I will break with the tradition of this debate by not quoting the whole
of a long message, itself quoting the whole of another long message,
quoting another message and so on.
Firstly, 'um lei para popularizar a ciencia' doesn't quite mean the same
as popularization of science. Em portugues, 'popular' means of the
public, belonging to the citizens (pelo menos em portugues Mocambicano,
nao sou corrente com os significados Brasileiros). It doesn't
necessarily have the manipulative overtones it has acquired in the UK.
(Although there are always pressures on politicians and civil servants
to descend Arnstein's ladder from citizens control through consultation
to manipulation.)
It could mean a law to bring science closer to the ordinary people. That
could include mass involvement in amateur science (e.g. astronomy,
archaelogy and ornithology in the UK), and schoolchildren taking part in
science projects (in Maputo I came across schools that taught Chemistry
with no experiments, just copying notes from the blackboard), as well as
the deliberative democracy examples mentioned by others in this debate.
Think of the transformation of engineering education in many countries
when the staff and students started working on Appropriate Technology.
Now whether you want to promote citizen scientists, or get
environmentalists and loggers to jointly author a report on forestry
policy (as Aldo de Moor did in British Columbia using GRASS
(http://www.wagenvoort.net/grass/) showing their differences, any law
should promote innovation: through financial rewards, funding for any
group wanting to work on innovative approaches to popular science (not
just the scientists), and removing legal obstacles to such innovations.
The last can be quite important in bureaucratic states.
--
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast, School of
Management and Economics, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland (UK)
Tel. +44 28 9097 3643 FAX: +44 28 9097 5156
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/
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