Please note: This course is not running in 2018-19
This course offers a rounded introduction to the connections between science and society.
We start by exploring exactly what it is that makes scientific knowledge special, and go on to spend most of the course looking at the many roles played by scientific knowledge in present-day societies. The scientific community offers a way of understanding how the natural world operates, but science is also valued in other senses – for the support it can offer to technical advance, as a model for what ‘good knowledge’ should look like, as a form of expertise for trying to manage risk or to ensure food safety.
The course uses examples to study all of these topics, ranging from debates about which kinds of scientific expert to allow into court, to continuing public debates over the safety of GMOs, through to the question of how scientific stories are covered in mass media.
This is a level 8 course with 20 credits.
Course organiser: Prof. Steve Yearley
Course Secretary: Alex Dysart
Semester: not running in 2018-19
More information: Science and Society 1a (STIS08004)