Science & Public 2007
19th May 2007, Imperial College, London
F U L L
P R O G R A M M E
9:45 – 10 Introduction & Welcome. Room 303a/b.
10:00 – 11:30 Session One
Medical meanings: Co-construction, Dispute and Debate
Room 303a/b. Chair: Nick Russell.
“You’ve Got It, You May Have It, You Haven’t Got It”: the Unintended
Consequences Of HIV Testing.
Kevin P. Corbett. Liverpool John Moores University.
This paper considers the experiences of health consumers who have undergone
diagnostic screening using HIV antibody, T cell and polymerase chain reaction
(PCR)/viral load tests. These HIV-related screening tests are deployed for the
purposes of making definitive diagnoses yet some consumers of testing do
experience imprecise outcomes and these ‘anomalous’ experiences have been
reported in the literature. Drawing on an analysis of different end user
experiences of these tests, where consumers’ knowledge reflected the
multiplicity and heterogeneity in test design, I explore how these user
experiences reflect particular knowledge about these tests. The paper
contributes to efforts documenting how health consumers are active end users
co-constructing the social meaning of technologies in mutual relations with other
users. Of particular relevance is how such knowledge can be used to delineate a
greater role for health consumers in evaluating medical screening technologies
as well as for building a broader understanding of medical test design and
performance.
Biomedicine and the pro-anorexia movement.
María González Aguado, Complutense University, Madrid.
Medicine, psychiatry and psychology offer five different explanatory models
(biological, psychoanalytical, cognitive, social and feminist focuses) about the
etiology of nervous anorexia, but there isn’t any satisfactory hypothesis who
explains in an only way its actual form. However, biomedical research centres in
biological and genetic justifications, minimizing the impact of another kind of
causes of not organic origin. Orthodox experts´ discourse, generally, considers
secondary social and cultural aspects. Most of these etiologies call “ biological”
some cultural or social factors, like the theory that designates anorexia’s origin
in gene “ob”, really, this gene only determines the possibility of enduring obesity,
but being obese only can be a risk factor to nervous anorexia if the environment
condemns obese body. On the one hand, biomedical science defends biological
and genetic arguments, but to the other hand it motivates women to get slender
their bodies doing diets and physical exercises or undergoing surgical operation.
Biological reasons are appreciated, provided that these ones give an etiologycal
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explanation of anorexia, but there is not a biological determinism about the form
and size of bodies.
This contradiction inside biomedical premises shows up again in the different
conceptions of anorexia and anorexic body on the Internet. Web sites who
defend anorexia like a life-style have got the same determinist discourses as
biomedicine supports, consequently frontiers between health and disease
became blurred. Pro- anorexia movement and biomedical science also have got
the same conception about corporal transformations to get a slender body.
Convergence between both discourses makes possible the social and cultural
hypothesis´ recognition.
Positioning and life politics through reproductive technology debates in
biology class.
Padraig Murphy, Dublin City University.
Film and role-play have been used extensively as tools to allow young people to
see holistically consequences of decision-making in reproductive and genetic
technologies. But how do emergent frames in the classrooms run up against
cultural and media frames from wider discourse? I presented two basic activities
to biology classrooms, with students aged from 15-17 years. For Activity 1,
biotechnology was framed as having social consequences when involving preimplantation genetic diagnosis, sex selection, and human embryo stem cell
research. Having watched a film showing these consequences, participants
moved around the room taking positions corresponding to statements
representing character’s point of view (from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly
Disagree’). For Activity 2, biotechnology was framed as a job leading to
beneficial research, its practitioners similar to the audience. Presentations by
young biotechnologists in real world science-in-action portrayed their role in less
controversial processes of biotechnology, relating more scientific details than the
films, and setting a scientist’s view of their place within society.
The dramaturgical work of Goffman (1959) was called on to place the study
within an interactionist and social constructivist paradigm. Classroom responses
to these two ‘research frames’ open up possibilities to explore dramaturgical
roles/ positions, or career/realisation themes as well as other frames that
counteract or complement these. By using positioning analysis, we can observe
how characters’ empowerment motivations in the films can relate to power in
classroom discourse to wider discourses on biotechnology and identity. By
focusing on identities within the context of bioscience, school science and
characters in a film, I got a multi-perspective of self, the other, and the limits
with which the participants in their roles construct and demarcate such identities
as ‘embryo’, ‘unnatural, ‘scientist,’ and ‘teachers.’ Preliminary constructions show
emerging frames that relate strongly to Giddens’ (1991) life politics, an ethics
that binds post-traditional questions of authenticity, choice and existentialism
with global science, and are of a higher complexity than the accepted prolife/anti-choice dichotomy of reproductive debates.
Science & Public 2007
19th May 2007, Imperial College, London
Adventures in PEST
Room 315. Chair: Sarah Davies.
An Experiment in Total Engagement: Science-Society Interactions in the
People’s Republic of China, 1955-1960.
Steven Robert Harris, University of Glamorgan.
Given the current advocacy by UK and European science communicators of
dialogue-based and “upstream” models of science-society interaction, it may be
useful to reflect upon a recent period in world history when such approaches
briefly became the norm. In the mid 1950’s the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
was economically, scientifically and technologically underdeveloped. The
governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) identified the rapid popularisation of
scientific knowledge as an important strategy for improving the country’s
situation. Consequently, peasants and workers were strongly encouraged to
engage in scientific research directly related to their labour in the fields and
factories. This was not only supported by forging new links between academic,
vocational and basic education, but also by encouraging a previously unknown
level of interaction between the public and scientists.
To the modern observer, one of the most striking aspects of this initiative was the
phenomenon of successful peasant farmers being encouraged to enter and work
within national scientific research centres - despite their lack of formal education
or qualifications. This situation, mainly driven economic necessity, also reflected
a perception of Western capitalist science as intrinsically favouring private
interests over the public good. Hence, for a brief period in the late ‘50s, science
in the PRC was not treated as something mystical, superior and inviolable but
rather as an important part of everyday life directly related to the needs of labour
and the collective welfare. This system, however, broke down together with the
Chinese economy in the early ‘60s, paving the way fro a return to more
conventional Western models for the hierarchical organization of science. This
presentation will consider what, if any lessons can be drawn by modern science
communicators and policy makers from the successes and failures of this truly
radical approach to public engagement with science and technology.
