Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction: What this book is about and why you might want to read it -- Prologue: Three orphans share a common paternity: professional science communication, popular journalism and literary fiction are not as separate as they seem -- Nature speaks -- What do these three communication genres have in common? -- George Gissing and the connections between science, journalism and literature at the end of the nineteenth century -- Bibliography -- Part I Professional science communication -- 1 Spreading the word: problems with publishing professional science -- Professional science communication begins well, even if authenticity is difficult -- Professional and popular communication diverge -- The evolution of the scientific journal -- The evolution of the scientific paper -- Specialized professional structures beget specialized professional language -- Bibliography -- 2 Walk like an Egyptian: the alien feeling of professional science writing -- Professional scientific prose -- Interlocking definitions -- Technical taxonomies -- Special expressions -- Lexical density -- Syntactic ambiguity -- Grammatical metaphor -- Semantic discontinuity -- Why is professional prose like this? -- The problem aggravated by rudeness and arrogance -- The damage of stating new interpretations as fact rather than argument -- Bibliography -- 3 The future's bright? Professional science communication in the age of the internet -- The internet to the rescue? -- The internet sparks a new publication philosophy, especially in the life sciences -- The future will be multi-stranded -- Bibliography -- 4 Counting the horse's teeth: professional standards in science's barter economy -- The pivotal status of the scientific paper -- Gift exchange demands high standards of moral behaviour -- Universalism.

Communism -- Disinterestedness -- Organized scepticism -- Unintended consequences of Mertonian ideals -- The virus of dishonesty is in the physical sciences as well -- Widespread evidence of fraud would undermine the authority of science -- Bibliography -- 5 Separating the wheat from the chaff: peer review on trial -- Peer review as the cornerstone of quality control in science -- Bibliometrics -- Peer review of academic papers -- Pure science undermined by commercial funding pressures? -- Peer review in grant application: its most unsatisfactory use? -- Where do scientific value and quality lie? -- Unlocking evidence of institutional sexism -- Peer review is dead: long live peer review -- Bibliography -- Part II Science or the public: what science do people need and how might they get it? -- 6 The public understanding of science (PUS) movement and its problems -- COPUS and the scientifically illiterate public -- Scientists' science: the wrong science for much of the public? -- Problems arising from a cognitive deficit communication model -- Struggling towards a better communication model: The science shop movement and the value of mediation between mind sets -- Where does this leave us? -- Bibliography -- 7 Public engagement with science and technology (PEST): good principle, difficult practice -- A garden in suburban Hertfordshire, January -- A kitchen table in rural South Devon, July -- Marjory on the mobile phone to Kate in Leicester town centre, June -- Dialogue as the basis for engagement -- Dialogue: turning precept into action -- Real dialogue and possible democracy? -- Cafes Scientifiques as dialogue events -- Ecotourism -- Educational engagement: medical soaps in the developing world -- Where does this leave us? -- Bibliography -- 8 Citizen scientists? Democratic input into science policy -- The scope of science policy.

Can non-experts contribute to technical decision making? -- Democratic mechanisms which enhance the involvement of ordinary people in policy decisions -- Referenda -- Scenario workshops -- Deliberative opinion polls -- Electronic consensus building -- People's Panels -- Citizens' juries -- Consensus conferences -- The consensus conference in public policy making -- The citizens' jury in public policy making -- More elaborate consultations in Canada, the UK and America -- Where does this leave us? -- Bibliography -- 9 Teaching and learning science in school: implications for popular science communication -- Theories of mental development in children -- Jean Piaget -- The Russian school -- The information processing school -- The particular problems of learning science -- The Constructivist school -- Interventions and alternatives -- Communication is the key? -- Lessons for adult science communication -- Bibliography -- Part III Popular science communication: the press and broadcasting -- 10 What every scientist should know about the mass media -- The mass media framework in democratic society -- The news genre and news values -- The pervading influence of media logic -- Space and airtime are always limited -- The ethos of journalism still revolves round hard news -- Tight deadlines encourage dependence on pre-digested material -- Editors have a huge influence on all news reporting and feature sections -- News values and media logic -- a lethal conspiracy against understanding? -- The tension between serious news and popular entertainment: the 'dumbing down' of the media -- The lessons for media science communication? -- Bibliography -- 11 What every scientist should know about journalists -- The foot-soldiers of the mass media: what do journalists do and what ought they to do? -- How should journalists behave? -- The ethical journalist.

News and the fourth estate -- Journalism as rule-based or utilitarian practice? -- Trust, truth, disinterest and detachment -- The bugbear of objectivity -- The issue of privacy -- Declaring an interest -- The real world? -- Bibliography -- 12 The influence of new media -- The birth of the World Wide Web -- Great technical network: what was the content to be? -- Mainstream journalism goes online -- Blogging -- Social networking -- New types of gatekeeper? -- Bibliography -- 13 How the media represent science -- A brief history of post-war science -- Coverage in the British press -- Analysis of the British media and climate change, the MMR vaccine controversy, cloning and genetic medical research -- The complexity of media representation of science -- The scientist as a source of news -- The special case of science on television -- The impact of general news media trends on science coverage -- Bibliography -- 14 How should science journalists behave? -- The norms of professional science journalist behaviour -- The differences between the ethos of science and the ethos of news -- Management and loyalty -- Distortion of science -- The self-image of science journalists -- Scientists and journalists still misunderstand each other -- The role of science information people -- How are science journalists doing? -- Bibliography -- Part IV The origins of science in cultural context: five historic dramas -- 15 A terrible storm in Wittenberg: natural knowledge through sorcery and evil -- Pacts with the devil -- The historical context of the Faust myth -- Faust revised -- Sorcery and magic haunt the origins of 'science' -- Bibliography -- 16 A terrible storm in the Mediterranean: controlling nature with white magic and religion -- Black and white magic -- The rational basis of magic -- Religion and magic -- Bibliography.

17 Thieving magpies: the subtle art of false projecting -- Alchemy as criminal fraud -- The rational basis of alchemy -- The objections of the Church: alchemy as blasphemy -- Real alchemy only possible for the morally good -- Bibliography -- 18 Foolish virtuosi: natural philosophy emerges as a discipline but many cannot take it seriously -- Baconian philosophy -- Was there a scientific revolution inthe seventeenth century? -- Sir Isaac Newton leads the revolution from the back -- Bibliography -- 19 Is scientific knowledge 'true' or should it just be 'truthfully' deployed? -- The role of publication and politics in Galileo's 'success' -- Brecht's Galileo -- Bibliography -- Part V Science in literature -- 20 Science and the Gothic: the three big nineteenth-century monster stories -- The Gothic tradition -- Frankenstein, how should we classify Victor and his monster? -- The Gothic Frankenstein -- Frankenstein as science fiction before its time -- Frankenstein as a popular myth -- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde -- the dark side of evolution theory -- Dracula -- late revival of the vampire -- The legacy of the monsters -- Bibliography -- 21 Science fiction: serious literature or low grade entertainment? -- The strange genre of science fiction -- The origins of science fiction -- The imaginary journey -- Tales of science -- Utopian and dystopian fantasies -- Future wars -- Evolutionary fantasies -- Eschatological fantasies -- Scientific romance and metaphysical fantasy -- Persistence of the 'occult' -- The divergent traditions in Britain and America -- The American and British approaches combine -- The meaning of science fiction -- The science fiction community -- Science fiction after the classic period -- Science fiction as 'serious' science communication -- Bibliography -- 22 Science in British literary fiction -- Science in literary culture.

Physics fiction in American literature.