Is the Science section of your bookstore as small as this one in Reno?

Question

Just as a thought experiment, I thought I'd start comparing shelf space in bookstores.
Science section vs New Age and Religious section.
Admittedly, the results for one bookstore are not scientific.
But they are pretty much what I expected to find.
Science-1 (4 row shelf)
New Age-3 (4 row shelves)
Religion-3 (3 row shelves)
Bibles-1 (3 row shelves)
Now regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, Do You
1. Have a similar situation in your local bookstore?
2. Think that the results will change with a bigger sampling?
3. Think that this says something about how effective science is at popularizing it's message/findings?

Answer 1

1. Yes. It is depressing. The bookstore in my hometown is very similar. I have found used bookstores to be even worse! Often they have huge sections of "Inspirational" books and maybe a handful of science books (if they have any at all) and those are frequently accounting textbooks or similar things.

2. No. I have seen this in pretty much all bookstores I have been in, unless they are specialty stores.

3. Yes. Most people like easy, warm fuzzy answers, which is what the New Age and religious sections have a lot of. They don't like having to think about reality, as it is not full of warm fuzzies, and usually involves a lot of math or other "complicated" things.

Answer 2

Excellent experiment and observation!

The problem isn't science writing. Scientists communicate with each other using jargon because it's very efficient, and the terms have precise meanings which are generally understood. Education takes the place of verbose, repetitive explanations and saves the knowledgeable reader time. There are plenty of books and magazines conveying science to general audiences. Think Scientific American, Popular Science, Discover, and so on.

The problem is what people are interested in and what they will buy. A book store can't hope to cover science in one store, much less a few shelves. So they try to offer a selection emphasizing hot topics. If I want a science book, I first check my library's online catalog, then amazon.com.

Anyone can create a religion and write about it. Enough people still know where to look for spiritual truth that they have the 3 shelves of Bibles. That's just one book, but with different translations, cross references, annotations, and helps (maps, concordance etc). If you don't care about truth, you have thousands of variations of the writings of man to choose from.

The book store need offer few chemistry books. Everything in them will be hard, proven facts, reached by consensus and the scientific process. It's not controversial. If you write a book telling the world that your television is God, no one can prove you wrong. Tell a good enough story, and you'll get followers and book buyers. There are fewer variants when you are constrained by truth. I don't know how much New Age stuff you've read, but you won't find any objective evidence of fact in it. It just sounds cool. People buy it because they'll go to great lengths to convince themselves that what they really know is true isn't true, and they are not accountable to anyone. Truly sad.

Answer 3

The Barnes & Noble wher I live has a wee science section with nary a booj on Geology. Grrrrrrrr.

At least they had plenty of copies of "The Origin of Species" though. I guess they get a point for that.

Science IS NOT effective about spreading its findings. Which is why science is always at odds with other groups. People don't understand it and people hate what they can't understand. I'll be the first to admit scientific papers are so dry we could soak up spills with them. Scientists need to make what they find applicable to the everyday person.

Answer 4

Geolicious is absolutely right. The worst of it is, scientists seem to actually discourage one another from writing plainly. I'm a senior in chemistry, and my lab reports got awful grades for the first year, until I learned to use all the technical jargon my professors did. When I'm a published chemist, I plan to write two versions of every paper--one as dry and boring as I can make it, for the chemical journals, and one in plain English for everybody else. Then in the unlikely event that a layperson actually wants to know what I'm doing, at least they'll be able to find out.