The Participative Approach in the Parliamentary Technology Assessment
Offices: an Evolving Perspective.
Pierre Delvenne, University of Liège.
Our current society is the playground of many changes structural as well as
cultural. That evolution has an impact on the way of developing an office of
Technology Assessment (T.A.) adapted to the new realities. Indeed, starting
from an industrial society in which the main dynamic is inequality, we argue that,
around the period including the 1970’s and the 1980’s, we moved to a risk
society where the main dynamic is uncertainty. This change of societal structure
is not without any effect on the citizens, sub-political actors informed and active
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who nowadays claim for a better place in the public management of
technological innovations.
The end of the industrial period has witnessed the two first parliamentary T.A.
offices, in the United States (1972) and then in France (1983), both drawn
towards an instrumental model which has as a principal mission to “enlighten”
the members of Parliament on complex technological issues. Ever since, other
T.A. offices were created in Europe and most of them took a more participative
shape, based on a discursive model which has also to foster the social
acceptability of technologies by associating all the stakeholders to the decisionmaking process through various participatory methods (consensus conferences,
citizens’ juries, scenario workshops). Has the society of the democratized risk
become a society of the participative cult? Is the modern risk a myth for
participative action in the framework of T.A.? In which proportion are the societal
changes shaping the impact of Technology Assessment? We propose to replace
the elements in a temporal context to bring the T.A. evolution to light from the
early beginning to nowadays compared to the emergence of new social
movements.
The ISOTOPE Project: Informing science outreach and public engagement.
Richard Holliman, Eric Jensen and Peter Taylor, Open University.
Over the last 20 years social researchers have been consistently critical of
simplistic deficit-informed approaches to engaging members of the public, citing
(mainly ethnographic) research findings that allude to the importance of
engaging a wide range of actors, with differing expertise, in dialogue,
consultation and deliberation about emerging and well established socioscientific issues. Culminating in the publication of a number of important policy
documents since the turn of the millennium, the pioneering work of these social
researchers has seen a re-alignment of government and institutional policies in
relation to public engagement.
Informing science outreach and public engagement (ISOTOPE), is a two-year
NESTA-funded interdisciplinary research project currently being undertaken by
staff at the Open University, UK. The project aims to address the emerging
context for a more theoretically informed, evidence-based approach to public
engagement. In this light, the ISOTOPE project team includes social scientists,
educational technologists with expertise in the design, delivery and evaluation of
web-based technical solutions, and scientists with practical experience of public
engagement from a number of scientific disciplines.
In adopting this interdisciplinary collaborative approach, the ISOTOPE project
team is using action research methodology to inform the co-production of an
open source web portal of theoretically informed evidence-based advice for
those interested in participating public engagement activities. In this presentation
we will discuss the data collection methods and initial results from the first focus
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group study; the results of which we hope will inform the later phases of the
project.
Scientists and Artists
Room 316. Chair: Jon Adams.
What Can the Matter Be? Reflections on the Inter-relationship between
Science, Art & Engineering.
Justin Dillon, Mark Miodownik and Zoe Laughlin, King's College London,
and Martin Conreen, Goldsmiths College.
There is a common belief that scientific advances frequently drive artistic
endeavours. In a related, uni-directional vein, Science/Art exhibitions often
involve artists being inspired to produce new works following collaborations with
scientists. However, a closer examination of the history of materials shows that,
in many cases, new substances used for artistic purposes have opened up
opportunities for scientists and engineers to be innovative. In effect, it is art that
has driven many scientific and technological advances.
This proposal is based on the EPSRC-funded project. What Can the Matter Be?
which involves a collaboration between King’s College London, Goldsmiths
College and the Tate Modern. The aim of the project is to investigate ways in
which engagement with contemporary culture enhances the public’s appreciation
of science and engineering. The project has four strands including a
downloadable MP3 Science Tour of the Tate Modern’s galleries and building.
The project commenced in September 2006 and during the first phase the
project team held four events on successive Monday evenings in November. At
each event, 10 ‘conjectures’ were distributed throughout one of the Tate
Modern’s four newly re-hung galleries. Each conjecture allowed participants to
have a hands-on experience of often unusual materials inspired by nearby
paintings or sculptures. Participants’ reactions and conversations were observed
by a team of educational researchers with a view to developing a better
understanding of the affordances of spaces and objects in terms of developing
and sharing the public’s scientific knowledge and artistic awareness.
The feedback from the evening events fed into the development of the MP3 tour
which will be launched in April 2007. The conference paper will present relevant
findings from the evening events as well as responses to the MP3 tour. The
paper is framed in a socio-cultural view of public engagement with science, art
and engineering.
Transgressions: Art and amateur science in an age of specialisation.
Nicola Triscott, the Arts Catalyst
On the 9th May 2004, FBI agents and the Joint Terrorism Task Force raided the
home of artist Steve Kurtz, a founder member of Critical Art Ensemble, seizing
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art works and research materials - including a home biolab and harmless
biological agents - for the Marching Plague project (commissioned by the Arts
Catalyst). The FBI has repeatedly tried to bring charges relating to bioterrorism
against the artist. Kurtz currently faces spurious charges that carry a potential
20-year jail sentence.
Kurtz’s ordeal is the most exaggerated, repressive example of disapproval of
those whose practice transgresses disciplinary boundaries, and particularly
those that involve a critique of the ‘status quo’. Internationally, in the last decade,
the emergence and massive use of the murky, generic term of “science-art”, or
even “sciart” (an indicator of the success of the Wellcome Trust’s hugely-funded
science communication strategy), has created a vague and unhelpful category, a
buzzword, that ropes together a range of varied and disconnected practices,
including art which incorporates scientific ideas, metaphors or symbols, art which
utilises scientific technology as a medium, and science communication and
education that use the media of visual representation or creative writing.
My presentation will specifically consider the work of artists who intentionally and
directly utilise scientific processes and technologies in order to enable a
commentary or critique on the societal and political context of science. I will
introduce the work of a number of international artists including Critical Art
Ensemble, SymbioticA, Marko Peljhan, Stefan Gec, Kitsou Dubois, Brandon
Ballengee, Helen Chadwick and James Acord, and raise some of the artistic,
political and ethical issues that arise from this area of practice.
