THE PANTANETO FORUM
Issue 26: April 2007
Editorial
Motivating Science, a collection of articles from the first five years of The Pantaneto Forum is now available from bookshops. We are offering a discount for direct orders, see our order page.
We will soon be publishing Science on Television by Bienvenido León. The book is a clear and systematic guide to the narrative and rhetorical techniques used by science documentary filmmakers. The book is due out at the end of June 2007 and will be priced at £18.50, with a 20% discount for advance orders.
According to Wolfgang Goede it is vital for science
journalists to keep their distance from "ideologies, ambitions, big money
and religious beliefs". In an analysis of the history of the German
Technical Literary Society (TELI), the oldest organisation of scientific
writers in the world, Goede details the sad spectacle of scientists being
"highly vulnerable to intellectual and moral corruption". In
Germany, more than in most countries, they are confronting their past, but
there are much wider lessons to be learnt for science journalism from the events
described by Goede. In particular, the robust scepticism towards
politicians by political journalists, is much less evident in the case of
science journalists scepticism towards scientists - this is a worrying
trend.
"Democratic times demand democratic measures". In calling for
greater debate and engagement from scientists with the public, Steve McIlwaine
aims to replace the Lockean model of science communication, where the mind of
the public is seen as a "tabula rasa" on which scientists via journalists
transmit a one-way imprint of scientific facts, with a model based on a
sceptical and questioning two-way process. In the end it may be the
economics of science which will act as an impetus as, according to McIlwaine:
"Faced with shrinking budgets, scientists may have to come to the public
debating table if their access to public funds is not to become more
difficult".
In her article: What do scientists do?..." Ana Delicado asks how the
process of science, as opposed to the results of science, is represented in
science museums. In an in depth analysis, primarily of museums in
Portugal, Delicado explains how far science process and practice are
represented, particularly in the so called "hard" sciences, and gives
pointers on how the situation can be improved to better represent scientific
practice.
Nigel Sanitt
Editor
ISSN 1741-1572
Contents
Articles
The Twenties – Exciting Times in Germany, Wolfgang C. Goede
Journalists and
Journalism Education Must Grasp the Democratic Science Opportunity, Steve
McIlwaine
Book Review
The Comprehensible
Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics
Come from?, Victor Stenger