High- and Low-Cost Realities for Science and Society

摘要

Through the ongoing proliferation of images and symbols, information overload and hi-tech-driven media, science increasingly communicates with the public in ways that are deliberately designed and intended to meet the public (and political) imagination. At the same time, the public is led to imagine what the sciences and scientists mean and say. The appeal to the imagination can be pursued through different avenues. One is that of fiction, a recent example of which is Michael Crichton's blockbuster.The State of Fear (1). In his plot, scientists are colluding with the environmental movement, making up facts when necessary, in order to support a common cause. In a shrewd move of having environmental lawyers rehearse possible arguments that the defense might use against them, he lectures extensively in the guise of the scientific graphs and footnotes and by presenting whatever else looks like scientific evidence, about all that is wrong with global warming. It is a mix of science, advocacy, and a vision of scientists whose idealism leads them astray.