Editorial
Motivating Science, a collection of articles from the first five years of The Pantaneto Forum is now available from bookshops and Amazon etc. We are offering a discount for direct orders, see our order page.
One of the most important areas where science interacts in public life is in the judicial process. Scientists are increasingly called to give evidence as expert witnesses, and what they say, and how they communicate their message, can not only be important for the participants in a trial, but also to society at large. In “Science in Court, experts and advisers as post academic science communicators”, Licia Gambarelli highlights the differences between scientific and legal truth or perhaps we should say between scientific and legal fictions.
Since the 1990’s Poland in common with many areas in Eastern Europe has undergone radical political and economic reforms. In “Science needs good public relations”, Andrzej Jasinski describes how far Poland has come along the road from political propaganda to healthy science communication, and how much further it still has to go.
In “Making marketing difficult”, Gitte Meyer explores the interaction between Science and Commerce. According to Meyer: “ambiguity to marketing is inherent to the convention of science transmission in the same way as ambiguity towards the market-place is inherent to science”. Meyer argues that sometimes the line is crossed by scientists from communication for the common good, to mere “selling” of a particular line of research.
In April of this year the Institute of Physics arranged a conference: “Einstein 2005” to celebrate a century of Einstein’s work. In issue 19 of The Pantaneto Forum, the artist Orit Orion describes her works, which were on display at the conference. In this issue we give a report on the conference.
Nigel Sanitt
Editor
ISSN 1741-1572