Roger's Interview presentation, which was accompanied by a video The interview you're about to witness is ugly. It's with the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at our university. I did it in the early 1990s right in front of a group of journalism students. The idea was for me to show how I interview scientists. My style, as you will see, is so attacking, so relentless, that one of the students says, in so many words, at the end of the tape, "That's rude, dude!"
Why do I interview this way? Because I'm an obsessive perfectionist who runs on high-octane anxiety. Thank God for pharmacies, for Ritalin and Zoloft, which I wasn't taking when this interview was conducted.
Another reason that I interview in this manner is that when it comes to science, my mind is porous. I was a teen-age English major, with no head for protease inhibitors. So I have to ask the same elementary questions over and over again. How do you bone up for an interview? As a general practice, scan The New York Times science page on Tuesdays. That's a drip irrigation approach to becoming versed. There's also the crash-course route. Natalie Angier, of The New York Times, says she'll read a few Scientific American articles to prepare for a particular interview. Ron Kotulak, who won a Pulitzer in '94 for science writing, starts by talking to other researchers who are doing work similar to the person he plans to interview. Science writer Paul Raeburn, whose latest book, about Mars, was published in 1998, says he actually cracks a science textbook from time to time. | |
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