Michael Hawkins, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland, having survived an airline disaster and a lightning strike (according to his jacket blurb) went on to contradict much of modern cosmology by concluding that 99 percent of the universe consists of primordial black holes. In his book, Hunting Down the Universe (Addison-Wesley), he favorably compares the reactions of journalists with those of fellow cosmologists to a news conference in which he presented his bold assertions.
As the publication date for my paper approached, I discussed the idea of a press release with Harvey MacGillivray, the head of the COSMOS unit. We felt that the paper provided an interesting example of what could be achieved with the COSMOS plate measuring machine and the UK Schmidt Telescope, and was worth publicizing. The press officer was enthusiastic about the idea and asked me to draft a suitable text. I summarized the Nature paper in what I hoped was an accessible way. After a couple of iterations, the director asked John Peacock to look it over. Ironically, although John did not believe that the Universe is permeated with primordial black holes, he nevertheless felt that the press release was pretty vacuous without a discussion of its implications, and strongly argued that we include it. On the other hand, although inclined to believe in the black hole idea, I was very reluctant to discuss it since it was not part of the Nature paper. Also, although to my mind an inevitable outcome of the quasar microlensing hypothesis, the primordial black hole idea was undoubtedly extraordinary and would seem farfetched to those who were not as familiar as we were with all the arguments. It was clear to us that the ubiquitous compact bodies had to be primordial black holes since the alternative, that they were like ordinary planets, was completely untenable. However, I knew that the rest of the astronomical community would be shocked by a media announcement to this effect. Even so, John persuaded me that since this was so obviously the case, we would do more harm by not mentioning it. We did not want to appear incapable of seeing what was staring us in the face and ignoring the most exciting consequences of the microlensing theory.
John’s intervention completely transformed the press release from something that might be of interest to a few specialist journalists and amateur astronomers into a highly newsworthy event, despite the fact that we had comprehensively hedged it with caveats and conditionals. Our press officer decided that it was sufficiently stimulating to be upgraded to a press conference, since it covered a variety of topics of great popular interest: quasars, gravitational lenses, black holes, and the potential to revolutionize our view of the Universe.
On the day of the press conference, there was a good turnout of journalists at the London venue. After I had discussed the main points of the paper, there was an extensive period of questions, many of which went far beyond what I had been talking about. I was very impressed by the astuteness of many of the journalists, who quickly perceived some of the more bizarre consequences of the idea. There was much discussion of the nature of primordial black holes and, strangely, a lot of interest in the implication that we must live in a flat and infinite Universe. After the press conference I retold the story for BBC and Channel 4 News, and agreed to do a piece for Tomorrow’s World. There were also several radio interviews, and the idea was incorporated in a television documentary on dark matter which was about to be broadcast. All this publicity brought home to me the great popular interest in new and controversial ideas. However, I was to find that this was not an enthusiasm that was encouraged by the scientific establishment.
The television news carried interesting and accurate accounts of the idea and its significance. Newspapers showed a wide range of approaches from the dryly factual to the perceptive, speculative, and sensational. I was nonetheless struck by the essential accuracy of the articles. There are many tales of journalists distorting the statements of people they have interviewed, but I am full of admiration for the intelligent and interesting way in which the story was handled. It is true that some of the headlines were a bit misleading, but I gather that they are added afterwards by a subeditor. My favorite was the Sun’s article, enigmatically entitled, “Boffin Predicts End of Universe,” but which provided a thought-provoking yet accurate account of the idea.
A number of distinguished astronomers were invited by journalists to comment on my paper. Most quite sensibly adopted a neutral line, acknowledging the importance of the idea if it turned out to be correct, but reserving judgment for the time being. However, two important figures in British astronomy were more outspoken. Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson of Queen Mary College was quoted as saying, “Rubbish,” and Professor Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge said that he did not believe the idea though he had not read my paper. He also advised at least one journalist to “ignore it.” Rees’s unfortunate remarks caused merriment among some younger astronomers, but there was a reasonable explanation. I had discussed my idea with Martin Rees several weeks before, and he had drawn my attention to some observations that he considered contradicted my argument. My view was that the observations were not relevant to the situation I was describing, and I had made this point in the paper. Rees knew very well what my line of argument was when he said he did not believe it; the fact that he had not read my paper was irrelevant.
