaning for human life is not one whit less pressing upon it than is its obligation to discover the truths of nature” (quotes are from William E. Ritter correspondence in 1920). Training good journalists and engaging scientists were elements incorporated in a vision of “shared responsibility” on which Science Service based its success, and that we still find central in many debates on science communication today. The same is true for the assessment of the meaning of “breaking news” or “hot news” in science, a topic that challenged other major protagonists of early science radio history, such as chemist Edwin Emery Slosson – the first to head Science Service - or the managing editor Watson Davis (to whom LaFollete attribute the merit of bringing journalistic skills and “noses” to science reporting: another voice that we wish to ear one day...). LaFollete  book  proceed  in  introducing  and  following  the  deeds  of  many  fascinating  historical characters, while at the same time providing an overview of many issues relevant for science in radio broadcasting in the period analysed, but we could easily say also today. Namely the educational role of radio, its close relationship with the public of the listeners, the opportunities and risks to present science through fiction, the way radio can and does allow scientists to express their personalities through the interaction with the presenters, the way in which, “having previously been dramatized and humanized”, in wartime period radio “became politicized”.  Having said this, it is worth spending few lines on what can be considered the weaker points of the book, as they emerge from the analysis of the bibliography. First, reference to science and technology studies and science communication studies are mostly absent, and only a handful of books and papers quoted were published in XXI century. This cannot be imputed to a lack of mastering of the topic: LaFollette is the author of several seminal papers and books on science popularization and she is an authority on the subject since many years, also as editor of the “Science  Communication”  magazine.  Do  we  have  to  interpret  this  absence  as  a  message  that contemporary studies on public understanding of science and science in society issues are on a false route and fail to provide useful new knowledge? Or it is just the choice of an historian who wish to protect her analysis from the distorting lenses of contemporary preoccupations? Whatever the cause, the effect is a feeling of unease: readers, whether academics of practitioners of radio science programmes, would  probably  have  benefited  from  clear  statements  clarifying  the  approach  adopted  and,  most importantly, the overall goals of this work. Indeed, potentially interesting assertions such as “what seems astonishing  in  retrospect  is  how  little  the  leaders  of  the  scientific  community  seemed  to  respect broadcasting's power and potentials” and a reported “marginalization of science programming” which appear as a strong thesis of the book, leave the reader with more appetite than they satisfy.  Secondly, almost no reference is included to studies conducted outside the Anglo Saxon world. Indeed, this is is a general tendency of studies originating in the US and UK, which has a very negative impact on the general advancement of knowledge. We could quote, for example (and not to refer to the obvious BBC, Radio France or Deutsche Welle experiences, all happening in the same years), the very interesting account of the origins of radio broadcasting in Brazil as a science communication tool in 19232, the very same year in which the account of LaFollette begins. Although outside of the focus of the book, readers of what is at present the most complete account of the history of science in radio broadcasting would 3  Science on air: a journey through early science programmes in US radio   have benefited to have at least a superficial overview of what was happening in the rest of the world at the same time.  Set aside these negative elements, minors if compared to the interesting elements sketched above, we wish to conclude with a quote by pioneer Austin Hobart Clark reported in Science on the air, that very well  summarizes  the  feeling  of  anyone  who  experienced  working  at  (as  a  practitioner)  or  on  (as  a researcher) a radio programme, and also the feeling that the readers of this book will probably take home: “all of those who have talked over the radio... have acquired a wholly new concept of popular science, and the training they have received will not soon be forgotten”. Notes and references  1 M. Mazzonetto, M. Merzagora and E. Tola, Science in radio broadcasting, the role of the radio in science communication, Polimetrica (2005). 2 L. Massarani, I. de C. Moreira and F. Brito (Eds), Ciência e Público. Caminhos da Divulgação Científica no Brasil, Casa da Ciência e Editora da UFRJ (2002).    HOW TO CITE:   M. Merzagora, Science on air: a journey through early science programmes in US radio, Jcom 08(01) (2009) R01  

Science on air: a journey through early science programmes in US radio

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