Biojewellery - interaction design as a trigger for public engagement of
science.
Tobie Kerridge, Ian Thompson & Nikki Stott, Goldsmiths College
The paper is an account of Biojewellery, an EPSRC funded public engagement
project which took place over two years from 2005 - 2007. The project was a
collaboration between engineers, designers, science workers and volunteer
couples. Bone cells taken from the couples were cultured using tissue
engineering processes. The bone samples where then taken from the laboratory
and to a jewellery studio where the bone was combined with metals to create
rings for the couples. The project had a range of outputs, including exhibitions,
public discussions, workshops, news media articles and academic writing.
The paper looks at Biojewellery as a project with two stages of activity. Initially it
will be explored through its relationship to the academic culture of Interaction
Design, a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art. How did the research
methods and design processes embedded within the course have a bearing on
the initial concept of Biojewellery and what was distinctive about the way the
course constructs technological artefacts and imagines the role of the user? The
second aim of the paper is to provide an account of how, at the stage of funding,
a postgraduate level concept became translated into a public engagement of
science and technology project. Given the initial form at postgraduate level, what
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was distinctive about the strategies for collaboration between workers from
different professions, the forms of participation between professional and public
groups, and the execution and nature of the project outcomes.
Science and Technology Studies are deployed as a framework to examine and
evaluate the project as a hybrid network, in particular Star and Griesemer's
concept of boundary objects as a way of binding heterogeneous actors. How can
we critically describe the interplay of technologies, institutions, audiences and
values which constitute an engagement project of this kind?
11:30 – 11:45 Break.
11:45 – 1:15 Session Two
Constructing pasts and futures
Room 303a/b. Chair: Peter Broks.
Screening Technology: Technical Advisors, Diegetic Prototypes, and the
Cinematic Creation of the Future.
David A. Kirby, University of Manchester
If scholarship in the history of technology has taught us nothing else, it has
taught us that technological development is not inevitable, pre-destined or linear.
Any number of obstacles can impede or alter the development of a potential
technology including a lack of funding, public apathy over the need for the
technology, public concerns about potential applications, or a fundamental belief
that the technology will not work. Many scientists and engineers who work with
Hollywood filmmakers place their faith in cinema’s ability to entice public support
for technological development by revealing possible technological futures.
Cinematic depictions can foster public support for potential or emerging
technologies by establishing the need, benevolence, and viability of these
technologies. It is fictional film’s ability to create images of “technological
possibilities” in the audience’s mind that leads filmmakers and scientists to
believe that “realistic” cinematic depictions can help overcome developmental
obstacles.
Scientists and engineers can create realistic filmic images of “technological
possibilities” with the intention of reducing anxiety and stimulating desire in
audiences to see potential technologies become realities. For scientists and
engineers, the best way to jump start technical development is to produce a
working prototype. Working prototypes, however, are time consuming, expensive
and require initial funds. I argue in this essay that for Hollywood technical
advisors cinematic depictions of future technologies are actually “diegetic
prototypes” that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need,
benevolence, and viability. I show how diegetic prototypes have a major
rhetorical advantage over true prototypes: in the diegesis these technologies
exist as “real” objects that function properly and which people actually use.
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Histories of science, scientism and the social construction of science.
Mark Erickson University of Brighton
History of science texts fall into place on a continuum, from general to specialist
accounts. For example, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything
(Bryson 2004) aims at informing a general, ‘lay’ audience, covers a great deal of
ground, and largely omits the details of how formal scientific knowledge is
generated. In contrast Allan Franklin’s Are There Really Neutrinos? (Franklin
2001) is an insider, evidential history of neutrino physics, written for a specialist
audience. Fleck’s work shows that scientists are part of discrete, esoteric thought
communities, formed by members of much larger, exoteric communities (Fleck
[1935] 1979). In relation to audiences for history of science, general accounts are
written for and consumed by exoteric thought communities and specialist, insider
accounts, by esoteric thought communities.
Although they are different in terms of tone, level of detail and authorship, most
exoteric and esoteric histories of science share many similarities, and perform
similar roles in the social construction of science. Both present science as an
inexorable rise of knowledge and discovery, focus on individual scientists as the
producers of the most significant transitions, and present scientific knowledge as
superior to other forms of knowledge (i.e. promote scientism). Most importantly,
through their avoidance of almost any discussion of social, economic, cultural or
political conditions surrounding the production of formal scientific knowledge,
they serve to show science as isolated from the rest of society.
In this paper I will explore how history of science accounts, both exoteric and
esoteric, serve to reinforce scientism and promote the idea that science is
somehow separate from society. By contrast I will argue that science is
profoundly dispersed, unfolding across multiple domains, and is socially
constructed by society as a whole, not simply by those producing formal
scientific knowledge, which histories of science, as well as other accounts and
representations of science, should reflect.
The Child in Time: progress, (tech)nostalgia, science and the child in
‘anachronistic’ popular culture.
Alice Bell, Science Communication Group, Imperial College London.
This paper focuses on the ‘genre-slipperiness’ of recent science fiction
(Luckhurst, 2005). I suggest that this vogue for genre-blurring has been
accompanied by a similar trend to blur historical eras, an aesthetic for mixing
allusions to pasts and future which I dub ‘the anachronistic fantastic’. Children’s
literature makes for a particularly interesting case study in this. In many ways,
anachronism is an issue at the heart of images and experience of childhood;
children’s literature is both forward looking and nostalgic. The child time-traveller
is a recurring literary image; as Alan Prout (2000) suggests, we can consider the
child a ‘boundary object’ between generations. Within the texts I consider, ideas
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of maturity are discussed alongside those of scientific and technological progress,
and notions of the child, time, nature and knowledge are co-produced.
Both Noga Applebaum (2006) and Perry Nodleman (1985) argue that children’s
SF tends to privilege pre-industrial societies. Projections of the future act as
critiques of contemporary science, but only by suggesting some form of return to
a non-scientific past. I argue, however, that such imaginings of the role of
technology in children’s futuristic literature has become more complex in the last
twenty years. Romantic escapes to the past are no longer necessarily preindustrial, and future/ past fusions can be used to advocate a synthesis of
scientific and magical approaches to knowledge. My examples include The
Dinosaurs and All that Rubbish, Dr Who, Steam Boy and Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, as well as the work of Phillip Pullman, Eoin Colfer and Phillip Reeve.
