Getting the Science Right

By Joan Marie Galat

How far will an author go to get her facts straight? In my case, it was a nearly-4000-kilometre round trip from my home in Alberta to Laramie, Wyoming. The program, called Launch Pad Astronomy, is a week-long workshop designed specifically for science-writing authors. It was established to make sure writers present science accurately when creating stories or writing nonfiction.

Whether you are reading a book or watching a movie, television show, or other media, it is not hard to get caught up in the story and assume it reflects genuine scientific principles. Launch Pad helps writers avoid presenting or creating misconceptions. Here are a few examples of how science can crop up in creative writing, followed by an explanation of why the scientific reference just won’t work. You will see how easy it is for even a well-intentioned writer to misstep.

• It was 6 am, too early for the courier to arrive with the first copies of Joan’s new middle-grade (and up) book: Dark Matters-Nature’s Reaction to Light Pollution. She took one last glance at the rising Full Moon and turned inside.
  SCIENCE FAIL: The Full Moon only rises at sunset.


• It had been dark for several hours. The courier was lost. His GPS battery was dead and his charger not working since it fell into a milkshake. Pulling over, he looked for the brightest star in the sky, certain the North Star would guide him home.
  SCIENCE FAIL: The North Star is not the brightest star in the sky.


• The courier remembered he needed to call his mother for her birthday. His cell phone was dead and the charger — well, you don’t want to know. Not wanting to admit his shortcomings, he decided upon an excuse. He would say he burned his hand when picking up a meteorite that had landed when he was searching for the North Star.

  

  Meteorite
  Photo credit: NASA/SETI/P. Jenniskens

  
  SCIENCE FAIL: It’s not common to find meteorites within seconds of them landing on the ground. Little is known about the immediate temperature of new meteorites, however scientists generally believe small rocks from space will be cool or only slightly warm upon striking the Earth.

Other common misconceptions abound about why seasons occur, the strength of gravity on the Moon, the direction a comet's tail will face, and other topics. The Smithsonian’s “Science Done Wrong” offers additional compelling examples.

Next time you read a book or watch a movie, consider whether the science is accurate and conduct a bit of research of your own to find out what is fact and what is fiction. If you’re a fellow author, consider applying to attend Launch Pad Astronomy. It is an experience you won’t want to miss.


Joan Marie Galat is the author of more than a dozen books, including the Dot to Dot in the Sky astronomy and mythology series. Science talks have taken her from the Arctic Circle to South Korea. Check out her book trailers and speaker demo.

On Books - and "Real Books"

Posted by Helaine Becker

Writing for kids can be a monstrously thankless job. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me, “When are you going to write a ‘real’ book?” Grrrr.

Kids’ books are real books. The level of material they contain is often superior to material aimed at adults.  With good reason:  What we read when we’re young will stick with us for a lifetime. And if the ‘facts’ we learn are wrong….

Let’s pause for a moment and think about pearls. Do you, by any chance, think they form when a bit of grit gets into the oyster? So sorry. Not so.

I only learned the true story of the pearl while researching The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea (Kids Can Press). I fact-checked a ‘fact’ that I ‘knew’ was true: that oyster tidbit. I thought doing so was a formality; a waste of time even.

Yet when I looked for a good source to cite for the snippet, I couldn’t find one. I found lots of cut-and-paste text saying the same thing (grit, grit, grit). But no reliable data. I spent countless hours digging deeper. When I finally burrowed down to some solid research, I was shocked. Pearls, it turns out, are formed when a parasite, not a bit of grit, gets into the oyster’s gut.  

Because of ‘gems’ (read: booboos) like this, I always take extra care to get the facts in my books right. That’s easier said than done. In my latest science book, Monster Science (Kids Can Press), I planned to describe Gregor Mendel’s famous pea experiment. When I fact-checked the basics, I wound up with questions about the number of pea plants he grew. The figures repeated most often in reference material were 28- or 29,000. But where, exactly, did these figures come from? Could it be verified?

I spent a solid week looking for answers. There were none. It seems the numbers were fabricated and repeated again and again, just like the pearls-are-made-by-grit “fact.”

So I got to work. To compute a more reliable answer, I sourced Mendel’s own data and google-translated it from German. When I added up his own tallies for the pea plants he grew, it was significantly closer to 20,000 than 29,000. But that figure, too, was just a best guess: Mendel's data was incomplete. So no one really knows how many pea plants he grew! 

“10-20,000 plants” went into the manuscript.Unsurprisingly, the copy editor flagged it as an error, because she was comparing it to all the widely published – but wrong – numbers on the web! 

That could become a big problem. A book’s saleability can be hampered if reviewers think the research is sketchy. So my “10-20,000 plants” phrase couldn’t stand either.

So what to do? Long, detailed backs-and-forths transpired as we parsed the data and experimented with language. We finally came up with a phrase that delicately bridged the gap between what we knew was dead-accurate (“who knows?”)  and what sounded right  (29,000).

In the end, we spent over two weeks working on one ‘minor’ phrase. Why? Because we respect our readers.  And that’s why kids’ books are real books. They contain the best possible information available today, presented in clear, easy-to-understand language. Easy enough, that is, for even grown-ups to understand.