British science writer Maurice Goldsmith argues that science critics are urgently needed to bring society to a new level of sophistication about science. Given the challenges of modern times, Goldsmith writes, the old forms of communication between science and the public are no longer adequate. Journalistic accounts of science tend to be gratuitously negative and scientists' accounts defensively optimistic. Science critics would counteract this superficiality with broad vision, in-depth knowledge and detached judgment.
What Goldsmith seems to be saying is that the public would appreciate science more if the relationship between the scientific community and the public were more open, more familiar, more human. To the extent that the scientific community keeps its distance, it creates fear; to the extent it resists criticism, it creates suspicion.
In advocating more open cooperation between science and society, Goldsmith's views are consistent with those of many observers. In proposing the science critic as ...