However, I argue that playing with notions of progress does not necessarily act
to critique them or present more inclusive ideas of knowledge. Indeed,
disruptions of linear time can be used to display quite realist, uncritical ideas of
scientific and technological progress.
Framing the Gene
Room 316. Chair: Louise Thorn
Gene discourse in the media – a comparative framing analysis.
Rebecca Carver, University of Oslo.
Not a day goes by without some mention of genes in the media. This little word
represents the core of scientific developments concerning biomedicine,
genetically modified organisms, DNA forensics and much more. The gene is an
integrated concept of our culture, and it has been argued that an understanding
of genes is absolutely necessary in modern society (Miller 2004, Stotz et al.
2006). But what is a gene? Is it a molecule, a recipe for proteins, a unit of
heritable information, a symbol or a cultural icon? The gene may be perceived
and explained in a number of different perspectives, and the scientific definitions
are generally perplexing to lay people. The gene concept is in a state of
conceptual change, and a growing number of scientists and philosophers are
arguing that we need a “postgenomic” gene concept (Stotz and Griffiths 2004).
Drawing on our cross-disciplinary perspectives from medical science,
evolutionary biology and communication studies, we are currently studying how
the print media contributes to public understanding (or misunderstanding) of
genes and life science in general. I shall present my initial PhD findings from a
comparative framing analysis of major Norwegian and British newspaper articles.
I will explain how framing analysis can be used to uncover a number of distinct
gene frames, which also gives valuable insight into the powerful mechanisms of
media framing in general. I am particularly interested in how media discourse
about genes relates to current scientific development. How exactly does the
media discourse differ from scientific discourse? What is the consequence of this
difference and what valuable information can we feed back to the different
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communities (scientists, journalists and the public)? These are some of the
questions I will answer.
Public engagement as a socio-cultural learning process: science
communication research using drama and discussion as meaning making.
Emily Dawson, John Barlow, Anne Hill & Emma Weitkamp, University of the
West of England.
Science communication agenda’s have focused on dialogue, discussion and
debate between scientists and the public since the 2000 House of Lords report,
“Science and Society”.1 Questions regarding the nature of these public
engagements have included the need for more research into the different publics
for science, their awareness and understanding of scientific issues, and what
implications scientific advances have for these publics.2 This paper outlines
exploratory research into the use of dramatic narrative as a tool for exploring
how 16-19 year olds perceive the social issues of biomedical advances, and
uses socio-cultural learning theory3 to analyse the audience engagement with
the drama and subsequent discussion. A series of drama/discussion workshops
conducted with students in formal education investigated the pervasive myths
held by this audience, specifically on genetic testing, and how these changed
through their engagement in the workshops.
Data were collected across seven workshops with a total sample of 240
participants, using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, including
questionnaires, mindmaps and recorded discussions. Findings revealed
confusion and lack of understanding about genetic testing at the start of the
workshops, with genetic testing frequently linked to ‘death’, ‘cruelty’, ‘animal
rights’ and ‘mutants’. Participating in the discussion enabled students to voice
their own opinions and construct their own understanding of the social issues of
genetic testing with their peers. The data illustrate an increase in sophistication
and depth at the end of the workshop, when compared to the start, and greater
response homogeneity within the sample, with 58% of participants writing about
‘family implications’ and ‘knowing the future’. The results demonstrate the value
of working with drama and discussion in science communication and support
contemporary socio-cultural learning research by clearly illustrating the benefits
of discussion to learning outcomes. The research suggests socio-cultural
learning theory may be a useful framework for science communication.
Chemistry, codes and companies. The influence of the information concept
in the automation of DNA sequencing (1980-1998).
Miguel Garcia-Sancho, CHoST, Imperial College London.
My paper will analyse the influence of the conception of DNA as information in
the automation of the techniques to sequence this molecule between the 1980s
and 90s. I will, concretely, focus on the attempts at the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech) and Applied Biosystems, a company at Silicon Valley. By
analysing the materials of a recent fieldwork trip to those institutions, I will
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explore how the conception of DNA as a text suitable to be processed by
computers shaped the development of the automatic techniques and the
involvement of private companies in sequencing.
Basing on a series of interviews with Caltech and Applied Biosystems scientists,
I will discuss their different attitudes towards science and technology in
comparison with the creators of the previous manual sequencing methods (Fred
Sanger and other researchers during the mid and late 70s). I will also analyse,
from a series of archival sources, the role of the informational view of DNA in the
modifications the techniques should incorporate to be automated.
The paper will also address the launching of the first automated sequencers and
the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a necessary technique for large-scale
sequencing. In the first instance, I will study how DNA as information helped to
articulate the different expertises involved in the commercialisation process. In
the second one, the focus will be on the background of the technique’s inventor,
Kary Mullis, a chemist instead of a molecular biologist.
1:15 – 2:45 Lunch
2:45 – 4:15 Session Three
‘Objects’ of the human body: diverse uses
Room S303a/b. Chair: Nick Russell.
Knowledge actors about intersex rearticulated on the Internet.
Carmen Gallego Martos, Institute of Philosophy, Spanish National Research
Council.
The paper I present here is part of a broader project called "Science and
Technologies of the Body from a Science, Technology and Society Perspective”,
carried out for a team connected to the Spanish National Research Council
(CSIC). In them we approach to medical practices, technologies and discourses
in the diagnosis and treatment of the so called "intersex states", among others
issues. For this occasion what I'm interesting to do is to analize the role played
by new communication technologies in the rise and collectivization of knowledge
and identities in relation to the intersexual movement.
Unlike medical handbooks or scientific journals where intersexual bodies appear
as pathologic and reified cases, as recipients of medical actions or resources of
scientific interest without voice -and frequently with their eyes covered-, Internet
as a new technology of communication has made possible that “objects of
medical knowledge” object and resist medical discourses and protocols
interchanging knowledge and rising a collective and political identity. This has
implied changes in the subject-object knowledge relations, in the sense that
proper “objects of knowledge” (in this case intersexual collectives) have become
“experts” on “subjects of knowledge” (doctors): they have become “experts on
experts”. However, what the creation of webs, chats or blogs have made
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possible is not exactly a subject-object inversion, but rather an articulation of the
different actors involved and a generation of new knowledge and alliances in a
process where intersex collective and medical community are being reconfigured.
