As I've been working on my book on evolution I've been posting updates about my progress (most of those updates can be found here), and I am certainly pleased to note that reactions have generally been positive. I am truly grateful for all the support I've received from readers, fellow bloggers, writers, and friends, the encouragement definitely motivating me to keep working. I have received some critical comments, however, and I feel that one in particular requires a detailed response. Responding to my last update, commenter James wrote;
Brian, what are you thinking? You don't even have an undergraduate degree as of yet and you want to write a book about evolution?! Do you really think anyone would give any credibility to such a book? I know you are interested in the subject, but please, hold your horses, get a degree (at least), go to graduate school and wait off for a bit.
Things would be much better that way, instead of some undergrad reading a bunch of other books to get ideas and material for his own book.
This comment made me laugh more than it made me angry, but I am reluctant to dismiss it as it does drive at the heart of the role of "amateurs" in science. Presently "amateur" is most often used in the pejorative manner, as if it means "passionate but not good enough to be professional." Such a definition is consistent with current image of who a scientist is; someone who has gone through the academic meat-grinder to gain some amount of experience and specialized knowledge they then apply to researching the natural world. (I am not saying that this view is correct, but from what I can tell it is at least a persistent stereotype.) This view of scientists matured during the 19th century, and there were certainly good reasons for that.
To borrow an example from some of my recent reading, some of the earliest discoveries of fossil humans were uncovered or reported by amateur geologists. What they found was interesting, but in many cases they did not record important details that were of primary concern to the relatively new scientific class of professional geologists and so the finds were practically worthless in terms of evidence of the antiquity of humans. This is why the professional members of the "Cave Committee" of the Geological Society called the shots involving the excavation of Brixham Cave in 1858-1859. Although the GS partnered with the local Torquay Natural History Society, the London group put William Pengelly (an amateur geologist from Torquay who gained the trust of Hugh Falconer, and thus the GS) in charge of meticulously recording all the data. When the presence of stone tools mixed in with bones of extinct mammals were discovered the GS took even more control and the amateur geologists could no longer be under the illusion that the professionals treated them as equals.
The back story of the Brixham cave excavation is complex and can be interpreted in a number of ways. The maneuvering of the GS to gain full control over the site looks like a group of professionals taking advantage of a group of amateurs. On the other hand, if some of the amateur geologists had their way they would have dug straight through the cave strata to get at the bones as quickly as possible (as was common practice) rather than peeling back the rock layer-by-layer, so the significance of the cave would have been greatly diminished. I am not going to judge who was right and who was wrong, but I offer up this historical event as an example of the tension between amateurs and professionals in science.
If I was attempting to write a new On the Origin of Species or Tempo and Mode in Evolution, then, James' criticisms might be justified. I do not have the requisite experience to write a technical book about the ins & outs of evolutionary theory. No one would take me seriously and the book would probably be an embarrassment (especially since I would require a ground-up education in development, genetics, microbiology, etc.). Like the Torquay NHS members, I would certainly have the passion for the work but would would be deficient in experience. I sincerely hope that I will be able to continue my education and get a chance to study the more minute details of ancient life, but I am certainly not at the point where I would be able to call myself a scientist without cracking up into laughter.
Fortunately the book I'm writing is a synthesis of natural history and the history of science, something that I can quite comfortably work on while I continue my education. The notes about the content I have added to my chapters should make that abundantly clear. If I can write about science and the history of science on this blog and not be constantly shouted down for errors I think I'm fully capable of doing the same in book form, the aim of the book being the generate interest & understanding about evolution rather than to impress PhD's.
Being that I do not have a degree in journalism I also expect to receive some criticism from another quarter. I've heard a number of cantankerous individuals bemoan the fact that science bloggers are gaining prominence, blurring the distinction between the people who do science and the people who interpret it for the public. (I don't believe any such division has ever actually existed, but some journalists seem to be under the impression that this is so.) To them books and articles are the domain of trained journalists, not students or scientists who have decided to pick up the pen themselves. Being that I've been blogging for some time now and was invited to ScienceBlogs, I would like to think that I have somewhat proven myself in this area. In terms of writing, as well as science, you've either got it or you don't, and the very fact that I made it this far speaks to the fact that I at least have some modicum of talent for science writing. If I was a crank or wrote blog entries in text message form I don't think I would have made it this far. I have earned my accomplishments and I am passionate enough about them to keep on writing.
