Bishop Hill The descent of broadcasting
May 27, 2014 BBC Media Royal Society Pour yourself a coffee, open a packet of biscuits, and sit yourself down in a comfy chair to read Ben Pile's long and utterly fascinating survey of the descent of science broadcasting and in particular the BBC's Horizon strand. With side swipes at, among others, Paul Nurse, Simon Singh, Iain Stewart and David Attenborough it is unmissable. Take this bit:
Nurse’s contempt for ‘politics and ideology’ and ‘polemicists and commentators’ is simple contempt for the viewer. Nurse asks for his trust, but does not reciprocate — the viewer is too easily misled, not being sufficiently equipped, too vulnerable to ‘others who don’t understand the science’. Science is just too complicated for the public. The values of the contemporary Royal Society are now identical to the values of the producers of Horizon: the public is a dangerous, contemptible moron.
Reader Comments (46)
"This could have been the subject for a useful hour long film, but in the hands of the director, it became instead an hour of filler, save for about two or three minutes of insight."
This is why I'm not allowed to watch Horizon any more. I get ten minutes in and am screaming, "FOR GOD'S SAKE GET ON WITH IT!!!" at the TV.
Horizon has been rubbish for years
Look at who's making it. Bunch of luvvy left wing wimmin.
The closing comment sums up the whole sad scenario:-
It is sad that the BBC has fallen so far down. It no longer produces good science programmes (the dumbing down and biasing of all BBC ecience programmes), it no longer produces great social meaning drama (e.g. Wednesday Play, Play for Today) and it no longer produces funny sitcoms (where are the new Fawlty Towers?). The BBC has stagnated while other countries' broadcasting has flourished. Remember how bad the television was in the US many years ago, the tremendous regulation and control it suffered - look at it now. Television throughout the world has evolved while the BBC merely congratulates itself on how good it is (or rather was).
The BBC has entered the Dark Ages of broadcasting with people like "Paul Nurse, Simon Singh, Iain Stewart and David Attenborough" being mouth pieces, regurgitating what the BBC elite want.
And all of this costs the public £3,500M per annum! No matter how much viewers complain, the BBC mangement know what is good for us.
Charming quark
The US example is interesting, isn't it? The programs that the BBC-loving lefties worship and adore are those made by HBO with its free-market subscription only model.
Funny that. Especially since it's only possible on first run via the hated Murdoch-owned Sky. Makes you wonder how many Murdoch-hating lefties have subscriptions to Sky.
Whose wife makes "catastrophe documentaries for Horizon ?
SJ
..yes Steve geneticist Jones
Stewgreen - Speaking of Steve Jones, he raises another interesting position of the BBC - hypocrisy
In the Telegraph there is -
"Christianity will rise as sceptics die out, geneticist claims"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/10856665/Christianity-will-rise-as-sceptics-die-out-geneticist-claims.html
Given that the BBC resists sceptics appearing on their programmes and Steve Jones helped pretend that the BBC was unbiased, what hypocrisy!
Wow, that clip of Simon Singh really is scary. How does he manage to be so patronising and infantile at the same time. And if he really can't see any flaws in his facile argument the, well, how does he come to be a professor?
To paraphrase:
There is a hypothesis that Jews are really poisoning the planet. Now we don't know that for sure, but all of my friends think so. we can either do nothing and risk war, famine, hurricanes, floods, droughts, epidemics ... or we can ....
How can anyone watch the very moving Bronowski clip preceded by Feynmann (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY), and not understand what science is and how it operates?
I have a simple rule of thumb that the dumb-ness of a program is proportional to the loudness of the background noise/music *while people are talking*. Horizon is steadily dropping but the PBS - Nova programs from America seem to be improving. Thank you Sky!
However while I read the article with increasing depression my spirits lifted at the end with the quote about physics undergrads. If there are still students who question received authority (as is the job of all science students!) then all is not lost. CAGW will soon go the way of phlogiston.
BBC employess caught making anti-UKIP tweets:
http://order-order.com/2014/05/23/bbc-news-warn-all-news-staff-over-anti-ukip-tweets/
The Global Dimming episode was riveting at the time. Unfortunately, we have the reverse, as proved by the fact that Neanderthal Man, ice age, snowy adapted, had much larger eyes than we. The larger brain had to process much more optical information than ours so their intellect was lower. We have similar genes, different ones switched on and off!
In that cold climate, low aerosol density meant cloud droplets coarsened rapidly so albedo was much higher than now; dark skies with a reddish cast. I just hope that Horizon makes a follow-up programme with the right science!
