Popular science would do better if its writers built on each other’s work instead of starting over each time. Wikipedia already shows how. Its rule against original research makes every article a synthesis of what others have published. I sometimes picture an order of science writers and explainers, held to a short charter:
The idea is old. Francis Bacon imagined Salomon’s House, an order of sages whose work included telling nature from “impostures and illusions of all sorts.”
Science itself is not loose. Peer review, journals, and societies make it the best-organized of the communities that keep our trust in truth. What is loose is how it reaches the public, and that costs science respect. Pew finds 77 percent of Americans have at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists, down from 87 percent in April 2020. In a 2024 survey, 47 percent said scientists “feel superior to others,” and 45 percent called them good communicators. That is the smug pilot problem, and rule 4 answers it.
Universities add a problem of their own. Jonathan Rauch warns of two insurgencies against knowledge: troll culture, and “unforced conformity and ideological blacklisting, sometimes called cancel culture.” On campuses, identity politics seems to feed the second. In FIRE’s 2025 survey of more than 58,000 students, 17 percent felt unable to voice an opinion for fear of the response. An order that argues about claims, not persons, resists both.
The rules I write this site under are a one-person version of the same charter. Link to what someone already explained, source the claims, write plainly, and respect the reader.