Notes
185 Notes Introduction 1. Some seventy-five reviews of The Bell Curve were published between October 1994, when the book was published, and the late summer of 1995 (McInerney 83). 2. By rhetorician, I mean one who studies rhetoric, as opposed to rhetor, who is anyone who writes or speaks. 3. Gregory and Miller make a similar point when they say that “much of the science that the public needs to know about is either hotly contested or is still on the assembly line” (“Caught in the Crossfire?” 62). This controversy or incompleteness is typically not presented in textbooks or media accounts of science, yet it is this cutting-edge work that requires an informed, scientifically literate populace most of all. 4. As discussed in more detail in chapter 2, a balance needs to be struck here. While I strive to teach material that I hope my students will find relevant, I don’t think we can rely entirely on our students to tell us what captures their interest; part of our job as instructors is to challenge students with texts that will arouse their interest. Although I present pedagogical scenarios in chapters 6, 7, and 8 that involve health and the environment, topics that I think most students will enjoy, I also chose these topics because they involve the sciences with which I am the most familiar (i.e., chemistry and biology). Instructors should not, however, hesitate to employ texts that they believe will broaden their students’ horizons. 5. As a consequence of a discussion of the genre, students may want to tinker with it or dismiss it entirely and try something new. I am certainly intrigued by the notion that students be asked to write science in their own way; undoubtedly , some fascinating ideas on the nature of scientific discourse would surface from such writing. However, for the moment, I consider such an activity to be counterproductive to this book’s goal of achieving scientific literacy according to the terms of its most common usage—the scientific research article. See Martin for a discussion on how allowing Australian K-12 students to write science in their own words in elementary and middle school left them ill prepared for the rigor of secondary school physics and environmental science. “Without a clear understanding of the fundamental role of scientific language in doing science,” states Martin, “this problem cannot be properly redressed” (167). 6. As this manuscript went to press, an excellent article entitled “Primary Science Communication in the First-Year Writing Course” by Moskovitz and Kellogg was published in CCC. These authors argue, as I do, that “primary science communication” (their term) should be treated no differently than other kinds of complex texts that we ask our students to read (313–14). 7. I am not arguing that all research in the rhetoric of science should pursue a pedagogical angle. However, attempts to make the work of rhetoricians of science visible and useful to compositionists and others concerned with widespread literacy need to be made. 8. It is prudent to note, however, the experience of physicist N. David Mermin . In a book review on the science wars that he published in Nature in 1999, Mermin wrote that he would be satisfied “if one outcome of the science wars were to make physicists less uncomfortable with their professional deployment of rhetoric.” A Nature editor changed Mermin’s wording to “less uncomfortable with using rhetoric when describing their work,” and this latter version is the text that was published in the journal. Mermin objected to the rewording on the basis that the change in fact separated rhetoric from scientists’ work, i.e., producing scientific discourse. Mermin sought to restore his original wording in page proofs and asked for an erratum after publication, but to no avail. 9. Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science and Esther Kaplan’s With God on Their Side are two recent books that discuss the current (and future) political implications of a fundamentalist Christian, anti-science perspective. 1. The Dominance of Scientific Discourse: Theoretical Contexts 1. Occasionally, original research will appear in books or other venues without being peer reviewed, as The Bell Curve did, but this practice is strongly discouraged in the scientific community. One need look no further than the controversy sparked by Pons and Fleischmann’s infamous 1989 press conference —which occurred well before peer review and duplication of their work on cold fusion were attempted—to understand the dismay engendered in other...
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