Newsletter, June 2007
Contents this month
Science Communication conference organised by the BA and the
Royal Society
How public engagement in science and technology can be used to
influence policy making has been a challenge for the science community
for several years. In May Pippa took part in a conference organised
jointly by the BA and the Royal Society on Science
Communication.
The panel included Andrew Dillon from NICE, Prof Sandy Thomas from
Foresight and Prof Celia Davies from the LSE. The first day of
the conference was devoted to public engagement while the second
was used to discuss climate change.
Pippa used our sciencehorizons project as an example that aims
to help policy makers to consider the views of the public in
developing policy on new science and technology. The session
was full to bursting; the whole topic is obviously challenging
many people in the science engagement field.
Sciencehorizons is a fascinating
project in its own right: click
the link to have a look. We are
following the consultation with a seminar for policymakers
within government to discover what issues new science and technology
raises for policy making. We will identify issues emerging
from
the sciencehorizons project that have clear policy homes, make
links between issues and identify issues for which there are
significant policy gaps.
This is just the start of the process
- a warm up - the results will be presented later this year
and it will be a while longer before we will know how they have
been
used.
