There’s lots about engagement in this issue of SPA. Given Melvyn Bragg’s passionate defence of science as part of culture, we might wonder what all the fuss is about. Why should we tie ourselves in knots about the way we relate to science, any more than to art or literature? Perhaps the scicom community should work towards being dismissed with a yawn. In the meantime, however, the discussions continue.

Engagement is a timely theme, given the government’s current consultation on science and society. Its aim is to promote public engagement on science issues and encourage more people to choose science as a career, and it’s accompanied by an attractive website which allows everyone to comment online. ‘We want to hear from you,’ says Science and Innovation Minister Ian Pearson in one of the site’s videos.

So far, so politically correct. But what’s this? Pearson also says it’s really important to ‘…ensure that we take the public with us.’ The public may be forgiven for wondering whether their views are simply to rubber-stamp a path already chosen.

A similar question was raised at the recent Public Communication of Science and Technology conference in Malmö. Felicity Mellor discusses the way it raised whether engagement is ‘a means of imposing consensus on an unwilling public, or a process through which non-scientists are able to determine the nature of the technological society in which they wish to live.’ According to Sue Hordijenko’s report of the Euroscience Open Forum, that meeting took the purpose of engagement for granted. ‘The overarching reason to engage,’ she writes, ‘was deemed to be the need to gain public acceptance of science – a type of missionary role to convert the sweaty proletariat.’

Back in the UK, John Beddington’s wish for his term as the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser is to develop engagement to the point where ‘new developments are appraised with regard to the scientific evidence alongside their economic, cultural and ethical implications’. We also find enthusiasm for engagement in nanotechnology, brain science, biodiversity and synthetic biology; although Paul Martin and his colleagues are pretty sanguine about the process as far as the last of these is concerned. ‘Time will tell whether the lines of communication between science and the public will really ever get very busy, or whether the conversation is likely to be as one-way as it has always been,’ they say. ‘At the moment we can only say that it’s worth trying.’

Meanwhile, Chris Langley finds that, on the question of funding for military research, universities positively shun engagement.

Journalists are, inevitably, part of the chain of engagement. Ian Gibson attacks the media for polarizing the debate about NHS co-payments, while Fiona Fox defends the Science Media Centre from the generalized charge of ‘churnalism’.

Tracey Brown has a remedy for the sci com community’s navel-gazing. ‘The idea that some kind of one-size-fits-all winning idea is going to set out the terms of a relationship between the public and science is likely to be a fiction,’ she says. Her prescription? Get out and engage, and form relationships with the public in the process. 

Wendy Barnaby, Editor

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