杏吧原创

IS THE goal of increasing the public鈥檚 understanding of science simply
finding ways to communicate a coherent body of knowledge to a group more or less
ignorant of it? Or is there more to it than that? The nine essays in
Misunderstanding Science? edited by Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne (Cambridge
University Press, 拢35/$59.95, ISBN 0 521 43268 5) explore a wide
range of issues relevant to anyone interested in the public communication of
science, but they also left me a little perturbed.

Sharon MacDonald鈥檚 exploration of the development of Food for
Thought, an exhibition at the Science Museum, draws attention to the hidden
hands that 鈥済hostwrite鈥� to ensure that content will find peer approval, that
commercially sensitive information is kept private and that the perceived
expectations of the institutions in which scientists work are met.

All of these factors may influence what scientists and science authors
communicate鈥攊ncluding this review. I find myself evaluating the editors鈥�
evaluations of their contributors鈥� evaluations who, in turn, are evaluating the
ways in which people evaluate science for their own use. This process seems to
be in danger of falling foul of what Steven Yearley describes, in his
exploration of the use of science within the environmental theatre, as that
constant inward analysis of applying science to itself which can eventually lead
to a crisis of credibility. He draws attention to the need for science
communication to stand up to expert interrogation by law and media.

In investigating sheep farmers in the Lake District and scientists after the
Chernobyl accident, Wynne shows that his need to translate so many of the
farmers鈥� comments indicates the barriers that science鈥檚 pundits created.

What might be worth equal attention is where science unexpectedly appears:
the empirical knowledge of the Lake District sheep farmers implied a greater
understanding of their fragile local ecology than that of the visiting
scientists.