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What a great opportunity for the public to get a better understanding of the nature of science. I hope it's used as a chance to value the Question more highly than the Answer. Wouldn't it be great if the public's most asked question was one that we can't yet answer ! What a fabulous opportunity to say 'Yes, science is about discovering that which we do not yet know, not actually about experts trotting out tried and tested answers'. There could be a session at Cheltenham devoted to an open format audience discussion to design experiments to answer some of these questions and then comparing that with the way that current understanding was actually arrived at. I particularly like the question 'Why do we go grey?' because it presumably ends up at the question 'Why do we age?' One could have a panel taking the audience through the idea of how we have got to our current understanding .... visible microscopy, electron microscopy, pigments, DNA sequencing etc.... and give a really long term view of how 'discoveries' such as 'how we go grey' are actually the result of a very long process of experimentation.... real science. Kevin Hollis ********************************************************************** 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail 2. To resume email from the list, send the following message: set psci-com mail 3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: leave psci-com 4. Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html 5. The psci-com gateway to internet resources on science communication and science and society can be found at http://psci-com.ac.uk **********************************************************************