The optimistic view of the pessimist: Reply to critics

Evgeniy V. Maslanov
Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy, Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

The opti­mistic view of the pes­simist: Reply to crit­ics

Abstract. This paper pro­vides short respons­es to the crit­ics’ com­ments on the arti­cle Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Sci­en­tists and New Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (Notes from a Pes­simist). Agree­ing with the the­sis that pub­lic con­trol over the im-ple­men­ta­tion of sci­en­tif­ic projects is need­ed, the author notes that its func­tion­ing is hin­dered by the “illu­sion of under­stand­ing” of sci­ence. Rely­ing on this illu­sion helps evade real pub­lic con­trol. Fur­ther­more, open access to sci­en­tif­ic results only strength­ens it. The devel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy sci­ence leads to the active for­ma­tion of its media image. At the same time, sci­en­tists them­selves are striv­ing to with­stand the increas­ing “illu­sion of under­stand­ing” along with the medi­a­ti­za­tion of sci­ence. As a result, sci­ence itself seeks to re-build the demar­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools.

Key­words: com­mu­ni­ca­tion, sci­ence, sci­ence popu-lar­iza­tion, pub­lic con­trol

DOI: 10.5840/dspl2020315

Ref­er­ences:

  1. Collins, H. M., Evans, R. The third wave of sci­ence stud­ies: stud­ies of exper­tise and expe­ri­ence, Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence, 2002, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 235–296.
  2. Dok­torov, B. Z. Per­vo­prokhodt­sy mira mnenii: ot Gel­lopa do Grushi­na [Pio­neers of the world of opin­ions: from Gallup to Grushin], Moscow: Insti­tut Fon­da “Obshch­estven­noe mne­nie” Publ., 2005. (In Russ­ian)

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