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Follow the links in this piece and you arrive at a paper that wants me to pay US$34.00 before I can read it. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a931921327~db=all What was that about the lack of openness in the media? (I agree about that, by the way.) MK -----Original Message----- From: psci-com: on public engagement with science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephan Matthiesen Sent: 29 January 2011 09:47 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [PSCI-COM] On openness in science and public engagement - a different view Hello, as we hear recurrent demands that scientists should be more open and engage more with the public, here is a different perspective from a scientist, discussing the perception of climate science. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/the-obvious-answer/ Most scientists that I know would probably agree to the following quote: "journalism is supposed to unveil questionable practices, but apparently the media itself does not practice openness and transparency. There are questions that are relevant to the information we receive, such as: What happens in the editorial rooms and how are decisions made? What are the criteria for selecting the ‘experts’ for debates, and hence frame them from the start? What part of the story is left out in news reports (which can be considered as manipulation if citations are taken out of context or video clips are cut and re-assembled in a way that gives the wrong idea) ? I would like to confront journalists and editors with these questions, because the real difference when it comes to power is not the scientific knowledge, but how it is communicated to the policy makers and the general public." It seems to me that, if we want science to be better integrated in society, the way is not to demand more and more from the scientists, but also look at the role of other players in society, most importantly the professional science engagers and the media. Science is already an extremely open activity. I'm not only saying that many scientists are already interested and eager to communicate with anybody, given an opportunity. More importantly, science is inherently public, results are published so that everybody can get them, and anybody who wants can come along to seminars and hear how science is done. You can email any scientist, and normally (if your question was sensible) you get a sensible response. I've never seen a scientist who refused to share his work with others. Compare that to the situation in other important sectors of society: when did you last hear a banker giving a public talk on how their bank makes their business decisions? Can you go along to a board meeting of a multinational company, or to the editorial room of a national newspaper and listen (or even ask questions) why they make certain decisions? Are these sectors less important in society than science? Sure, much of the communication that scientists do needs background knowledge and some effort on both sides. So it seems to me that the point is not that scientists should do MORE public engagement, and there is little need for strategy papers trying to convince scientists that they should do more - because scientists are already quite happy to do that, if there is a meaningful opportunity. Many create their own opportunities, for example by writing blogs (which then get belittled because they are not journalistic enough - we just can't do things right, can we?) Rather, the question is how to bring together scientists and interested people together in a meaningful way. This is something that isn't the job of scientists alone and can't be done by scientists alone, it needs significant support by other sectors of the society. Cheers Stephan -- Stephan Matthiesen http://www.stephan-matthiesen.de Neu auf www.science-texts.de: Wülstig - das Januarmuster ********************************************************************** 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 You may also change your settings and subscribe/unsubscribe to psci-com from the web site. Psci-com is part of the National Academic Mailing List Service, known as 'JISCMail'. It adheres to the JISCMail Acceptible Use Policy: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html and to the JISCMail guidelines for etiquette: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/etiquette.html Email commands: 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens] 2. 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It adheres to the JISCMail Acceptible Use Policy: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html and to the JISCMail guidelines for etiquette: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/etiquette.html Email commands: 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens] 2. To resume email from the list, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens] 3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: leave psci-com -- [include hyphens] Please allow up to 24 hours for these commands to activate. Remember that you will need to send commands using the same email address that you used to register on psci-com. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to: [log in to unmask] **********************************************************************