Ann Druyan speaks to COMM 566 students

I feel terrible today, probably for many reasons.

I may feel poorly because I stayed up all Monday night to reduce some data, and have yet to fully recover.

I may feel badly because it is snowing.

But perhaps the reason I feel most terribly is that, today, I feel I put an impressive individual's feet to the fire.

Ann Druyan, an accomplished co-producer of Cosmos, an author, and Carl Sagan's widow, spoke to our science communication class. She gave a moving testimonial and excellent example of how science can inspire.

My intention was to ask a question about what scientists can do to improve themselves, both as scientists and citizens, independent of the perennial outreach issue. But it seemed like that question was interpreted and restated on both our parts as a science-religion question. She was gracious in her response, and afterward I did my best to apologize for any pointedness, real or perceived, on my end.

But the issue remains, and I will do my best to articulate it here.

My contention was, and remains, that "outreach" implicitly sets a dividing line between scientists and non-scientists. This in itself isn't harmful - differences do exist in terms of knowledge, training, and experience that make such a distinction real and critically important if education is the goal. What is potentially harmful is a frame in which the broader society is viewed as an entity to be changed, and the scientists are the change agents.

I believe Ann, and most scientists, recognize that this is a gross simplification. Being a heterogeneous, complicated, and fundamentally human community, we fall prey to any number of biases -- the availability heuristic being a particularly pernicious one. (This means that what's familiar is more salient, and we make judgments weighted more heavily on our own experience and memory instead of data.) And yet the stakes are so high that I would say that before we focus exclusively on outreach, a measure of inreach is necessary.

I know, to varying levels of certainty, that the individuals in my department have experienced depression, anxiety, familial problems, financial difficulties, and health issues. But I also know they are amazing, strong individuals who, as Jim Bell once said, "draw strength from their ghosts". Before we have any pretensions to being a "scientific community", we may do well to see how well either of those words describe who we are.

Ann, on the off chance you read this, I want to reiterate my comments in our conversation after class. You are an amazing individual who has "it" - the ability to persuade and inspire, the communicator's dream, and the scientist's gold standard. Neil deGrasse Tyson mentioned that the path for science communicators, like himself, was blazed by Carl, and that he paid for it.

In a way, Carl Sagan's story echoes Ben Franklin's - worked his way from humble origins to fame, fortune and international renown, but remained rejected by the very countrymen who benefitted the most from his meteoric rise and visionary work. Ben Franklin was the first American scientist, and the first American scientist to push strongly for changing American higher education from a Latin-based curriculum to an English-based one, opening the doors to public education.

Perhaps, if I had met enough Ann Druyan's in my life, I would not be leaving astronomy... perhaps not. What is clear is that the demands for the 21st century citizen, and the 21st century scientist, are substantial. My time here has shown I am not equal to the former, but I will devote my remaining time to working on the latter.

Ann mentioned that February 20, 1961 was a snow day. She spent it listening, along with her family, to Kennedy's First Inaugural. Two weeks ago, I went to Arlington National Cemetery and knelt by JFK's grave, and read the excerpts of his First Inaugural Address, and cried.

Now, I turn, as I so often do, to the words of his younger brother, Robert.

"Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping influence of America that neither fate, nor nature, nor the irresistible tides of human history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

Neither fate (religion), nor nature (science) alone will determine our destiny. It will be the fruit of our present labor and indolence, wisdom and ignorance, ambition and contentedness. Our destiny is a hundred-pointed caltrop, dangerous to the touch, painful to grasp, but necessary to bear for a time, towards the future that must be.

And in that effort, we grow to become stronger, nobler individuals, more amazing and impressive than we could have ever hoped, yet recognizable in the mirror as simple, ordinary individuals who found something beyond themselves towards which we strive as best we can, with those who can and will.

I think Ann Druyan is a critical part of that future -- as is Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bruce Lewenstein, the members of the Science Communication class, and the astronomy graduate students I have had the privilege of working with. I don't know when "too late" is, or how one would measure it, so I will work best knowing that, for all times and for all civilizations, there are always challenges that will require the brilliance, talent, and vision of citizens everywhere.

So "let it go forth that a torch has been passed to a new generation." And let us not drop it, or be burned by it.