Public engagement as means of restoring trust in science? Hitting the notes, but missing the music.

Wynne, Brian E. (2006) Public engagement as means of restoring trust in science? Hitting the notes, but missing the music. Community Genetics, 9 (3). pp. 211-220. ISSN 1422-2795

Abstract

This paper analyses the recent widespread moves to 'restore' public trust in science by developing an avowedly two-way, public dialogue with science initiatives. Noting how previously discredited and supposedly abandoned public deficit explanations of 'mistrust' have actually been continually reinvented, it argues that this is a symptom of a continuing failure of scientific and policy institutions to place their own science-policy institutional culture into the frame of dialogue, as possible contributory cause of the public mistrust problem.