The tolerance of visible scientists shows most clearly in their ae
reactions to television. A relatively new and yet pervasive mediun,
television has traditionally turned off scientists. In a frank

analysis of his feelings about television, Joshua Lederberg (1973)

 

probably reflects what scientists find most disturbing about
_ television:

I have a deep prejudice against television. It's not a
snobbish one. It has to do with my own analysis of it as a
medium. My concern (about it) is that it has tremendous

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affective impact, that it grips the viewer in a vite; he's
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_ time-bound to the medium, he can't set the time back a sentence
or forward a sentence, he's locked into the temporal sequence
of what goes on. It's bi-modal. So he's captured; he has very
little free will except to turn the thing off. He can't even

-do too much thinking while it's going on, if he's going to re-
main engaged with it. That's my prejudicial image of it as a
medium. And while I think it has a tremendous role as an art
form, and for influencing people, I don't see it asa very good
way of getting people to think for themselves. They're too
controlled.

(~ T-would say, if you asked me what's the main mission that

I'm trying 13 accomplish in my writing at a public level, it's

not to sell one point of view as against another, but it's try-

ing to establish a more thoughtful attitude, a more skeptical
one, one of further inquiry, not to regard things as settled
that are very much unsettled. And I don't think television is

very good for that purpose. . . . I fedl very uncomfortable

 

ml

giving an interview under those circumstances. You also don't

& get much feedback. But mostly it's prejudice, as I say...

I also don't like the sense that I have no control about
whatever eventually comes out. I know it's impractical. The
performer has to be at the mercy of the director. He's got
37.9 seconds to fit things in, and that's an iron law. It
can't be helped. But that doesn't give me a chance to be that
reflective. I can't redraft what I have to say. Since many of
my thoughts emerge in the process of communicating them, I

find that very uncomfortable.