I've still got a lot of work to do on my book (I probably should have been working on it rather than this protracted reply!), but I do want to clear up one last point. I'm not slapping a bunch of information together that I have managed to cull from the literature and producing a string of seemingly disparate facts; I am trying to construct a narrative about evolution through a historical lens, and charging me with "reading a bunch of other books to get ideas and material for [my] own book" is a gross oversimplification of what I am trying to do. In the end, though, whether the book is a success or failure will be determined by whether I've really got "the goods" or not, and from what I've heard so far I have every reason to be proud of what I have done.
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You should be. You are an excellent writer, and I look forward to reading your book.
I've come to prefer the term "novice" over "amateur". It doesn't have quite the same negative connotations, but still conveys the fact that you are in the early stages of learning about/exploring the field.
Someone should tell the Smithsonian to quit awarding cash prizes to amateur comet hunters, lest "professional" astronomers get their noses all out of joint.
One sympathizes, to be sure, but you must realize that, rationality of such attitudes aside, for many credentialed biologists, if a book or a paper is not authored by a PhD holding an official position at a university, it might as well not exist. I cannot even begin to capture the contempt in which such things are held by the biologists with whom I have worked. Indeed, in my experience, the only works they dislike more are those by philosophers of science.
Don't let the naysayers get you down, Brian! :)
Seriously, it all depends on the kind of book you're writing. If it's for the general populace, then I'd argue there's an advantage to having someone like yourself, as opposed to an "expert," write the book. Of course, I WOULD say that, since I am a science writer without a bona fide science degree. So is Carl Zimmer. And Chris Mooney. And George Johnson and Dennis Overbye at the NY TIMES. And lots of other respected science writers in the field.
Distilling lots of other deep, technical material into a compelling, readable narrative for the general public is an invaluable skill, and not everyone has it. "James" should maybe get off his elitist high horse a bit, and accept that people like Brian -- and myself -- do have something valuable to add to the dissemination of science to the broader public sphere. After all, one of the reasons science has become so marginalized is this underlying attitude that really, only "experts" have any right to talk or write about it in public...
As for journalists who criticize your lack of training in THAT area -- I think you'll get less than you think. Most of us recognize that the best way to become a better writer is to write, not chase after umpteen degrees....
This is an issue I've struggled with as well, but my feeling is that maybe my dinosaur book won't be for the scientific community. I mean, they can read if they want to, but my aim has always been to accurately portray dinosaurs to the common man, to explain why pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, and why that distinction is so important. Plenty of science writers lack PhD's (although maybe I should get an MA), so I'm not too worried about it. You shouldn't be, either, Brian! You're five times the writer I am, so you should have no trouble at all.
"I've come to prefer the term "novice" over "amateur". It doesn't have quite the same negative connotations, but still conveys the fact that you are in the early stages of learning about/exploring the field."
That might be applied to some amateurs but others are pretty much as knowledgeable and up to date as their professional cousins. In some cases the real difference is in money. A professional gets paid to do the science whereas an amateur is employed in other areas but chooses to spend their time, efforts, and a considerable amount of their own money on the science.
This has both advantages and disadvantages.
One disadvantage is that, for the amateur, work distracts from science. The need to split their time, assuming they aren't independently wealthy, limits both the time and resources they can dedicate to their science. A professional, externally funded, is likely to have access to more resources than they could gain on their own and to be able to spend more time on the science.
On the other hand the amateur spends less time writing proposals, justifying expenses, cultivating funding sources or accounting for time or resources spent. The funders want accountability and/or something that will gain them acclaim and/or profits. Some see funding as purely an investment and they want a payoff as soon as possible. This leads to pressure to see results, published articles and financially exploitable discoveries. The amateur is spending their own time and money so there is nobody looking over their shoulder. They can take their time and have fewer external demands to rush, publish or produce results.
In this I think using the term novice misses the point that an amateur can be both skilled and experience. Even the term amateur misses the idea that some take their science seriously.
Perhaps the term non-professional hits it a little more squarely.
All "amateur" means is that you're not getting paid for it. I wonder if anyone has measured the contributions of amateurs to science. In the field of astronomy, for instance, I believe amateurs have made, and still make, significant contributions. I say keep going.
During my time "wandering the Earth" after graduating college, I worked for the Supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS), a collaborative effort among astronomers to, well, get early warning of supernovae. The idea is that when a big star blows up, most of the energy doesn't go off as visible light or radio waves: in fact, upwards of 99% is emitted in the form of neutrinos, electrically neutral and almost massless particles which could zip through light-years of lead without noticing anything in their way. In order to detect them, the best you can do is pile a whole heap of matter in their way and hope that the odd one will interact. This is one of those moments when you can use the word "kiloton" to refer to something other than an atomic explosion: the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory in Kamioka, Japan is built around a fifty-kiloton tank of water. The IceCube detector currently being built in Antarctica borders on the absurd: its raw material is a cubic kilometer of ice, 1500 meters below the surface of the South Pole. You can't get much more "Big Science" than that!
