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• Alt. med science caff On Wednesday we hosted our second health-based science caff. We had Toby Murcott, author and minstrel science journalist, talking about alternative medicine. Now, we're not the first people to point out that alternative medicine gives us plenty to get our science policy teeth into. But what pleased me was that the discussion was so open, so balanced and so wide ranging.Debates about unorthodoxy can easily form up around the "It's true!.. No, it's snake oil" axis. That's fine, but a bit dull.... from : jackstilgoe 17th June 2005
• Cheltenham Sparring 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... from : jackstilgoe 13th June 2005
• Putting the "pub" back in "public engagement" While Jack was taking LA by storm, and James was galavanting around India, I was getting my own dose of excitement at the ESRC-funded Science in Society workshop, right here in sunny London yesterday.In the modern if window-less basement of The Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry or DPEI (the re-branded DTI), a few social scientists and civil servants were thrown into a room together to figure out how public engagement can inform horizon scanning. Steve Rayner led a lively... from : mollywebb 13th May 2005
• Sing us a song, you're the nanoman Running really low on nano puns. No bad thing.Just got back back from the annual Nanotechnology schmoozathon in Los Angeles. For most of the four days, I was more ethnographer than contributor. But there was a thoughtful session on "nanotechnology and society". I talked about See-through Science and our Nanodialogues project. Others, including Julia Moore and Don Reed, discussed the lessons from the GM saga. There was also talk of risk research and standards-setting. The odd thing was that,... from : jackstilgoe 13th May 2005
• Mile high blogging This is a first - for me at least - I'm posting this from 35,000 feet above Afghanistan. I'm currently on a Lufthansa flight and thanks to the new Boeing Skynet service, am savouring the joys of full broadband access (even the Demos VPN works!). Advert over. My real reason for posting is to say I'll be away from the office for the rest of May, carrying out some scoping research for our Atlas of Ideas project, which is exploring trends in science and innovation in China, India and South... from : jameswilsdon 8th May 2005
• ... and now for the science bit ?The personalised is political? - pharmacogenetics and medical futures Thursday 19th May, from 5pm to 6:30pmDemosThird FloorMagdalen House136 Tooley StreetLondon SE1 2TUCome along to the first of the Demos Science Caf?s. These monthly events are an opportunity for scientists, policymakers, journalists and social scientists to draw out the policy implications of current scientific issues.At each caf?, we?ll hear from a visiting speaker about their work. The discussion will then be open to our... from : jackstilgoe 3rd May 2005
• The March of Unreason The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalismby Dick TaverneOxford University Press ?18.99, 310 pagesLord Taverne is a man with a mission. In 2002, angered by the public backlash against genetically modified crops, the Liberal Democrat peer founded a pressure group, Sense About Science, ?to promote an evidence-based approach to scientific issues?.Like every political movement, Sense About Science requires a manifesto, a core body of arguments around which its followers... from : jameswilsdon 17th April 2005
• Nano Nano Lord Sainsbury announced yesterday his new grants for public engagement with science, one of which is funding a new Demos project with Lancaster University. After See-Through Science, we are squaring up to our own challenge and doing some innovative public engagement experiments with a handful of organisations who have different approaches to 'science' and 'the public'. For more info on this project, which we call Nano-Dialogues, email me.Last night, I was part of another form of... from : jackstilgoe 18th March 2005
• My Darwin Valentine How could I have missed it?! While Hallmark stores everywhere hawked their chocolate hearts for Valentine's day, Darwin Day on February 12th, a celebration of 'science and humanity', slipped by as stealthily as some junk DNA.Of the hundreds of events from Cambridge to Kathmandu, I was sad to have missed the Phylum Feast in Ontario, Canada: "We celebrate Darwin's birthday with a potluck meal made up of as many kinds of organisms as possible, to remember our origin as omnivores and our... from : mollywebb 15th February 2005
• Illness, Expertise and Charlie Hodgson's floppy foot. There was some ham-fisted criticism of such policies on the grounds that they somehow undermined the authority of science. But, more interestingly, there were valid questions about how such attempts to engage publics should be implemented. Many people?s criticisms seemed to suggest that the top-down programme forced both patients and doctors to behave in a certain, prescribed way. This raises important questions?Should public engagement experiments be seen as instruments or opportunities? Real... from : jackstilgoe 14th February 2005

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