This articulation allows diversity of voices and perspectives on social, medical
and legal issues in relation to intersexed lives and arouses controversy and
debates, now open not just to medical experts, but to multiple actors. In short, we
analyse how technological mediations allow a certain democratic rearticulating of
socio-scientific knowledge.
The Bone Hunters: Paleoanthropologists as authors of popular science
books.
Oliver Hochadel, University of Vienna.
“Where do we come from?” Publishers have learnt to capitalize on this
question. Ever since paleoanthropologists started to search for our hominid
ancestors in the late 19th century they have always tried to address the general
public. This paper will focus on the last thirty years. With the shift of the research
focus to East and Southeast Africa after the Second World War a new type of
popular science book emerged.
Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey were the trendsetters. They owe their
fame not only to the fossils they found but also to their hugely successful books
on Lucy and the fossil hunt in East Africa. Meanwhile it has become very
common for paleoanthropologists to write popular science books. Contrary to the
common image of the scientist in the white lab coat the paleoanthropologist
wears shorts and no shirt while he scans the stony African savannah for fossils.
The books are a mixture of popular science, the individual quest of a scientist to
find our ancestors and tales of adventure and suspense.
I put forward three hypotheses: (1) These books are an indicator for the
increasing “medialization of science” (Peter Weingart). Paleoanthropologists use
them to heighten their profile not least to secure funding for their research. (2)
Due to the very few hominid fossils, which are very difficult to interpret,
paleoanthropology is fraught with controversies. These books serve as an
“extended battlefield” to carry on the debates being fought in the scientific
community (e.g. out-of-Africa versus multi-regional-theory) in the public realm. It
is therefore impossible to distinguish clearly between “scientific” and “popular”
texts. (3) These books also serve as a meta-narrative allowing for a general
overview, the discussion of overarching questions and speculations on the
course of human prehistory that would not be possible in peer-reviewed articles.
Apart from the popular science books material for this paper is drawn from
interviews with the paleoanthropologists themselves.
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Using Medical History to Enhance Patient Information Services:
Reflections on Curating a Patient Information Centre and Museum of Joint
Replacement at Wrightington Hospital.
Dr Francis Neary University of Manchester.
This paper will look at an innovative use of history within the community. In the
new era of ‘patient choice’ within the NHS, it will examine a project to develop a
patient information centre and museum of joint replacement to communicate the
benefits, risks and unknowns of hip, knee and other joint surgery more effectively
to patients and their families and carers.
This new centre was created at Wrightington Hospital (near Wigan) where Sir
John Charnley (1911-1982) developed the first widely successful total hip
replacement in the early 1960s. The brief was to use the rich history of
innovation and research at this specialist orthopaedic hospital to enable users to
fully understand the stages of the patient’s journey to have a joint replacement
operation. We also aimed to reduce anxieties and to give information regarding
the uncertainties surrounding the technologies and procedures so that patients
are well-informed enough to make the best decisions about their elective surgical
care.
Medical history is used widely in the exhibitions in a variety of ways. The paper
will investigate the significance and effectiveness of these multiple uses of
history, which include edification, clarification, illumination, demystification and
the communication of the problems that are still to be solved through charting the
history of joint replacement procedures.
Case Studies in Science and Politics
Room 315. Chair: Mark Erickson.
Discursive Choices: Boycotting Star Wars Between Science and Politics.
Rebecca Slayton, Stanford University.
Few presidential initiatives have attracted more public ridicule from scientists and
engineers than Star Wars, Ronald Reagan’s 1983 proposal to build a missile
defense system that would render the Soviet nuclear arsenal impotent and
obsolete. Scientists found multiple ways of critiquing what Reagan’s vision
became: not a working weapons system, but a dramatically escalated research
and development program known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which
stalled arms-control negotiations near the end of the Cold War.
This paper examines how scientists crossed discursive boundaries between
science and politics as they staged a social movement against SDI: a nationwide
boycott of Star Wars research funds. It argues that scientists made discursive
choices that furthered their immediate challenge to practices of military academic
research, while still shaping emergent identities in line with existing institutions.
Significantly, this account cannot be simply incorporated into existing traditions of
research in lay expert communication. Whereas these traditions suggest that
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communicative practices either enable or constrain actors, this account shows
that they simultaneously did both. It advances the notion of discursive choices as
a concept that may help mediate between structure and agency in studies of
public communication with technical experts. This account also suggests that the
concept of discursive choices may contribute to understanding how expertise is
maintained and reconfigured within a particular political culture.
On the relationship of science and public illustrated by the example of
modern ferrous metallurgy at the Technical University Aachen,
Stefan Krebs, University of Aachen.
The contribution pursues the question of how Fritz Wüst, professor of ferrous
metallurgy at the Technische Hochschule Aachen (1901-1921), changed the
configurations of influential agents, thus readjusting power structures in favour of
the institute of metallurgy in Aachen. Science and the public are here understood
as resources for one another. Through the establishment of his own technical
journals, and cooperation with industry, interest groups, and the politics of Berlin,
Wüst mobilised specific public relations for himself, and thus connected the
Aachen iron metallurgy multifariously with the social network of the German
Empire. He was well able to recognise the sensitive conditions of his times, using
them for his own purposes in his lectures and publications. Thus, he stylised
modern iron metallurgy to a motivating and formative force for the German
Empire’s world power ambitions. These politics for science demonstrate how at
the institutional and intellectual level, the interweaving of scientific and political
goals followed.
Left unsaid: the marginalisation of scientist-critics in the media coverage
of controversial technologies
Felicity Mellor, Science Communication Group, Imperial College London.
Drawing on examples of the reporting of GM foods and new nuclear power in the
UK media, this talk will examine the privileging and marginalisation of different
interest groups in science journalism. I will argue that much science journalism
constructs a public image of science as aligned with a libertarian position
supportive of corporate interests and leads to the under-representation of
scientists and scientist groups who advocate a precautionary approach to new
technologies. In the absence of critical science journalism, scientist-critics
struggle to be heard, whilst the pronouncements of those scientists who support
new technologies are used to justify political decisions.
Seeing Nature
Room 316. Chair: Katherine Gillieson.
