The Sagan Effect This blog is not the first to mention it, and I'm sure won't be the

last. "With Cosmos, Sagan sought to put an end to the fear and to inspire the kind of wonder Hubble's lectures had inspired in the 1930s and 1940s and the Moon landing had inspired in 1969. The series was enormously successful. For the first time since Hubble, a huge audience was engaged in exploring the grand questions of life, nature, the structure of the universe, mythology, and what it might all mean, how it might all fit together, the mystery of it all. It examined how our search for meaning through science and our accumulation of observations and knowledge were the grandest of all human quests. "The show was seen by an estimated five hundred million people, then about a ninth of the world's population, in sixty countries, nearly as many as the Moon landingan enormous viewership for the time, and by far the largest for any science show ever. And yet Sagan was later denied admission to the National Academy of Sciences by his peers, who voted against his nomination on the grounds that his research work as a scientist was not strong enough to justify admissionlikely a stalking horse for the real reason: the animosity scientists felt toward Sagan's celebrity as a TV star and as a spokesman for their work. The scientist who nominated Sagan, origins-of-life researcher Stanley Miller, described the animosity he perceived. "I can just see them saying it: 'Here's this little punk with all this publicity and Johnny Carson. I'm a ten times better scientist than that punk!' "Following the shocking rejection, and Sagan's rejection in his bid for tenure at Harvard, scientists developed a new termthe "Sagan effect"in which popularity with the general public was considered to be inversely proportional to the quantity and quality of one's scientific work, a perception that in Sagan's case, at least, was false. He published, on average, once monthly in peer-reviewed publications over his thirty-nine-year careera total of five hundred scientific papers. More recent research suggests that all scientists who engage the public tend to be better academic performers as well." "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America," Shawn Lawrence Otto Science being a human endeavor is populated by humans that can be petty, trifling, and quite literally bigoted in many cases, despite its egalitarian stereotype of itself. Carl Sagan did what he set out to do: in "The Cosmic Connection" at about 10 or 11, I realized that at 186,232 miles per second, and the total population of the earth at the time about 5 billion, if one third of that were children (using the filtering criteria - "naughty, or nice") it would have taken several million years for Santa to visit, B&E and deposit toys. It obviously made an impression on a kid from the hood on 25th and Cleveland Avenue. In my last Santa con, I asked my parents for my 2nd science toy which, they were OK with beyond my disastrous first experiment in chemistry: a telescope. Along with Star Trek, and a not too casual attraction to Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Kiswahili for Freedom Star), I was hooked on science. Then, reality stepped in.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was a few years older than me in New York. Hed meet Dr. Sagan, who inspired him to continue his studies from Harvard to Cornel (who granted him tenure post Harvards oversight). He chose instead the University of Texas, Austin, which along with him and some others (six at some estimates) has failed to graduate a single PhD African American applicant. Ironically, the building where the natural science majors congregate is named after Robert Lee Moore. Ahem: Ill let you explore the link. I point out our close ages because we didnt see any more people of color then, or now doing science other than science fiction/fantasy. Our own enthusiasm carried us forward. The enemy of hierarchy is knowledge, and thats what science is supposed to empower the public with. However, the halls of science have themselves become a hierarchy; accepting only certain GRE scores from certain schools; respecting the research of a particular type of scientist over another (judging by the usual colloquium speaking lists); building unto itself an impenetrable ivory tower. And I asked myself: why? Then, it hit me: Revenge of the Nerds Not the movie; actual, real nerds. Reality: if youre African American on the wrong side of the tracks, youre not encouraged to pursue science, technology, engineering or math. Football, basketball, track and field because youre fast (not smart), and thats your ticket out of wherever you find your life circumstances. You may not get much support in your ambitions from friends, relatives; guidance counselors. Bullies might try to choke the life out of you, then laugh because it was so funny when you turned a different shade (as blood was no longer reaching m y brain). The archetype nerds experienced this type of bullying: beatings, shoved in lockers, ostracized from the cool jocks. So, high GPA/SAT/GRE scores put them in a Nerd Nirvana at most campuses where they dont have to worry about those things that used to terrify them: they are among their own, not realizing in creating this utopia, this cerebral citadel, they have closed themselves off deliberately from the former cool jocks/snotty cheerleaders/popular kids that just couldnt do STEM and they tend to run for public office. And win. And get on science or intelligence committeesyeah. They have their revenge against the nerds that were so much smarter than them, that they used to ostracize, and create since they didnt really understand science pseudo sciences on par with eugenics and ram it down societys collective throats. A warning from the person whom the Sagan Effect is surnamed about societal disengagement: "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." The Demon-Haunted World, page 25