Silence of the geronotologists

I was perhaps a bit cryptic in tweeting about my New Statesman piece on “the immortality business” (which I’m afraid I can’t put up here, but it should be online soon – and NS is always worth its modest cover price anyway). This is what I meant.

When I pester researchers for comments on a topic I’m writing about, I recognize of course that none is under the slightest obligation to respond. That they almost always do (even if it’s to apologize for being unable to help) is a testament to the extraordinary generosity of the research community, and is one of the abiding joys and privileges of writing about science – my impression is that some other disciplines don’t fully share this willingness to explain and discuss their work. Occasionally I do simply get no response at all from a researcher, although it is unusual that a gentle follow-up enquiry will not at least elicit an explanation that the person concerned is too busy or otherwise indisposed to comment.

That’s why my experience in writing this piece was so clearly anomalous. I contacted a large number of gerontologists and others working on ageing, explaining what I was trying to do with this piece. With the very few honourable exceptions named in my article, none responded at all. (One other did at least have the grace to pretend that this was “not really my field”, despite that being self-evidently untrue.) I am almost certain that this is because these folks have decided that any “journalist” contacting them while mentioning names like Aubrey de Grey wants to write another uncritical piece about how he and others like him are going to conquer ageing.

I can understand this fear, especially in the light of what I said in the article: some researchers feel that even allowing the immortalists the oxygen of publicity is counter-productive. But truly, chaps, burying your head in the sand is the worst way to deal with this. A blanket distrust of the press, while to some degree understandable, just takes us back to the bad old days of adversarial science communication, the kind of “us versus them” mentality that, several years ago, I saw John Sulston so dismayingly portray at a gathering of scientists and science writers. What researchers need to do instead is to be selective and discerning: to decide that all writers are going to recycle the same old rubbish is not only silly but damaging to the public communication of science. I would even venture to say that, in figuring out how to deal with the distortions and misrepresentations that science sometimes undoubtedly suffers from, scientists need help. While it is understandable that, say, IVF pioneer Robert Edwards should have bemoaned the way “Frankenstein or Faust or Jekyll… [loom] over every biological debate”, I see little indication that biologists and medics really know how to grapple with that fact rather than just complain about it. You really need to talk to us, guys – we will (some of us) do our very best to help.