I didn’t make it to the essay about Mendeleev that I mentioned earlier today… got sidetracked by an interesting comment piece by Professor Raymond Tallis in today’s Times about the public’s perception of science. It’s definitely worth a read and can be found here.
This led me to Sense about Science – a charity that provides a bridge between the front lines of science and the general public. The section on making sense of chemicals should be mandatory reading for everyone…
Stuart
Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)
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Scientists may not give a satisfactory answer to ‘Will Vitamin-C kill us’, but they can certainly answer why it is still useful if our understanding of the world is not the world itself.
The public can have better understanding of the former kind by themselves if they first understand the latter kind, where scientists can really help.