SCE (WILEJ) LEFT INTERACTIVE

THE BOOKS
Hugh Munby, Peter Chin, and Andréa Mueller, Section Editors

Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (revised edition), by
Dorothy Nelkin, 1995. W. H. Freeman Co., New York. x ⫹ 217 pp. ISBN 0-71672-
595-9

Dorothy Nelkin became interested in the idea for this book while studying public atti-
tudes towards science and technology — and particularly towards technological contro-
versies. She found that scientists and engineers attributed negative public attitudes to
popular press coverage but had no evidence of them, ironically. Interestingly, these critics
did not point to schools as sources of these negative public perceptions. In any event, she
decided to see how science and technology were presented in the press and to consider
why these matters were treated the way they were. Her ideas were first presented in 1987,
and 8 years later she wrote a revised edition. She notes many changes in the years between
the editions: the increased scale of science raised questions of costs, biological research
raised questions about ethics, fraud increased mistrust, and continued incidents of tech-
nological risk turned individual controversies into a generic concern. The press, she con-
tends, has dramatized these trends in order to compete in a changed media industry: scandal
is news.
Nelkin wonders why would the press want to report science anyway given the many
other stories that could interest the average reader. Furthermore, she says, scientists resent
the press. Nonetheless, science is reported; but as Nelkin argues, the reports are based on
false ideas about how the work is done and about what the results can offer to decision
making. The media, she says, seeks “order and certainty.” When told that these are not to
be had from science in the process of assessing risk, the media assumes a cover-up: science
has the answers but we are not being told; keep digging!
But a misunderstanding of science by the media is not the only problem. There is the
view in the business press, Nelkin says that those who raise questions of risk are “crackpots
and scare mongers.” Such need to be discounted and the rest reassured. It is one thing for
the press to miss the point; it is another thing to get the point all to well and promote a
positive attitude to science. Nelkin concludes her chapter on the perils of progress by
emphasizing the failure of the media to understand risk, but she might have also under-
scored that the media not only “reports,” but it reports selectively from selective sources.
The science page is one thing; the business page another. The question thus arises, “Who
decides what gets into the paper?” Nelkin sees no grand design: “While editors play a
critical role in shaping the news, their influence appears more a result of incremental
decision than of grand design” (p. 108). She attributes media performance to the culture
of the journalistic trade itself. But why stop at the influence of the editor and the culture
of journalists as influences on how science is reported? What about the interests of the
owner? The advertisers? The business elite? Others?
Science reporting, journalists told Nelkin, had to be jazzed up and kept simple. The
editor of Science Digest, she notes, “[H]ad assumed that in a high-tech world people would

short
䉷 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. standard
long
SCE (WILEJ) RIGHT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
BOOK REVIEWS 681 Base of RH

