It’s a longstanding question: how do you make science more accessible? Many initiatives have attempted this, and museums have often played a key role. The most recent attempt was the public understanding of science movement (PUS), which began in response to a perceived loss of confidence in science. Now widely discredited in its approach, PUS has become shorthand for an authoritarian, ‘cognitive-deficit’ stance that tried to make ‘the public’ more appreciative of science. But controversial issues involving science keep hitting the headlines, and the distance between the scientific and non-scientific communities remains. So how should museums present science and allow visitors to engage in a dialogue?
Creating Connections contains the selected papers from a conference that discussed just that. Enabling full public engagement and dialogue about science is a new task for museums, and Creating Connections should perhaps be viewed as a discussion document. It argues for ‘public understanding of research’ (PUR) and sets out history, rationale, strategies and examples and advice from other media. However, rather than leading the way in a key debate this book is a missed opportunity.
At the core of the book is a distinction between the public understanding of research, and the public understanding of science. Unfortunately none of the contributors seem too sure of what PUR is, although two main definitions filter through. The primary definition is also a rationale. PUR is about engagement with issues: where PUS imposed, PUR will debate. This is to be greatly welcomed, but sadly the strategies and case studies set out in the book imply that the reality will be somewhat different. The key problem seems to be in considering the audience. Engagement requires listening, not assuming authority, not considering ‘the public’ as a homogeneous mass and considering all views as valid. Yet here authors talk about what ‘the public’ need to know, or to learn, in order to understand ‘the scientific process’. This doesn’t sound like engagement; the tone is the same old cognitive deficit approach to a better public appreciation of science.
Suggestions for methods of engagement don’t fare much better. Albert and Edna Einseidel give a succinct account of a continuum of engagement, but other contributors pay only lip service to the most interactive forms such as consensus conferences. Events at which scientists meet ‘the public’ take precedence. It is easy to see the advantages of this to the scientists, but what will visitors gain? No one seems to have asked. There doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement of the fact that most scientific issues have a political and/or ethical nature. It’s no good talking to scientists if politicians make the decisions. The Einseidels suggest that avoidance of politics will be foremost in many museums’ minds and the book seems to bear out their hunch.
The second definition of PUR is given by the dubious distinction between ‘finished’ and ‘unfinished’ science (when does science become ‘finished’, and who says so?). It turns out that ‘unfinished’ refers to new science that hits the headlines. Many of the strategies and examples of PUR in museums are about exhibits on these stories, and are more concerned with revealing scientific process than with engagement. Five chapters are given to print and broadcast professionals to tell us how they choose and develop science features. It turns out that this is quite straightforward: it’s the story, stupid. But what comes through in these chapters is how difficult it can be to turn a story around quickly, despite the amazing amounts of resources news organisations have. Other contributors acknowledge this and suggest forming networks so that museums can share resources and workload. But no-one asks why museums should try to compete with better resourced, well-established daily news media. Nor do they ask why ‘unfinished’ science should be any better than ‘finished’ science at illustrating the complexities of a subject inextricably linked to other practices and values.
There is one author who does raise concerns about the limited vision of PUR presented in Creating Connections. Don Pohlman’s two chapters, especially the afterword, elegantly articulate his concerns about this nascent field. They are one of the few points in the book where the subject is given careful thought and reflection. It is interesting, and disappointing, that the other noteworthy chapters are written by non-museum professionals. As well as the Einseidels’s contribution, Bruce Lewenstein and Rick Bonney neatly outline some of the complexities surrounding science and the public. Tim Radford’s article is a sparking showcase of faced-paced journalistic style, and Christine Cansfield-Smith’s account of the Discovery building at CSIRO in Canberra is extremely interesting and insightful. But it is Pohlman who stands out as the person who makes a considered overview of the subject.
Also of interest is the slightly puzzling choice of papers making up Creating Connections. A list of delegates in the appendix shows that the conference was international, and yet of the 32 contributors to the book, 24 are from the US, six from the UK (three of whom are from the Science Museum) and one each from Australia and Canada. There are no papers from the rest of Europe, in spite of the fact that the most cited talks were by François Vescia of La Cité des Sciences and delegates from the Hygiene Museum, Dresden. I would really liked to have read their contributions, not least because the Hygiene Museum has organised consensus conferences.
There is no doubt that there is a need to show and explore how closely science is intertwined with society. And there is no doubt that for many issues involving science, engagement by all interested parties on equal terms is desirable. Museums can play a role in this. The distinction between public understanding of research and public understanding of science is pretty shaky, but it is inevitable that any new field will raise more questions than it answers. What is noticeable in Creating Connections is how many questions are not asked. The debate needs to be much more sophisticated than that presented here.
“Creating Connections: : museums and the public understanding of current research” Eds: D Chittenden, G Carmelo, B V Lewenstein. AltaMira Press ISBN 075910476X
This article was first published in Museums Journal, November 2004
Rachel Souhami 