History In The Making - What Happens Next? Podcast on exploring our history

Susan Carland:

Welcome back to What Happens Next? I'm Susan Carland. This is our final episode for this topic. Dr. Elizabeth or Ella Finkel is one half of an Australian scientific power couple. A scientist and researcher, Ella turned to telling the stories of science as the editor of COSMOS and more recently through her books. Her latest book explores how scientific theories are tested. And as always we've gathered all the best tips and advice from our featured experts to help us as individuals make change.

Elizabeth Finkel:

Hello, I am Elizabeth Finkel, who abbreviates herself as Ella. I have had a career in science all my life. I started off as a research scientist. I shifted from being a research scientist to a science journalist. And more recently I spent six years as editor of the popular science magazine COSMOS. And I left a couple of years ago. And for a year now I have been working on my third book.

Susan Carland:

Ella Finkel. It is so nice to have you here today.

Elizabeth Finkel:

Thank you, Susan.

Susan Carland:

Can you tell us a bit about what you're working on at the moment?

Elizabeth Finkel:

Right. Oh God. I'm in the agony of writing a book, looking at theories in science and how they're tested. And just to tell you a little bit about myself, I think you'll have it in your introduction, but I was a working scientist and then I was a journalist and then I was an editor and it's been a process of turning from a carrot into a rambling pea, because as a scientist, you're very narrow, you know a lot about very little, as a journalist you start spreading a bit, but then when I had to be the editor or when I chose to be the editor of this popular science magazine, COSMOS, I had to know about everything. And in-depth because I was passionate about a mission to educate and I wasn't going to allow anything to go on those pages unless I understood it. And I can tell you when I started, I did not know much about general relativity or string theory or things like that.

Susan Carland:

And now you do?

Elizabeth Finkel:

And now I do.

Susan Carland:

So you're looking at the way we test scientific theories?

Elizabeth Finkel:

Yes.

Susan Carland:

What have you come across so far in your research that might test some of the theories about how we understand human history or how we research human history?

Elizabeth Finkel:

I should just say my approach is a narrative one. I'm a storyteller and I've found, through my two previous books that this is the best way to convey information, even complex scientific information.

Susan Carland:

What is the story of the way we research human history?

Elizabeth Finkel:

The story? Okay. So fascinating, and I have to say that my book is really a thesis, because I don't know what I'm going to find going in there. I've told you, I'm looking at how science works, but I don't know really. I thought I did, but being the editor of COSMOS, I had this sense that there were different cultures and the different sciences kind of, there were differences about the way they operated. And so I went into this book as a kind of a thesis and exploration, let's see how it differs across the sciences.

Elizabeth Finkel:

And let's see how it operates in the 21st century, because worthy people like, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn have written about this stuff already, but they were writing about the science as it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s. And science has transformed. There was a time when theories were big and data was small. Now data is big and sometimes you can't even find the theory in there. Prefacing this by saying, this is an exploration for me. What have I found in archaeology? This is one of the stories from my book, looking at the peopling of Australia and what's the theory here?

Well, because it plays into a much bigger theory, which is the origins of all humans, modern humans. And Australia's first people are enigmatic. They seem to have been here more than 65,000 years. And our best theories at the moment of when people came out of Africa sometime between 60 and 70,000 years. So you see the problem, you see why geneticists and archaeologists around the world are zeroing in, on trying to figure out the origins of Australia's first people. This is chapter two, following on from gravitational waves. Two light chapters, to get the book going.

If I have a mission, it is to better understand the way science works. And I would say science as a discipline is the distillation of probably all that is the best in homo sapiens. Here we are with our brain that, an ape brain, adapted to hunting and gathering across the Savannahs. And this ape brain has been able to fathom things that use nothing of our senses. The workings of the universe, the ability to fathom that space and time are actually a fabric and that we can detect gravitational waves, ripples in that fabric. This is my first chapter  - Einstein's theory of relativity, whose prediction was that there would be gravitational waves and a hundred years after he made that prediction, we detected them as ripples in space time. This is science, the distillation of the best that is in homo sapiens, but we still are homo sapiens with that ape brain and all the other things that come with it.

It is still flawed people who practise and aspire to science. And I think that in telling my stories, I want to show how we've iterated through the centuries and in telling the story of Australian archaeology, how we've gone from archaeology when it was really a history where you couldn't do much more than make imaginative leaps to now with the infiltration of science, those theories are being tested ruthlessly. And I don't think all the archaeologists are enjoying it all that much, but a lot of archaeologists do. I definitely ... What you see now in Archeology's huge multidisciplinary teams and that's the way that it progresses.

Susan Carland:

What do you think our investigation into pre-colonial history can tell us about what it means to be human and what it means to be Australian?

