BBC Learnings · Section 2

Restoring trust in science

Once in a while along comes a scientist who captures the public imagination

Level: B2 · 92 sentences

Transcript

  1. Once in a while along comes a scientist
  2. who captures the public imagination
  3. and communicates their passion for science in an exciting and understandable way.
  4. In this programme we'll be meeting one of America's best-known popular scientists,
  5. Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson.
  6. He's a man with a gift for communicating
  7. and inspiring people with his television shows
  8. and books on cosmology
  9. the study of the origin and nature of the universe.
  10. In his day job,
  11. he runs the Hayden Planetarium in New York's American Museum of Natural History.
  12. But Neil's real mission is to encourage scientific thinking among the American public.
  13. We'll be hearing from the famous astronomer and learning some new vocabulary soon.
  14. But first, I have a question for you, Sam.
  15. Science is ever-changing,
  16. with new discoveries updating our understanding all the time.
  17. For centuries, the Earth was thought to be the centre of the universe.
  18. But who was the first astronomer to have the correct idea that,
  19. in fact, the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun?
  20. Was it A, Nicolaus Copernicus, B, Isaac Newton, or C, Galileo Galilei?
  21. I'll say it was C, Galileo.
  22. OK Sam, I'll reveal the correct answer later in the programme.
  23. Recent events like the Covid pandemic and climate crisis have put scientists under pressure from critics motivated by political views.
  24. Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks facts are not dependent on politics
  25. but should be established with a scientific method
  26. a process of finding the truth through testing and experimentation.
  27. Here's Neil explaining more about the scientific method to BBC World Service programme Hard Talk.
  28. If you have a brilliant idea
  29. and you test it and it unearths
  30. so much of what has been known before,
  31. we're going to double check that.
  32. The rest of us.
  33. We say, well, did he cross his T's and dot his I's?
  34. Let me check the power that's driving his experiment, you know, the wall current.
  35. Let me check how that was conceived and done.
  36. And if no one can duplicate your results, it's not a result.
  37. Before scientists can confirm the truth of an experiment,
  38. their findings must be double-checked,
  39. making certain something is correct by carefully examining it again.
  40. This process is called peer review,
  41. other scientists double-checking the experiment to make sure everything was done correctly.
  42. One way they do this is to duplicate or repeat the experiment to see if they get the same result.
  43. In other words,
  44. Neil wants scientists to have crossed the T's
  45. and dotted the I's a phrase
  46. which means paying attention to the small details of whatever you're doing.
  47. A scientific approach requires an open mind and critical thinking.
  48. But Neil believes the most important thing is to know the difference between fact and opinion.
  49. People have opinions about all kinds of things,
  50. but that doesn't make what they believe a fact.
  51. Yet fact and opinion are becoming harder to separate.
  52. As protests by anti-vaccine groups and climate change deniers have shown,
  53. many Americans, even presidents, seem suspicious of scientific fact.
  54. It's a worrying trend that Neil thinks is a result of the US education system,
  55. as he told BBC World Service programme Hard Talk.
  56. It has to do with how science is taught in the schools.
  57. It's currently taught as a body of information,
  58. a satchel of facts that are imparted upon you and then you regurgitate that for an exam.
  59. That's an aspect of science, but it's not the most important part of science.
  60. The most important part of science is knowing how to question things
  61. and knowing when an answer has emerged
  62. that represents sort of an objective truth about this world.
  63. Neil says that science is taught by encouraging students to regurgitate facts – to repeat information without properly understanding it.
  64. Knowledge is important,
  65. but what's also needed is a questioning attitude that can recognise objective truth
  66. a truth about the natural world
  67. which is not influenced by human bias,
  68. opinions or emotion.
  69. Without that, anyone is free to call whatever they like a fact,
  70. which only leads to chaos.
  71. Right. No matter how hard I believe that the Moon is made of cheese
  72. or the Sun goes around the Earth,
  73. believing it doesn't make it true.
  74. That sounds like something Neil deGrasse Tyson would agree with.
  75. And maybe Galileo too.
  76. Yes. In my question I asked who first came up with the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
  77. And I said it was Renaissance astronomer Galileo.
  78. Ah, which was the wrong answer I'm afraid.
  79. Galileo knew the Earth revolved around the Sun,
  80. but the first person with the idea was Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543.
  81. Unfortunately, centuries before the invention of television could spread the news of this objective truth
  82. a provable truth
  83. which is uninfluenced by human bias or opinion.
  84. OK, let's recap the rest of the vocabulary from our chat
  85. about American scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson
  86. and his love of cosmology the study of the universe.
  87. To double-check something means to make certain it's correct by carefully re-examining it.
  88. One way scientists do this is to duplicate or repeat exactly an experiment.
  89. The idiom cross the t's and dot the i's
  90. means to pay close attention to the details of what you're doing.
  91. And finally, if you regurgitate facts,
  92. you just repeat them without properly understanding them – something a true scientist would never do.