As it approaches its sixth birthday, Public Understanding of Science is about to undergo its first major rite of passage. From January 1998 the Editorship will be assumed by Dr Bruce Lewenstein, Associate Editor (USA), and the editorial locus will move from London to Ithaca in the State of New York. Ownership of the journal will continue to rest with IOP Publishing and the Science Museum, London; but, rightly and inevitably, the change of editorship will bring with it changes of balance, of emphasis and of style. Over the years, I have generally resisted the temptation to use Editorials as a convenient vehicle for `sounding off' on particular issues. Instead, following a statement of the journal's aims and intentions at the outset, I have confined myself to nothing more than the occasional editorial devoted to explaining changes in the editorial structure or rationales behind special issues. Six years on from the launch, however, it seems appropriate to stand back and assess what has been achieved. What have been the journal's chief successes and failures to date? More generally, how far have we come in the public understanding of science, and what have we learned? On the credit side of the journal's account must come first the fact of survival. Though we were optimistic, we could not be certain in 1990 (when we started planning in earnest) that the research field of the public understanding of science was capable of sustaining a quarterly journal. Our mere existence today proves that it was, and is. The creation of the journal probably helped stimulate the field a little; but leaving this aside, it is clear that enough people have become engaged in serious study of the public dimensions of science and technology to justify our decision to establish the journal. Indeed, since our launch a second international journal with an extensively overlapping remit - Science Communication - has been created (or rather, fashioned out of an older publication). It seems that the field is continuing to expand. A second point to the journal's credit is that we have succeeded to a considerable extent in fulfilling our pluralist remit. In the launch issue, I suggested that the public understanding of science was an interdisciplinary research field characterized by heterogeneity: heterogeneity of research agendas; heterogeneity of theoretical frameworks and models; and heterogeneity of research practices. The contents of the journal since then have amply confirmed this judgement. The submissions we receive are genuinely international (though US and UK contributions are the most numerous); and it would be extremely difficult to distil from them any unifying research agenda, theoretical framework or research practice. The journal has not been the mouthpiece for any single perspective or point of view in the public understanding of science; rather, it has been a vehicle for all points of view that are supported by serious scholarship. If the fact of survival and the fostering of pluralism have been our main successes, chief among our failures to date has been the over-dominance of empirical studies in the mix of submissions to the journal. From the outset, we have remained true to the ideals of a scholarly journal; that is to say, we have rejected mere digests of work that has appeared elsewhere, as well as pure opinion pieces (with which our field is greatly over-blessed), in favour of original and serious research. This is surely the right policy. However, original and serious research takes several forms, of which the empirical case study is but one. More reflective theoretical work is also crucially important if any academic study is to make real progress; and this has been in relatively short supply in our field. To be sure, we have published a number of important reflective articles as `Theoretical Perspectives;' but for the most part, these have been specially commissioned in an effort to remedy the deficit of such material in the journal's post-bag. The one theoretical issue of substance that has continued to feature regularly in the journal is the central `framing question' of our field: how ought we to conceive the relationship between science and the public? At the outset, the journal recognized the existence of contrasting and even conflicting responses to this question by commissioning a series of `Launch Perspectives' from natural and social scientists with an interest in the public understanding of science. Re-reading these perspectives today, I am struck by the fact that they still embody most of the significant positions that are on offer in the field. What has come to be known as the `deficit model' continues to find favour among natural scientists; but it is hard indeed to find many social scientists who have a good word to say for it. The great strength of the deficit model is that it captures the educational imperative at the heart of much scientific and governmental concern about the public understanding of science; but its great weakness was set out clearly by Brian Wynne in the launch issue: Formulated as it is in this way [i.e., as a problem of public ignorance], the problem throws all the critical research attention on the public and the media. The only problems within science are to do with inducing scientists to communicate more clearly and entertainingly in lay terms.[ 1 ] Debate around the deficit model has been the single most significant area of theoretical discussion in the field over the past six years. This, in the main, is how the public understanding of science has become caught up in the wider arguments between some natural scientists and practitioners of science studies that have come to be known as `the science wars'.[ 2 ] In essence, the science wars have been a dispute about what science is and who has the right to say what it is. On occasion, ideas about what non-scientists think science is have proved to be convenient weapons in the conflict. Thus, Lewis Wolpert has argued at length that the nature of science is profoundly antithetical to common sense, to the point where the very possibility of a genuinely public understanding of science must be questioned;[ 3 ] whereas Steve Fuller has suggested that, `if the surveys are to be believed, the average person's understanding of science has the makings of a much more sensible and sophisticated view than the one being promoted by leading scientists and government officials.'