Speaking up for the intellect

Volume 9 Number 1 January 14 - February 11 2013

ABC Radio’s Science Show presenter Robin Williams delivered an inspiring graduation address to Melbourne students recently, in which he argued for improved public conversation about science and innovation. Following is an edited extract of his address.

In The Australian newspaper recently Maurice Newman, former chairman of the ABC and of the Securities Exchange wrote: “If only the laws of climate change were as certain as the laws of economics.”

Now that’s a very brave statement to make in 2012. The economic health of the world is not noticeably thriving. Banks have broken, some by scandal, Churches are in disarray, the armed forces, at least in America, are deeply embarrassed, and need I remind you about the hackers and the hacked in the media, the BBC, and politics? The very democratic process is being held up to ridicule here and abroad. Our institutions are wobbling. Some have crashed. 

So what’s been happening in science while all this has been going on?

In August, after more than seven years of planning, scientists flew the truck-sized Curiosity explorer to Mars, lowering it by cable from the space craft, to land precisely on the spot intended, 225 million kilometres from where it was launched. 

In May, Australia and South Africa combined with other supporting countries to be the centres for the Square Kilometre Array, an astronomical venture which will eventually use as much computing power as the entire world now does.

In July, at CERN and in Melbourne, scientists announced they had found the Higgs boson and so confirmed the basic theories of modern physics – an achievement that Brian Cox called the greatest discovery of his lifetime.

And in November CSIRO announced they had produced a vaccine for the deadly Hendra virus.

Science is one institution that has done brilliantly while others around it have foundered. 

So why isn’t science more famous?

Try this: what did Henry Sutton do in Ballarat in 1885? I ask because 2012 was the centenary of Sutton’s death and I’ve heard not a whisper of celebration of the quiet man’s work here in Australia.

Consider this quotation from his biography: “At age 14 Henry invented a type of electric motor that could also be used as a dynamo which was a prototype of the first electric motors to be used in factories all over the world.”

In the same year he “designed and built an ornithopter which mimics the flight of birds. It was driven by a clock work which could fly in a circumference of 12 feet. Henry is credited with being the first person in Australia to have experimented with flight long before Hargrave’s first experiments.”

[Lawrence Hargrave of Stanwell Park, NSW, was the inventor who did experiments that inspired the Wright Bros to fly the first aircraft in 1903.]

In 1876 at age 20 Sutton read a brief account of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone in Scientific American. Bell’s telephone patent was issued on 7 March that year and within six months Sutton had designed and built at least 20 different types of telephones. This was at least two years before Australia’s first official telephone system was installed in Melbourne.

Later, when in conversation with Graham Bell, Sutton asked why the telephone had to be a box on a wall, with a cup on a wire to hear and a speaking tube on the box. After some inspired reflection, Sutton gave us the handset instead incorporating both listening and speaking in one device.

In 1880, without any knowledge of Thomas Edison’s work, he “designed and built the electric light bulb (an invention with many fathers, but Sutton’s and Edison’s were, according to the biographer, only 16 days apart).

And in 1885 what did Henry do? He invented television and transmitted the Melbourne Cup to Ballarat through what he called the telephone. It was stated that it “worked quite well”.

And he did lots more. Mark Dodgson, Professor of Innovation at the University of Queensland Business School calls Henry Sutton one of the greatest inventors in history.

Yet who has ever heard of him? Who has heard of the genuine heroes who’ve created the civilisation we enjoy in this 21st century? Who knows the names of Burnet, Florey, Blackburn, Doherty, Cory, Metcalf, Miller or Cornforth? These are some of our heroes. Or should be.

My points are these:

First, we are facing a real crisis in science communication. This year many of our best science writers left their newspapers or were “let go”. This sad exodus was not in any way due to the unpopularity of the topic of science. In fact every survey I’ve ever seen puts science and medicine at the top of the list of audience choice. The ANU, in 2010 went so far as to report: “Aussies say science knocks sport for six”.

A more recent ANU poll of public attitudes to science found far from being a nation of sports obsessives, Australians would prefer to hear about health, medical discoveries and the environment in the news. The poll also found the public felt poorly informed about science, confused about climate science, and thought politicians were too easily swayed by media reaction when they should be listening to scientists. The audience is there.

Second, as my profession fades away it’s up to someone else to do the job of explaining science.

The world is a different place now from Henry Sutton’s day. But it’s up to the next generation of thinkers and inventors to make a noise, and to do so more loudly than the Kim Kardashians, the Jimmy Saviles and Lance Armstrongs have done. Make them fade away in a culture that has greater priorities than self-seeking acquisition and material indulgence. Let the intellect rule instead.

Because it’s intellect, as well as craft, that has created the best of the modern world.

abc.net/radionational/programs/scienceshow