Your readers may be interested in the science PR fakery described below. Although my brief science writing career ended 40 years ago, I remember with considerable warmth and admiration the people who came before me and stayed with it — Earl Ubell, Vic Cohn, Al Blakeslee — which admiration extends to the newer members of your talented band.
Forty years ago I was a science writer at the New York University College of Engineering, then located in The Bronx. One of the “stars” of the College was Dr. Maria Telkes, who had recently migrated from MIT. Solar devices were one of her specialties (among other things, she had used solar desalinization of water for the Navy during World War II.)
Telkes, with a quintessential Hungarian ego, would never have won a Nobel for modesty. So when she thought she had perfected a certain model of a solar cooker, she turned to me to arrange press publicity. I was much younger then, but not wiser, so I readily acquiesced. I arranged a press showing on the campus.
Unfortunately, the day was a bit overcast. The press was due to appear around 11 a.m. Telkes turned to me an hour or so before and said (as best as memory can recall), “I think because there is too little sun, we give the rolls a head start.”
The “head start” she proposed was to warm the rolls a while in the oven of the Faculty Club. That we did, but that we did not tell the press. Thus prepared, the rolls baked reasonably well after they were whisked to the solar oven, just before the reporters (all two of them) arrived.
The resulting publicity was pretty thin, but what do you expect from a half-baked demonstration?
Richard Magat
Bronxville, NY