Hi
Just taking a break from my current "public understanding of history"
(generally pronounced "pooh") project to comment on the debate about names
for what psci-commers do.
At first sight, this debate is trivial nonsense. Some names suggested are
downright silly, others have lavatorial acronyms, and who cares about a name
anyway?
Thinking again, names are important. They communicate what you do and,
often, your attitudes to what you do. "London First" is an example, non-one
would think that it was promoting Scottish independence.
Most members of psci-com are science communicators, science policy people or
science academics. But most seem to want to keep the "public" element in
their name. Those that have responded in the last few days seem to relish
being part of a community centred on the public. Be they PUSists, PESTs, or
PISTalites, the one thing they all endorse is that its all about the public;
hence their names infer that the public leads the agenda.
But this really the case? Isn't what many people are doing public relations,
and discrete (or otherwise) lobbying for science? (And nothing wrong with
that I say!) Some are educators but doesn't science drive their agendas
rather than the public? Surely science leads the entire "public
understanding" process and, if there has to be a name for this disparate
band of communicating marauders, it should begin with Science. Let's drop
the "public" bit and go back to the future. We should own up to being
science communicators, science educators and science facilitators (and in my
case, a science evaluator).
Andy Boddington
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