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May 06, 2005
A Couple of Good Science Based Titles
I've been a little under the weather this week, so I haven't completed my next installment of Marketing Biology. However, I have seen two articles whose headlines and first paragraphs are like those that every article on evolution should have. The first example comes from articles about the much-discussed (see here and here and here for example) Falcarius utahensis which appeared several places. The MSNBC headline reads, "Newfound dinosaur caught in evolution act." And the first paragraph reads,
Caught in the act of evolution, the odd-looking, feathered dinosaur was becoming more vegetarian, moving away from its meat-eating ancestors.
The Reuters headline was not quite as good, "Dinosaur 'missing link' unearthed in Utah." The USA Today headline was somewhere in the middle but weak, "Fossils show dinosaur transformed into vegetarian."
The second example concerns fossils of an ancient fish that appeared earlier this week in BBC News online. The article's title is "Fossils illuminate fish evolution" and its first two paragraphs read,
Fossils of an ancient fish - dating back 450 million years, when the creatures had neither bones nor teeth - have been found in South Africa.The finds, which are 50 million years older than any other fossil fish in Africa, will help provide a "missing link" in the evolution of early fish.
You can read a good review of this discovery at afarensis.
What I like about these headlines and opening paragraphs is that they reinforce the science without the reader having to do much work. The largest number of people who see these headlines will not read the article. Those that read the article will remember little more than the general idea of the first paragraph or two and that not for long. The best we can hope for is an accumulation of reinforced impressions. It is useful to think that an author has less than a second to get his reader to read the first paragraph.
While biologists are engaged in trench warfare with creationists of increasing sophistication, it is easy to forget that the individual battles may be with these dedicated opponents but the war goes to whoever can mobilize the less dedicated middle. It is the minds of the people who determine the outcome of elections that need to be influenced over the long haul. The creationists know this all too well. One proactive thing that can be done is to make sure that science is positively reinforced in the marketplace of popular opinion on every possible occasion. There is a lot more to this than catchy, pro-science headlines, but they are a start. The accumulation of these small reinforcements increases the visibility of science and puts creationists on the defensive.
I know that biologists have little or no control over headlines, but they do have control over any press releases that announce the results of their research. They should make sure those releases reinforce science to a largely disinterested public.
Posted by DuaneSmith at May 6, 2005 08:24 PM | Read more on Evolution |
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