Monday, June 4, 2001

Scientists Face Challenges in Popular Reality-Style Television Show By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Most reality-based television shows get low marks for educational merit -- unless you count Machiavellian lessons in backstabbing. One exception is Rough Science, produced by Britain's Open University. The program plops down five scientists on a gorgeous desert island and challenges them to build cameras and other gadgets from scraps of found materials. And the university is even designing a for-credit online course to go along with the television show. The BBC show, which will begin taping its second series in July, pits people against nature, rather than each other. No one is voted off the island, and no money is at stake. Everyone on the program has a Ph.D., and they're given a chance to flaunt their academic training on national television. Since making its debut last summer, Rough Science has become a sensation in Britain, attracting more than two million viewers and sparking an increase in enrollment at Open University. The second series will be broadcast in November, and the university plans to offer a distance-education course based on it. In the first series, the scientists -- who hailed from institutions including the Universities of Oxford and Sussex -- were flown to a Mediterranean island and given such tasks as building a camera, making soap, designing a toothbrush, and determining their longitude and latitude. The team, which attempted the challenges using seaweed, a participant's silver bracelet, and even human urine, met with mixed success. They created photosensitive paper, for instance, but their makeshift camera couldn't capture an image. "Science is more about failure than it is about success," says Mike Bullivant, a chemistry course manager at Open University who was one of the five scientists on the show. "A lot of the time you fail -- ask any researcher." Rough Science, he asserts, is not just a geeky version of Survivor. "I can't stress enough the irritation of being associated with reality-TV programs that don't seem to have much depth," he says. "I would hope that people go away from a Rough Science program having learned something." Viewers in the United States might soon get to see the British boffins in action. A public-television station in Washington has been talking with Open University about importing the program. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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