Can There Be a U.S. ‘Cox Effect’? Maybe?

Warning – the idle musing ahead is possibly more idle than usual.

Brian Cox (no, not the actor) is much more widely known in the U.K. than the U.S., aside from a couple of appearances with Stephen Colbert and The Science Channel.  On the eastern side of the Atlantic, the editor of New Scientist makes the case for a Cox effect in The Telegraph.  Highfield notes that in recent festivals (a bigger deal in the U.K. than here) science-themed programming has become more successful, and agrees with those who think Cox, a former boy-band musician and probably considered dreamy, has something to do with it.

Here’s an interview with Cox (Yes, the show interviews people during car rides.  Welcome to the wonders of British television.), see what you think.

 

So, is there an American Cox?

Neil Tyson and Bill Nye are, like Cox, genial communicators and good on television.  Could they draw people to a tent at the next Caravan, H.O.R.D.E. Festival, Lilith Fair or other massive outdoor gathering of the young?  I don’t know.  Arguably it’s Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who bears the closest comparison to Cox in this respect, though he’s not been as widely disseminated on American television like Cox has in the U.K.  I blame the lack of a BBC.

Science and technology guests have made the rounds at various U.S. conventions for a while now (Plait has been to both the San Diego Comic Con and Dragon*Con.  But these are of a different kind than the music festivals Highfield writes about.  The U.K. has its own traditional science festivals, and they have been growing (the U.S. struggles in this area).  Breaking out into non-traditional venues appears to be a recent phenomenon.

Highfield notes that this trend could be considered a restoration of sorts.

“Perhaps what we are witnessing is not so much a rise of science as its restoration to its rightful place in our culture. When Ian Blatchford departed the Victoria and Albert Museum at the end of last year to run the Science Museum, his leaving present was a framed image of the V&A’s original doors, fashioned from bronze in 1868. On the left door are three figures from the history of science, balanced by three from the arts on the right.

“The message they sent was that, in 19th-century Britain, art and science should always be taught together. But then, in 1893, the South Kensington Museum was divided into two institutions, the V&A and the Science Museum, and cut asunder by Exhibition Road.”

Exhibition Road is being returned to the pedestrians.

While there isn’t such a close parallel in the U.S., it’s worth noting that the National Museum of American History started its life as the Museum of History and Technology.  It had been housed in the Arts and Industries Building, which was the National Museum before the Natural History collections were separated to their own building.

But this isn’t about science in museums as it is science in the public consciousness or the public culture.  Cox has had help in the British resurgence and there will need to be several folks in the U.S. aiming to do the same for something like that to emerge here.  I suspect they are out there, and would love to meet them.