Elizabeth Finkel:

We are really finding out, and it's tricky territory. I'm also having to educate myself about Aboriginal understandings of their history. And it means I have to write very sensitively and I'm trying to find a path that is both true to the science, and yet would not be offensive to any Indigenous people. The Indigenous traditional narrative, as I understand it, is that they don't see it in terms of thousands of years, 65,000 years, they see it as we've been here forever.

Like any people, there are many, many voices, right? So you will often hear traditional owners say we've been here forever, but you will also hear traditional owners who are taking tourists across their lands. Well, we've been here for 65,000 years or 40,000 years. I think, and indeed many Indigenous people are working archaeologists and I will consult with them to help me articulate the scientific narrative in a way that respects the beliefs of traditional owners. I think the best thing I can say is I'm feeling my way of how to tell my story, which looks at what the science is saying in a way that is also completely respectful of the traditional view.

Susan Carland:

Why do you think this work is so important?

Elizabeth Finkel:

We are in the post-truth era. And once upon a time, we were in the era of enlightenment. The thinkers of the enlightenment were in turn inspired by the thinkers of the scientific revolution, a century or so before Newton and Galileo, who had developing the scientific method, a method for how you gain knowledge about the universe, a method for doing that based on theories, on obtaining evidence, on testing those theories and understanding the limits of what you were observing, the limits of your data. And we are now living in this beyond belief era that has been brought in by the information superhighway.

Like many other people, I'm trying to figure out how we have gone in the exact opposite direction of enlightenment. I would like to think that by telling people stories of how science works, of how we gather evidence, of how we overturn theories or how new theories are deemed to hold more water than yesterday's theories. That if I make the story good enough and entertaining enough, I'm not writing these stories to hit anybody over the head with science and say, you're an idiot. But I think what it shows me is I have taken it for granted. My decades in science have taught me how science works. That is what I'm attempting to do. Softly, softly, you won't even know you're getting this stuff down your throats. I'm just going to tell you great stories.

Susan Carland:

What would be the best advice that you could give to people who may want to become more science literate or learn more about the history of humanity? Where's a good place they could start?

Elizabeth Finkel:

There are some great podcasts out there. The Science Show, Robyn Williams, ABC. That's a good place to start. I love to listen to the New York times podcast, The Daily.

Susan Carland:

Me too.

Elizabeth Finkel:

I gave a talk to the National Press Club last year. The talk I gave at the National Press Club really made the point that science and journalism follow the same precepts to report without fear or favour. And that's why I love The Daily. They get to the difficult truth of a story. I think The Daily is a great place to start. If you want to put more scientific thinking into your understanding, because they will drill down to get both sides of the story.

If there is another side that's worth telling. Some sides are not worth telling, a side that is just backed based on rumour and hearsay is not worth giving oxygen to. Yeah, listen to The Science Show, listen to The Daily and remember to be humble in your pursuit of knowledge, remember what Michael Faraday said, "I hold my theories in my fingertips for the slightest breeze to blow away." You have to be prepared to revise your theories when solid data mitigates against them.

Susan Carland:

I love that quote, that, "I hold my theories in my fingertips so a breeze can blow them away." That is a brilliant way to govern our lives. Ella Finkel. Thank you so much for your time today.

Elizabeth Finkel:

Thank you, Susan.

Susan Carland:

Professor Lynette Russell is the director of the Monash Indigenous Study centre.

Lynette Russell:

Hi, my name is Lynette Russell. I am a Laureate professor in the faculty of arts Monash Indigenous Studies centre. I'm an interdisciplinary historian. So I do anthropological history, which is really history that tries to not only teach us about the past or learn about the past, but also understand what people were doing, what their motivations were. And I work closely with archaeologists and other disciplinary specialists. I'm also the deputy director of the centre of excellence and biodiversity and heritage.

Susan Carland:

Professor Lynette Russell. Welcome.

Lynette Russell:

Thank you.

Susan Carland:

If there are people listening to this podcast that would like to know where they can find out more information about deep time, our human history, where could they find reliable information?

Lynette Russell:

Certainly the Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity and Heritage has an excellent website. And that will put you in touch with lots of public outreach, particularly around archaeological sites and the like. Also, AIATSIS, the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies has excellent resources, and there's a number of really quite excellent websites. And probably you're not going to get people digging through detailed archaeological scientific reports, which is why sometimes we might get something like that. And then we'll turn it into an article and pop it in The Conversation or on the ABC or something like that. Just to get people the opportunity to hear this from a, perhaps, non-scientific perspective.

Susan Carland:

Lynette Russell, this has been so interesting. Thank you so much for your time.

Lynette Russell:

My pleasure.

Susan Carland:

Justin Adams is a palaeontologist finding previously unknown facts about extinct species, such as the Tasmanian tiger. He tells us why we need to keep looking for new information about who we once were and why that matters today.

