Science & Public Conference 2010 (Report)

At the crossroads: The Science and the Public Conference 2010
By Oliver Escobar
Centre for Dialogue (Queen Margaret University)
Public Engagement Fellow (Edinburgh Beltane)

Whether you are a seasoned ‘public engager’ or a rookie science communicator, a natural or a social scientist, an artist or an engaged member of the public… Imperial College London and the Science Museum were the right places to spend the first weekend of July.

The Science and the Public Conference 2010 included a staggering total of 52 presentations, packed into a sunny weekend in London (3rd-4th July). The event was a melting pot of stimulating cross-disciplinary work from all around Europe. Only a theme as fascinating as the relationship between science ad society could bring together scientists, sociologists, psychologists, artists, communicators, policy makers, etc… to explore such relationship from multiple angles and perspectives. A number of subthemes characterised the event. I will group them in three blocks:

• best practice in communication;
• the challenges of public engagement with controversial science and;
• the emergence of a critical mass of new debates.

In the first place, there was a vast amount of work done on understanding and taking advantage of the multimedia context that is reshaping our societies. For instance, there were papers exploring the power of visual communication, the synergy between online and face to face engagement, the importance of comics and cartoons as tools for communicating science, the use that marketing and advertising has done of ‘scientific imagery’, and the way in which popular TV dramas integrate science and storytelling. Another prominent place was occupied by the study of interpersonal communication in a variety of contexts. For instance, papers on issues stemming from the medical sciences reflected on the challenges of engaging patients; a remarkable number of presentations explored the synergy between science and art; and a great deal of effort went into analysing the complex relationship between scientific communities and diverse publics or audiences.

In the chapter of controversial science we found, as you would expect, a continuation in the study of some of the issues that have populated the field in the last decade. Namely, a variety of perspectives on public engagement with nanotechnology, biotechnology, genomics and GM, vaccines, and in general issues around religiosity, media framing, publics attitudes and perceptions, and risk and uncertainty.

This takes us to some of the emerging debates. The relationship between policy makers, citizens and scientific communities appeared as a cross-cutting theme in a number of papers. In particular, the challenge of bridging the gap between experts and laypersons keeps attracting attention. In this subject, there were interesting presentations from a team of German psychologists that are currently exploring issues around the formation of different kinds of knowledge and beliefs, and how this impacts on expert/non-expert communication. These are issues that overlap with the second theme that I would like to highlight here, namely, the use of ‘dialogue’ in public engagement. Although there is some tacit consensus on the value of public dialogue on science, there is little agreement on how this translates into practice. Dialogue, as a communication practice, is widely misunderstood. This was clear in some presentations where the concept of dialogue was used in its ‘theatrical’ sense, that is, as a synonym for conversational exchange. However, dialogue –from a communications’ perspective- does not merely refer to any exchange of utterances. It entails specific dynamics that focus on mutual understanding and relationship, and in general it refers to high quality communication where participants achieve deep levels of reciprocal inquiry. I do not doubt the potential of dialogue formats in dealing with controversial science, emotional and conflictive issues, and the gap between experts and lay citizens. However, it is important that we do not overstretch the concept to name every interactive process. When a concept of this nature is used vaguely to mean many different things, it may end up meaning nothing.

Moving on, I would like to briefly refer to the keynote lecture given by Professor David Edgerton: ‘Pots and Kettles: Science Policy elites and their Understanding of Science’. Besides other interesting views, Prof. Edgerton suggested one simple way of moving the field forward: ‘Avoiding the use of the word “science” will raise the intellectual level of our reflections about the relationship between science and the public’. Prof. Edgerton stated that when we use general terms such as “science” or “technology” we are ‘acting as ideologues or spin doctors’. Instead, we should always specify: industry research on…university research on…medical research on…; etc. In his view, qualifying what kind of science and technology we refer to will help to get a deeper level of understanding of the relationship between scientific communities and publics.

I would also like to take this opportunity to mention my presentation, which was co-written with my colleague Magda Pieczka at Queen Margaret University. Our paper, ‘Meet the engagers: The professionalization of science public engagement in Scotland’, explores the world and challenges of this emerging profession. It follows on our previous research into science policy in the UK.

Finally, let me conclude with an observation. For all the cross-disciplinary work present at the conference, I noticed some significant absentees, namely, communication scholars and political scientists. This absence is remarkable if we take into account that both disciplines already have vast experience in dealing with similar issues. For instance, deliberative theory and dialogue scholarship have been growing in the last three decades providing myriad case studies on community engagement, conflict resolution or collaborative policy making, to name but a few. It seems a useful way of concluding this report to call for new cross-cutting initiatives that try to bridge these areas of expertise. Establishing those connections will serve us well not only to avoid wasting our time in reinventing the wheel, but also in terms of fostering the necessary synergy to deal with the challenges ahead.

* If you want to receive any abstracts from the conference, or you are interested in our work on dialogue and public engagement, please contact: oliver.escobar@ed.ac.uk or mpieczka@qmu.ac.uk