Dear all,
Many of you will have seen some of yesterday's discussion on Twitter that arose from criticisms of science communication and public engagement projects by Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh.
Most of you will have not spent three hours tracking and tracing the resulting tweets on Storify.
I did!
A few threads came out of Goldacre's initial attack on the Science Museum for "endorsing" the so-called Dr Love and his claims about oxytocin (http://bit.ly/Ma3pUT). Singh's criticism of the IoP's "Lab In A Lorry" and collaboration with Ballet Rambert sparked a lot of comments, though Singh did not participate in much public discussion.
Conversations focused on the funding of sci-comm and public engagement and the need for evaluation - credit to Amy Sanders for first raising the issue. Heather Doran and Petra Boynton took a small tangent into the difficulty of finding time and institutional recognition for PE activities. Tom Whyntie blew the @IronyKlaxon and Goldacre was challenged on his proclamation that he could "make shit happen" given a thousandth of the money that is spent on science engagement.
Steve Cross offered sage words as ever, and a discussion with Victoria Herridge about the need for plurality of approaches followed. How to evaluate was briefly covered between Steve, Andrew Holding and Eva Amsen. Martha Henson shared some preliminary evaluations about Wellcome Trust's Axon game.
However, the most profound comment was this:
@OXYTOCINHULK: @bengoldacre OCYTOCIN HULK SMASH BAD SCIENCE COMMUNICATION USING GIANT HUG MOLECULES
Louise
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