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11.08

AAAS Mass Media Fellowship

By Maddalena Jackson

I spent last summer as a science reporter for two reasons. The first was to test a hypothesis I had formulated about applying the engineering mentality to non-engineering problems. The second reason was because I found myself at a loss for words at cruising altitude somewhere over Texas on my way home from Los Angeles.

I’ll start with the flight.

I was halfway through my senior year at Harvey Mudd College, one semester from earning my BS in Engineering. Going home for the holidays, I found myself in the window seat next to a nice-looking couple from Tennessee. We got to talking about professions and hometowns. I suddenly noticed that the husband, on the aisle, was nudging his wife and mumbling to her.

“You ask her yourself!” his wife said. The man craned slowly around her like some kind of predatory bird, peering at me intensely. I looked back, anticipating a really odd question.

“Do you believe…” he started.

I thought he was going to ask me about my spiritual wellbeing, so I started preparing a polite but extremely boring response.

“…in Global Warming?” he asked.

What!?

I gawked at him for a while. I couldn’t for the life of me form a coherent sentence — and my feeble, stuttering answers earned me a spot as the captive audience for a tirade about Al Gore’s scare tactics.

My knowledge failed me. Where could I start? How could I explain what had convinced me to accept climate change as reality? I had just spent a semester reading the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, studying sustainability and researching renewable energy. I grew up with the scientific method; I grew up believing that science and engineering are noble professions, in service of the public good; grew up knowing how to set up a scientific experiment and what constitutes “evidence.” I have been trained in the application of probability and statistics — I know the scientific meaning of “high confidence,” and have had to use those concepts in my research.

I wanted to explain to my seatmates that based on my best understanding of this science, I did, in fact, believe in climate change.

But I couldn’t organize my thoughts. How could I explain that climate modeling is not just “some guy playing with his computer?” How do I explain that a correlation is more than “huh, those graphs look kind of similar!” That “Al Gore is trying to scare us!” is not a legitimate criticism of the science of climate change?

I was so frustrated with my inability as a scientist to explain science that I started my application for the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship as soon as I got home.

The Engineering Hypothesis

On the surface, nothing seems further from engineering than writing for a newspaper. But I hypothesized that somebody, trained as an engineer to identify a problem, dissect it, find (or make) tools, and then use them to solve the problem, could learn to be a science writer. I reasoned that a newspaper article must be a deliverable — and thus, the reporter must first comprehend the context of the assignment, discover the relevant pieces of information, and then assemble them into a story.

I formed this hypothesis when I began to see opportunities to use the engineering mentality everywhere around me — and when I realized I had been “engineering” long before college taught me the words to describe what I was doing.

I realized the way I approached a thermodynamics problem was the same way that I solved any other problem — analytical essays, art problems, social interactions, disagreements, and even making edible food. I figured out what I wanted to accomplish, what I needed to know to achieve that goal, what tools I had, and how to apply them. Then I did it. Why shouldn’t it work for science writing?

I doubt I will ever be the “mad scientist” who, to prove her hypothesis, injects herself with a crazy serum and can suddenly turn into a bat. But using myself as a test subject in my engineer-turned-reporter experiment was the next best thing (and had no peculiar morphological side effects).

Testing the Hypothesis

If I had known what I was getting myself into, I would have been petrified. I expected to cover what I thought was the “science beat” — basically, to explain to people why Mars is exciting, or that somebody created a hybrid between a tomato and an alligator. I thought, if I was lucky, I could explain how wind turbines work. And I had a tiny secret hope that I could write what I should have said on that plane from Los Angeles.

As it turned out, the Sacramento Bee was not looking for an intern to explain cool science press-releases — unless the story directly affected their readers or the Sacramento region. I was initially dismayed to see national science news picked up from the wire. I wasn’t from Sacramento, and I didn’t know the local hot issues.

But — and I am probably one of the only people who can say this — I was saved by a devastating outbreak of wildfires.

Choking white smoke filled the northern Central Valley for days on end, making my morning train ride into Sacramento look deceptively foggy and surreal. Quite a few people ventured outside in masks, and many wondered why the smoke lingered so long — not to mention why the fires began in June, when fire season usually starts in the fall.

I was given an opportunity to inject knowledge of science into the daily lives of our readers as the Bee assigned me to report on the fires. I wrote a story about forest ecology and heat transfer — how the composition of a forest fuels a fire. I wrote about the large-scale fluid mechanics of meteorology to explain the cyclical pressure patterns that kept the smoke trapped in the valley for days at a time, about the material properties of dust masks, about heat transfer and cars, about the impacts of particles on the tiny ecology of the lung. And I got to try to show readers the beauty and majesty I see in science.

But it was hard. Engineers are often stereotyped as socially awkward, nerdy, and uncomfortable — and while there are countless wonderful examples to the contrary, I in many ways fit the bill. When I realized I would have to talk to other people to find out what they think, I briefly considered running away.

I didn’t run away. I reverse engineered the process — what would make me want to talk to a reporter? What should that reporter say and do to make me share my knowledge?

So I started making my phone calls, explaining who I was and what I needed, being friendly and polite. And it was actually fun! After the initial overtures, where I concentrated most on not introducing myself as “Sacramento Jackson” or “Maddalena the Bee” (or by the name of the person I was calling), I found that most people really wanted to help me get the story right. Telling them I was an engineer didn’t hurt, either.

The highlight of the summer came in the last week, when the Bee sent me to the coast of Mendocino County, California, to research a story about offshore energy — drilling, wave power, and wind farms. Not only was it one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, but I got to sit down and talk with the real people whose lives would be directly affected by decisions made by distant politicians and scientific advancements.

Though I did my best to keep my journalistic objectivity, seeing the passion with which coastal residents are committed to protecting their waters, their fear that the evolution of technology could scar the coastline (like some early wind farms, which lacked provisions for removing technology in the event of bankruptcy), has convinced me as a scientist to better understand the impacts of my work on society. Engineers, scientists, the media and the public exist in the same world, whether we admit it or not.

In many ways, being a science reporter was exactly what I’d hoped for. While I didn’t get to write the definitive story of climate change, or a treatise on the scientific method (which, in retrospect, I’m not sure I would want to read either), I did my small part to help heal the break between the science and the public. For ten weeks, I had the honor of fostering a little understanding between us — I was able to give the public a little more relevant science, and as a writer and engineer, I was able to learn a little more about the public.

Having had the opportunity to be a part of those three worlds — science, public and media — I am convinced that for each to understand the others is a necessity. For the media to accurately represent science requires scientists to clearly explain the function and importance of their work, and in turn the media must ask good questions and represent the answers correctly. As a member of the public, I can do more to ask “why?” of scientists and the media; and as a scientist, I can explain.

I’ll be heading into the engineering industry in January, but I will be going in knowing that I have the tools I acquired at The Sacramento Bee; that I have the power to take any question and find the answer, and then spread the word — to learn for myself, or share understanding.

Maddelena Jackson is a 2008 engineering graduate of Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, Calif. Her AAAS Mass Media Fellowship was sponsored by IEEE-USA, which has sponsored engineering students in the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows Program since 2000.

More information on IEEE-USA's mass media fellows can be found online at: www.ieeeusa.org/communications/massmedia.asp

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.