On the whole, I was very pleased with the reception of the paper. I think Stephen Hawking typified the reaction of most cosmologists when he said that if the variability of quasars was caused by small black holes, “this would indeed be a very important discovery.” But there were more sinister rumblings emanating from Cambridge that were picked up by The Sunday Telegraph and Scotland on Sunday. They claimed that some distinguished astronomers felt that an idea which had not been generally accepted by the scientific community should not be publicized. Sir Martin Rees was quoted as saying, “It is very embarrassing if astronomers too often claim to find the secret of the Universe and then it falls flat in a few months. I believe those who made this claim will turn out to be embarrassed.” In my opinion, the problem is exactly the opposite. Too often, scientific announcements to the public relate to dull, uncontroversial issues that have finally been tied down, or where the long awaited answer was never in any real doubt. Such stuff is very rarely given much coverage, but when it is, it either perpetuates the myth that science is boring or, because the journalist invariably had to hype it up in order to get editorial acceptance, it ends up being misleading and sometimes even false. Very rarely is the public allowed to glimpse the real debate that underlies every true scientific advance. I think this is because, as we have seen earlier, these conflicts are not normally very clean affairs and certainly do not accord with the image of the scientific process which the establishment likes to foster. Alec Boksenberg, director of the Royal Observatories at the time, expressed a view close to mine when he was quoted as saying about my paper, “Nothing is lost in putting these things out, and I think it is better that the odd person has qualms rather than the research goes unnoticed.”
Published by Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Copyright 1997 by Michael Hawkins and Celia Fitzgerald Hawkins.
Over the last year, I have found myself for better or worse as one of the national ‘experts’ on both instant scratchcards and Internet addiction. How did this state of affairs arise and was it justified? What follows are two little stories which go to show how a little can go a long, long way.
Back in 1971 I completed a Ph.D. on fruit-machine addiction. OK, so this does mean I have something of a “reputation” in the psychology of gambling but it does not mean I know everything about all forms of gambling. In 1995, Camelot introduced their “instant” scratchcards and I was asked to comment on them by various members of the media. I remember describing them to journalists as “paper fruit machines” which seemed to catch on. However, just because you utter a few casual comments to the press about something you vaguely know about does not make you an expert. The journalists did get me thinking about the nature of scratchcards and as a consequence, my views started to become polarized enough that I penned a quick letter to The Times. On Wednesday April 19th, I was lucky enough to get an edited version of my letter published. I know it’s not exactly a paper in Psychological Review but I did feel quite pleased with my token effort. I told a few people about my letter and left it at that. Later that afternoon I got a call from someone from London Talk Radio asking if I’d like to go on Frank Bough’s show the next morning and talk about my letter.
The following day (at 6:50am!!) I did a live interview on the breakfast show. As a result of this interview I was suddenly inundated with requests for interviews with other stations (oh, how the media love a good lottery story!). It really was the snowball effect in action. Within almost a month I had done about 15 interviews on scratchcards and somehow reestablished myself as the person to talk to about scratchcards. The only problem was that I’d never written a thing about them except for the letter. This thought promptly spurred me into action and I sat down one day and wrote an article on scratchcards and sent it off to a journal. Thankfully the editor accepted it almost immediately and in November 1995 it was published. At last I had an article on scratchcards gambling, and I could at least claim some credibility for my afforded status.
A similar kind of thing happened regarding the subject of Internet addiction. Back in April 1995 (yes, it was obviously a lucky month for me) I was giving a paper at the British Psychological Society (BPS) Annual Conference in Warwick entitled “Technological addictions—A New Area of Psychological Study?” A month before the conference I came across an article in the New York Times about people supposedly hooked on the net. This kind of “addiction” was one which fitted my definition of a technological addiction (i.e., a behavioral as opposed to a chemical addiction—one that involved excessive person-machine interaction).
As I was a “newbie” on the net myself (in fact almost computer-illiterate) at that point I joined an addiction discussion class and asked for any comments on the phenomenon of “net addiction.” Within days I had received five or six replies from people who considered themselves to be “addicted.”
So what’s all this got to do with the BPS conference? Well, as it happened, I slipped in a few transcript excerpts from the “net addicts” in my paper and the next thing I knew was that the media didn’t want to know about 98 percent of my paper (which was essentially about computer game and slot machine addiction) but wanted to know about “Internet addiction.” I have to admit I hadn’t really thought through my ideas on Internet addiction but once again within the space of about 24 hours my views became polarized and I became quite happy to speculate and theorize about net addiction. Almost simultaneously, I was asked to pen a feature piece for the Times Higher Education Supplement and since its publication on April 7th 1995 I’ve never looked pack. Internet addiction is now one of my research areas and I’m glad to say I know a lot more about it academically than I did back in early 1995!
I wonder what I’ll be expert enough to talk on this time next year??!!