Top of test
be interested in reading about science. . . . [He said] ‘it was a terrible assumption. Base of text
. . . For most people [science] was a required course [that] made you feel stupid’”
(p. 112). But this is the least of it. Nelkin points to class bias in reporting; reporters talk
to the people involved in their stories who are most like themselves and who are like those
they imagine will read what they write: the middle class. Worse, the supposed detachment
of the scientific enterprise is reflected in the lack of journalistic effort to understand and
report the political context of stories. The media is thus open to manipulation, she says,
for being naive: “Attention turns to conflicts of interest only in response to scandals or
disputes” (p. 98).
In the face of what is perceived to be press misrepresentation, scientific institutions have
hired press advisers in order to control the flow of news. Nelkin notes that these efforts to
control information have high social costs. In Michigan, for example, “The press took
over two years to report on . . . a fire retardant, PBB, . . . accidentally mixed with
cattle feed. . . . Local reporters who relied on state agencies as sources of expertise were
simply reassured that the problem was contained” (p. 157). Where does the evil lie in this
story, I can’t help asking. Nelkin says “hype” has its costs. The public does not appreciate
the way science gets done: “Thus science in the press becomes a form of sport, a ‘race’
between scientists. . . . [People] are ill-prepared to deal with scientific information when
it directly affects their interests” (p. 162).
One might add that what does not get told also has its costs; so do stories that are thinly
veiled propaganda. Nelkin concludes that people ought to get from the media what they
need to know to act wisely both for themselves and for the body politic. This can happen,
she contends, only when scientists open their doors and when journalists report on the
political context of science and on the nature of the role that science plays in technology.
But part of the answer lies with those who consume what is on offer in the media. Where
do citizens get the ability to detect hype and propaganda in the media? From the media
itself? What about the education of the citizen in this story?
Thoughts about schooling kept coming to mind as I read this book. Were teachers like
journalists? Did the scientific and government establishment treat education like it treats
journalists, by providing propaganda for its cause for consumption in schools and text-
books? Did students develop their taste for “gee whizzery” in school and were they pre-
pared unwittingly to accept myths about science and technology and to suffer willingly
the consequent alienation?
There have been studies on how people perceive the value of their experience of science
in school. For example, David Layton studied how people in the UK assessed the value
of information they received from experts and of their school science in quite difficult
personal decisions about issues in which science was implicated — like Down syndrome,
nuclear waste processing, or recycling. Two problems were found: what the experts said
did not answer the questions these people were asking, and the people were not well
prepared to sift through the miasma to extract nuggets of value. This picture of baffling
experts and alienated citizens is not a happy one. It raises questions about how those in
control construe their communicative role, and about the contribution science education
makes to the capacity of citizens to deal with issues that bedevil them.
Nelkin raises the same questions: Why do journalists believe that science is a source of
authority for human decisions to the exclusion of other considerations? Why do they think
that those who consume their work think so as well? Why this over-awed view of science?
Even Nelkin suffers from it. The bulk of what she notes as issues for public concern have
to do more with technology than science. The real selling is the selling of new technologies.
One does not have to go too far to see how this is so: agribusiness alone would supply a short
long list of current technologies that are highly touted and controversial. The establishment standard
long
SCE (WILEJ) LEFT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
682 BOOK REVIEWS Base of RH

Top of text
that is selling technology is not the media but businesses and government who have in- Base of text
terests in new technologies. I see the journalistic trade and those who inform it tempted
by those interests, and like her, I see no grand conspiracy — just a settled unwitting status
quo. Schools are not immune to the retailing of technocentric propaganda. As school
budgets decline, the temptation is to use materials produced by corporate interests as well
as by commercial media. In what context are these materials being used in school? Are
they consumed uncritically?
Nelkin’s book offers us a well-researched study of the temptation of the media to swal-
low the myths on offer and thus to obscure the truth. Her prescription for the media is the
same that one might urge for schools: take a hard look at the stories you tell. It takes
courage to do this because the supposed authority of science and teachers (and the media
and scientists) is diminished, and there is less security for students, parents, and admin-
istrators when the myths are questioned. Life without myths is hard. New myths are needed.
New heroes. The luddites, a group early aware of the dangers of technocentrism, had the
mythical Ned Ludd to rally to. What then might be a modern version of technological
literacy for citizens and the media? The challenge of Nelkin’s book for science and tech-
nology education is to invent new myths of the well-educated citizen and to rally teachers
and students to a more liberating view of their work and journalists of theirs.

JOHN OLSON
Faculty of Education
Queen’s University
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada

DNA Pioneers and Their Legacy, by Ulf Lagerkvist, 1998. Yale University Press, New
Haven, CT. xi ⫹ 156 pp. ISBN 0-300-07184-1.

