Science and the media

Abstract

Science seeks and needs the attention of the public and the media, and the media are eager for news from the world of research. This sometimes seduces scientists to communicate their results in early stages of their work and may bring them into the situation of the sorcerer’s apprentice – they can’t get rid of the ghosts they called. We give some recent examples of early or doubtful communication in physics and ask for a responsible cooperation of science and the media which takes care of the peculiarities of the scientific process. Times of uncertainty are a normal part of the research process. It took from 1974 to 1978 till a handful of peculiar events in the MARK I experiment at the electron–positron storage ring Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (SLAC) in California could be interpreted reliably as being due to the first member of a new third family of elementary particles. For this discovery of the tau lepton Martin Perl received the Physics Nobel Prize in 1995. Perl first mentioned his observations in 1975 at a summer school in Canada. A reliable interpretation of the results he dared only in 1977 at the International Lepton-Photon conference in Hamburg. Perl himself describes this process of clarification of all uncertainties in his memoirs [1] “Is it a Lepton: From Uncertainty and Controversy to Confirmation: 1976-1978.” THE HIGGS – DISCOVERED TWICE? An example of early communication is the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Centre of Nuclear Physics CERN in Geneva. There are two important differences between the discovery of the tau lepton and the Higgs boson: first, Perl‘s team in 1977 consisted of 36 physicists, while in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 more than 5,000 researchers in two experiments were involved. Second, in 1977 there was not the hype and pressure from the media present in 2012 during the hunt for the Higgs. Already the start-up of the LHC was accompanied by slogans such as “The Hunt for the God Particle” (National Geographic), etc. And third, internal details on the state of the search could not go around the world via new media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. within seconds. High pressure and exaggerated expectations on more than 5,000 physicists and a major international laboratory create an atmosphere that makes an undisturbed completion of the research difficult. The LHC start-up was accompanied by more than 2,500 television broadcasts and 5,800 press articles worldwide, and there were over 100 million hits on the website of CERN. The day before the CERN Colloquium on July 4, 2012, the “Higgsteria” reached an unprecedented level. The auditorium at CERN was literally besieged. The day before, the German “Spiegel” had already promised a “hot trail to the God particle” [2]. On July 4, 2012, the experiments ATLAS and CMS announced the discovery of a “Higgs-like” particle [3]: “CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson,” and the Director General of CERN Rolf Heuer said in the historic Colloquium [4]: “As a layman I would say: I think we have it... We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle consistent with a Higgs boson.” In view of the existing uncertainties Heuer suggests to the public the conclusion to be drawn from the measurements. He acts somewhat like Jesus before Pilate who being asked whether he is the King of the Jews answered: “Thou sayest.” The subtlety of this trick was of course ignored by the majority of the press which announced triumphantly: God Particle Discovered at CERN (“ABC News”) [5], Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe (“The New York Times”) [6], Sensation! God particle discovered! Have researchers deciphered the origin of the universe? (“Bild”) [7], Cern scientists discover Higgs boson. What the mysterious, God particle’ really means (“FOCUS Online”) [8], etc. SOR-SOCSCI