Stuck-Record
I have a self imposed embargo for the same reason.
Swiss Bob
That's the other reason.
Whenever I traveled I had my shortwave equipment with me, just to be able to listen to the BBC as I did at home. But I gave up listening in the nineties when their science programs started to be all about global warming, global warming, and then there was even more global warming. And then there came localisation, when the BBC lost focus of the world, and taught me what should be my true interest: my homeground, I knew already more about than the BBC.
I lost interest completely. But about the BBC.
There have been some recent Horizon programmes where they pick a theme and then show clips from the archives about that theme IIRC. The tonal shift from old clips to new clips is quite stark at times but it is hard to explain what I mean. It is as if the earlier ones were letting scientists put their theories across and leave it up to the viewers while more recent ones have a message of 'The BBC believes this and you should too'.
Is Horizon used by the Open University? If it is I fear for the quality of the teaching. It all seems to have been replaced with a variety of presenters getting a ride in an English Electric Lightning, Jem Stansfield blowing things up and James May tinkering in a shed.
Congratulations to Ben Pile for a well written article. I remember when Horizon was essential viewing for me. That was decades ago. Now I just regard it as rubbish. Sometimes the subject matter tempts me to watch it and I generally find it full of BBC bias or completely lacking in scientific content, or both. Usually it seems that the main purpose of the programme is to ensure that the generous travel budget is fully spent.
It is because our elite class care so very very much...
They really believe they do...
Frightening.
The recent Horizon about the earth's core was riveting and didn't mention climate change once. Maybe someone, somewhere, is listening?
1980s: my children's god-father, PhD university biology professor, sat slack-jawed, mawkish, before Sagan's slop: I despaired. Bronowski's 'Ascent,' ten years before, in Seattle, had inspired. 2009: respected friends watched Discovery Channel earth-in-flames special effects, 'Why are you laughing,' they asked. 'How do know so much?'
What USA productions can you recommend; all I hear is the Goracle and Figueres fantasy.
Today: Wild thing! Google Doodle celebrates nature author Rachel ...
I was surprised to read that US television product was thought to have improved. I see it was HBO, to which we never subscribed. I clearly didn't know - although Boston Legal was certainly worth the viewing.
I am most fascinated by the Canadian series, "How It's Made" which in an hour describes how three different products are manufactured. Often the complexity of the process cannot be adequately portrayed in 15 minutes, but what is described is usually interesting. They never generalize about what is shown, but after watching 40 or 50 of these episodes, i conclude that food products are always made in batches, other products if not hand assembled, are produced by continuous process, that there is much more manual labor in many things thought to be made by automation, and steel products are very often heat treated.
As to the expansion of two minutes of information into an hour, I wonder when it is a subject with which I am familiar and would have been able to provide the other 56 minutes, why it wasn't done. Sometimes the content consultant is a duffer, but sometimes it has been someone I could recognize and who indeed could have filled the time.
Why wasn't it done? I suspect that there is a theory that the general public is able to absorb about 4 or 5 minutes of information per hour. Maybe there is some other explanation., but I'm almost certain that using the time completely would not increase cost.
It could also be that dearth of content descends from the "Strange but True" (maybe wrong series) genre in the '70s which speculated about alien origins of pyramids, Chilean land-glyphs (I made that up - must be a better name) and so forth with the Voice of God, repeatedly intoning the very few known facts and the bizarre interpretation of the writers over and over and over.
I well remember the moment when I realised Horizon was no longer worth watching. I don't remember the exact topic of the program, it may have been about the LHC or similar. There was a scene lasting a minute or two showing a high-energy physicist HAVING HIS BREAKFAST WITH HIS CHILDREN. I thought at the time 'why on earth do the producers of this SCIENCE program think I'll be interested in seeing a physicist eating breakfast?'. I suppose the answer has to be that they wanted to show that physicists are people too, and that they don't just emerge from some sort of chrysalis each morning, as most arts luvvies probably assume.
This may have been about the time they changed the strapline to 'Pure Science - Sheer Drama' which is rather obviously two words too long.
Paul Nurse states "I’m here in the Royal Society. Three hundred and fifty years of an endeavour which is built on respect for observation, respect for data, respect for experiment: trust no one; trust only what the experiments and the data tell you. We have to continue to use that approach if we are to solve problems such as climate change."
But, in reality, he supports precisely the opposite approach. Argument from authority, models over experiments etc. etc.
What an arrogant hypocrite.
