Let's be Clear About Science Education and Engagement
By Melanie Smallman and Simon Lock,
The Guardian
| 07. 08. 2013
In last week's blog piece "
The public don't want to be involved in science policy" Hannah Baker used the recent Wellcome Trust
Monitor Survey to argue that rather than involving the public in decisions around science, we need to be focusing on educating them.
"Although this simple knowledge deficit model [which assumes that increasing knowledge about science will reduce scepticism] has now been largely discredited in the academic sphere, we should perhaps be wary of concluding that ignorance or misunderstanding of key areas of modern science doesn't matter," she says, going on to argue that involving the public in decisions around science and technology "is only possible if it is underpinned with a good base of science understanding, delivered through our education system".
Very few of us in the "academic sphere" referred to would disagree that science education is important, nor argue that misunderstanding of science is not – you only have to look at the
recent measles outbreak in South Wales to see the tragic consequences of such a misunderstanding. And this is only going to become...
Related Articles
By Pallab Gosh and Gwyndaf Hughes, BBC News | 06.26.2025
Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first.
The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to...
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Rhys Blakely, The Times | 06.24.2025
Scientists have created fertile mice from male genetic material alone, a breakthrough that could one day open the door to human babies who inherit their genes from two fathers.
The experiment, led by Professor Yanchang Wei at Shanghai Jiao Tong...