5 ms·

Interesting, but it doesn't actually explain why he was denied membership -- other than the obvious "didn't get enough votes" reason, with some speculations abo

Interesting, but it doesn't actually explain why he was denied membership -- other than the obvious "didn't get enough votes" reason, with some speculations about why. Original title of article is 'Kinship with the stars'.

jenga_janwar 5y ago
The committee didn't think him of a serious enough researcher.
snowwrestler 5y ago
The short answer is that Sagan was denied membership because he devoted much of his professional efforts to the popularization of science, as opposed to conducting and publishing original scientific. As the article notes, this is somewhat counterintuitive because most scientists recognize the need for science to be popularly understood and appreciated.
- Maursault 5y ago
  By the time he passed, Carl Sagan probably had a net worth of $20M. I'll wager his career and economic success is a major element of peer-disdain (and envy), and "the short answer" is a mostly false, made-up reason to save face.
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
    I kind of doubt that was the issue. Money is not the most important thing to most successful scientists. Impact and legacy dominate the motivations of senior researchers. Which is part of the issue with science communicators. They have huge impact; Sagan’s fame was way out of proportion to the scope of his contributions from original research. He’s undoubtedly more well-known than almost any Nobel Prize winner. I think there is also a category issue. If the members of the National Academy consider it a professional organization of the top working researchers, then a “science communicator” who has not distinguished themselves with original research simply would not fit the category (in their minds).
    - Maursault 5y ago
      > Sagan’s fame was way out of proportion to the scope of his contributions from original research. The same could be said about Stephan Jay Gould. The same could be said about Albert Einstein, and it would be truer of Einstein than Sagan (when one studies History of Science, it is a shock to discover nearly all of the insights attributed to Einstein were not his own: In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light c with respect to any inertial frame is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source. But he didn't just pull this rabbit out of his hat. There is a long history of science of at least the notion of the finite speed of light, and Einstein is standing on the shoulders of giants when he publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, and heavily relied on the work of three mathematicians to develop General Relativity, and a forth for his work on Black Holes. But neither Relativity nor the constancy of the speed of light were Einstein's ideas, and not remotely so. History just gave him all the credit.) I like Gould and Einstein as much as anyone, but I don't quite follow the logic of Sagan's unpopularity among peers. It isn't like Sagan did nothing at all, nor even very little: he pioneered planetary science and exobiology. And only one of those alone should be enough credential! Carl Sagan pretty much single-handedly (with the help of Sir David Attenborough) popularized science. This isn't science, but had he done nothing else whatsoever, this would have been enough to justify his notoriety, and in itself is important (just how many did Sagan influence to study science in advanced education? and careers in science? I expect, more than any other yet). Sagan was a huge contributor to our understanding of Mars, but was pretty much the very first to realize just what was going on with Venus' atmosphere, which makes his work pivotal in the revolution in Earth's climate science, not to mention his astute theories about liquid on Titan's surface, and water in Europa. Again, I don't quite get the notions that Carl Sagan didn't contribute enough, or that he was weak in hard science. But it is easy to understand his puny human scientist-peers that toiled their career away in obscurity and retired with a mortgage. Neil deGrasse Tyson is pretty darn famous. I don't know anything of his contributions, but I'm not sure it matters. How could anyone not like him? The only answer I can fathom is his (presumed) economic success. IOW, envy.
      - bsder 5y ago
        > The same could be said about Albert Einstein While you could think that "photoelectric effect" and "special relativity" were simply "due up" and somebody would have eventually worked them out, "general relativity" was definitely Einstein. "General Relativity" was a bolt out of the blue that took forever to assimilate the predictions of and to experimentally verify.

jenga_janwar 5y ago

The committee didn't think him of a serious enough researcher.

snowwrestler 5y ago

The short answer is that Sagan was denied membership because he devoted much of his professional efforts to the popularization of science, as opposed to conducting and publishing original scientific. As the article notes, this is somewhat counterintuitive because most scientists recognize the need for science to be popularly understood and appreciated.

Maursault 5y ago
By the time he passed, Carl Sagan probably had a net worth of $20M. I'll wager his career and economic success is a major element of peer-disdain (and envy), and "the short answer" is a mostly false, made-up reason to save face.
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  I kind of doubt that was the issue. Money is not the most important thing to most successful scientists. Impact and legacy dominate the motivations of senior researchers. Which is part of the issue with science communicators. They have huge impact; Sagan’s fame was way out of proportion to the scope of his contributions from original research. He’s undoubtedly more well-known than almost any Nobel Prize winner. I think there is also a category issue. If the members of the National Academy consider it a professional organization of the top working researchers, then a “science communicator” who has not distinguished themselves with original research simply would not fit the category (in their minds).
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > Sagan’s fame was way out of proportion to the scope of his contributions from original research. The same could be said about Stephan Jay Gould. The same could be said about Albert Einstein, and it would be truer of Einstein than Sagan (when one studies History of Science, it is a shock to discover nearly all of the insights attributed to Einstein were not his own: In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light c with respect to any inertial frame is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source. But he didn't just pull this rabbit out of his hat. There is a long history of science of at least the notion of the finite speed of light, and Einstein is standing on the shoulders of giants when he publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, and heavily relied on the work of three mathematicians to develop General Relativity, and a forth for his work on Black Holes. But neither Relativity nor the constancy of the speed of light were Einstein's ideas, and not remotely so. History just gave him all the credit.) I like Gould and Einstein as much as anyone, but I don't quite follow the logic of Sagan's unpopularity among peers. It isn't like Sagan did nothing at all, nor even very little: he pioneered planetary science and exobiology. And only one of those alone should be enough credential! Carl Sagan pretty much single-handedly (with the help of Sir David Attenborough) popularized science. This isn't science, but had he done nothing else whatsoever, this would have been enough to justify his notoriety, and in itself is important (just how many did Sagan influence to study science in advanced education? and careers in science? I expect, more than any other yet). Sagan was a huge contributor to our understanding of Mars, but was pretty much the very first to realize just what was going on with Venus' atmosphere, which makes his work pivotal in the revolution in Earth's climate science, not to mention his astute theories about liquid on Titan's surface, and water in Europa. Again, I don't quite get the notions that Carl Sagan didn't contribute enough, or that he was weak in hard science. But it is easy to understand his puny human scientist-peers that toiled their career away in obscurity and retired with a mortgage. Neil deGrasse Tyson is pretty darn famous. I don't know anything of his contributions, but I'm not sure it matters. How could anyone not like him? The only answer I can fathom is his (presumed) economic success. IOW, envy.
    - bsder 5y ago
      > The same could be said about Albert Einstein While you could think that "photoelectric effect" and "special relativity" were simply "due up" and somebody would have eventually worked them out, "general relativity" was definitely Einstein. "General Relativity" was a bolt out of the blue that took forever to assimilate the predictions of and to experimentally verify.