Science Communication

Abstract

A common stereotype of the scientist is of someone withdrawn from society and isolated from its values (Haynes, 1994; Howard, 2007). However, modern science rarely generates knowledge and products from such individuals: instead, it is a collective enterprise, organised via collaboration and competition among groups that may be multidisciplinary and geographically dispersed (Wagner, 2009). The professional norms of the scientific community demand that knowledge and practice be open to scrutiny, conducted without prejudice and shared widely (Merton, 1968). So science is, ideally, a public activity, and secrecy, private ownership, and personal knowledge are the hallmarks of invalid knowledge. Scientists function not so much through a profession, bound together, for example, by common accreditation, nor as a trade, bound by common skills, but as a community in which a wide diversity of knowledges, practices, objects, and people are held together by communication. (The idea of a community-formed-by-communication is one of this book’s central motifs; see for example Chapter 12’s discussion of religion as communication, and Chapter 7’s discussion of how the representations of marginalised communities can bolster threatened identities.) According to sociologist of science John Ziman, ‘the fundamental social institution of science is … its system of communication’ (Ziman, 1984, 2002).

‘True descendants of Prometheus, the science writers take the fire from the scientific Olympus, the laboratories and the universities, and bring it down to the people.’

New York Times journalist William Laurence, 1943

‘… if the UK is to take full advantage of the opportunities for creating wealth and improving quality of life offered by scientific discovery and technological development, it is crucial that we develop new approaches to bring scientists and the public together in a constructive dialogue to explore emerging issues.’

UK Government Office of Science and Innovation, 2006

‘Scientists and engineers can change the world, but first they need to get over their “serious marketing problem”.’

Google co-founder Larry Page, 2007