Don Keiller,
Don't you suppose that Nurse thinks that he's done the trusting no one bit for us so we needn't worry about it. Symptomatic of an assumption of priesthood, wouldn't you also think?
But then he didn't really do it himself, but assumes that some other member most have done it; after all, it is their motto.
Sorry, I got the timing on "How It's Made" wrong. They describe the creation of three products in a half hour episode. Fascinating nonetheless.
Jacob Bronowski is probably turning in his grave. Creating his sequel - "The descent of Man"
Related ...
A Guide to Reading Health Care News Stories
From April 16, 2006, through May 30, 2013, a team of reviewers from HealthNewsReview.org, many of whom were physicians, evaluated the reporting by US news organizations on new medical treatments, tests, products, and procedures. After reviewing 1889 stories (approximately 43% newspaper articles, 30% wire or news services stories, 15% online pieces [including those by broadcast and magazine companies], and 12% network television stories), the reviewers graded most stories unsatisfactory on 5 of 10 review criteria: costs, benefits, harms, quality of the evidence, and comparison of the new approach with alternatives. Drugs, medical devices, and other interventions were usually portrayed positively; potential harms were minimized, and costs were ignored.
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1867181
More here ...
http://healthnewsreview.org/
My experience is that most science (including healthcare) reporting consists of breathless rewrites of press releases. These are more likely to make it on air or into print if a researcher is made available for an interview and can speak in complete sentences. A white coat helps.
Great article by Ben. I gave up on BBC science programmes, including Horizon, at about the same time I gave up taking New Scientist. Fortunately, at about the same time the internet gave alternative access to science knowledge.
I was glad I took the coffee and comfy chair hint because though I decided to skip the main video evidence I couldn't resist watching the Adam Curtis film ‘The Uses and Abuses of Vegetational Concepts'. For some reason I missed ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ when it was originally shown.
Marvellous stuff. I hadn't known that 'Limits to Growth' was based on a computer model, though I wasn't surprised.
This comment by Nurse took the biscuit for me, remembering that he would not allow publication of any details of the "re-education" that they deigned to offer Nigel Lawson at the RS.
I agree with Don Keillor in this case- what utter hypocrisy.
The average ten-year-old probably undestands the process of science - and its importance - better than a whole roomful of BBC science journos. (And climate scientists too, come to that).
Kids would quickly see through hiding data, gatekeeping and all the other charades on which the alarmist consensus is founded.
I look forward to reading the whole thing. Ben Pile is an eloquent writer who reasons elegantly. Trouble is he does rather spread himself, which may be necessary and is still well worth reading. It is just a question of finding time.....
How can anyone watch the very moving Bronowski clip preceded by Feynmann (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY), and not understand what science is and how it operates?
May 27, 2014 at 11:20 AM | Unregistered Commenteralleagra
Pay your mortgage by working as a "climate scientist"?
Notice how they are rather over celebrating this 50 years of BBC2 .
Want to bet that in 5 years BBC2 might be with its sister Channel BBC3 living in obscurity on the internet .Or gone completely.
Where will the BBC axe full next.
Established BBC2 producers must be running scared desperately trying to promote themselves and their channel,s past achievements.
But getting rid of National and Local TV channels and Radio Stations is a good way for the Beeb to cut its Carbon Footprint and its Budget.
The BBC sold off the old TV Centre for redevelopment and moved up north to cheaper Manchester.
Wonder when the BBC iplayer will go completely subscription only.
And an Independent Scotland how many License Fees does that take out
Privatize the BBC and the Met Office and you take out the two biggest cheerleaders for Climate Change Alarmists.
The article is an excellent read. I'd started watching one or two of the programmes Roberts selected, and my brief personal summary reads "From the Exquisite to the Execrable in 50 Years". Possibly from being old enough to have watched many of the earlier episodes at the time, I didn't find their video technique "dated" - in fact, the slower-moving format is a lot less wearing on the consciousness, when you're trying to follow something, than the endless disorienting zap-zap-zap of video trickery in the more modern programmes. (Personal note: I haven't had a TV in the happy homestead for over 30 years now, on the grounds that there wasn't the talent around to fill the three channels there were then, and from the little TV I see now things certainly haven't improved.) (Though "Don Giovanni" a week or two ago was outstanding - thanks, ROH!)
I'd guess the rot began in the "hippie age" of the late 60s. That was when it seemed to become fashionable to decry science and treat it as giving humanity more problems than solutions, and for all my hippie hairiness at the time I held on to my love of knowledge and defended science whenever I heard people moaning about it. For whatever reason (you'd have to ask TPTB why), science seems to have been mostly denigrated ever since.
