Your weekly science stalker

Science is only for scientists just as music is only for musicians and culture is just for anthropologists.

If like me, you think that there is something seriously wrong with the previous sentence, then you may understand why I chose to do science writing. I have been writing these Thursday science columns since 2002. This is my 389th column and every week would seem to me like I was doing it for the first time. And that is the main reason why I do science writing: I love doing it. For me it is always a fresh chance to understand a piece of nature, whether within us or out, and share it. 

My Christmas week columns are always about what science writing is and why I do it. I find it necessary to do that at this time to thank my readers and to clarify certain things about what this column is.

I think a lot of joy and fulfillment comes from knowing what one’s role is. My role as a science writer is to have science and the public at the very least, shake hands. I “stalk” the minds in science through their work, and when I am lucky, meet them in person or thank goodness for Skype, discuss their ideas with them. Then I filter them through my own scaffold of questions, partly guided by what the typical non-scientist would want to know and selfishly driven by my own curiosities. I then stuff them in the suitcase of my head which, by some accident of nature and some of my own enforced discipline, accommodates them and brews them to a texture that I can express with words. I lay it out there for the consumption of the newspaper-reading public so they could hopefully connect with science. I know I am not always effective but please know I give it my best, every time. One day, I know I will stop but I will look back at this love affair with writing like no other. 

Before I started writing the columns, I did not realize how strange science writing as a genre was to most newspaper readers here. I asked myself how could that be when all the newspapers that matter in the world have science sections and columns and consider them major parts of their paper? I did not go around looking for an unsatisfied writing niche and figured I’d fill it. Like all science writers I know and know of abroad, I love the idea that there are certain kinds of people who would work to understand something, sometimes throughout their entire lives, without expecting reward or recognition, save for the feeling of discovery. These uncelebrated but deep passions are what I like writing about, not because the scientists need it but because I need to affirm that understanding is as fundamental a desire as hunger and thirst.

Science is not a club or a mere subject but a way of figuring things out. It is a severely impoverished mind who considers science as a territory exclusive to professional scientists. If science claims to find ways to heal your once incurable diseases by tweaking your own genes, or it claims that the planet we all live in is heading for massive changes, then no card-bearing scientist, no matter how many PhDs she/he has, should keep you from trying to understand what is going on. Science is too important to leave to scientists alone and the best of scientists are the ones who acknowledge this.

I heard from you this year mostly thru e-mails. I do not post any comments or replies to my own columns online. If I had to do that as a matter of duty, I will not have time to do my main task which is to carefully study what science has to say, so that you would get to know each other better every week. So if you have a question, please e-mail me instead in the address I provide at the end of this column.

To the scientists I approach who have been so patient with my requests to please run their explanations by me for the umpteenth time, I want you to know that I will continue to stalk you with accruing gratitude. I would especially like to thank Dr. Steve Jones, evolutionary biologist, author of many wonderful science books, and a BBC science presenter, with whom we have had an outstanding Skype experience in a Café Scientifique on Charles Darwin we hosted in April this year. I, together with the public who came, listened to Dr. Jones give a talk on Darwin. It was my idea of a rock star scientist lecture. We were also able to ask him many of the questions we have always wanted to ask about Darwin and his powerful idea. 

For those of you who read the columns, or even took the time to write and comment on it, thank you. Please know you put an extra spring in my science stride. This Thursday space is where I have my virtual coffee with you to see where we are in our constant confusions and occasional clarity about nature. I truly enjoyed the mileage we gained walking every week with science and you. It is a pleasure meeting you in this weekly space.

Merry Christmas.

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