Nicola Buckley cautions against inflation

I think we need to continue to build our public engagement programmes from an understanding of the interests and concerns of the public, and not just those of the scientists and policymakers.

I find that my role coordinating the Cambridge Science Festival involves a constantly-shifting balance between ‘science boosterism’ (the term, which means promoting one's domain to improve its public perception, comes from a report on New York’s recent World Science Fair) and aiming for broader public engagement in issues of scientific interest and concern.

Necessary but trivialising

Science boosterism is working to some extent: the public face of scientists seems slightly less these days the arrogant, aloof white-coated image, and seems rather closer to that of a clever person who might help tackle climate change, or find out more about the building blocks of the Universe. There has also been great investment in science teacher training, curriculum reform and enrichment opportunities for young people, with some initially encouraging results in including more young people in science education provision.

However, boosterism can trivialise science. As I heard Brian Trench of Dublin City University say, ‘You can tell an area of study is in trouble when you see the bright T-shirts.’ I plead guilty to bright T-shirts. Our Science Festival T-shirts in recent years have been orange, green, pink and turquoise. He might have added that a subject is really in trouble when stickers are printed with leopard-skin pants on them saying: ‘Smarty pants’ to promote physics.

Yet boosterism is necessary. Without it, I’d find it nearly impossible to raise the £90,000 or so in sponsorship and grants our festival needs each year from a mix of public bodies and companies to offer our free events to 30,000 members of the public. But it’s crucially important for practitioners in public engagement with science to notice when we’re doing boosterism and when we’re attempting instead to begin with the public’s questions, passions or concerns and develop dialogue from that starting point.

Public-engagement wash

We should be cautious about propagating a kind of ‘public engagement-wash’, in the way in which some institutions have been accused of ‘green-wash’ as they use a veneer of concern for the environment to improve their image while conducting business very much as usual. There have been some good examples of public engagement in science feeding into policy(1) but, as the Nanotechnology Engagement Group urges, we need to be clear with funders, organisers and participants about the purpose of a public dialogue initiative, and strategies created to meet those needs(2).

Like many public engagement practitioners, with input from outstanding scientists and communicators, I organise and market public discussions and events on topics like nutrition and mental health; science and technology in international development; how to measure your carbon footprint and the possibilities of more of the UK’s energy coming from renewable sources. Many such events are organised without having a mechanism to feed public views into policy, and I think that is right and understandable – public discussion events, interactive websites and exhibitions all help to make science part of culture, with efforts made to attract harder-to-reach audiences. These activities also help to inform scientists about the public’s views.

Democratise science

But we should not lose sight of the goal to further democratise science and involve members of the public in helping to set research strategies. For example, a growing international movement of community-based research, loosely co-ordinated by the Living Knowledge network, encompasses a number of science shops in Europe and elsewhere. These aim to involve civil society in setting research agendas, often initially addressing local topics of concern, environmental or social(3).

At the University of Cambridge, we are starting a small-scale community knowledge exchange which will ask civil society organisations whether they have research questions which could be posed to students for projects in subjects including engineering, IT, geography, sociology and business.

As we prepare for further challenging interactions between policy makers, scientists and the public over issues like GM crop trials and new nuclear power stations, we need to be highly conscious that the public can see through ‘public engagement-wash’ and realise that doing too much science boosterism will divert us from listening and entering into meaningful dialogue with the public.

Reference

1. The Sciencewise Knowledge Hub has a useful collection of reports by government agencies and other policy makers in response to public consultation exercises, in areas from stem cell research to atomic weapons.

2. K. Gavelin, R. Wilson, with R. Doubleday (2007),Democratic technologies? The final report of the Nanotechnology Engagement Group, Involve, London

3. http://www.livingknowledge.org/

Nicola Buckley manages the Cambridge Science Festival