“But Mrs. Auntie SciBabe,” I hear some of you thinking really hard at me from across the internet, “who is Sharon Begley and why is her name on a Carl Sagan quote?”
Today’s micro-Moment of Science… but why would I even think to fact check this?
Carl Sagan never uttered this (hatemail to the usual address). At least there’s zero evidence to suggest he did. Sharon Begley was a science writer who penned the phrase in an article about Sagan in 1977. It’s been misattributed to him for decades.
Begley was an incredible science communicator. She was 21 years old when she conjured the famous quote in one of her earliest contributions as a writer for Newsweek. During her career that spanned over four decades, she wrote five books and earned the entire wishlist of awards for her journalism work.
Her last article, a piece on the rising diagnoses of lung cancer in non-smokers, was published on January 26th, 2021. A non-smoker herself, Begley died five days later of lung cancer.
“Sometimes, the incredible thing waiting to be known is that you were wrong.” -definitely not Carl Sagan
This has been your micro-Moment of Science, gently nudging that you Google this one before yelling at me if you have some doubts.
To get Moments of Science of all sizes delivered to your inbox every weekday and support my urgent need to order a vintage August 15, 1977 Newsweek from eBay to see the quote for myself (see below, scroll to the bottom image for the quote), head to patreon.com/scibabe.
“The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science” Margaret W. Rossiter 1993
Dear Mdme. SciBabe: You’ve stolen my childhood! How will I go on? Oh well, my childhood was a long time ago. In fact, the first thing that struck me about this story was that Sharon Begley and I were children at the same time. The second thing was the shudder I always feel when I discover that someone who should be my age is in fact dead. The third is that her ending is perfect. The fourth and final thing, speaking from my experience as a writer and an editor, is that no general-interest print magazine today would run a story at this length. Do we live in a less-literate era, or are publishers trying to save money on paper and postage? Or is it just that no one alive today is as interesting as Carl Sagan?