DNA Pioneers and Their Legacy is a vivid book meant to insert the personalities of
great men into the education of scientists. Lagerkvist, himself a scientist, reconstructs the
prehistory of DNA research through brief biographies of path-breaking scientists. Since
his purpose is to discuss pioneers rather than actual practitioners, it is irrelevant to Lager-
kvist that the scientist or doctor in question would recognize his research as DNA research.
Therefore, the author begins his story with Paracelsus, briefly discusses the spontaneous
generation debate among medical scientists in the nineteenth century, and spends much
time on the practice of German physiology. The book takes the reader chronologically up
to the discovery of DNA polymerase by Arthur Kornberg and his research team in the
1960s. The book is based on scientific autobiographies, obituaries, memorial lectures,
scientific works, and a few histories of science. Several formal portraits and photographs
of scientists are included, as well as a snapshot of Kornberg surrounded by his family.
Chapter 1, “A Scientist’s View of Science,” introduces Lagerkvist’s assessment of the
duty of the scientist to speak to the public. The author states his central questions: What
makes science so fascinating to particular individuals? What personal qualities are needed
to succeed in the enterprise? Lagerkvist then briefly describes the social nature of scientific
research as evidenced in the student – mentor relationship. The rest of the chapter contains short
a more idiosyncratic discussion of scientific risk, of the Catholic Church, of secrecy, and standard
of the need for responsible popularization. The author ends the chapter by expressing his long
SCE (WILEJ) RIGHT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
BOOK REVIEWS 683 Base of RH

Top of test
confidence for the future of science after dismissing the possibility of research bans. Be- Base of text
cause these possible bans are unnamed, the reader can only speculate from the book’s
context that Lagerkvist is referring to regulations on genetic engineering or tissue culture
research.
The prehistory of biochemistry is traced in Chapter 2, as the author surveys the works
of Paracelsus, Lavoisier, Pasteur, and Liebig. The foundations necessary for nucleic acid
research are located in the origins of chemistry, in the spontaneous generation controversy,
and in the discovery of proteins. Chapter 3 completes the prehistory of nucleic acids by
detailing their biochemical discovery by Friedrich Miescher in nineteenth century Ger-
many. Miescher’s family life, education, and marriage are discussed. Miescher is portrayed
as an intense young scientist, introspective, modest, and never quite self-assured. Lager-
kvist describes in some detail the mentoring relationships between Miescher and his uncle,
Wilhelm His. The climax of the chapter is Miescher’s isolating nuclein from leukocytes
derived from the bandages of patients at the university hospital at Tübingen. The remainder
of the chapter then asks why Miescher neither recognized the importance of nuclein nor
continued to work on nucleic acids. Indeed, Lagerkvist sees it as “ironic and sad” that
Miescher’s eulogies focused on his work on nutrition and physiology rather than on the
discovery of nuclein. Here, Lagerkvist falls into an unfortunate trap. Nowadays, we know
that nuclein is a form of DNA, the carrier of genetic information, so its discovery seems
extraordinarily important to us. But to Miescher’s contemporaries, nuclein represented
simply another cellular component. Thus, because Lagerkvist seeks an explanation of
Miescher’s turn away from nucleic acids in his personality, a more plausible explanation
might be found in the interests of nineteenth century biochemists and physiologists.
Chapter 4 brings the reader more clearly into nucleic acid research and researchers. The
accomplishments and personalities of Albrecht Kossel, Emil Fischer, and Phoebus Levene
are described in some detail. Lagerkvist discusses the birthplace, childhood, religion, ed-
ucation, marriage, and family life of each of the scientists in addition to their scientific
work. Kossel’s characterization of nucleic acids as consisting of a base, a carbohydrate,
and a phosphate is presented as his inheritance from Miescher. Unlike Miescher, how-
ever, Kossel was celebrated by the scientific community for his work on the chemistry of
the cell nucleus, and he received the Nobel Prize in 1910. The author similarly lauds
Fischer’s organic synthesis of various purines and pyrimidines. Levene receives harsher
treatment as the father of the tetranucleotide theory of nucleic acid structure. Lagerkvist
argues that Levene’s tetranucleotide theory led the history of DNA research astray for
several decades by implying that DNA lacked the complexity to be the carrier of genetic
information.
The last two chapters contain a familiar presentation of the scientific discoveries leading
to James Watson and Francis Crick’s elucidation of the structure of DNA in 1953. In
Chapter 5, “The Dawn of Molecular Genetics,” the author traces the changing concept of
a gene from Johann Mendel to Archibald Garrod to T. H. Morgan. Oswald Avery emerges
as a shy, modest star in establishing DNA as the transforming principle. The treatment of
the other characters is more uneven; it is unclear what criteria Lagerkvist uses to decide
whether to limit his discussion to scientific accomplishments or to expand into a personality
analysis. It is also worth noting that Lagerkvist adopts the narrative devices of a Greek
drama when telling the DNA story. Watson and Crick emerge as a deus ex machina,
descending from the heavens to reveal the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin and Erwin
Chargaff, on the other hand, are portrayed as “two tragic figures off in a dark corner” (p.
131). Here, as in many other parts of the book, Lagerkvist has exceeded the boundaries
of providing character portraits of great scientists and has moved his narrative fully into short
the realm of mythology. After these narrative excesses, Chapter 6 is a more restrained standard
memoir portraying the works of the author’s friend and colleague, Arthur Kornberg. In long
SCE (WILEJ) LEFT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
684 BOOK REVIEWS Base of RH

