The tolerance of visible scientists shows most clearly in their

reactions to television.  A relatively new and yet pervasive medium,

television has traditionally turned off scientists. In a frank

analysis of his feelings about television, Joshua Lederberg (1973)
                                                6

probably reflects what scientists find most disturbing about

television:

I have a deep prejudice against television. It's not a

snobbish one.  It has to do with my own analysis of it as a

medium.  My concern fabout it] is that it has tremendous
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affective impact, that it grips the viewer in a vi v e; he's

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.time-bound to the medium, he can't set the time back a sentence

or forward a sentence, he's locked into the temporal sequence

of what goes on.  It's bi-modal.  So he's captured; he has very

little free will except to turn the thing off. He can't even
do too much thinking while itls going on, if he's going to re-

main,engaged with it.  That's my prejudicial image of it as a

medium.  And while I think it has a tremendous role as an art
form, and for influencing people, I don`t see it as a very good
way of getting people to think for themselves.  They're too

controlled.

F+quld say, if you asked me what's the main mission that
     '_

I'm trying t&accomplish in my writing at a public level, it's
                   .,.

    not to sell one point of view as against another, but it's try-
    ing to establish a more thoughtful attitude, a more skeptical
&,,$- one, one of further inquiry, not to regard things as settled

     that are very much unsettled.  And I don't think television is
                              ,'

very good for that purpose. . . . I feel very uncomfortable
giving an,interview under those circumstances. You also don't
Lget much feedback,  But mostly it's prejudice, as I say . . ;
   I also don't like the sense that I have no control about

whatever eventually comes out.  I know,it's impractical. The
performer has to be at the mercy of the director. He's got
37.9 seconds to fit things in, and that's an iron law. It

can't be helped.  But that doesn't give me a chance to be that

reflective.  I can't redraft what I have to say. Since many of
my thoughts emerge in the process of communicating them, I

find that very uncomfortable.