Gitte Meyer

Expectations and beliefs in science communication: Learning from three European gene therapy discussions of the early 1990s

There is widespread agreement that the potential of gene therapy was oversold in the early 1990s. This study, however, comparing written material from the British, Danish and German gene therapy discourses of the period finds significant differences: Over-optimism was not equally strong everywhere; gene therapy was not universally hyped. Against that background, attention is directed towards another area of variation in the material: different basic assumptions about science and scientists. Exploring such culturally rooted assumptions and beliefs and their possible significance to science communication practices, it is argued that deep beliefs may constitute drivers of hype that are particularly difficult to deal with. To participants in science communication, the discouragement of hype, viewed as a practical–ethical challenge, can be seen as a learning exercise that includes critical attention to internalised beliefs.

In science communication, why does the idea of a public deficit always return?

For centuries, science communication has been widely perceived, irrespective of context, as a didactic enterprise. That understanding does not accommodate a political category of science communication, featuring citizens on an equal footing – some of them scientists – who share responsibility for public affairs and represent different points of view and ways of reasoning. That may harm, at the same time and for the same reasons, democratic knowledge societies as political entities and science as a body of knowledge and rational methodology. Scientists are discursively excluded from the public. The public is perceived in terms of knowledge deficiency. The latter perception has survived decades of critique, accompanied by attempts, along an everyman-as-scientist logic, to include all citizens in the scientific endeavour. But why should all be scientists? With respect to practical-political issues – as distinct from technical-scientific ones – the acknowledgement of the citizenship of scientists seems more relevant. Only, this would challenge the widespread understanding of science as an all-purpose problem solver and the consequent ideas of politics.

Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction: The Shared Features of Awe and Fascination and Their Significance to Ideas of Science Fictions as Vehicles for Critical Debate About Scientific Enterprises and Their Ethical Implications

Some see literary Science Fiction as a possible vehicle for critical discussions about the future development and the ethical implications of science-based technologies. According to that understanding, literary Science Fiction constitutes a variety of science communication. Along related lines, popular science communication with science fiction features might be expected to serve a similar purpose. Only, it is far from obvious that it actually works that way.

International Language Monism and Homogenisation of Journalism

Abstract Different languages representing diff erent frameworks of thought and perspectives on reality also carry diff erent frameworks of thought on journalism and on how the profession may contribute to democracy. A shortcut to understanding varieties of journalism may be provided by the study of different understandings of journalistic key notions in different languages, by comparing two varieties of journalism – the “reporter” and the “publicist” tradition – in English and German. The current homogenisation of journalism, using the Anglo-American reporter traditions as the model, strengthened by the simultaneous move towards English as the international language, may be seen as a loss of diversity in journalism and even a threat to democratic diversity in Europe. An increased stress on language understanding and conceptual hygiene in the education of journalists is proposed to maintain diversity.