Citizen-scientist: an oxymoron?

✍ Scribed by Rustum Roy

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 51 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1369-7021
• DOI: 10.1016/s1369-7021(02)01040-4

✦ Synopsis

At a recent American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, in a session on "Science and Democracy" many of the speakers agreed that in practice the term was an oxymoron, at least for the vast majority of scientists in academia.

Can materials researchers behave like citizens first? That means thinking about the whole of society and our science's place in it, in that order. Scientists are forever complaining about the 'scientific illiteracy' of the public, without considering either their own citizenship knowledge, or the consequences of a citizenry genuinely knowledgeable about science, but financially and professionally disinterested in it. There are large numbers of such. In the US, they work in the Congressional committees or as members' staffers. They work in science agencies. They work in the dozens of public interest groups. Unlike