In 2009  I was a laid-off journalist with a few dollars and an interest in science so I headed out to west to the inaugural University of Arizona Origins Project Symposium.

The topic of the symposium? Everything. According to promotions, the public would have a chance to listen in as the greatest minds in science discussed “the origins of everything, from the universe to humanity.”

They weren’t joking when they referred to the greatest minds in science. The list included, but was not limited to: Steven Pinker, Brian Greene, Craig Venter, Stephen Hawking (who cancelled due to illness), Lawrence Krauss, and Richard Dawkins!

NBD

(As an aside, I swear I thought V.S. Ramachandran was on the list – in fact, I never forgave him for not showing up. Looking back at the program, though, I don’t see his name. My bad).

Being a laid-off journalist was still some kind of journalist, so I registered for a panel discussion about science reporting. Imagine: maybe a dozen journalists, one laid-off journalist, Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins. All in a classroom together. It was like I was just hanging out, me, some cool journalists, and my two buds. Chatting. About physics and evolutionary biology…

We also chatted about journalism. The two scientists had some issues with the way we were doing our jobs. No one understood the smart things they were saying, and often they cringed when they read articles written about their fields of study. Dawkins, it seemed, was really smarting.

Now. I’ve probably never made a mistake ever in my life. But if I had, I asked him, how would I know? “Do you call a reporter to let him or her know if they got it wrong?”

I got a look. It was just on the not-baffled side of baffled. Or maybe just on the not-incredulous side of incredulous.

“No.”

I wasn’t really surprised, but I wanted to him to know that, at least in my work – when I had work – I was reliant on our past coverage for background information. More reliant than I would have liked to have been, but them’s the breaks in a newsroom when you aren’t covering a science beat and are just trying to sneak in a story — about … I dunno … an invasive species transported by ballast water — between the story about a Fourth of July parade and the police blotter. The stories I had actually been assigned to write.

So if I went into the clips, I explained, and there was an error that had not been corrected, that error would live on, in my story and, ostensibly, the next story about barnacles or crabs or whatever. The more times a non-fact was published, the harder it would be to rein it back in.

If I were a quicker-thinker, I would have given a glance to Krauss and said that the stories had momentum. I’m sure he would’ve given me a knowing nod, and thought, “That lady really knows her physics 101!”

I’m not a quick thinker, but I did tell Richard Dawkins (ahem), if he thought a reporter made a good faith effort – or even if he thought a reporter was just a sloppy jerk – it was in everyone’s best interest that any errors be corrected.

I have no idea if Dawkins thought I made a valid point.

But I did get this awesome, awkward picture.

Yours truly & Richard Dawkins