Dare to be Dumb

I enjoy what this article has to say in the Columbia Journalism Review about editors. They shouldn’t let their fear of not knowing everything about a subject limit them when they begin their thinking and reporting. At least this is true as they work to understand and explore the boundaries of scientific research.

“On the other hand, why should they? Humans evolved to procreate, eat, and avoid getting eaten,” writes K.C. Cole, a journalism professor at USC. “The fact that we have learned to understand what atoms are all about or what the universe was doing back to a nanosecond after its birth is literally unbelievable. But the universe doesn’t care what we can or cannot believe. It doesn’t speak our language, so there’s no reason it should “make sense.”

“For all these reasons and more, good science journalists know that if they’re not dealing with subject matter that makes them dizzy, they’re probably not doing their jobs … The best editors understand all this. As for the rest, perhaps Weird Al said it best: sometimes you just need to “dare to be stupid.”