Top of text
addition to describing the science of DNA polymerase, the author conveys his admiration Base of text
of Kornberg as a great man as well as a scientist.
The question of audience is never quite resolved in this book. At the beginning of the
preface, the author first remarks that he intends to fill a void in the education of biochem-
istry and molecular biology graduate students by instilling them with a sense of the per-
sonalities of the great pioneers in their fields. Later in the preface, however, he states that
his book “is intended for everyone who wants a popularized and simplified look at how
it all started” (p. x). Yet later on the same page, he offers his hope that the book will
inspire readers to plunge further into the history of nucleic acids. The author’s choice of
sources, however, is hardly helpful on this point. Of the 50 sources listed in the bibliog-
raphy, 17 are in German and 1 in French, making them largely inaccessible to an English-
speaking undergraduate or popular audience. Furthermore, although a few histories of
molecular genetics, DNA research, and biochemistry are mentioned, many of the sources
are brief obituaries or memorial lectures that may not further the reader’s curiosity. A
division of the bibliography into two sections, one for sources cited and one for further
reading, might have been more effective. Finally, the storytelling format and the roman-
ticized portrayal of scientific research may not appeal to graduate students, while under-
graduates or popular readers may be discouraged by the occasional use of technical language.
Some readers may be put off by the author’s prose style. More troublesome, however,
is his reliance on stock scientific stereotypes. The reader encounters the distracted Miescher
who, much to his wife’s horror, uses his Sèvres china for glassware (p. 53); Kossel, who
dreamt of being a scientist “even as a schoolboy” (p. 68), and Fischer, who “could always
escape to his uncle’s house and have a refreshing fight with his male cousins” if his sisters
were “too coddling” (p. 79). It is fitting that the book ends with the image of Kornberg
whisking the wife of a colleague off to a psychiatric clinic, having encountered her in the
midst of a psychotic episode brought on by childbirth. Young women scientists reading
this book will find no role models other than patient wives and doting mothers. Considering
the emphasis that Lagerkvist places on the student – mentor relationship, the absence of
women from the volume is especially unfortunate.
Educators may find small gems in Lagerkvist’s portrayal of the student – mentor rela-
tionship in the nineteenth century German academy. Indeed, the third and fourth chapters
of the book are by far the strongest. The author’s discussion of the interactions of Miescher,
Kossel, and Fischer with leading German scientists, including Felix Hoppe-Seyler and
Karl Ludwig, is especially helpful. The book also succeeds in briefly familiarizing the
reader with the names of the main characters in DNA research. The volume is less suc-
cessful in conveying the personalities of these men. By the fifth and sixth chapters, the
author must deal with so many characters that he simply cannot describe the personal
characteristics, or even the education, of most of the scientists. The first chapter’s attempt
to characterize the personality of Paracelsus is equally futile. In short, DNA Pioneers
provides a concise catalog of some of the scientists involved in laying the foundations for
twentieth century molecular genetics. I would be extremely reluctant to teach the volume,
however, without first discussing the role of scientific stereotypes and mythologized heroes
in the history of science.