Enhancing the transformation of information into diagrams within science
instructional material for school pupils: a practice-based case study
focusing on closed-loop cycles.
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Annegrete Mølhave. Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University
of the Arts, London.
During my initial survey of diagrams showing closed-looped cycles (e.g. the
carbon cycle) in scientific learning material (UK curriculum level Key Stage 4 and
A-level), I found a wide repetition of diagrammatic structure, with changes
confined to modes of visual depiction. This raised my concern as the observed
structure applies polysemy (the assignment of more than one meaning to a
symbol) in visual elements such as arrows. Empirical research into students’
reading of diagrams (Ametller & Pintó 2002) found the interpretation of several
meanings in one symbol problematic. Thus the observed diagram structure may
be an inefficient method of communication to an audience of school pupils.
Further, the observed repetition suggest a stagnation in visual exploration within
design practice in educational publishing.
Based on these findings this practice-based PhD study seeks to identify existing
rationales and processes for transformation of information into diagrams; to
develop and apply a theoretical framework for evaluating the communication
practice, efficiency and application and, based on these findings, to develop and
evaluate alternatives using the researcher’s communication design practice. The
methodology includes: visual content analysis of 300-400 examples of diagram
structures; interviews with those involved in realising scientific learning material
(e.g. editors, authors, designers, illustrators) and the researcher’s own
communication design practice.
To conduct a review of current practice for communication of closed-looped
cycles, a database of 350 examples has been established (1920-2007), collected
from historical and contemporary textbook collections in the UK and Denmark.
This paper discusses the review of the collection – conducted using existing
diagram analysis models and visual content analysis – and presents examples of
repetitive patterns within the practice. This leads to a demonstration of how the
review is utilised as a generative tool to inform the researcher’s practical
exploration of alternative transformations.
Imaging techniques and the aesthetics of modernism: seeing nature in art
through the eyes of postwar science.
Assimina Kaniari University of Oxford
While the “lab” has been a privileged methodological site in science studies,
research on science’s interaction with non-scientific cultures tends to disregard it.
Experimental techniques and their various irreducibly visual and mobile proxies,
while routinely discussed as reliable agents in science studies, remain absent
from stories concerned with science’s influence on cultures beyond science,
such as the arts. Scientific imaging techniques are not commonly perceived as
active actors in narratives concerned with science’s historical and social
connections to the arts and the development of new aesthetics. Artists’ uses of
scientific imaging techniques while epistemologically “unscientific” are also seen
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to comprise “unreliable” historical agents in discussions of science’s impact on
the arts.
As the case of post war British avant-garde shows however, artists’
experimentation with scientific imaging techniques often gave rise to new
aesthetic forms which were recognized as being different and distinct to previous
examples of artistic creation. Such new aesthetic forms were to a large extent
the result of artists’ engagement with novel technologies introduced in post war
science such as the SEM. While comprising poetic interpretations of science and
technology’s vision of nature, the works produced by Nigel Henderson, Eduardo
Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton in the 50s engaged with the very style of post war
science’s technologies of seeing and representing.
The impact of imaging techniques and imagery, introduced in postwar science,
on art, and the creation of novel artistic forms, not only illustrate an episode in
the interaction of art and science in post war Britain, but also exemplify a new
application for an already in good practice in science studies methodological
notion of the lab. While the “virtual” extensions of the lab beyond the tangible and
actual have long been discussed and applied in science studies after Shapin and
Schaffer’s seminal Leviathan and the Air Pump and Latour’s notion of the mobile
and immutable proxy, the notion of the lab as a distributed technology with
irreducibly visual aspects as a causal factor for the development of new
aesthetics and theory remains unexplored.
Showing, telling, selling: digital images in science entrepreneurship.
Catelijne Coopmans, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College.
Computer-based visualisations and simulations are increasingly important for the
development of knowledge within the sciences, but they are also used to
facilitate interaction between scientists and non-scientists. My paper analyses
the nature of a particular type of image-based interaction by following a group of
scientist-entrepreneurs in their efforts to create a market for image analysis
software for mammography. How are the attributes of digital images used to
frame productive relationships with prospective customers and collaborators?
The paper is based on a one-year ethnographic study in a university spin-out
company and draws on academic literature in science and technology studies
and innovation studies, particularly the notions of “boundary work” and “path
creation”. My analysis shows how the scientist-entrepreneurs flexibly portray the
relationship between the pictorial and numerical aspects of digital images, and
suggests to understand these practices in terms of the production and
distribution of identities in an innovation network. The way in which the properties
of digital images are performed through showing and telling hence turns these
images into a resource for managing the engagement with external
constituencies. The paper proposes that, from the entrepreneurs’ point of view,
this might serve two purposes: (1) to expand the ways in which processed digital
images can be understood as diagnostic evidence, and (2) to buy time for
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development by shielding the innovation from premature judgement. Theoretical
implications for understanding digital images as containers of scientific
knowledge and value are discussed.
4:15 – 4:30 Break
4:30 – 6:00 Session Four
Dealing with Deficits and Difference
Room S303a/b. Chair: Alice Bell.
Digital deficits: public representations of digital communications
technology.
James Sumner, University of Manchester.
For around a decade, various state and commercial interests worldwide have
promoted the rhetoric of the ‘digital divide.’ Developed largely in reaction to an
earlier wave of techno-utopian accounts, which ascribed great social and
economic levelling potential to technologies such as internet connectivity, the
digital-divide position asserts that variations in access actually tend to entrench
local and global divisions (in terms, variously, of socio-economic status, gender,
race or professional background.) The result has been an interventionist
movement to bridge the divide, identifying and connecting up the digitally
‘dispossessed.’
Yet this approach, applied incautiously, embodies a perception which science
communication theorists will recognise as akin to the deficit model: internet
access and information literacy are uncritically conflated, mysteriously
guaranteeing, irrespective of context, that those connected have not been ‘left
behind.’ Recently, critics in science and technology studies have responded that
non-use of the internet may be rational and appropriate, even for highlyeducated members of technological societies; others, proceeding from
anthropological investigation, have found that cutting-edge digital information
access may take a major role in users’ lives while barely influencing cultural or
information literacy, and with no evident change in the user’s perceived
economic or social options.