Interesting too to note above that Gareth asks "Is Horizon used by the Open University?". I was chatting to an OU science student a few years ago, and had great trouble accommodating one piece of information she gave me around the time of her OU Summer School. She'd heard that the OU were planning (sit down before you read this) science courses with no summer laboratory work. Ye-e-es, er, it must cost a few quid hiring the use of the host Uni's labs, let's see if we can do without them ...If she was right, I'd think a content-free Horizon or two would fit in very well with a content-free science course; the students would have to believe whatever junk they were told 'cos they'd have no way of checking or testing any of it. I'm afraid that was the day my opinion of the OU joined my opinion of the BBC down in the basement. (If anyone can assure me it hasn't happened, and won't, please do so and I'll gladly recant.)
The history of Horizon demonstrates - it was quite apparent then, is is undeniable now - a growing infantilization in the treatment of its topics. Over time this approach to its topics came to be displaced from the content onto the viewers. Soon the producers started to be believe their own myth about the audience. But with an audience believed to have the mental capacity of infants, what ways are there for justifying to them claims such as those of CAGW? Clearly the scope for reasoning, inference and logic is limited, and such concepts as falsification and reductio ad absurdam are helpless. But wait - there is argument from authority, and all the other rhetorical devices known for centuries as logical fallacies.
To ask the question of how rhetorical devices could ever come to be seen as adequate substitutes for logical justification is to begin to tackle the more the general question of What is postmodernism?
The last time the BEEB produced a decent science was "Earth Story" presented by Prof. Aubry Manning (he of the "forget global warming, if we don't get to grips with the population problem we are doomed!" and that back in 1998. I know for a fact that the lead geology consultant flatly refused to allow the BEEB producers to interfere with his supervision of the subject.
And now when students from that department are offered internships with Horizon, they very quickly return very disillusioned with the publicising of their subject.
The other sad thing is that the only other person I know whoever watched it was a fellow engineering colleague - Jo public just isn't interested in real science.
Mercifully there is still the odd good science programmme on good old R4.
In general it is well worth noting that tha BEEB broadcasts no less than seven "pop" music radio stations whilst it lets its ,one time, flagship cultural station, R3, slide into the slough of mediocrity - as a classical music lover I have to resort to the internet, or my CDs for well presented or uninterrupted music.
And as for what should be its cultural TV station, BBC4, it seems think an evening of Abba or "Top Of The Pops" is culture!!!!
If the BBC, or any other broadcaster, needs a pattern for science programs go and watch every episode of Jame Burke's 'Connections' programs and see how an intelligent, insightful, and truly educational program is made.
Excellent post by Ben on CR; I have a number of transcripts which might be interesting additional reading (more to come, hopefully):
BBC2 Horizon: Science Under Attack:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20110124_hz
BBC2 Horizon: Global Weirding:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20120327_hz
Earth: The Climate Wars: 1: The Battle Begins:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20080907_cw
Earth: The Climate Wars: 2: Fightback:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20080914_cw
Earth: The Climate Wars: 3: Fight for the Future:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20080921_cw
Oops link lost in the rage -
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/james-burke-connections/
A short scan around the categories on BBC iPlayer is probably all one needs to know about BBC's strategy when it comes to the ideological skewing and dumbing down rampant in commissioning and production. "Production values", "key talent"and in-house political rectitude dominate over actual relevant content. Many of the "key talents" don't seem to be able to deviate from the script / autocue - and as for arithmetic -> oh! too boring... give 'em eye candy and trendy music - yawn...
What is extraordinary is that those in the bubble are so mired and entangled in groupthink that they just keep doing it The occasional one slips under the radar - but that happens in any huge bureaucracy.
There was a Horizon program about stars not so long ago that had much lingering moody footage of wind turbines ...
There is still to much and growing public acceptance that 'climate science' speaks for all science. Even scientists have swallowed this bait. Rot sets in when lay people like broadcasters wrongly assume that they know more about science than many scientists do.
Old message repeated here. It has an important distinction.
The chattering class is concerned to deliver the message.
Good science delivers the goods.
PBS Nova series? They've gone from beautiful science scenes and depictions with solid information to false, misleading fantasy shams of massively edited film clips with a few bright spots of science thrown in.
As soon as they throw anthropogenic perspectives, feelings, descriptions, ambitions and intent into the film trying to involve us in their frightened world views, it is time to find better things to do.
