Make science understandable to all

AS an academician, I feel bored whenever the word “sustainability” is bandied about in university life. Mainly because we academicians are told that if you mention sustainability in your research, then it has more chances of being accepted and given grants.

Even at the workshop on high impact publication, it was the same: just throw in “sustainability” and one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs, as they are popularly known), then your paper is more likely to get published.

Meanwhile, where I live in Kajang, Selangor, I still can’t find out where to put my recyclable rubbish. The Kajang Municipal Council (MPKJ) has a good sense of community when it comes to things like upgrading community halls – but there is no place for recycled sampah sarap. I have had to pay my gardener to dispose of our recyclable rubbish, and he just gives it to some migrant workers who have a side income in collecting metals and plastics to sell (where, I don’t know, is it dealt with sustainably, I don’t know).

I recently read some report somewhere from a seminar that Malaysia sangat bagus (is very good) in SDG compliance. Well, I don’t know about that but the smell of the air and the high temperature in Kajang tell a different story, I think.

I have never believed in all the hack about “climate change”. For me, the climate is the climate lah, and it changes according to “sunnatullah”, or God’s law for nature. To me, the problem is not God and climate change, it is and always has been manusia punya pasal (humankind’s problem).

Unfettered urbanisation by incompetent and greedy policymakers and enforcers, I suspect, are the culprits behind the failing of our planet. But civil servants with Datuk Seri titles always go up to the podium and say, “Oh, the flood was caused by climate change.” That’s just a newer way of saying “It’s God’s fault lah, what to do.”

Aside from the most obvious problem of “climate change” (aka human greed) and the need for a sustainability push, there is another more pressing problem on the agenda to save our planet from a climate catastrophe. And that is the fact that our scientists and academicians do not know how to communicate with people.

There are scientists who think they should be listened to by the likes of politicians and clergy with large followings simply because they have an important message to impart: that the planet is dying and humankind along with it. But those politicians and popular clergy command large followers who will make a lot of noise over the use of a word or the availability of alcohol – but they do not care two sen for what scientists and academicians are saying about the climate. Why? Let’s see, where should I start?

First, academicians are recognised as such because they specialise in an area of research that only they and a few handfuls of others would understand. Academicians can be promoted and promoted till there are no more promotions at which point there would be a small handful of people who understand their work. Academicians do not have to be “popular”.

Popularity among academicians is an unheard of concept. “Popular” academicians writing books for the populace and the media are deemed “people with an opinion only, who have no hard facts with tables and mathematical formulas”. Many “top” academicians will accept knowledge only if it is accompanied by three pages of appendices with tables and figures.

Second, academicians who are involved in NGOs are considered troublemakers by most university leadership. These academicians would usually criticise government policies and, of course, that lessens the chances of top leadership being awarded a Datuk or Datuk Seri title or even more. So activist academicians who can reach the masses are unwelcome.

Third, academicians tend to be lousy teachers. Try looking in a bookshop for an easily digestible book about climate change and what we should do about it in Malaysia, I would be surprised if you find one written by a Tan Sri Professor so and so. You might find a book of “chapters” or collection of papers which you could buy to impress visitors to your office.

I am reading a book by Bill Gates on climate change. He is not an expert but learned from scratch on his own – I like reading the kinds of books in which the authors know how to communicate with an ignorant climate change guy like me.

I also like to read Michio Kaku, an American scientist who is also a “science populariser”. Do we have a science populariser in Malaysia? Maybe I should ask Harith Iskandar, Allan Perera or Douglas Lim to run a course for all the Tan Sri and Datuk Seri professors on how to explain “sciency” stuff to ordinary people.

Lastly, I would like to touch on my favourite subject – religion. Many Muslim friends of mine are now extremely serious about going to heaven. So they will support any Islamic issue that is brought up by opportunistic politicians, from the use of a word and a Japanese festival to the alcohol-in-the-middle-of-the-mall issue.

I have read thousands of khutbah, or Friday Sermons, and none of them is about the SDGs.

Our scientists can’t talk religion. Why, because they are scientists lah! Sigh.

I have read over 70 books on Islam and I can stand on my own explaining why I think mosques do not need either a minaret or a dome, which could save the planet much carbon emissions. Try telling a group of ulama that mosques should be built using recycled timber and not concrete because the former is something low carbon and can be planted and harvested while cement and steel throws off so much carbon that they would choke those attending prayers.

The ulama may not like my subject or me for that matter, but I could put Quranic verses and the hadiths in my presentations. But our scientists can’t speak ulama and ulama tend to be lousy at science because religion and science are different since one doesn’t believe in God while the other adores God.

Thus, we should move our university syllabi from being specialisation-centric to be more liberal-centric so that our future academicians can speak religion as well as everyday science to the people. The question is, do we have the political will within education circles to do this?

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.