[ 4 ] It is not clear how far either of these authors is inclined to treat seriously the results of public understanding of science research; what is abundantly clear, however, is that both of them can not possibly be right. Unfortunately, the acrimony that has characterized the science wars as a whole has to some extent spilled over into our field. The exchange between Lewis Wolpert and Harry Collins in the journal was the most acrimonious with which I have had to deal in my time as Editor; and much to my regret, a member of the Editorial Board has subsequently resigned on a separate but related matter. Somehow, it seems particularly difficult to engage in good-willed and constructive discussion about the nature of science across the natural science/social science divide. Yet so far as the public understanding of science itself is concerned, such discussion is surely essential if we are to make real progress. Whatever we may take the public understanding of science to be, one thing is evident: it is too culturally, socially and politically important to become the victim of mere in-fighting among rival groups of academics anxious to protect the dignity and perceived worth of their particular specialisms. It would be absurd of me to try to adjudicate here on the rights and wrongs of what has become an exceedingly complex - indeed, at times arcane - dispute. However, two observations seem appropriate in this context. First, I can not help observing an ironic contrast between the terms in which the science wars debate is being conducted and the terms in which many non-scientists choose to deal with science when occasion demands. The science wars debate is nothing if not abstruse. It deals for the most part in issues of supposedly large philosophical moment, and many of the core texts in the debate are well-nigh incomprehensible to all but a small group of cognoscenti . By contrast, the terms in which many non-scientists choose to deal with science appear to be comparatively straightforward and down-to-earth. By this, I do not mean merely to re-state the obvious fact that most non-scientists lack the complex vocabulary of technical terms which are the province of experts. Rather, I mean that non-scientists appear generally to adopt what might be termed a pragmatic approach to science that is free from many of the idealizations of both natural and social scientists. This is not to say, of course, that non-scientists deal with science in an ideologically `pure' and value-free way - clearly, that would be impossible; rather, it is to say that perhaps a lack of familiarity with the science wars may not be such a huge disadvantage when it comes to dealing with science in the real world. This leads me to a second observation that has to do with Wynne's notion of critical research attention. If the question were to be posed to me: `which shall it be, a critical view of science, or a critical view of the public?,' my answer would be: `both, please.' Similarly, if the question were to be posed to me: `which shall it be, an idealized view of science, or an idealized view of the public?,' my answer would be: `neither, thanks very much.' It does not seem to me that we are required to choose between one model of the public understanding of science that idealizes science and demonizes the public, and another model of the public understanding of science that demonizes science and idealizes the public. Surely we should aspire instead to a model of the public understanding of science that is even-handed in its critical analysis of science and the public; a model that attempts to do justice to the complexity, the subtlety, the strengths and the weaknesses of both. Here, perhaps, is where there is the greatest scope for further theoretical work that will carry research in the public understanding of science beyond the current debate about the strengths and weaknesses of the deficit model. Finally, I should like to conclude this valedictory editorial with a word or two of thanks. Many people have been involved in the setting up and operation of the journal over the past six years: publishers; editorial board and team members; many (supposedly) anonymous referees; and so on. I hope that I shall be forgiven for not mentioning all of these people by name, and for picking out just two among them for special acknowledgment. Alan Singleton at IOP Publishing was the first professional publisher we spoke to who seemed both to understand and to enthuse about what we were trying to do. Jane Gregory was the person who first persuaded me that we should try to do it, and then showed me how. Without Jane's efforts, I doubt that Public Understanding of Science would ever have happened. I have enjoyed editing Public Understanding of Science , but I have no qualms whatever about handing over the reins to Bruce Lewenstein. His work in the field, as well as his active involvement in the Editorial team over the past six years, make it obvious that with him the journal is in safe hands. I look forward to seeing the journal moving forward with confidence over the coming years. John Durant Editor References [1] Wynne, B., 1992, Public understanding of science research: new horizons or hall of mirrors? Public Understanding of Science , 1 , 38. [2] For blast and counterblast in this unsavoury conflict, see: Gross, P., and Levitt, N., 1994, Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD, London: Johns Hopkins University Press); Ross, A., 1996, Science Wars (Durham, London: Duke University Press). [3] Wolpert, L., 1992, The Unnatural Nature of Science (London: Faber). [4] Fuller, S., 1996, Does science put an end to history, or history to science? Or, why being pro-science is harder than you think. Science Wars , edited by A. Ross (Durham, London: Duke University Press), p.31.
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