When I was at university, the best way to get a decent mark in a physics practical was to rig the results. There was no way using the apparatus provided that a student could carry out the investigation as described, and get anything like the answer in the text-book. Components were missing, instrument needles were weighed down with rust, batteries were flat and crocodile clips were bent beyond usefulness. But as each group of students mysteriously produced ever more accurate results, there was no reason for the lab technicians to check on the quality of the apparatus. And so the vicious circle continued. The way to pass was to work backward. First you looked up the answer in the book, then drew the straight line graph, then scattered some points around it, then deduced what readings you should have taken.

Now I work in educational television. I like to fill my programs with exciting hands-on demos and investigations. But I often find that the experiments described in the books don’t work. Or at least they don’t work the way they’re supposed to. Take the “make your own hydrometer” experiment for example. According to the book, a lolly stick with a blob of blue tack on one end is supposed to float at different heights in salty water and fresh water. Does it? Sure it does. But the difference is so tiny that you’d need an electron microscope to measure it. So the age-old question arises… do I rig it? I now have at my disposal all the tricks of television. I can speed things up when they’re slow; I can turn the cameras off while I fiddle with the apparatus; I can repeat the experiment a dozen times and only broadcast the take that works. But what does that tell students about science…?

What it ought to tell them is to be suspicious. Everyone who sees an experiment working first time and beautifully should be suspicious. Because experiments don’t do that. Experiments are messy and unreliable. For this reason, the history of science is full of scientists rigging their results. No scientist worth their salt does an experiment with an open mind. No, they know the answer they want and that’s what they get. (see the book by Thomas Kuhn for more details)

There are countless examples. I’ve just read on the internet that Archimedes (the Greek who supposedly jumped out of his bath and ran nude down the street shouting “Eureka”) is yet another fraud. He’s supposed to have lowered a golden crown and an identical mass of gold into a bowl of water. Because the crown was partly silver and partly gold, the theory goes, it displaced more water than the equivalent mass of pure gold. Through this means, Archimedes was able to prove that Hiero had been cheated by his gold smiths. I loved this story when I was a kid. It had intrigue, excitement, and science won the day. But, I now read, it’s all a con. The difference in water level would have been so tiny, that Archimedes would never have been able to spot it. He rigged it.

Now as an educator I like the story even better. I want students to know how science really gets made. And I want them to realise that science IS made. Science is not absolute truth, handed down from the gods. But that’s the way we portray it... even when we know we shouldn’t. It’s all part of the science hype. School science is full of hype. It’s the way we try to keep kids interested. To make science palatable, we make it colourful, magical, instantaneous and at the same time mythical. Real science consists of long boring days hunched over rusty equipment, trying to force out the answer you want, followed by lots of thinking, paperwork and rigging of results. It’s unromantic, it’s tedious and it makes lousy television.

All of which leaves me with the quandary of how to present this week’s experiment for my science show. Feeling brave and reformed I’ve decided to show it not working. That’ll shock em.

Berry Billingsley

Reference: The Golden Crown at http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Crown/CrownIntro.html