This deserves a detailed reply from us, so we have posted here. We look forward to your response.

I work on the ‘Science : So What? So Everything’ campaign and the posts on the campaign were forwarded to me for comment. Forgive the lengthiness of this response, but I thought it only fair to address as many of the points raised as possible.

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the length of time it’s taken for us to respond. We are all aware that this is an unacceptably long period of time taken to respond to a post. Whilst government is well set up for prompt responses to phone calls, letters and emails, blogs and social media are an area in which we are all still catching up. Moreover, it’s worth remembering that government isn’t just the civil service acting on its own initiative – in order to find answers to some of the points raised, we need to check with stakeholders and officials from a wide range of backgrounds.

As such – at present – there just aren’t any “official” methods for responding to blog posts, especially in areas where commenting on policy is required. In this instance, I decided to try and find answers and responses on a personal basis rather than wait for these processes to be fully realised (which they will, in time – everyone is aware of the importance of getting social media right, and I think people would be surprised at the appetite for channels that offer better communication with the public at large).

Since criticism was made about someone from an agency posting (rather than DIUS directly), I think it’s only right that I explain that – as with most government campaigns – some elements are delivered by external agencies as government simply doesn’t have the resources to maintain large in-house campaigns teams (who would not be fully occupied all year round).

In this case, government identified that there was a shortfall in engagement with science – from the perspective of those who are yet to choose their career paths, those responsible for their employment, training and education, and the public at large in terms of understanding why their tax money is spent on science. We then identified the variety of methods available for getting the message across, the interested parties (“stakeholders”) and tried to set outcomes for the project – so, in this case, we’d like to see things like more coverage in the press for science in general and UK science companies, organisations and practitioners, as well as long term goals like an uptake in places on science courses at all levels.

Re: consultation – The Science and Society Consultation invited input from all interested individuals and organisations on a range of issues including public engagement. As it was “Science & Society,” social science institutions were directly consulted too, notably the Social Research Association and the Academy of Social Sciences. As Lord Drayson stated in his letter to Research Fortnight (19 November 2008), on just this point, DIUS will be involving in the broadest range of stakeholders possible in the subsequent development and implementation of the strategy.

A full list of contributors can be accessed here:

http://interactive.dius.gov.uk/scienceandsociety/site/

In terms of engagement with the wider science community so far we have enlisted the support of all the Research Councils, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society amongst many others. A full list of the campaign partners is on the website here:

http://sciencesowhat.direct.gov.uk/SSWFindOutMorePartners.aspx

It’s also worth mentioning that part of the idea of this campaign is to reach a wider audience than the science community can sometimes reach themselves. Whilst we have a duty to consult with the science community and stakeholders, the goal here is to reach beyond. The SSW campaign we are running is not really about talking to scientists – it’s about trying to encourage new ones and promoting better public understanding / valuing of science practictioners. As a result, what suits those people may not always suit the community. For example, I know using celebrities / showbiz seems non-science-y, but the truth is that a very large number of young (and not so young) people are influenced by what they see celebrities doing. So, yes, if it comes across as a bit “yoof” I’m not sure that should be so surprising!

As for the issue of good science communication and providing links etc – we are revisiting this issue in its entirety. There is now a clear route for communication with the campaign sciencesowhat at dius dot gsi dot gov dot uk and we are ensuring that, wherever practicable, we will include links to relevant sources. We will also be refining how we select and present content for channels like Twitter, as well as ensuring that we use good, existing science content (as has been suggested) in preference to creating mountains of new content, especially if it’s duplicating work already undertaken elsewhere. That said, if there’s good content that can be re-packaged to reach a wider audience, I think we should be trying to do that too.

We all think it’s important that we listen and try and re-shape what we’re doing if and when it’s appropriate. Although the campaign has mostly been well-received, you’ll have seen some changes in some of the approaches already, all of which are as a result of us listening to feedback from across the board, and there’s more to come. These campaigns are constantly re-evaluated and re-directed.

I hope this goes some way to answering the posts on here. I’ll try and answer any further general points but I probably can’t get too specific about some of the more precise areas of policy as that would be me talking out of turn. As I said, we’re trying to work out how to communicate better in social media spaces but, as with most things in government, it doesn’t change overnight… In the meantime, I’d like to invite anyone who would like to suggest content or other ideas in the spirit of the campaign to get in touch. We do want to hear from you!

Thanks for listening.

However, I’m sure that my frustration shows on this post, and I hope people appreciate why. As I tried to explain there are some fundamental difficulties with science communication that should be addressed – issues of trust, of communicating actual scientific controversies where there simply isn’t a “matter of fact” to report, going beyond excitement, two way dialogue and so on. And to that I would add a bit more of an honest appraisal of what a science career really looks like: because it’s not all hunky dory. I spent a year on the dole with a physics degree, and that was during the boom years. So I’d link to prospects.ac.uk as well as UCAS. (By the way, one of your links on the science career page is broken).

There is a wealth of research on science communication, the dynamics of science in the public, media representation of science, and “science and society” that will tell you the issues are more complicated than merely getting people to excited by science. I also appreciate that it is easier to criticise than to make suggestions on how to do it better, but in this case that’s difficult because I’m just not sure what they (i.e. DIUS) want to accomplish here beyond some vague notion of bigging up science, because that is in some unspecified way Better For The Nation. And it’s not as if they are unaware of the social scientists’ input on this because we submitted all of it to the consultation. And of course, most of these arguments are still somewhere on the House of Lords website. And that’s why I am frustrated.

And by this of course I don’t mean you, the people who run the site and who have to work with the constraints that you are given, so I apologise if I come across as slightly harsh here.

As a follow up it was good to read about the British Science Council’s work on a robust definition for science but it strikes me as very woolly.