From The Lab To The Tube: Surviving Television Appearances

One nagging thought stuck in Leon Lederman's mind as he was being interviewed on ABC's "Nightline." It had nothing to do with his Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. Rather, it concerned the effect of adhesive tape on epidermis. A microphone was affixed to the University of Chicago physicist with duct tape because the cord that should have held it around his neck was missing. "All I could think of was how much it was going to hurt when they took it off," recalls Lederman. Ah, the glamorous world of television. Appearing on television can be worrisome, inconvenient, and uncomfortable, but it seldom involves actual physical pain. Indeed, scientists who have taken to the airwaves to discuss their work say the benefits easily outweigh the drawbacks. "The proper placement of science into what we call the subsoil of the mind is a major question for modern democracy, and if you don't use television, you're not going to succeed," says Philip Morrison, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is widely regarded as one of the most effective scientists on the tube. Not so long ago, the scientific community considered television a frivolous diversion, at best. When biologist Thomas Lovejoy started putting together the Public Broadcasting System program "Nature" a decade ago, he worried that his involvement with television would jeopardize his career. "I wondered whether I'd be criticized by some members of the scientific community for pandering to the popular medium," recalls Lovejoy, the Smithsonian Institution's assistant secretary for external affairs. Lovejoy didn't hear much criticism from his colleagues after "Nature" went on the air. And, over the years, many scientists have warmed up to TV. "Now, I think scientists are much, much more conscious of the need to communicate with the public," says Paula Apsell, executive producer of the acclaimed PBS science program "Nova." "They know where their funding is coming from." Still, scientists have valid reasons to be leery about television. Apsell calls it "an impatient medium." It doesn't offer a lot of time to explain complicated stories. And because so much depends on "the manner of expression," she says, television images can overshadow substance. Even worse, TV smacks of entertainment. "It's an interesting sort of philosophical discussion. Why is it that when something is educational, it's not entertaining? And if it is entertaining, why can't it be educational at the same time?" asks Don Herbert. Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard, has spent four decades proving that doing science on television can be both educational and entertaining. Trained as a science teacher, he caught the showbiz bug while teaching. Those two elements combined to produce "Watch Mr. Wizard" in 1951. The new version, "Mr. Wizard's World," can be seen on the Nickelodeon cable channel. It's not just kid stuff. Any scientist who's interested in using television is well-advised to tune in. Nobody on TV is better than Mr. Wizard at explaining basic scientific principles in terms anyone can understand. Herbert, Lederman, and Morrison agree that the scientists who are most effective on television are teachers. Teachers' classroom experience gives them a feel for presenting ideas to an audience, the veteran communicators say. However, they are quick to point out that the TV audience is very different from the classroom audience. "The class is a captive audience," Morrison notes. "They have a predisposition to pay attention." By contrast, a viewer can easily change the channel. In addition, most TV viewers aren't science-literate, says Lederman, "so you have to develop metaphors to explain your stuff." In his Christmas lecture, aired on the Learning Channel last December (The Scientist, Dec. 10, 1990, page 4), Lederman used a metaphor to explain the building blocks of the universe to a group of teenagers. He compared the universe to a library and said scientists want to know the simplest ingredients of the library. He narrowed it down from books to words to letters and, finally, to zeros and ones. The zeros and ones correspond to the smallest subatomic particles: quarks and leptons. For scientists, speaking to the TV audience can be like speaking another language--and what's spoken is not the language of science. "You have to go into it knowing you're not writing a scientific treatise," says Lovejoy. "But that's a small price to pay for the opportunity to communicate to millions about things they need to know." Art, Not Science Roald Hoffmann agrees with Lovejoy. The Cornell University chemist got the chance to reach a vast audience as host of "The World of Chemistry," a 26-part television course and PBS series that premiered last fall. Hoffmann followed in the footsteps of his Cornell colleague, Carl Sagan. "He was encouraging, and he was a role model," says Hoffmann of the man who revolutionized science TV with "Cosmos" more than a decade ago. "But I realized I was not as good as he is." Hoffmann says Sagan warned that "it would take me infinitely more time than I thought it would take." He was right. "What I did had to be done over until it was judged sufficiently good by the director," says Hoffmann. It can take hours to shoot a scene that will be on the air for only a few seconds. But while the production process usually proceeds at a snail's pace, the programs themselves move along quickly to keep the viewer's attention from wandering. Television's time constraints require scientists to condense complex ideas into short, punchy statements. "In part, you are under the terror of the sound bite," says Hoffmann. Besides that, the process of making a TV program can be baffling to a layperson. Nothing is done in chronological order. Scenes are shot seemingly at random and reassembled in the proper sequence later. Hoffmann says all this bothered him at first. He felt better when he saw the finished programs and started hearing from viewers. "I'm sure from the reactions I'm getting there are substantial numbers of people [who saw the programs], many more than I could