John Burnham’s decision in How Superstition Won and Science Lost to frame science popularization as a cultural competition with winners and losers—rather than as an organic process responding to external forces and evolving over time—reflected both his high regard for science and his disdain for those who promoted magic and superstition over scientific authority and authenticity. To Burnham, the outcome of such rivalry mattered, for reasons beyond whether popular culture offered transitory distraction or fact-based enlightenment. Medical and health knowledge could save lives, discoveries in physics and chemistry fueled social progress, while pseudoscientists and fakers peddled false hopes and cures, manipulating their auditors’ emotions for the sake of profit or power rather than the greater good. By abdicating responsibility for communicating to the public, and eventually abandoning center stage to professional popularizers and journalists, the scientific community had also, Burnham believed, left audiences vulnerable to superstition’s seductive attractions. It was a compelling argument, buttressed by daunting arrays of evidence, and persuasive within the context of the 1980s. The question now, several digital life-years later, is whether How Superstition Won and Science Lost identified a trend that proceeded uninterrupted or whether the “track conditions” for popularization—that is, the competition for public attention and trust—have changed, with more participants, more pathways, more choices, more technical information available for niche or previously underserved audiences, and therefore more unruly struggles for primacy in the marketplace. The answer to that question has implications for resource allocation and civic education, but it will also alter future track conditions for historians of popularization, as debates over climate change, vaccination safety, water quality, and similar topics play out in digital space and time rather than in conventionally managed and archived formats and places. Today, even the most comprehensive technical information, available online and illustrated with spectacular graphics, competes for audience attention with beguiling rumor, intentional misrepresentation, and downright fakery. There are no judges in the booth, no officials to call a foul, no referees to order an instant replay; and neither communicators nor audience members seem capable of pausing to take a breath and look ahead. That situation is quite different from the production and reception context for the nineteenth-century magazines (or even the twentieth-century broadcasts) that Burnham described.

中文翻译：

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跟踪条件：重新审视迷信是如何获胜的，科学是如何失败的

约翰·伯纳姆 (John Burnham) 在《迷信如何获胜和科学失败》(How Superstition Won and Science Lost) 中决定将科学普及定义为一场赢家和输家的文化竞赛——而不是作为对外部力量做出反应并随时间演变的有机过程——既反映了他对科学的高度尊重，也反映了他对科学的蔑视他宣扬魔法和迷信而不是科学权威和真实性。对伯纳姆来说，这种竞争的结果很重要，其原因不仅仅是流行文化是提供短暂的干扰还是基于事实的启蒙。医学和健康知识可以挽救生命，物理和化学的发现推动了社会进步，而伪科学家和造假者兜售虚假的希望和治疗方法，为了利润或权力而不是为了更大的利益而操纵他们的审计员的情绪。伯纳姆认为，科学界放弃了与公众沟通的责任，最终放弃了专业普及者和记者的中心舞台，也让观众容易受到迷信的诱惑。这是一个令人信服的论点，以令人生畏的一系列证据为支撑，并且在 1980 年代的背景下具有说服力。数年之后的数字生活现在的问题是，《迷信如何赢得和科学失落》是否确定了一种不间断的趋势，或者普及的“轨道条件”——即公众关注和信任的竞争——是否已经改变，更多的参与者、更多的途径、更多的选择、更多的技术信息可供利基或以前服务不足的受众使用，因此，在市场上争夺主导地位的斗争更加肆无忌惮。这个问题的答案对资源分配和公民教育有影响，但它也将改变大众化历史学家未来的轨道条件，因为关于气候变化、疫苗接种安全、水质和类似话题的辩论在数字空间和时间中展开，而不是在数字空间和时间中展开。而不是传统管理和存档的格式和位置。今天，即使是最全面的技术信息（可在线获取并配以壮观的图形），也会以诱人的谣言、故意的虚假陈述和彻头彻尾的造假来争夺观众的注意力。看台上没有裁判，没有裁判吹犯规，没有裁判命令即时回放；传播者和听众似乎都无法停下来喘口气并展望未来。这种情况与伯纳姆所描述的 19 世纪杂志（甚至 20 世纪广播）的制作和接收环境大不相同。