May 12, 2005 - Claremont, Calif. -

Text of commencement address by Michael G. Wilson '63

May 15, 2005

Mr. president, trustees, faculty, graduates, honored guests…

When I last spoke at HMC in 1985, the topic was "The Harvey Mudd Generalist: Still Relevant?" It was relevant then and, 20 years later, it is more so. Today, more than any time I can remember, science and scientists are on the defensive. They are being attacked and challenged on many fronts.

I want to speak to you about the public's engagement with science and your role, as scientists and engineers, in educating and communicating with the public. It is crucial to the progress of your careers that you are prepared to make a clear and effective case for your work.

While the public are thankful for the advances in technology, they remain concerned about its potential risks and unintended consequences. And ethical issues raised by certain types of research trouble them. You will not effectively deal with the public's concerns by lecturing them from an ivory tower. You must engage the public in a dialogue about science in a common language so they are able to make informed judgements. But in order to do so you must be able to communicate your ideas. That is why the scientific generalist, with a solid grounding in the liberal arts, is especially relevant today.

Many areas of research rely upon the public's support and good will. Major undertakings such as the Hubble Telescope, a new particle collider or the hunt for the neutrino depend upon government funding. Many technologies are subject to government regulation and control, such as stem cell research and GM crops. Some of the public actively protests against certain types of research, such as those that involve animal testing. Some of the public may refuse to accept mainstream scientific opinion such as in the MMR scare. A significant number of parents are not allowing their children to take the mumps, measles, and rubella inoculations because they fear it causes autism, in spite of assurances by the medical establishment to the contrary.

So what are we to make of all this? The public does not trust the government – well, that is no great surprise, after Mad Dow Disease and Three Mile Island, but why don't they trust doctors and scientists?

Just what are the public's opinions? And how informed are they?

Let's start with: what do the public think of scientists? By and large scientists do very well in the rankings: second place in a list of 17 occupations in a recent Harris poll. And when parents were asked to rank from one to ten how pleased they would be if their child entered specific occupations, science was given a perfect 10. Engineers are another matter. Engineers ranked eighth. Indeed, The survey showed that engineers are not only less prestigious than doctors, scientists and teachers, but also less prestigious than ministers, military officers, policemen and politicians. But you engineers can take heart, lawyers were ranked even lower.

What is the public perception of a scientist?

"The scientist is a man who wears a white coat and works in a laboratory. He is elderly or middle aged and wears glasses.... He may wear a beard, may be…unkempt.... He is surrounded by equipment...and spends his days doing experiments."

In the 50 years since Margaret Mead first made this observation, sociologists confirm the persistence of this stereotype right up to the present.

So much for what the public think of scientists and science. What do they know about science?

The National Science Foundation periodically polls the American public on their knowledge of science. Here are some enlightening results:

If you ask: "Does the earth goes around the sun or the sun around the earth?" only 73 percent get it right. Apologies to Copernicus.

But this result is not bad considering if you ask: "How long does it take the earth to go around the sun, one day, one month or one year?" – only 54 percent of American adults answer one year.

Less then 50 percent of the public - on a true-false test (that is, worse than pure guess) – were able to give the correct response to the statements: electrons are smaller than atoms; antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria; and lasers work by focusing sound waves.

When asked if humans lived in the time of the dinosaurs, more than 50 percent say, yes. And only 44 percent agree with the statement that humans developed from some earlier species. No doubt, these responses reflect American's strong religious views. As you are aware, 80 years after the great clash between Clarence Darrow and Williams Jennings Bryan, the teaching of evolution in schools is sill a major issue in some states.

As to the public's views on evolution, a recent Gallup poll concluded:

"Only about a third of Americans believe [Charles] Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory well supported by the evidence, the same number say that it is just one of many theories. The rest say they don't know enough to have an opinion."

So the public think highly of scientists, but don't have a good grasp of scientific ideas.

What views do the American public have about pseudoscience?

The Gallup poll regularly follows Americans' beliefs in 13 categories relating to the paranormal, the occult and "out-of-this-world" experiences. It is interesting that in the last 15 years, belief in most of these experiences is on the rise. In fact, the only one of the 13 that has actually decreased is the belief that "people on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil." The percentage of adult Americans who definitely believe in possession has fallen from around 50 percent to 40 percent in the last decade and a half.

A steady quarter of the public believes in astrology. And belief in ESP has been running at a steady 50 percent. But all other categories are up. Some of the big winners: psychic and spiritual healing, up 8 percent to 54 percent; belief in witches, up 12 percent; that people can communicate with the dead, up 10 percent. Belief in clairvoyance up 6 percent to total of one in three adults. Belief in ghosts, up a whopping 13 percent to two out of every five adults. (A lot of people must have seen the "Ghostbusters" movies) And the belief that houses can be haunted, also up 13 percent to 42 percent of American adults.

Haunted houses are a big business. When I was listening to the early morning TV news in New York a few weeks back, I saw the following add (channel 5, Fox) – "Is your house haunted? Call Silvia Mondel at 1-800-mondel2." I'll repeat that for those of you taking notes, 1-800-mondel2.

Just in case you thought that education might change some of these ideas – it doesn't. Except for belief in astrology, there is little difference between college graduates and the rest of the public when it comes to believing in these notions.

I should not leave you with the impression that the American public are less informed than other industrial societies. Americans score better on the Science Knowledge Test than Europeans and are less gullible to the claims of pseudoscience. For example, while 25 percent of Americans believe in astrology, a staggering 50 percent of Europeans believe it to be true.

