Writing in 1987, Geoffery Thomas and John Durant describe the various reasons for increased Public Understanding of Science as follows:
* Benefits to Science – This is the ‘to know is to love’ argument, and perhaps mixes up the word ‘understanding’ with ‘appreciation’. It suggests that increased PUS will lead to more funding, looser regulation and more trained scientists.
* Benefits to National Economics – This argues that to compete economically we need trained scientists and engineers, which more PUS will provide.
* Benefits to Individuals – This is based on the sense that we live in a technological society, and assumes that we must know some science to negotiate it (e.g. knowing about surface tension helps us kill spiders).
* Benefits to Democratic Government & Society as a Whole – This train of thought emphasises that a scientifically informed electorate equals a more democratically run society.
* Intellectual, Aesthetic, and Moral Benefits – These arguments assume science is good for the soul in some way and increased PUS will lead to a populous of happier and more fulfilled individuals, perhaps equating science with the arts or religion.
Such arguments are quite old. As are rebuttals of them. For example, writing in 1952, I. Bernard Cohen points out a set of ‘fallacies’ in arguments for improved science education:
* Fallacy of Scientific Idolatry – ‘believing scientists to be lay saints, priests of truth, and superior beings who devote their lives to the selfless pursuit of higher things’.
* Fallacy of Critical Thinking – understanding science does not necessarily give you this transferable skill, as ‘may easily be demonstrated by examining carefully the lives of scientists outside of the laboratory’.
* Fallacy of Scientism – science is not the best or only way to solve problems.
* Fallacy of Miscellaneous Information – ‘the belief in the usefulness of unrelated information such as the boiling point of water, the distance in light years from the earth to various stars, the names of minerals’.
Most of the key criticisms of PUS come from 1990s work from scholars in Science and Technology Studies. For example Steven Hilgartner (1990) argues that what he calls 'the domanant view' of science popularization tends to imply a tight boundary around those who can articulate true, reliable knowledge. By defining a deficient public as recipients of knowledge, the scientists get to contrast their own identity as experts. The process of popularisation is a form of boundary work. Understood in this way, science communication may explicitly exist to connect scientists with the rest of society, but its very existence only acts to emphasise it: as if the scientific community only invited the public to play in order to reinforce its most powerful boundary (see also Bucchi, 1998).Similarly, in his seminal study of Cumbrian sheep farmers.
* Benefits to Science – This is the ‘to know is to love’ argument, and perhaps mixes up the word ‘understanding’ with ‘appreciation’. It suggests that increased PUS will lead to more funding, looser regulation and more trained scientists.
* Benefits to National Economics – This argues that to compete economically we need trained scientists and engineers, which more PUS will provide.
* Benefits to Individuals – This is based on the sense that we live in a technological society, and assumes that we must know some science to negotiate it (e.g. knowing about surface tension helps us kill spiders).
* Benefits to Democratic Government & Society as a Whole – This train of thought emphasises that a scientifically informed electorate equals a more democratically run society.
* Intellectual, Aesthetic, and Moral Benefits – These arguments assume science is good for the soul in some way and increased PUS will lead to a populous of happier and more fulfilled individuals, perhaps equating science with the arts or religion.
Such arguments are quite old. As are rebuttals of them. For example, writing in 1952, I. Bernard Cohen points out a set of ‘fallacies’ in arguments for improved science education:
* Fallacy of Scientific Idolatry – ‘believing scientists to be lay saints, priests of truth, and superior beings who devote their lives to the selfless pursuit of higher things’.
* Fallacy of Critical Thinking – understanding science does not necessarily give you this transferable skill, as ‘may easily be demonstrated by examining carefully the lives of scientists outside of the laboratory’.
* Fallacy of Scientism – science is not the best or only way to solve problems.
* Fallacy of Miscellaneous Information – ‘the belief in the usefulness of unrelated information such as the boiling point of water, the distance in light years from the earth to various stars, the names of minerals’.
Most of the key criticisms of PUS come from 1990s work from scholars in Science and Technology Studies. For example Steven Hilgartner (1990) argues that what he calls 'the domanant view' of science popularization tends to imply a tight boundary around those who can articulate true, reliable knowledge. By defining a deficient public as recipients of knowledge, the scientists get to contrast their own identity as experts. The process of popularisation is a form of boundary work. Understood in this way, science communication may explicitly exist to connect scientists with the rest of society, but its very existence only acts to emphasise it: as if the scientific community only invited the public to play in order to reinforce its most powerful boundary (see also Bucchi, 1998).Similarly, in his seminal study of Cumbrian sheep farmers.
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