Science ran headlong into society in 2005

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

As 2005 winds down to a close, scientists and editors are putting together their lists of the year's top science stories, and it’s clear that one major theme is the intersection — or downright car crash — between science and sociopolitical stands.

After all, this was the year when a top scientist was celebrated for cloning a dog and creating tailor-made embryonic stem cells — and then wound up hospitalized for exhaustion, amid a raging debate over bioethics. This was the year in which there was not just one, but two sets of hearings that merited comparison to the "monkey trial" of 1925. This was the year in which members of Congress took positions on brain death and when every month seemed to bring some new worry over severe weather or a global pandemic.

The developments of the past year show that the "accepted wisdom" on science isn't as quickly or as widely accepted as perhaps it once was — partly because of a skeptical political climate, and partly because the Internet provides wider access for dissenting views. Those societal challenges are sparking the rise of a new breed of scientists: media-savvy folk who aren't afraid to join the fray themselves.

One of those folk is Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies as well as a co-founder of the RealClimate Web log. In its year-end roundup, Seed magazine selected Schmidt as one of 15 "icons" who has shaped the global conversation about science over the past year.

Schmidt told MSNBC.com that the RealClimate blog "seemed like such a perfect fit with the kinds of things that I was having to talk about with journalists and friends and other people who aren't necessarily scientists."

Schmidt and his co-bloggers get into the nitty-gritty of climate research, interacting earnestly with fans as well as foes in long strings of reference-rich commentary. It's not an approach meant to attract a mass audience or stir a political movement — and Schmidt doesn't mean it to be.

"What I think is more doable and more achievable is getting to the point where the media and maybe politicians would have a more direct line to what the scientific consensus on an issue is, or whether there's a consensus at all. Sometimes there is no consensus," he said. "But where there is a consensus, I think it's important that the media be able to deal with that in a way that takes you out of the 'on the one side ... on the other side' style of journalism, because I think that confuses the public to a large degree."

21st-century scientists
That interplay between science and society is what Seed was going after in its year-end review, said Adam Bly, the magazine's founder and editor-in-chief. Among the other honorees are Jonathan Farley, a mathematician and counterterrorism consultant; Alex Deghan, a biologist who worked as an adviser in post-Saddam Iraq; and science-minded creative types like novelist Carrie Tiffany and artist Justine Cooper.

MAGAZINE BLOGS Seed magazine and Scientific American both started up Web logs this year: Seed's Sciencegate SciAm Observations

"The people we selected as the revolutionary minds of 2005 are not just scientists in a 20th-century sense," Bly told MSNBC.com. "They're connecting their ideas and their research with the broader public more so than might be the case with a 20th-century definition."

The social implications of science also played a big part in the selection of the Scientific American 50 — a year-end roundup of notables assembled by the 160-year-old magazine.

"We're trying to recognize the people and the organizations that we think are showing real leadership in advancing technology in constructive ways," said John Rennie, Scientific American's editor-in-chief, John Rennie.

Business, policy and research
The selections span the worlds in business, policy and research. In two of those three categories, the top leaders are being recognized for their contributions to the infrastructure of innovation, rather than scientific breakthroughs in the traditional sense:

• Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin were recognized as business leaders of the year for revolutionizing information technology — and profiting richly in the process.
• Norwegian engineer/entrepreneur Fred Kavli was named policy leader of the year for starting up the Kavli Foundation, which funds basic research as well as a trio of $1 million science prizes.

The other top honoree could well serve as the poster child for this year's clash between science and society: South Korean stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang. When you consider the top science-related controversies of 2005, the ups and downs surrounding Hwang, Scientific American's research leader of the year, would have to rank at the top.

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