AUDRA J. WOLFE
Department of History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Logan Hall, Suite 303
249 South 36th Street short
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA standard
long
SCE (WILEJ) RIGHT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
BOOK REVIEWS 685 Base of RH

Top of test
Connecting Research in Physics Education with Teacher Education, edited by Andrée Base of text
Tiberghien, E. Leonard Jossem, and Jorge Barojas, 1998. International Commission on
Physics Education. ISBN 0-9507510-3-0 (English Edition).

Physics education research is the driving force behind an increasing number of changes,
some subtle and some boldly innovative, to the way introductory physics is being taught
in secondary schools, colleges, and universities. This book, undertaken on behalf of the
International Commission on Physics Education (ICPE) of the International Union of Pure
and Applied Physics, with support from UNESCO, aims to make available the results of
research in physics education worldwide to physics educators working with pre- or in-
service physics teachers. The reviewed version is in English but further editions in French,
Spanish, and Japanese are planned.
The book is in electronic format, provided on floppy disk.1 A click on the icon launches
your browser application enabling you to browse, read, or print relevant chapters. Browsing
has the advantage of allowing the user to access material in a nonlinear fashion. To further
assist the user, each section has an introduction that summarizes the content of chapters
in that particular section. All chapters have two-way hyperlinks to the index. The ICPE
grants users permission to copy and use the contents for pedagogical purposes, provided
that neither text nor graphics are altered in any way. The book is also available for down-
loading from the World Wide Web at the URL http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/
⬃jossem/icpe/books.html.
Each of the 16 chapters has been contributed by one or more renowned people in the
field of physics or physics education. As well, the authors have provided brief comments
on a related chapter so that a wider range of perspectives has been offered. A brief biog-
raphy of each author is included at the end of the book. The editors point out that physics
education is a relatively recent field of research and it is difficult to find results that are
directly useable in practice. The editors suggest that there is a need to differentiate among
the practice of the discipline, the teaching of the discipline, and research on the teaching
and learning of that discipline. In the first section of the book, the editors emphasize the
need for links between research in physics education and teacher education for both the
relevance of research and the effectiveness of education. They explain how they have
grouped the chapters into four major sections to enable teacher educators to become aware
of the variety and richness of research in physics education. The sections are “Perspectives
on Physics,” “Students’ Knowledge and Learning,” “Teachers’ Attitudes and Practices,”
and “Curriculum Development, Assessment and Teaching Situations.”
“Perspectives on Physics” is composed of three chapters. The first, by Anthony French,
provides a succinct overview of the historical development of the broad set of beliefs that
we might call physics knowledge. Martin Keieger’s previously published article, “The
Physicist’s Toolkit,” describes how scientific work can be likened to a craft for which a
practitioner has an appropriate “toolkit” enabling him or her to investigate, understand,
and represent the natural world. The tools variously consist of mathematical and diagram-
matic tools as well as several aspects of the “rhetoric of physics.” A third perspective is
offered by Roger Stuewer who stresses the importance of students having an understanding
or even empathy for the historical setting in which physics knowledge was developed. The
way physicists describe history as “linear . . . which meshes so well with their logical

1 The copy used for this review was not the final product. There are no page numbers (making referencing

difficult) and there are numerous small typographical and formatting corrections still to be made (more in some short
chapters than others). standard
long
SCE (WILEJ) LEFT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
686 BOOK REVIEWS Base of RH

