The "Science" Channel is hurting America

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The Covid-19 pandemic is shining new light on America’s dysfunctional relationship with scientific literacy.

From Trump on down, elected officials, business and civic leaders, and regular-old-citizens are making choices about the virus that seem to reflect a less-than-stellar understanding of infectious diseases, the immune system, and public health.

Trump is generally baffled by everything having to do with Covid-19 and has stated that the virus can be defeated with the seasonal influenza vaccine.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton is fixated on conspiracy theories.

Talk show host Bill Maher went down the rabbit hole with a misleading comparison of mortality counts, get-over-it fatalism (“People die. That’s what happens in life. I’m sorry”) and statements comparing the pandemic to Y2K and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig accident in 2010.

New York Times columnist Russ Douthat told his audience “Just go on a cruise, two weeks it’ll be over.”

And tycoon Elon Musk Tweeted on March 6 that “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” a statement that has garnered 1.7m likes even as “top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned that a large-scale outbreak of the disease occurring in the U.S. is possible in the coming weeks.” (via The Hill.)

Churlishness and ignorance is nothing new among public figures in the United States, alas, but with Covid-19 now showing signs of exponential growth in the US the short-term consequences of a less-than-constructive public dialogue may be extreme.

And the public’s background knowledge and ability to make sound judgments in this arena is thin to begin with.

72% of Americans are scientifically illiterate and 70% of Americans “cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times, according to a 2007 study reported by Science Daily

All of this has renewed a conversation in my family about the role cable TV science programming has played in making Americans dumber.

So I was interested to learn through archaeologist Sarah Parcak that a Mr. Mark Etkind, formerly the General Manager of of the Science Channel, has left his job.

Mr. Etkind, who spent 12 years at the Science Channel and Discovery (the channel’s parent company), was responsible for creating programs such as,

  • Finding Bigfoot

  • Call of the Wildman

  • Gator Boys

  • Pitbulls and Parolees

  • BBQ Pitmasters

  • Hillbilly Blood

  • Buying Alaska

  • Monsters & Mysteries in America 

  • United States of Bacon

  • Mountain Monsters

  • Buying the Bayou

  • Last Call Food Brawl

I remember being excited, long ago, at the prospect of having new cable TV channels devoted to science and history, but the dream of great programming was short lived as reality programming and low-caliber, lowest-common-denominator dreck filled the channels 24-hours a day.

And I wonder, as we confront the grim reality of a runaway pandemic in the United States and elsewhere, if an American watching the last 10 years of the Science Channel, Discovery, the Smithsonian Channel, the History Channel, and National Geographic would have picked up enough background information and critical thinking skill to be able to grasp the significance of Covid-19 and make good decisions for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Given what I’ve seen of the programming on these channels I’m guessing not. (Though I will make an exception for Mythbusters, one of the best “popular” shows about scientific method and critical thinking, ever.)