This paper reassesses public representations of digital communications from
around 1980 to indicate that multiple rhetorics of ‘divide’ predate, and have
outlasted, the major internet-based push to extend physical connectivity. As
internet access becomes the norm in developed (and some developing) societies,
the distinction between ‘deficient’ and ‘sufficient’ reasserts itself at the level of
technical literacy and styles of use. The greatest challenge to deficit thinking
comes, perhaps ironically, from those computing professionals who regard the
activities of the broader public as simply irrelevant to their concerns, and from
proponents of ‘usability’ considerations willing to assess variant use patterns as
equally valid.
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Reaching Diverse Publics: Challenges of Communicating Sustainability
Science to Low-literacy Audiences.
Nicola Shelswell, University of Glamorgan.
With the true scale of the environmental crisis rapidly becoming apparent, there
is an urgent need to engage the public’s interest in sustainability; some
understanding of the environmental, social and economic issues involved and
the science behind them appears to be one important prerequisite for the
widespread attitudinal and behavioural changes required to confront global
warming and its potentially devastating results. Although there has recently been
a huge increase in media messages aimed at raising public awareness about
climate change, the vast majority of texts embody assumptions about the basic
literacy and numeracy levels of their audiences which simply do not hold true for
a significant proportion of the European population. For example, in some socioeconomically disadvantaged areas of England and Wales up to 40% of adults
have difficulties with reading and writing, while similar or larger numbers struggle
with basic mathematics. Recent evaluations of a range of public-facing
publications produced by UK scientific organisations show readability levels
suitable for less than 50% of readers, despite their intention to communicate to a
non-expert audience. This indicates the need to draw on existing knowledge in
adult basic literacy and numeracy education in order to design publications that
can reach a far greater proportion of the population. However, such efforts
produce many dilemmas, not least the danger of “dumbing down” information to
such an extent that the contested nature and profound social and political
implications of the climate change debate disappears. This presentation will
discuss work being carried out along these lines by Science Shops Wales, a
grass-roots science-society initiative in the Heads of Valleys region of south-east
Wales, one of the most socio-economically deprived areas of Britain.
Science, Commonsense, and Syncretism
Jon Adams, LSE
Popularisation exists to disseminate expert knowledge among inexpert
communities. This becomes problematic when the inexpert community being
addressed already has it’s own beliefs about the subject matter. The
popularisation of psychology aims to enact a replacement of the functionally
adequate commonsense- or folk-theory with its own novel interpretation of how
the mind works. How might popularisers achieve this substitution? Some meet
the issue head on, talking explicitly in terms of the “replacement” of existing
beliefs, whereas others – though no less colonial in intent – are more subtle.
Steven Pinker has developed increasingly sophisticated techniques for
absorbing and assimilating his readership’s beliefs. Rather than see the existing
commonsense-folk beliefs as an obstacle, Pinker exploits similarities between
the findings of experimental psychology and the current folk psychology of his
readership, selectively employing folk beliefs as heuristic tools for teaching the
new science. The story of how Pinker’s work succeeds also draws on a wider
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network of fellow writers and facilitators whose work, collectively, constitutes a
claim on the public imagination. Previous studies have been interested in the
way in which scientists use popularisation to widen the gap between
commonsense and scientific belief. There are also important questions to be
asked about how popular writers employ facsimiles of and variants on folk beliefs
in order to better distribute scientific facts. Rather than simply pushing aside the
folk belief, successful popularisations seem to be those which are able to employ
them. Like all expanding empires, those that can assimilate the old ways spread
quicker.
Images of Science in Popular Literature
Room 315. Chair: Felicity Mellor.
Science in Contemporary Anglo-American Crime Fiction.
Katja Schmieder, University of Leipzig
“Science-in-Fiction is an effective way of smuggling serious topics of scientific
behaviour into the consciousness of the scientifically illiterate” (Carl Djerassi)
After Snow and Leavis had started their argument on the status of the natural
sciences and the humanities (in academia and in the general public), a new
paradigm of productive negotiation between both discourses emerged. One of its
results has been an ever-intensifying dialogue which is reflected in innovative
fields of research (such as ‘Science Communication’ or ‘Scientific Prose’) as well
as in newly founded associations (such as the SLSA). Moreover, groundbreaking
theoretical approaches have entailed a shift regarding concepts of objectivity,
authority, and credibility: The repercussions of the Theory of Quantum
Mechanics in physics, for example, have revealed an interpretability and
situational dependence of natural sciences, when simultaneously literary texts
have undergone theoretical and systematic analyses. In the wake of this
development, natural sciences have evolved into cultural practices to be
examined, into texts to be read, into constructs marked by subjectivity,
contextualization, language.
Particularly Anglo-American society favors those approaches to natural science
and its technological shape. Areas such as medicine, military, and specifically
crime investigation - along with its representations in popular-scientific reports,
docusoaps, and detective novels - blur the boundaries between theory,
application, and fictionalization of natural science. Functionalizing, politicizing,
exploiting – these originally non-scientific strategies contribute to an accelerating
permeation of the (artificial) borders between the ‘two cultures,’ while
contemporary crime fiction provides the most illustrative example for popularized
science. My interest is to analyze how authors like Patricia Cornwell, Thomas
Harris, and Val McDermid employ natural sciences and their forensic
applications and blend it with fictitious plots. I argue that to them, ‘science’ is not
only a literary motif but a tool fulfilling diverse narrative functions. While granting
credibility and authority to scientific methods on the one hand, and popularizing /
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fictionalizing them on the other, they simultaneously appropriate and deconstruct
the dialog mentioned above.
The image of science in Brazilian Popular Literature.
Luisa Massarani, Carla Almeida & Ildeu de Castro Moreira. Museu da Vida /
Casa de Oswaldo Cruz / Fiocruz & Instituto de Física / Universidade Federal
do Rio de Janeiro.
In the present work, we will analyze the public perception of science through a
cultural manifestation very popular in Brazil, called cordel literature (chapbooks
in English). Exported from Portugal to Brazil, the cordel reached the country at
the end of the nineteenth century, quickly becoming a significant communication
tool, especially in the Northeast, where other ways of mass communication were
precarious or even inexistent. The cordels, homemade thin books filled with
rhyming and structured verses, are read by their authors, the cordelistas, in cities
fairs, farms, squares and markets. They register all kinds of remarkable facts,
social and political satires, information about urban and rural life, heroic acts,
religious and moral lessons and many other themes. Because of their thematic
diversity and their popularity, they play an important roll in the expression and
modelling of the social imaginary.
