Comments on: Guest Post: Scientific Accuracy in Literature: The WAS Seal of Approval doesn’t get Mine

By: peg kay

peg kay — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:27:46 +0000

Nancy has some valid points, but it would have been better if she had read the books before she pooh-poohed the whole thing. The Academy initially intended the Seals to be a service to our members. The BBC covered one of our events and neglected to mention that this was not a service provided to the multitude. But once the article (which I thought was a good one) was published, we found ourselves the recipient of many requests for the Seal. The third book which received the seal was Karl Pribram’s “The Form Within”. This is a major work by a distinguished scientist who spent a lifetime contributing to the field of neuroscience. I’m not sure what the fourth book is supposed to be — we’ve only awarded the 3 seals. We have several more books out for review (none of them published by the Academy), one of them SciFi.

In response to the criticism that SciFi should have the freedom of imagination, I could not agree more. As we explained to one of our reviewers, if a novel states that time travel has been a reality since 1991, we would not award the Seal. If the novel is set in 2100 and makes the same claim, that would not eliminate it from consideration.

The remark that the Kay and Howard books are amateurish — it would be better if you read them before you take potshots. I’m no judge of my own work but Dr.Howard’s Hidden Giants received the award for the third edition of that book. Earlier editions have been the basis of many of her talks on the lecture circuit. It’s a good solid piece of research.

Final point. We review every book sent to us before making a decision. Don’t you think you should do the same?

By: S. Howard

S. Howard — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:34:23 +0000

The Washington Academy of Sciences offers this service to its members only, not to the general public, hence the restriction to books published by members. The BBC article did not make this clear. It would be great to offer such a service to the wide world of books, and the Academy is perhaps a place to start and not to finish. In addition, the review is restricted only to science content, not style of writing.

By: David Brin

David Brin — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:48:54 +0000

Thanks for the heads-up and fascinating report, Nancy. Good investigation, too. (And thanks especially for the sweet shout-out!)

I looked further into this and I do think it is important to note the difference between an award or prize, on the one hand, and a “certification” on the other. The latter has no number limit or ranking.

While I agree that it was ham-handed and absurd for the WAS to give their first certifications to in-house published or pal-written (and likely amateurish) works, one could envision that they meant it simply as pump-priming, to start the works and certs flowing. Still, ham-handed it is. They have lost cred to recover.

Thanks again Nancy and keep up the great work.

david brin
http://www.davidbrin.com

By: Gratbarst

Gratbarst — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:45:37 +0000

“Peer-reviewed novel manuscripts, submitted to the same rigorous scrutiny as technical research papers? Oh yeah, I want that.”
Do you really? And who are these peers of the novelist? Or are you suggesting that only the scientifically qualified should be allowed to write novels? SF should only be written by engineers?
Fiction of the imagination is about freedom. The freedom to get stuff wrong is part of that, because sometimes the truth of the piece is a human truth not a scientific one. The actual autoignition point of paper is an irrelevance, there is no spoon, we can’t make the jump to light speed, Icarus can’t fly with feathers and wax, but the idea that some OCD engineering student rejects a story because they can’t get past the solar tolerance of bees’ wax in fourth century BC Greece, is missing the point, and the point is imagination does not have to be scientifically accurate it merely needs to be illuminating or fun

By: Morgan Alreth

Morgan Alreth — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:47:26 +0000

I wouldn’t worry about it. During the last two or three generations, science fiction has often been the one defining and validating scienctific advances. Academia has been the one struggling and panting along behind, trying breathlessly to catch up. How many concepts were first introduced in science fiction and are now mainstream? Got a few hours? Moreover, universities are notoriously incestuous when it comes to handing out recognition.