Cheltenham Sparring
at 11:38am on Monday, 13th June 2005
But it was great to have such a range of views, from speakers and audiences, about science. A bunch of conversations I had reminded me that there is still a lot of nervousness about public engagement. A lot of the people in Cheltenham would see themselves as defenders of science. They would argue that politics needs to be taken out of science to make it more effective, more neutral and better for the public. They see public engagement as putting politics back in, which spoils things.
Many of the science defenders also see public engagement as adding new layers of technocracy ' making new jobs for the social scientist boys. One of the things I'm keen on is using the energy behind the kinds of science communication seen at science festivals and redirecting it to make it more conversational. I'm all for enrolling scientists to the public engagement cause and making social scientists redundant (eventually).
These kinds of discussions have informed much of Demos's new thinking about science, which will be revealed in a pamphlet that James is with Brian Wynne ' launching in September. Watch this space.
On the westbound train, I had a long chat to Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas and radio 4 brainfest The Moral Maze. She was heading to Cheltenham to start a fight about science education.
But it was great to have such a range of views, from speakers and audiences, about science. A bunch of conversations I had reminded me that there is still a lot of nervousness about public engagement. A lot of the people in Cheltenham would see themselves as defenders of science. They would argue that politics needs to be taken out of science to make it more effective, more neutral and better for the public. They see public engagement as putting politics back in, which spoils things.
Many of the science defenders also see public engagement as adding new layers of technocracy ' making new jobs for the social scientist boys. One of the things I'm keen on is using the energy behind the kinds of science communication seen at science festivals and redirecting it to make it more conversational. I'm all for enrolling scientists to the public engagement cause and making social scientists redundant (eventually).
These kinds of discussions have informed much of Demos's new thinking about science, which will be revealed in a pamphlet that James is with Brian Wynne ' launching in September. Watch this space.
On the westbound train, I had a long chat to Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas and radio 4 brainfest The Moral Maze. She was heading to Cheltenham to start a fight about science education.
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