For this study, we gathered 60 recent cordels about science and science related
themes, such as health, environment, astronomy and the life and work of
important scientists. We did a qualitative analysis based on this material,
focusing on the cordelistas attitude toward science and scientific themes and the
way they express their own conception of science through their work. More than
identifying eventual scientific mistakes and distortions in the cordels content, we
aimed at trying to understand better the cultural imaginary related to this popular
expression, both from the cordelistas and the public point of view. We believe
studies like this can give important subsidies and stimulate the creation of
innovative and creative science communication tools which take into account
cultural and regional diversity.
A Tepid Response to the Prospect of Immortality?: Cryobiological
Experiments in Popular Science and Science Fiction.
Benjamin Wright, University of Salzburg
Over the past few decades, ongoing research in the field of Science Studies has
confirmed that science, as performed by professionals in a laboratory, is an elite
activity. The rare glimpses that the public receives of the products of this activity
are filtered through the lens of popularisation, often in the form of media reports,
but also from book-length popular science titles published in hardcover as well
as from science fiction novels. While the link between science, science fiction
and the news media has received a measure of critical attention, the relationship
between popular science and science fiction as modes of transferring scientific
knowledge to the public has yet to be examined. This paper explores the
interaction between popular science and science fiction from the mid-1960s to
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the late 1970s, concentrating on the emergent science of cryobiology. The late
1940s saw successful experiments in cryopreservation by Jean Rostand in
France and Christopher Polge in England. However, it was not until the mid1960s that the possibilities occasioned by these experiments reached a mass
audience. The publication of R.C.W. Ettinger's The Prospect of Immortality (1964)
by Doubleday provided the impetus for many science fiction authors, who
published stories involving cryobiological experiments in the ensuing years.
Ettinger, in turn, used the medium of science fiction indirectly to gain increased
publicity for his ideas on cryonics. I argue that the appearance of Ettinger's ideas
in science fiction and popular science, and the interaction between the two text
types, helped shape the public's awareness and (mis)conception of
cryobiology/cryonics.
Technology and Consciousness
Room 316. Chair: Hauke Riesch.
Space, Disembodied Thought and the Threat of Disappearance:
Intelligence and Anxiety in Space Exploration.
Lee Mackinnon, Solent University.
In this paper I will be investigating the relationship between outer space and
human agency, considering outer space as metaphor for human mortality and
artificial intelligence as metaphor for immortality, and referring to two literary
sources that deal with non-human intelligence and apprehension of the
unfamiliar. Central to my paper is the construction of culture as a way of
deferring Mortality Salience (Greenberg et al); and the conceptualisation of
nature as antithesis of human cultures, intelligence and technology.
Both novels explore possible psychological motives behind our inter-planetary
searching. In Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, an intelligent planet proceeds to ‘explore’
the minds and memories of three scientists, examining the limits of human
intelligence and cleverly questioning whether we really only search for affirmation
of our worldview. In Clarke’s 2001 Space Odyssey, HAL the super computer
eventually lets emotion get the better of him, attempting to murder the human
crew when programmed to lie about the nature of the mission, posing questions
regarding the complex, biological nature of intelligence; technological application
and morality. We have yet to develop such artificial intelligence- perhaps
because the final frontier of science is not outer space but the infinitely dark inner
space and workings of human consciousness, clouded by our total proximity to
it.
Refiguring the 'spiritual dimension' of cinema in the 'Human Apparatus'.
Martha Blassnigg, University of Plymouth.
This paper proposes an account of the human actors in science and technology
as more fully ‘rounded’ entities by addressing the topic of the so called 'spiritual
dimension' of the human mind. This is a topic that has mainly survived in popular
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culture since it has been driven out of the scientific environment in the
enlightenment period. It suggests a hypothetical strategy in order to resituate this
topic within the sciences of the Humanities as an ontological issue by focussing
on empirical research into the experiences of the ordinary processes of
perception. It investigates into a revision of Henri Bergson's philosophy which, at
the end of the 19th century, shared widespread popularity amongst the general
public simultaneously with the upcoming reception of and fascination with the
cinema. In studying the connotations of the early cinema period with
'Spiritualism' and 'otherworldly dimensions' in a comparison with Henri Bergson's
philosophy of the relationship between matter and spirit, this paper argues
against a ‘mystification’ of both matter and technology and suggests relocating a
more sophisticated and rigorous study of the so called 'spiritual' dimension in the
ordinary processes of perception. It uses the cinema as a paradigm where these
processes have been exemplified and amplified and which served as a platform
where these sanctioned topics have been able to survive in popular culture until
today. This paper will present a trans-disciplinary dialogue that converges in the
fields of Cultural Anthropology, Philosophy and Film- and Cinema Studies and
situates this historical review in the wider context of contemporary scientific fields
such as Consciousness Studies and Neuro-Science.
Technology, Desire and Imagination.
Michael Punt, University of Plymouth.
In this paper I will argue that technology can be understood as a cultural
construction which reflects significant aspects of the desires and imagination of
the historical moment in which it is developed, and more significantly, the shifting
contexts in which it is interpreted. Using the case of the ‘invention’ of cinema
technology, and its subsequent use as an entertainment medium, I will show how
the scientists and technologists who were responsible for the invention of cinema
thought that they were doing one thing while the exhibitors and public thought
that they were doing another. Drawing on my own and other published research I
will endeavour to unearth some archaeological traces of the desires and
imaginations that impacted on the technological solutions to the projection of
moving images. In doing so I will outline the network of determining factors that
shaped the popular and commercial interpretation of moving image technology to
include an entertainment form. Examining the emergence of cinema as a popular
art form in this way provides a useful case study for thinking about both science
and technology within a history of ideas. The claim is that this approach enables
us to tackle key questions that confront us as scientists, technologists: in
particular why one technological solution or scientific model is preferred over
others, why some viable technologies fail to capture the imagination, and why
some ideas need to be ‘rediscovered’ before they are understood. More
important, perhaps, is how thinking about science, art and technology as
expressions of desire and imagination, as well as the progressive accretion of
knowledge, might provide a methodology which helps us develop sustainable
future trajectories.