While the film crews are determined to take five to ten minutes of useful knowledge and stretch into at least an hour show, sometimes they stretch ten minutes into a two hour two part series; then it is time to watch some classic movies and old re-runs. Even 'Benny Hill' and his aged jokes are much better, at least we've got Benny's grin. PBS seems to think that six of the last 'Jeremy Brett' 'Sherlock Holmes' episodes are all that are available anymore.
I tune into PBS to watch the 'Woodwright', 'Poirot', 'Born and Bred' shows. Sometimes I'll watch a 'Rosemary and Thyme' or 'Last of the Summer Wine' episode. Everything else on PBS, blah.
The Canadian series 'How do they do it', 'How it's made', 'Factory Made' are good. I also like the early seasons of the Canadian Show 'Red Green Show', (silly slapstick humor with bad puns and linguistic slips).
The science and history channels run a few good shows which I catch when possible. I do try and watch 'Pawn Stars' which makes for the only gawdawful reality show I'll sit through.
I used to watch the car repair shows but they've lost the concept of serious car work, design and focus instead on thirty seconds of info and 29.5 minutes of sales. When the 'All Girl Garage' is one of the best repair shows left on TV nowadays, well...
Sorry for those that are curious, I don't do many sports shows except the Olympics. Playing sports is terrific, living sports through others, well, there are better things to do. Even getting drunk and singing at the moon rates higher in my mind.
I agree with many of the previous commenters; television as commissioned by national TV companies whether fed by tax blood money or fee structured 'assigned monopolies' are a waste of time.
When legislators wanted to force cable companies to start charging ala cart the cable companies and TV stations panicked; how could they produce, film and televise garbage for the public if they had to tie costs to garbage shows? Of course hordes of lobbyists descended on Washington DC and the 'ala cart' cable show concept faded away.
I've been sick of cop, lawyer, murder mystery, false reality shows for a long long time; along with cubic acres of false 'nature' films.
Perhaps I'll b very envious soon? Maybe the political seismic shift in UK politics will change the UK's broadcast entertainment shows and through that change effect positive changes to international shows.
Yes, TV is a waste of time.
How many BH readers, when on their deathbed in years to come and asked by their children "Is there anything you regret not having done in your life?" will answer: "Yes. Above all, I regret not having watched more TV" ..... ?
There's always an exception to the rule.
Horizon was probably the last BBC TV programme to be dumbed down. Like others above, I stopped watching Horizon about 15 years ago, as I was infuriated by the repetitive condescending narration and ridiculous 'background' music.
It is a real shame - I grew up watching Horizon, The World About us and many other programmes on BBC2. Nigel Calder's programme 'Einstein's Universe' was my personal favourite, and I still have the book which I ordered when I was 16. Those were the days. Truly educational TV programmes, and schools staffed with teachers who could spell and teach basic arithmetic.
Martin:
Never one to miss an opportunity for a disagreement, let me offer one story as limited defence.
The other evening I was with my sister and brother-in-law and joined them, having done some other things, as they watched the Bafta award ceremony - TV celebrating itself, in confident defiance of this dictum. I was greeted with "Your programme won its category." Long Lost Families. True enough, I often say to myself "only thing worth watching on all of telly" as I get drawn into another of those carthartic stories. No doubt other mileages vary. I noticed later the Guardian live blogger managed to make some nihilistic comment as Davina and Nicky picked up the trophy and paid tribute to "the most compassionate backroom crew in television." I believed them.
Later of course The IT Crowd won big-time, as did some other Graham Linehan vehicle, if I remember correctly. I've never got into the programme myself but couldn't resist blurting out that the writer is clearly a very funny guy who hates people like me. Such a sunny person to be with on a relaxing evening! My relatives and friends were surprised to hear about it. I added that I doubt he's actually met anyone like me.
TV has a place in our culture and comedy is an important part of that. James Delingpole certainly gets that. We're probably best accepting that sceptics will differ on hours watched as on most other measures. But none of us can escape the social and cultural challenges presented as we do.
To summarize : ever since the 1970's
- wild claims
- fake certainty
"The environmental narrative is never presented as simply a problem that might cause a problem for some people in some circumstances at some point in the future. It is presented as a total, encompassing, terminal problem facing ‘all of humanity’, requiring immediate and comprehensive adjustments to our way of life, to economies, and political organisation."
- Reality TV is actually about the exact opposite unreality.
So this Horizon Longitudinal prize issue is 'Unreality Science' , manipulating the public's perception of science reality to the green loony dogma.