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It has been 11 years since astronomer Carl Sagan died following a battle with myelodysplasia. To commemorate his loss, and more important, to celebrate his life, many of us are blogging about Dr. Sagan or putting comments about him on the http://celebratingsagan.blogspot.com/ blog.
To say that Dr. Sagan was a hero to a great many of us would be an understatement. For all of us who came to science popularization as a result of the phenomenal Cosmos series (created with Ann Druyan), who read his science popularization books, and who followed in his footsteps as writers and researchers, Carl Sagan was the foremost practitioner of science outreach and popularization. Simply put, he embraced and shared a passion for science and truth. Cosmos may have brought him to public attention in a very broad way, but it was hardly the first thing he did. Do a search on Amazon and you'll find an amazing number of products—books, music, DVDs, CDs, and so on—that he had a hand in creating (or that he inspired). All are still popular more than a decade after his passing.
One of his greatest hits isn't something that you can pick up at Amazon or download from iTunes. It's called the Voyager Record—a sort of audio-visual time capsule that recorded a brief moment of humanity's time in the universe. There are copies of this album on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, each of which is speeding out from the Sun, never to return. Whenever I think of Carl Sagan, I think of those albums. He headed up the committee that created them; he fought for them to be put on the spacecraft, and in some sense, they carry his vision of humanity (with all our brilliance and foibles) along with them.
The Voyager Record
I often wonder what Carl Sagan would say today, if we were still alive and watching the current rush by some short-sighted politicians in the world to dehumanize science and scientists. These "leaders" seem to care for little more than the next election, the next corporate donation, the next fundamentalist endorsement. Would he have to rewrite the book Demon-Haunted World, where he describes the fallacies of too much reliance on short-sighted religious prophets and the uneducated embrace of pseudo-sciences by people who fear science? Would he need to add on new chapters with examples of people who disregard their critical thinking skills just so they won't be bothered by uncomfortable truths about their leaders, their country, their planet?
I've had many "godly" people tell me that Carl Sagan hated religion, which of course is nonsense. Most times they haven't taken the time to read his works and understand his points. A careful reading of his works has showed me that Sagan wasn't about hate. He disliked, intensely, the way that many people willingly let others do their thinking for them. He disapproved of the silliness of pseudo-sciences and those who use science to promote nonscientific theories as a cover for religious indoctrination in the schools. But, hate people or religion? There's no proof of it. And science is all about the honest search for truth and the proof of it.
Carl Sagan's greatest legacy is and will continue to be the embrace of science and what it can tell us about the universe. How the cosmos works, where it's come from, where it's going, our place in it; those are things that science can tell us about. We have to be willing to do our part, too, by stepping up to the challenge and using science as the exploration tool that it is. And that, along with a record of images and sounds from our planet, is all a large part of what Carl Sagan left for us as a gift and a encouragement to explore our cosmos and all the ideas (whether uncomfortable or not) that exploration brings.
Phil Plait over at the Bad Astronomy Blog is always battling dumb portrayals of science in movies, on TV, in the media, etc. You know what I'm talking about—wrong lunar phases in movies, stupid things like having Barbie say "Math is hard!" and mis-statements about physics and astronomy in newscasts. It happens every day, and nobody in the media really gives much of a hoot because to them, science is just another beat, another story, another "weird" thing to write about to keep people from worrying too much about all the other problems in the world. Don't wanna write about the White House breaking the law cuz it's too hard on one's reportorial skills or the editor doesn't want you to? Well, hey, let's write a story about weird science. That'll deflect people's attention! Don't understand anything about astronomy or physics or math, Mr. or Ms. Reporter? Doesn't matter as long as you have a snappy lead, right? (And, just for disclosure, I consider myself a journalist too, even got a degree in journalism and mass communications—so I know their jobs and I know their beats. But I still get to call shenanigans on 'em!)
Okay, so I'm a bit cynical about media portrayals of science and misuse of science terms in movies, TV and news. Wouldn't you be if your profession were continually misrepresented by the media? If you're a scientist, you continually read really silly stereotypes about science and scientists, like the one about how scientists are just geeks. Or you go to movies and see scientists being portrayed as loners, or evil geniuses, or lonesome weirdos working at the frontiers of science. Wearing pocket protectors. And thick glasses.
It's kind of like being an atheist and reading stories about how atheists supposedly worship Satan (hello!! atheists profess no belief in any deity, and last time I looked, Satan was supposedly the Lord of the Underword in several mytho-romantical religious cultures). Or being a Muslim and finding out in the media that you're a bloodthirsty bomber, or being a Christian and reading that all Christians hate everybody, or being a woman and reading in the media that all women want or need is a good man, or being a teenaged girl and finding out that your biggest goal should be to look anorectic so you can attract boys. Or... well, I could go on and on. Stereotypes and mistakes in the media are an annoyance, but if people who read and watch media are well-educated enough, they can look beyond the stereotype. (And the sad state of science education in my country is another tangent I could go off on, particularly since it seems that many reporters don't take ONE class in science when they're in J-School... but I digress...).
What got me up on my Science Mistakes Soapbox today? Reading CNN.com. Which kind of surprised me, because usually their science stories are pretty good and reasonably accurate most of the time. They don't make the usual bone-headed mistakes that I see so often in much of mainstream media.
So, today I was reading about Sunita Williams, one of NASA's astronauts on the International Space Station. She was all over the news last week (at least in Boston) because she ran the Boston Marathon in space while the race was being held here on Earth. There was lots of cool coverage about her training and how she'd run it on the treadmill while whirling around the planet at 17,239 miles per hour (27,273 kilometers per hour). Today's story (which you can read here), talks about Sunita catching a ride home soon, if the Atlantis shuttle launches on time.
The part that set me off on this discussion was the last part of the first sentence (called the "lead" in J-talk), which said:
"...so she doesn't have to spend more than six months in the cosmos."
In the cosmos??? That one definitely jarred my attention, and I asked myself, "Okay, what part of "cosmos" doesn't the story writer understand?"
For those of you following along at home, here's a nice definition of the word at Dictionary.com. It cites the American Heritage Dictionary's definition of "cosmos" that says, in part:
"the universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious whole."
The use of the word "cosmos" in the CNN story is wrong. And you don't even have to be a scientist to know it. Any reasonably well-educated person should know what the word "cosmos" means, right? Probably the writer didn't want to say "outer space" or "on orbit" (although I don't know why not). But, substituting the word "cosmos" is just plain wrong. We're already IN the cosmos! Earth is part of the cosmos. Low-earth orbit is part of the cosmos.The flowers in my yard are part of the cosmos.
The tale comes from the Associated Press, which I used to admire quite a bit for its accuracy and good writing. But, it seems they've let their standards slip a bit. I think that somebody's writer is a little non-cosmos-mentis. and shame on CNN for just running it as is, without correcting the mistake.
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Adot's Notblog A fellow traveler blogger and astronomy enthusiast!
Astronomy Blog An astronomy blog pondering the big questions
—books, music, DVDs, CDs, and so on—that he had a hand in creating (or that he inspired). All are still popular more than a decade after his passing. 
