Science in the Making

”The impossible task of opening the black box is made feasible (if not easy) by moving in time and space until one finds the controversial topic on which scientists and engineers are busy at work. This is the first decision we have to make: our entry into science and technology will be through the back door of science in the making, not through the more grandiose entrance of ready made science.”

- Bruno Latour, Science in Action

Peter Galison's Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know is one of the best science documentaries ever made. The film follows multiple teams of physicists as they labor to gain a better understanding of black holes. The first group is led by Shep Doeleman, Director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). We first meet him and the team on-site in Serdán, Mexico, at one of the many locations of the EHT array just as they're running through final preparations and troubleshooting for the big event: an attempt at the first photograph of a black hole. The second group in the film is a team of theoretical physicists — Stephen Hawking, Malcolm Perry, Andrew Strominger, and Sasha Haco — and it follows them through a series of meetings and discussions as they try to work out a new theory to explain the black hole information paradox.

The film is notable for several reasons. It captures the thrill of scientific discovery, including the media frenzy that followed the team after they successfully captured the first-ever image of a black hole. It documents the last working moments of Stephen Hawking's life and shows the enormous influence he had on the generation of physicists who have come behind him. The film also serves as a striking visual representation of Galison's theory for how science advances: through experimentation, theory, and instrumentation. Each of the different subcultures provides insight and intellectual leverage for the others.

Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know is a model example of science in the making — using the element of time to effectively communicate the wonder and complexity of science.

Galison follows the teams through multiple stages of the scientific process — hypothesizing, technical troubleshooting, questioning, and celebrating. The full emotional journey is on display, and it’s an incredibly compelling way to communicate science. It's human and nuanced. It's more honest than the usual mode of communicating science, which usually takes the form of reporting results or, at best, doing a retrospective story. Galison tapped into the same magic of Jacques Cousteau's legendary series that inspired a generation of marine biologists. The viewer is along for the adventure, wherever it happens to lead. 

Jeff Orlowski is another master of the format. His award-winning films Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral follow scientists to the edge of our changing planet. The films have the common stylistic ingredient of time, which Orlowski uses to translate the dynamic uncertainty of science into story. 

Beyond any specific format or medium, story remains the best method of communicating science to a broad audience. As Orlowski notes, the narrative arc of science fits neatly into our best understanding of how to shape and structure a story. But it rarely happens! The vast majority of science is communicated as a current event: "A new study shows..."

Science-as-news is reductionist and isn’t always effective. And it's getting worse as scientists try to pack rationality and facts into narrower and noisier mediums like Twitter and TikTok. They're losing an unwinnable battle. 

I don't blame the scientists or journalists. They're doing their best to adapt to the realities of a digital age and a flood of misinformation. A lot of it is imaginative and impressive. But they're working on a faulty premise: the information deficit model. The deficit model of science communication, which has persisted and dominated the field of science communication since the mid-1980s, operates on the assumption that science literacy is the problem; people just need more facts, or more information, to fix an incorrect worldview. Unfortunately, that's not how human minds work. It's now well understood that confirmation bias trumps rationality. And it’s worse than ineffective: the deficit model is actually harmful. The Cultural Cognition Project calls this the science communication paradox, which shows the more information a person has, the less likely they are to change their minds.

The deficit model needs a dramatic upgrade. There’s too much at stake. The breakdown in the relationship between science and society is the meta-problem compounding many of humanity’s other grand challenges: climate change, pandemic response, biodiversity loss, and more.  

So what works? 

That’s an open question. The moment calls for more experimentation with new forms of communication and scientific participation, each coupled with rigorous analysis. We need a new science of science communication. Counting views or likes isn’t enough. We need to understand what actually changes minds and increases scientific curiosity. And communicating science through time is a promising opportunity space. 

The good news is that we can experiment here. There are good examples in adjacent genres. Two personal favorites: the Grand Designs television series with their years-long builds neatly packaged into a 45-minute show, and Leo Sampson Goolden’s epic YouTube series documenting the ongoing rebuild of the Tally Ho sailing ship. Simply copy-pasting those stylistic models should yield good results. Even a little more of this style goes a long way. In DeepMind’s short video about creating AlphaFold, the in-the-moment archival footage brings the discovery to life:

The tools are there, too. The new platforms — YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and on and on — along with ubiquitous cameras and recording technology provide all the infrastructure needed. And scientists are starting to figure it out. I'm following several. Ariel Waldman has posted multiple expeditions, including a microscopic exploration of Antarctica, to her YouTube and Patreon channels. I'm following Jeff Heilveil as he provides missives to Experiment and Twitter from his field season across eastern North America — live streams, in every sense of the word. 

I'm all for more YouTube explainers, catchy TikTok clips that incorporate scientific information, and more scientists on Twitter. But I'm cheering for more. Communicating science through time feels like a rich, under-explored genre. I hope more scientists — professional and amateur — make it their own.