Do most Americans lack the attention span to follow science news more complicated than the latest antidepressant or flu shot?
Perhaps. But Roger Bingham of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego has faith. In fact, he believes that whether people know it or not, they're actually interested in science.
Along with Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan and founder of the science education venture Cosmos Studios; Sally Ride, the astronaut and physicist; Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society; Salk Institute neuroscientist Terry Sejnowski; and other science stars, Bingham is building the Cable Science Network. The network is modeled in the public-interest spirit of C-SPAN, its founders said, but aims to be a little more fun.
"Because we say it will be like C-SPAN does not mean that it has to be resolutely boring," Bingham said.
The network will air unedited, C-SPAN-style talks from conferences like the Society for Neuroscience or the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meetings. But other shows – including features on the best science teachers in the country, Q&A's with science authors and profiles of researchers performing cutting-edge brain experiments – should keep the programming lively.
The feedback Bingham and his colleagues have received so far leads them to believe that if they build it, people will come. Since Scientific American ran an article by Shermer about the network, the CSN site has been flooded with notes of support and offers of help.
"Yes, we want this channel! Before our brains turn to mush!" one wrote.
Scientists seem to agree that the state of television science coverage is abysmal, and they crave something better. Bingham calls it the "tyranny of the sound bite."
By focusing mainly on medical developments and boiling everything down to 30 seconds, science is often sensationalized and distorted, said Sandra Blakeslee, a science writer for The New York Times.
"I cover a lot of meetings and I can just see things unfolding, but we can't cover it all in print media," Blakeslee said. "So it would be wonderful to have things like talks and plenary sessions accessible to the public. There are a lot of C-SPAN junkies, and I think there would be a similar interest (in science TV) from the American public."
But CSN will have to be selective about the kind of scientific-conference programming it airs if it wants to keep viewers interested and awake.
Brian Alexander, in his recent book Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion, aptly describes the ennui potentially engendered by scientific sessions:
"The talks almost always take place in the dark," he writes. "During the first 10 minutes, the scientist-presenter fumbles with a bulky laptop computer in an effort to get the PowerPoint program to work. During the nonext 30 minutes, the scientist, who has never been trained in the art of public speaking, explains, often through a very thick Chinese, German, French or Italian accent, why the mass of pinkish cells on the right is the surprising and highly significant result of the procedure performed on the almost identical mass of pinkish cells on the left. Line graphs are shown.
"The final five minutes is taken up by a question period. Colleagues stand at a microphone in the middle of the aisle and, using the polite code phrases of science, ask the presenter if he has considered the possibility that his head has unaccountably become entangled in his ass."
Besides choosing programming, the challenge any new cable channel faces first is getting funding, which Bingham is working on. Next, he'll have to deal with cable carriers.
"The challenge is getting carriage of their cable network," said Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. "There are over 300 national cable networks vying for carriage today. So there's been a substantial amount of growth, and there is limited capacity for channel lineups on all of them."
But Dietz said that CSN's concept might give it a leg up. Despite the abundance of networks, none focuses solely on real science.
"The content is going to be what's going to drive people to call their operator and ask for it," Dietz said.
Television traditionally has been scared of science shows because programmers think it won't sell. For the past year, Shermer said he's been trying to sell a "skeptic TV" show, which would debunk crackpot research that masquerades as science, to various networks. The response to the concept has been universally lukewarm, he said.
"Networks are in the business to make money," Shermer said. "This is America and we can't fault that, but I think they're wrong – I think you can make it entertaining and make a profit and sell science."
Bingham said his research has shown that science-oriented covers of Time and Newsweek grace some of the publications' best sellers.
"There's a curious disconnect between the fact that the audience out there actually does like science and for some reason people think they don't want (it). Time and Newsweek know full well it will sell," he said.
Even networks that cover science, like Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel, are opting for easy-access topics, Bingham said. On Friday, for example, Discovery Channel was airing shows about contortionists, stunt driving and bungee jumping gone bad. Another popular subject on so-called science television recently is crop circles – to the ire of one CSN supporter.
"Describing one theory about what causes the circles, a woman noted that the energy required to create them must be enormous and electrical," he wrote in an e-mail to CSN founders. "Why must it be? How hard is it to flatten a plant to the ground? And wouldn't 'enormous' electrical energy perhaps ignite cornstalks and other plant matter?"
Bingham said he and his colleagues are approaching the launch of the network like a science project. First they'll perform a "proof of concept," using their website to gauge interest in various programs. Later they hope to partner with another network to pilot some of their shows, eventually leading up to the launch of the stand-alone network, likely to happen in 2005.
"The idea is to make all science, all the time," Bingham said, "no house makeovers, no monster trucks – real science all the time."
