How Pop Culture and Science Interact

As I was listening to the lyrics of One Direction’s hit song “What Makes You Beautiful”, the idea of the relationship between pop culture and science was captured in an interesting manner.

Going back several years, I remember a popular anecdote about the popular British singer Katie Melua’s song, “Nine Million Bicycles”. A sequence of lines in the song goes like this: (It’s a lovely little ditty, listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrPUJsZQSkw )

“We are 12 billion light years from the edge

That's a guess

No one can ever say it's true

But I know that I will always be with you”

(Katie Melua, Nine Million Bicycles, 2005)

Melua stating that the age of the universe is 12 billion years, and that it’s a guess, miffed the astronomer community heavily, as it replaced scientific fact for the sake of poetic harmony. With a lot of research and data, astronomers have found that the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, with some variance around that figure. It was perceived as an affront around the phenomenon of media taking precedence over science, and rigorous studies being undermined in the guise of creative endeavor.

Simon Singh, the author of the book “Big Bang”, which discusses the historical evolution about our understanding of the universe, wrote about this in an article in the Guardian, titled, “Katie Melua’s bad science”. He eloquently critiqued Katie’s “deep ignorance of cosmology and lack of understanding of the scientific method”. (Singh, 2005)

Funnily enough, Katie Melua apparently read the article, and re-recorded her song with the correct lyrics, with Simon Singh being a guest in her studio during the recording as well. The updated version went as follows:

“We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe,

that’s a good estimate with well-defined error bars,

and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you”

(Katie Melua, Nine Million Bicycles (updated), 2005)

The amusing aspect is, this kind of pop culture overreach on science is not only regarding the physical sciences, but extends to the social sciences as well. But the fact is, it’s much harder to catch inaccuracies on social sciences, since it is a subjective discipline, and songs written about human or societal phenomena tend to be interpreted with a lens of entertainment than an analytical perspective.

However, coming back to the introductory part of the article, while I was playing One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful”, whose main refrain goes like: (Enjoy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJO3ROT-A4E )

"Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe

You don’t know, oh-oh, you don’t know you’re beautiful, oh-oh

That’s what makes you beautiful"

(One Direction, What Makes You Beautiful, 2011)

Is this idea true though? Well, Dan Ariely, in his seminal book, “The Upside of Irrationality”, talks about the concept of “assortative mating”. Through his analysis of people’s dating phenomena through a behavioral economics approach, it is shown that hot people prefer hot people, and the “not hot” people focus on other positive qualities unrelated to attractiveness. So, basically, you indeed know you’re beautiful, others know you’re beautiful from an optical viewpoint, and people of similar attractiveness, well, attract each other. (Fun fact: the online dating dataset used by Dan Ariely, Hot or Not, a similar website was created by Mark Zuckerberg in his university days)

That’s an interesting example of how pop culture doesn’t reflect research in the social sciences, and the fact that popular media like these have so much influence on society, perhaps it’s time we start taking social sciences more seriously, and not equate them to common sense or different personal opinions. And an exploration of how the arts and the sciences interact, that’s a unique feature to be explored further as well.

Well, I shall wait for an updated version of “What Makes You Beautiful”, and I hope Liam Payne’s soul attains peace,

God bless, take care,

Suudharshan