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5 March 2009

Programme director
CEO of Siemens Southern Africa, Mr Sigi Proebstl
Members of the Board of Directors
Award winners
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

South Africa has plentiful supply of coal, which we burn to produce 92 percent of our electricity. We burn more of it to provide 40 percent of our petrol. As a result, we are becoming one of the world’s largest, per capita, producers of greenhouse gases. We produce one percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Even though this might seem a relatively small proportion, it makes us the 14th largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.

Our challenge, therefore, is to start thinking and acting a lot greener, fast. We are this week, together with the Department of Environment and Tourism, hosting a National Climate Change Summit with a similar theme at Gallagher Estate. Therefore, “technology for a greener Africa” is a very apt theme for this year's Siemens Profile Awards, which have brought us together here tonight. We applaud all the efforts aimed at preventing further damage to our already vulnerable planet.

Tempting as it is, I am not going to speak to you about a greener Africa and a greener world. Tonight I will leave that for others. I prefer to talk about the subject that has brought us here this evening, and that is, excellence in reporting and writing on science and technology.

I want to begin by reading you two sentences from a recent book titled ‘magnetism and synchrotron radiation.’

"In recent years the interest in x-ray spectroscopes has been revived by the discovery of new experimental methods associated with the exploitation of the polarisation properties of synchrotron radiation."

This sounds like good news, but what does it actually mean? Perhaps the following sentence might throw more light.

"The detection of x-ray magnetic and dichroism in ferro-, ferri-, and paramagnetic compounds, the detection of x-ray natural circular dichroism in gyrotropic single crystals, and more recently the observation of non-reciprocal X-ray linear dichroism in antiferromagnetic crystals, are good examples of such new developments."

Perhaps the initiates in this field are likely to understand what this entire means!

The good news is that the author is now signing copies at Exclusive Books. If you hurry you might still catch him.

But on a more serious note, while I'm sure the writer knows a great deal about synchrotron radiation, he clearly knows nothing about communication. And for scientists, and the public, that is a big problem.

I happen to know that researchers using synchrotron radiation techniques are developing promising treatments for cancer, and investigating ways to increase life-expectancy and methods to improve the efficiency of electricity distribution. But if only a handful of people know this, further research and use of the techniques won't get very far.
That is why good science journalism and reporting can be as important as science itself, and why the Siemens Profile Awards for reporting on science and technology is such a significant event.

In many respects, we are all victims of a journalistic stereotype introduced many years ago, in which the only person who could possibly be interested in science, or even hope to understand it, was the scientist himself always male and usually mad.

But things have changed. IT scientists have put computers in our laps, telecommunications scientists have placed cellphones in our hands, nutritional scientists are guiding our food intake, and sports scientists are designing our running shoes. Science is everywhere there is little of consequence in our lives that is not either the result of scientific research or a subject for scientific scrutiny. Yet in many cases, the process of reporting on these developments has not kept pace with the developments themselves.

Current and future sciences and technologies hold great promise in terms of speeding up socio-economic development, which is of particular importance to the poorer nations of the world. We need to do all we can to accelerate, not only the fulfilment of that hope, but also the expectation of that hope.

In South Africa's case, this is both an urgent and a complex matter. We are not a poor country, but we are not a highly developed one either. We are a relatively prosperous nation at the southern end of a largely underdeveloped continent, much of which is looking to us to show the way forward. But we cannot realistically hope to do that until we solve some of our country's own problems.

Among these are unacceptably high poverty levels, a largely inadequate skills base, an ongoing near-emergency energy supply, the impact of climate change and its threat to water resources, rising criminality, the degradation of the environment, the impact of HIV infections, and now, the world economic slump.

We have a relatively sophisticated pool of scientists, but they're ageing, and they're not being replaced in sufficient numbers to cope with the challenges we face. That is the downside, but on a more positive note, the work that our scientists are doing on the hydrogen engine is looking very promising. So does the development of South Africa's electric car by a private enterprise in Cape Town. Researchers in the biosciences exploring our country's remarkably rich biodiversity are very upbeat about what they're doing.
The work being done on the development of photovoltaic cells, essentially a quantum improvement in the harnessing of solar power, is extraordinary, and bodes well for the renewable energy programme.

The story of Sasol, which took failed technology and turned it into a winner, seems likely to be repeated in the development of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor. Our achievements in the field of astronomy have been truly spectacular, which is a fitting tribute to a continent whose astronomy history goes back over 8 000 years. The Southern Africa Large Telescope (SALT) has been a triumph, the MeerKAT is performing as expected, and we are crossing our fingers to win the bid to host the envisaged largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array.

Our scientists are excelling in many disciplines, and there is every reason to suppose that, given enough backing and support, they will come up with workable solutions to many of the country's most pressing problems.

So, what is the role of the journalist in all this?

First, we need to make science seem less arcane to the average person. Actually, these days it is a lot harder to tell the difference between scientists and journalists. Both spend a lot of time in front of computers trying to make things fit together. Both go to work in t-shirts and chinos, and both have to smoke in designated areas. They're just ordinary people doing ordinary jobs.

Related to this is the need to popularise science. We need more South Africans to choose careers in science, technology, mathematics and engineering. The number of young people studying maths and science-related subjects at tertiary or even senior secondary level is very disheartening. We cannot do maths and science without mathematicians and scientists. We need more young people to open their hearts and minds to science. Everybody needs to be reminded, as often as necessary, that these days science is ubiquitous, and there is no such thing as a technology-free life.

In both these roles we need to interpret the work scientists are doing so that the public is enlightened, not confused. Ordinary people need journalists to simplify complex concepts for them, or in Siemens terminology, put science into "an easily understandable format."

We should never forget that we live in a country with eleven official languages, and journalists therefore have to make extra sure that the information they present their readers with is clear. If information is incomprehensible in the language in which it is written, there is no hope of even a passable translation.

In summary then, South Africa and the rest of Africa will benefit immensely if journalists are able to demystify and popularise science by simplifying it. Siemens deserves kudos for its insight into this, and for sponsoring the recognition of excellence in scientific journalism.

Siemens is a company that has done much careful thinking, and has come up with many sound initiatives. Like all of us here, Siemens seeks to create safer and healthier societies, cleaner environments and prosperous knowledge-driven economies across Africa. We can do this so much more quickly and effectively if our efforts can be aligned with smart, responsible journalism.

I congratulate the winners here tonight. I hope you will intensify your efforts to develop public awareness of science and technology. And I would like to thank all journalists here tonight, winners or not, and encourage you to continue the good work your country needs your skills, your interpretive abilities, and your communications flair. All hands to the journalists!

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
5 March 2009
Source: Department of Science and Technology (http://www.dst.gov.za/)