In French, explaining science to a broad general audience is called “vulgariser”. To me, this French verb has a very negative connotation. The word implies popularizing science is something dirty. Surely something that should be avoided at all times. If a scientist wants to stay clean, he’d better stay away from translating his abstract ideas and complicated experiments into the daily lives of ordinary people.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dutch science was without doubt world-class. The first Nobel Prize for chemistry went to the Dutchman Van ‘t Hoff. The first three recipients of the Nobel Prize in physics were either Dutch (Zeeman and Lorentz) or were partly educated in the Netherlands (Röntgen).  All of them were born in upper-middle-class families.

My first university course was in elementary calculus. The course itself was foremost a repetition of what we had already learned in secondary school and was therefore in itself not very interesting. However, those first days did learn me a lot about physicists. I was surrounded by nerds, geeks, whizzkids. Badly shaved guys, elegantly dressed with shorts, white sport socks, and sandals. Since most of them used to be the best of their class, they (and I am afraid I should include myself in this category) thought they were to a large extent omniscient. During the calculus course, they considered everything to be self-evident, exclaiming phrases like ”of course, tell me something new”. It was absolutely not accepted to admit not to understand something. Our ego’s created a non-critical atmosphere, in which questions were looked upon with suspicion. Indeed it was very unscientific.

The writing of scientific texts is often initiated by a junior scientist working out his findings in a draft version of a paper or thesis. Then, he discusses this draft version with his direct supervisor, professor, or co-author. As pointed out in the writing guide, this reviewing should be a bilateral iteration process. If these reviewers do their job properly, they provide the junior scientist with loads of suggestions, critical comments, and references.