CSI: Crime, Science, Investigation
Resolving mysteries is remarkably similar to the process of science—Robert Cialdini
The CSI franchise teaches you so much about mass spectrometry while solving crimes—but that's just the backdrop. The pleasure is in finding things out, exactly as in science.
A scientist is a detective.
Real-world crimes are nothing but sad, but we are drawn to them because they are mysterious. Science is also full of intellectual puzzles, which are a great tell about what to work on. Mysteries make the most "sticky" scientific stories (the quote is from Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die):
“But,” says Robert Cialdini, “I also found something I had not expected—the most successful of these pieces [science writing for non-scientists] all began with a mystery story. The authors described a state of affairs that seemed to make no sense and then invited the reader into the material as a way of solving the mystery.” One example that stuck in his mind was written by an astronomer, who began with a puzzle: How can we account for what is perhaps the most spectacular planetary feature in our solar system, the rings of Saturn? There’s nothing else like them. What are the rings of Saturn made of anyway? And then he deepened the mystery further by asking, “How could three internationally acclaimed groups of scientists come to wholly different conclusions on the answer?” One, at Cambridge University, proclaimed they were gas; another group, at MIT, was convinced they were made up of dust particles; while the third, at Cal Tech, insisted they were comprised of ice crystals. How could this be, after all, each group was looking at the same thing, right? So, what was the answer?
Figuring out the truth gives you a jolt of excitement. Being a scientist is fun. But, then
why is it that science is not as popular?
Maybe because science is taught with a textbook flavor, devoid of the mysteries and arms races for knowledge, acclaim, and money? Students will think science is a sterile data point frozen in space and time. We teach them without showing the dead-ends and crazy theories required to lead to the best approximation of the truth. We rob them of the excitement of seeing how scientists stumbled but figured out the Universe's great mysteries.