I quote these polls not to discourage you, but to make you aware that the public may not have beliefs that coincide with your own. And they certainty don't apply scientific thinking to many of the opinions they hold. Nevertheless, it is key to the future of science and technology that you, as scientists and engineers, especially in your specific areas of expertise, take a lead in communicating with the public.

The greatest impediment to public dialogue on any subject is censorship. And by censorship I don't mean just communication that is prohibited by law – I mean every action meant to end dialogue before it even starts or tactic that silence people through fear or intimidation. When people say your work is immoral, blasphemous, obscene, unpatriotic, sexist or racist they are trying to foreclose any discussion of it.

Unfortunately, public debate on many subjects today seems to have fallen into this kind of rhetoric. Shrill name-calling is not confined to either end of the political spectrum; it is used effectively by both the right and the left, and a lot of people in between.

When the House majority leader suggests that federal judges be impeached when they don't rule the way he would like, he is just making a clumsy attempt to intimidate the judiciary.

And a recent bill introduced to prohibit all human cloning, with criminal penalties for any violation, which would put an end to all stem cell research in the U.S., is a clear attempt at old fashioned government censorship.

Books have always been a major target for censorship. One of the most recent to make the news as the "The Da Vinci Code." A spokesman for the Catholic Church said that Christians should not buy or read Dan Brown's best-selling thriller. The novel thus joins the ranks of previously banned works on the church's official index of condemned books which was discontinued in 1966, but included "Madame Bovary," "The Red and the Black," and the complete works of Jonathan Swift, John Locke and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Closer to home occasional book burnings are still in fashion. Judging from a straw poll of the Internet, the Harry Potter books are the evangelists' favorite fuel.

The American Library Association reports they document about 600 formal written requests every year that books be removed from public libraries or schools, and they estimate four to five unreported cases for each documented one. Additionally, books are edited so that they may be allowed in school libraries. Much of William Shakespeare's works have been edited to pass muster in our nation's classrooms.

Often the same book has to be edited twice in order to be acceptable to both the right and the left. For example, the publishers of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," under pressure from conservatives have removed poor grammar from textbooks to avoid encouraging students to use bad grammar themselves. On the other hand, to satisfy liberal pressure for sexually neutral language publishers have substituted the word "children" for "boys" and deleted any suggestion in the novel that girls are inactive or play supporting roles to boys.

Probably the most egregious example of the whipsaw between left and right is a Seventeen Magazine short story entitled "A Perfect Day for Ice Cream," which was reprinted in a junior high anthology. Under pressure from the right publishers deleted references to Gloria Steinem and the word "pest," used with reference to a sibling, as these were thought to be an attack on family values. Under pressure from the left the phrase Kamikaze ball was deleted because of possible ethnic negativity. Also under California law school texts may not encourage the use of low nutrition foods, hence the Title was changed from "A perfect Day for Ice Cream" to simply "A Perfect Day" and the trip to the ice cream parlor was edited out. One wonders what was left of the short story.

Science texts are not immune from censorship. Each year there is an attempt in several states to either delete references to evolution or include creation as a competing theory. While this has not been successful so far, the causes of global warming, discussions of endangered species, and the effects of deforestation all have been successful deleted from science textbooks.

Now here is a question: "Which films are the most heavily censored in the U.S. today?" Would it be excessively violent films? Obscene films?

How about scientific films? Three IMAX films produced for exhibition in science museums are not shown in many theaters for fear of public protest. "Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the big bang, "Galapagos," about the islands where Charles Darwin did his field research for this theory of evolution, and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," which suggests that life possibly originated in under sea vents - all have been self-censored at some dozen IMAX cinemas because the management fears they would offend the religious sensibilities of their patrons.

Earlier this year, under pressures from the new secretary of education Margaret Spellings, PBS did not broadcast an episode of "Postcards from Buster," a series about diversity in America. The episode in question depicted syrup and dairy farming in Vermont and featured a household headed by two women. Their relationship was not defined and their sexual orientation was not discussed. Nevertheless, in addition to have the episode pulled, the secretary of education demanded PBS refund federal money spent on the segment and warned that future support was in jeopardy.

While I think most of you graduating today would probably agree that these attempts at censorship are wrong, you must be vigilant that your own passionately held views do not cause you to call for censorship when you hear something with which you disagree.

I'm sure most of you have heard about the remarks Larry Summers, president of Harvard, made a few months ago at a conference on diversifying the science and engineering workforce. Summers asked why women were under represented in the physics and math faculty at his university. About one out of every five faculty in these departments are women. The ratio is slightly better (about one in three) here at HMC. He offered three theories to explain the lack of women in these departments. One of the theories was that there is a greater variability in the scores of men and women on mathematical ability tests with more men scoring higher then women at the extremes. Thus, he suggested that men had a genetic edge on women in these disciplines. Summers said he would prefer to believe something else, but that was the way he interpreted the data in one of the papers submitted at the conference.

An explosion of criticism followed from his remarks, culminating in a vote of no confidence by the Arts and Sciences faculty, and calls for his resignation. Now, one may disagree with his ideas, but censoring his remarks is not the answer. We should not use tactics on others which we deplore when they are used on us. If you disagree, don't shout him down, prove him wrong.

As each of you leave today, you go out as ambassadors for science and the scientific method. Be prepared to explain and justify your work, first and foremost to yourself. And after that, be prepared to explain it not only to your colleagues and financial backers, but to the public at large as well.

I bid you farewell with my Irish grandmother's favorite blessing:

"Now go with the wind at your back

And the sun on your face

With a song in your heart."