Yet, there's a direct connection to the amateur science enthusiasts, too. Here's why:
When a star goes supernova in our Galaxy, the neutrino burst will register basically simultaneously on all the neutrino detectors in the world. Because neutrinos pass through regular matter much more efficiently than light does, the neutrino signal will arrive at Earth first, perhaps several hours before the light signal, which will be delayed by the expanding gases of the supernova itself. So, a "coincidence" among the neutrino detectors is your alert to look up.
Problem: we're not likely to get precise pointing information. The figure I hear for Super-Kamiokande is that we'd know the direction of the exploding star to within perhaps 5 degrees, which is ten times the angular width of the full Moon. This means that we'll need a large number of telescopes, sweeping the candidate area of sky, and doing it as quickly as possible. Big telescopes aren't so good for this, partly because they look at small patches of sky at a time, and partly because working with the most sophisticated ones is just complicated. Last I heard, it would take two days to point Hubble where you want it, for example.
Solution: when the central SNEWS server detects a coincidence, the alert goes out not only to the professional neutrino astrophysicists, but to a mailing list of amateur astronomers. Anybody with a telescope in their back yard could, in principle, catch the first light from an exploding sun half a galaxy away. To hell with the distinction between "amateurs" and "professionals" — we all live under the same sky.
f I can write about science and the history of science on this blog and not be constantly shouted down for errors I think I'm fully capable of doing the same in book form
good point.
well said! I'm almost in the same boat as you, as, despite being a postgraduate, I am writing a book on a subject I feel passionate about. I'm getting a bit sick of the science profession, I'd rather just be an "amateur" (sensu doing something for fun, not profit), but then where's the money gonna come from to do that?
Think of it this way, you're not doing a study of evolution, you're doing a meta-study of studies on evolution.
I want to echo a point that Jennifer made:
Your own personal ability to make the subject interesting, by writing in a way that you yourself find the subject interesting adds to my understanding of the topics you write about it.
I am so looking forward to your book. Just don't screw it up.
One of my favorite science writers without science degrees is David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (terrific book; I just finished reading it for the third time) and a frequent contributor to National Geographic.
A book of his essays, Natural Acts, came out recently in an updated edition with several of his newer pieces added, including a fairly long piece (originally written for NG) on Mike Fay's African Megatransect.
To hell with the naysayers, Brian. As a history-of-science buff, I'm intrigued by your list of topics, and I'd like very much to see your finished book.
I think that the commentary you described is part of the continuing process towards user-generated content. This guy claiming that you can't write a science book is in the same league as the TV producers that maintain that youtubers can't produce quality material, or that amateur game designers can't come up with good games, or microsoft disparaging open sourcers. They have been shown wrong repeatedly. The Internet started the age of the amateurs in information dissemination, and the old players are taking a bit long in figuring it out.
As long as the book is interesting and achieves a good balance between scientific accuracy and readability, the credentials of the author shouldn't matter. Keep on writing, circulate your materials for criticism to the best people you have available, ask competent friends for help in editing and such, and you should be in good shape.
Good luck on your journey!
If it took fancy-schmancy degrees and gobs of hands-on experience to write good science books for the general public, we'd have very few such books indeed! You're more than qualified for this, Brian. The problem is, you're more than qualified for this, and that's going to scare both the "professional" scientists and the "professional" journalists, so you're going to hear moaning about how "amateurs" shouldn't be doing this stuff. Translation: "Oh, crap! He's making us look bad!"
So I'm glad you're taking silly comments like "Don't write this until you've been an expert for 100 billion years" in stride. There's always a critic. The vast majority of the external ones can't hold a birthday candle to the one inside.
Carry on!
I pretty much agree with what everyone else has said. I'd like to add that I think you may, in fact, be better at writing this type of book for a general audience, or rather it may be easier for you to do so because you don't have an advanced degree in the subject. Once you become super-specialized in a subject, and spend most of your time talking about that subject to other people who are super-specialized in that subject, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain the subject in a way that makes sense for a lay person. It's like you've learned a new language and you've spent so much time speaking it, your English has suffered.
I'm glad you aren't letting comments like James' get you down.