Wednesday, the students at the Tshwane and the Soshanguve campuses of Tshwane University of Technology met on the downtown Arcadia campus for a daylong conference on science journalism. Pedro Diederichs, head of the journalism department, organized the conference as part of his expansion of the journalism department. His next hire will be a chair in science reporting.
There were excellent talks on AIDS reporting, the ethics of science reporting and great case studies in investigative science journalism.
The students (freshmen and sophomores) were very involved and asked questions that showed they were paying attention to the speakers. There was a lot of back and forth between the students and the speakers, but the comment that riled the students was from Elsabe Brits, a science reporter for Die Burger, in Cape Town. She was encouraging students to test claims about scientific advances against reason and logic. She said, for instance, there are about 1.7 million species of creatures on the Earth. How big do you think Noah’s Ark would have to be to carry two of each of those species? It would be a lot bigger than what is stated in the Bible. It’s impossible. It couldn’t have happened in that way, she said.
That’s when I learned how deeply religious many people are in South Africa. Quite a few students started arguing with that comment. The discussion extended to intelligent design, which the speakers trashed as pure rubbish and one student in particular adamantly defended.
At this conference, I was invited to lecture to grad students at the University of Pretoria next week.
My time here is passing too fast, and I’m having such fun.
Gary Kebbel's Travel Blog 