Justin Adams:

Hi, I'm Justin Adams and I am a comparative anatomist and palaeontologist and medical anatomist and anatomy educator. And I'm a bit of an academic platypus. You look at me and you wonder how I came to be.

Susan Carland:

Justin Adams, welcome. If people are interested in the deep history of humans, human evolution, that kind of thing, where could they go to find out more other than Googling anatomy, which I don't think would end well?

Justin Adams:

I would say that there are some good resources. Start with the really good museums, places like the Smithsonian, places like the Natural History Museum, London. Institutions do a really good job of curating and then conveying with as much accuracy as they possibly can, the scientific information. But of course, the challenge there is that it's rarely cutting edge. What I really do see as being a benefit. And one of the things that has come up more often is that we are constantly trying to make our scientific data more publicly accessible, as opposed to being behind the paywalls of journals. I think that when you hear about a new advance, like on CNN or ABC or any of the media outlets, there is obviously an article or multiple articles that underlie that. And obviously you hope that the scientists have been able to have the money to make it open access.

Because it's usually not cheap, but I would say that we've had quite a bit of success recently with working with groups like The Conversation or some of the other university affiliated groups and things like this, where we can start walking through what the results mean in a way that is publicly accessible and isn't behind a paywall. And it goes beyond the sound bite that we get in a CNN article or an ABC article. Oftentimes we do extended radio interviews or commentary or TV interviews or other media stuff. And unfortunately it does have to kind of really be boiled down because scientists are long-winded, it's what we do. That can make it a bit challenging I think for people to find the real story that's behind, maybe the narrative that has been spun, but there has been a bigger push to make data more publicly available.

And to make things like common language abstracts, things that everyone can read and understand as opposed to it being indecipherable. Science does a good job of this, the magazine Science, where it's got the hard research article that's in the issue, but then there's usually an opportunity for us to write a one-page synopsis of what's in the article that is much more user-friendly and really boils down the major results. I think that there are ways, but I think definitely we could be doing a much better job of navigating those waters and making it more accessible to people.

Susan Carland:

All right. Go to the museum, read Science, tan suit is optional. Justin Adams. Thank you so much for your time today.

Justin Adams:

It's a real pleasure. Thanks.

Susan Carland:

Alistair Evans is a palaeontologist who explains why we need to keep exploring our history, if we want to understand our planet and ourselves.

Alistair Evans:

I'm Alistair Evans. I'm an associate professor in biology and palaeontology. I study how animals evolve, how they are built in an embryo and how they function throughout the 500 million years of vertebrate history.

Susan Carland:

Alistair Evans, thank you so much for joining us.

Alistair Evans:

Thanks for having me.

Susan Carland:

If people are really interested in human evolution, where should they look to find out more?

Alistair Evans:

Oh, in these days of internet resources, there are dozens of great websites, online courses that can teach you about human evolution. And I think understanding evolution in general is fantastic. There are some MOOCs about that, that are able to give us a better idea of why humans are the way they are. They are not as far as we know, they're not deposited by God. They really are evolved over many millions of years. And knowing that that is not a perfect process, we end up with a somewhat functional, but still flawed organism, but with its own requirements in food and social behaviour. Understanding evolution in general is great. One of the units that I coordinate is about understanding how evolution affects modern society.

And so that type of thing is really useful to open the students' eyes on why do we have disease? Why is our social structure like this? Why are we being obese? Why do we have these problems, why do we have back problems? Et cetera. It's because a lot of those things are rooted in our evolutionary history. And instead of fighting them, we should understand how the evolutionary processes made us end up as we are, and then hopefully gives us some solutions into the future.

Susan Carland:

Do you think part of living in a postmodern world and a post ... in a world that says that all truths are up to interpretation, truth is dead, that kind of thing, has put humans in a, or at least modern western humans, in a place where we have felt that all that stuff is up for debate or discussion. But yet we seem to keep crashing into the reality of our biology that we do ... fertility does decline for women as they get older. And these do start to hurt. We are wired to live in societies. Do you think as things like post-modernism and those ideas of flourish. And in many ways, for good reason, it sort of crashed up into science as well.

Alistair Evans:

It certainly has. And I think that recognising some of the fundamental aspects of biology as would happen with physics and chemistry, you say, well, I can't build a computer by using wood because it doesn't have the right properties. There's things that we can't do or understand about biology and about humans, because that's not the way the world works and fighting against that, it's a losing battle. We have never won that battle. And I don't think we ever will.

Susan Carland:

Alistair Evans, thank you so much for your time.

Alistair Evans:

Thank you very much.

Susan Carland:

That is it for this topic of What Happens Next? More information on everything we discussed in the series can be found in the show notes. If you liked this podcast, please write us a five-star review. Only the five-star button works for some reason. It also helps other people find the show. If you would like us to cover any other topics in the future, please let us know. You can put them in the review comments of the podcast review too. We love to hear your suggestions. I will catch you next time on What Happens Next?