have reached just teaching," says Hoffmann. Hosting the program taught the Nobel laureate an important lesson about the nature of television. It is an art, not a science. "It may not be great art, but it is a constructed reality," he says. "There is a distortion of reality in order to achieve the teaching function." While "you have to make a lot of compromises" in television, says Hoffmann, he believes TV's ability to reach millions "redeems the compromises that you have to make." Images And Evidence Morrison urges scientists not to compromise when it comes to presenting evidence to support what they say on TV. Television artists can use computer graphics and special effects to create virtually any image imaginable. That's not the same as presenting evidence that something exists. Viewers have no way of knowing whether a simulation is accurate unless they have some evidence. If TV's power to create images is used irresponsibly, Morrison warns, "the world will operate without knowing fact from fiction." Morrison fears that viewers are becoming too willing to accept something simply because a scientist appears on TV and says it's true. While he agrees that scientists should convey a sense of credibility, he believes those who "trade on that entirely" are doing a disservice. "It's antithetical to science," he says. "It's mythology." Having Fun On Talk Shows You can have some influence over the way images and evidence are presented by developing a good working relationship with the producer, the director, the writer, and the rest of the production crew. Unfortunately, scientists aren't usually involved in the making of programs long enough to develop such a relationship. It's much more common for a scientist to do a quick interview for a newscast or appear as a guest on a talk show. In a newscast, a scientist's videotaped comments will usually be edited down into short sound bites. "You're very limited because you know the times are very short and your answers have to be short," Lederman says. The longer the program, says Lederman, the better for the scientist. He prefers news programs such as the "MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" and "Nightline," which devote large chunks of air time to a single subject. The programs that are the most fun, Lederman says, are the ones like "Donahue." Lederman received "a tremendous amount of mail" after his appearance on "Donahue" a few years ago. ("His transvestites or whatever he usually has didn't show up. I think we were filler.") The physicist says he likes the way host Phil Donahue runs the show. "It went quickly and was lively and fun." Since television's strength is its ability to show things, scientists appearing on a program might be tempted to do a demonstration to illustrate what they say. It sounds good, but pulling it off is "very, very tricky," warns Mr. Wizard. There's a lot of planning and rehearsal involved in making a demonstration look good on TV. Herbert says all his demonstrations are "designed for the medium, which means close-ups, close-ups, close-ups." The children who visit Mr. Wizard also are crucial to the success of the program. Herbert sets up an experiment and asks his young assistant to predict what will happen. Then they do the experiment together to see if the child's hypothesis is correct. This simple format has served Mr. Wizard well for decades. But if you substitute an adult TV host for the child, everything changes. In his appearances on "The Tonight Show," for instance, Herbert has found Johnny Carson isn't as good an assistant as a kid. Adults don't like to admit they don't know the answer to a question, explains Herbert. "Almost invariably, the host of a program like that, in order to cover it, pretends that he is the kid on `Mr. Wizard.' " Words Of Advice While there are no formulas to follow, there are a few guidelines that can help you be effective on television. Says Lovejoy: "Number one, be relaxed." That's easier said than done. who can speak to packed lecture halls with ease may find they're self-conscious talking to a camera. "I learned how to do this adequately, but I was never very comfortable," says Hoffmann. "I should have been sent to acting school." Lederman, however, doesn't think that acting school is necessary. "Scratch a teacher and he's a ham actor," he says. "If he just realizes that, then it will all come out." Morrison advises scientists to be themselves on camera. "Television is full of very professional, very skillful actors, narrators, and so on. And I think that one of the great errors is to feel you have to fit that model," he says. Morrison believes a scientist who's not a polished TV personality adds "freshness and authenticity" to a program. "Talk to the interviewer as if you were at a bar somewhere, just having a drink and discussing things," Lederman suggests. Apsell says she puts scientists on TV to show that "science is a human story." She doesn't want the scientist to talk about the nuts and bolts of an experiment. That can be done more concisely through scripted narration and graphics. She wants the scientist "to analyze the results, to tell us what their implications are, to give us some context...and to express some kind of excitement." Advises Lederman: "Remember that having a sense of humor is a saving grace." Lovejoy says he "could have done without" a call-in show he did on C-Span last year. "Halfway through, some nut called from the Northwest and called me an eco-fascist," recalls Lovejoy, who is seldom seen on TV without his signature bow tie. "I wasn't quick enough to reply, `Have you ever seen an eco-fascist with a bow tie on?' Next time, I'll just roll my eyes--remembering that it's a visual medium." And finally, as the Nike commercial says: "Just do it." "If they don't come to you, go to them--volunteer," says Lederman. " tend to talk to themselves all the time," Lovejoy says. "We're never going to make this material count unless we talk to everybody." Stephen Pendlebury is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C.

From The Lab To The Tube: Surviving Television Appearances

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of