Top of text
skills” is contrasted with the way historians might view people and events at the time of Base of text
scientific discovery. Stuewer argues that students need to understand the social context in
which physics knowledge is developed and validated.
The second major section, “Students’ Knowledge and Learning,” has five chapters. The
bulk of research in the field of physics education over the last two decades has focused
on describing children’s intuitive physics ideas. Limited space has no doubt prevented the
editors from including a detailed account of all relevant research results; however, the
articles included cover a comprehensive range of ideas. Lillian McDermott documents a
number of students’ alternative conceptions pertaining to mechanics and suggests several
instructional strategies to help students with appropriate concept development. Reinders
Duit and Christoph von Rhöneck describe students’ understandings of electric circuits and
briefly suggest strategies to help teachers address student difficulties. Lawrance Viennot
similarly describes students’ naive understandings of heat and temperature and suggests
that some difficulties are attributed to student’s inadequate and nontransferable patterns of
reasoning. In the fourth chapter, Robin Millar examines the problems associated with
students’ understanding of the process of scientific inquiry, citing the lack of professional
consensus about “the scientific method” as a confounding factor for teachers trying to help
students develop appropriate research skills. Finally, a previously published and highly
regarded paper by Phil Scott, Hilary Asoko, and Rosalind Driver provides a review of
pedagogical strategies, which are based on a view of learning as conceptual change.
“Teachers’ Attitudes and Practices” contains four chapters. The challenge that authors
address here is how to break the cycle of mediocrity in which teachers, themselves taught
physics by passive transmission of knowledge, perpetuate the same, largely ineffective,
form of instruction. Richard Gunstone and Richard White list some of the wide variety of
approaches that have been used to explore teachers’ ideas and beliefs about science, teach-
ing, and learning, and they outline some of the implications of this work for teacher
education. Susana de Souza Barros and Marcos F. Elia describe a range of teacher attitudes
and competencies that influence the teaching process. They make suggestions for how
more appropriate attitudes might be engendered and subsequently enhanced through pro-
fessional development. In a similar vein, Jacques DéSautels and Marie Larochelle elaborate
on the epistemological postures of science teachers and how traditional ideas can, if un-
checked, be perpetuated through the teaching process. Daniel Gil-Perez and Anna Maria
Pessoa de Carvalho point out that physics teacher education must be separate from instruc-
tion in physics content, especially if that instruction has a more traditional lecture and
laboratory format.
The final section, “Curriculum Development, Assessment and Teaching Situations,”
describes the state of curriculum and assessment and how some change may be made. This
area, however, is limited by the small amount of research it draws upon. Piet Lijnse outlines
several previously popular physics curricula, but he makes the point that future designs
need simultaneous and equal input from physicists, physics teachers, and researchers of
physics education. In documenting the various forms of evaluation and assessment that
are being implemented in different countries, Paul Black describes the constraints and
difficulties faced by teachers, especially since assessment is a powerful “regulator” of any
teaching activity. In the final two chapters, the authors propose curricula that account for
students’ preconceptions and for how their knowledge might be advanced. Martine Méheut
proposes a developmental learning sequence for teaching students a prequantitative particle
model of matter, and Dimitris Psillos proposes a sequence for teaching electricity.
As one moves through the sections in the book, the amount of research supporting the
knowledge base decreases. The physics community largely agrees to the knowledge held short
by physicists, although what counts as knowledge may be argued philosophically. Stu- standard
long
SCE (WILEJ) RIGHT INTERACTIVE

Top of RH
BOOK REVIEWS 687 Base of RH

Top of test
dents’ naive conceptions in most areas of physics are also well known, or are becoming Base of text
so, but the pedagogical issues of how best to move students from naive to more scientific
understandings are debatable. The processes of effecting change in the knowledge, skills,
attitudes, and practices of pre- and in-service physics teachers are largely unresearched,
yet these are crucial to pedagogical change at the school level. Finally, designing and
implementing curricula that combine all of the aforementioned elements are possibly the
least understood and arguably the most important task facing physics educators. In the
preface, Paul Black comments that “whilst this book may mark the completion of one
project it should also signal the beginning of a longer-term and continuing project linking
together researchers in physics education with those who train physics teachers.”

SHELLEY YEO
Department of Applied Physics
Curtin University of Technology
Perth, WA, Australia

DAVID TREAGUST
Science and Mathematics Education Centre
Curtin University of Technology
Perth, WA, Australia

short
standard
long