Lost in Translations Lost in Translations Discourses, Boundaries and Legitimacy in the Public Understanding of Science in the UK Simon Jay Lock Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of London 2008 l UMI Number: U592551 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U592551 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Lost in Translations I, Simon Jay Lock, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Lost in Translations Abstract This thesis documents the historical development of debates around the public understanding of science in the UK from 1985 until 2005. Testimonies from key actors involved in the evolution of the recent public understanding of science arena, and an examination of documentary evidence, have been used to map out how this issue was problematised by scientists in the mid-1980s, and how it has developed into a contested field of activity, political interest and academic research. I propose that this historical period can be broadly understood in four phases each characterised by a dominant discourse of the public understanding of science. I examine how, within each phase, the various groups involved have engaged in boundary work: rhetorically constructing, and mobilising, ideas of ‘science’, ‘the public’, and the perceived ‘problem’ in the relationship between the two, in the pursuit of defining and legitimating themselves and these definitions of the relationship between science and public. Phase I is characterised as a rhetorical re-framing of earlier ‘problems’ of the public understanding of science by scientists and scientific institutions in the context of the 1980s. Phase II is dominated by the boundary work between scientists and social scientists as they contended for legitimacy and authority over competing discourses of public understanding of science and the institutionalisation of PUS activity and research. Phase III is characterised by a variety of discursive formulations of the ‘problem’ of PUS following the House of Lords report (2000) and a subsequent change in the rhetoric of public understanding of science to one of public engagement. Phase IV is dominated by the language of ‘upstream engagement’ and identifies the political interest in managing science’s relationship with the public and the social scientific responses to this. 3 Lost in Translations Contents____________________________________ Abstract...............................................................................................................................3 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 7 1. ‘Problems’ of PUS............................................................................................8 Introduction........................................................................................................................... 8 Part I: What am I analysing?.......................................................................................... 11 Data collection .................................................................................................................11 Archival research ............................................................................................................. 12 Interviewing ..................................................................................................................... 13 Part II: My analytical tool-kit.........................................................................................16 Science and its social context........................................................................................17 Boundaries of science ..................................................................................................... 18 Boundary work................................................................................................................ 19 D iscourse .........................................................................................................................25 Science communication ................................................................................................. 27 Issues of subjectivity and reflexivity............................................................................. 29 Part III: Science and Public in a historical context................................................ 34 Science in the nineteenth century ................................................................................. 34 The Birth of the Bridsh Association for the Advancement of Science ..................35 Professionalising science ................................................................................................ 39 Science enters the twentieth century ............................................................................ 41 The public’s understanding of science ......................................................................... 45 Post-war science.............................................................................................................. 47 A gulf between science and public?............................................................................. 48 Criticisms of science....................................................................................................... 51 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 54 Part IV: My Historical Framework............................................................................... 56 P hase 1 .................................................................................................................................... 58 2. Re-inventing the Wheel?.............................................................................58 The Bodmer report ......................................................................................................... 60 4 Lost in Translations The impact of the Bodmer report I - practical efforts ............................................. 64 The impact of the Bodmer report II - research ......................................................... 68 Dissecting PUS ................................................................................................................ 74 Quantifying PUS ............................................................................................................. 81 Phase I: Conclusions........................................................................................................ 87 Phase II................................................................................................................ 91 3. Criticisms and Colonisations.....................................................................91 Colonising PUS ............................................................................................................. 100 PUS, risk and trust ........................................................................................................ 110 Institutional endorsements ..........................................................................................114 The nature of science and society ..............................................................................120 4. Two Tribes go to War..................................................................................126 PUS as social research ..................................................................................................134 A new direction for PUS? ............................................................................................ 137 Misunderstanding science? .......................................................................................... 140 5. Professionalising PUS..................................................................................148 A Shift in focus... ? ...................................................................................................... 149 ... or institutional business as usual? ......................................................................... 151 Ten years of COPUS.................................................................................................... 154 Professionalising science communication .................................................................157 A deficit of trust? .......................................................................................................... 164 Phase II: Conclusions..................................................................................................... 171 Phase III............................................................................................................. 177 6. Governing science and the public..........................................................