An open letter to the science editor of the BBC
Dear Sir,

Whilst there are a number of things about your science coverage that I could complain about – paucity of detail; the patronizing tone with which it is delivered; the fact that not one of your editorial team appears to have more than a passing acquaintance with the notion of “science”, life is short and so I must pick my battles wisely.

When showing me an image, any image, of something that is meant to make me coo with wonder, or marvel at its beauty, for the love of suffering FUCK will you put a scale bar on it? For example, when you show me a picture of a colossal squid, you kindly put a schematic showing its size in relationship to a double decker bus. This is good. This allows me to look at the picture and say “Fuck me, that colossal squid is fucking huge! It's bigger than Lisa Riley! Wouldn’t want to run into one of those on a dark night.” Or words to that effect.

So when you show me a picture of say, the surface of Mars, unless you indicate otherwise, how in the name of baby Jesus and the orphans, am I supposed to know whether I’m marveling at the majesty of a rock formation 200 miles wide, or looking at a two millimeter close up of the side of a pebble?

At the opposite end of the scale, wowing me with an electron micrograph of something very, very small is great. I find this fascinating! Telling me said object is “one billionth the width of a human hair” is useful, but putting a fucking bar on the picture with a scale on would be only polite. It will be published in a journal with it, why do you feel that you can show it without? Are you concerned that the average visitor to the BBC website may be scared off by the sight of a number on their screen that doesn't pertain to the number of days Maddie McCann has been missing, or the price of a hovel in Chelsea?

I’ll stop there. I could go on, but merely typing this is making me shake with the rage of a thousand unrealized hissy fits.

Yours with unspecified length and girth,

Rakky
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:06, 5 replies)

Dammit!
I forgot the scale bar on the minge photo in my profile!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:09, closed)

*slaps*
Go back and fix it. Though putting "actual size" would work. :)

I realise my rant is rather specific but I cannot tell you the number of times I've complained to the beeb about this. Actually I can. 4.

And twice about not citing original sources for some of their more spurious health stories.

*foams*
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:12, closed)

Wonderful post
so full of truth. I hate science stories on the television, they are so dumbed down and full of lies half the time. *rages at poor grasp of basic science in the world at large*
(Bazongaloid, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:21, closed)

Al
Why is it a badge of honour to be crap at science? I mean, you don't get many people laughing about the fact that they can't read. Yet it's fine and all very funny to say "oh, I was rubbish at that, that was for the geeks."

I know science is hard. I know it can be badly taught and thus boring or intimidating. But it is so fundamentally important. Not string theory, not complex genetics, just the basics. It describes the world. And to think that the people making the decisions about healthcare, science funding, new technology, find it amusing that they don't understand it scares me more than I can articulate.

*foams more*
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:31, closed)

I don't understand
why it's a badge of honour to be crap at subject at school (well, maybe PE, I don't like team sports, cycling or ski-ing would be great, but we didn't do them).

People who can't see the point of doing maths, then wonder why they don't understand the implications of taking out loans at 30%APR. Personally was never great at essay writing so I didn't do English beyond GCSE, but I still love to read, and love going to the theatre.

Just, argh, bloody crappy education teaching people to learn by wrote and testing everything and everything having to be done for a reason rather than simply making you a well rounded person who can adapt to any situation.

Just everything is pissing me off at the moment.
(Bazongaloid, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:46, closed)