Workshop 5 - PNS 5: A Digital Journey (2020)

As science's inter-penetration with technology, finance, politics and mass-media becomes ever more profound, new challenges arise. Scientific practices are becoming increasingly diverse — for example, as citizen science, DIY and makers movements gain prominence, and traditional, local and indigenous knowledge are (re)valued. Plurality in the forms of knowledge increases complexity. In this context, the protection of integrity and quality of knowledge includes critical thinking about science itself. New demarcations are needed, between science practices with qualities that are negotiated with society, and practices that are shoddy, entrepreneurial, opportunistic, reckless, vacuous, or outright dirty. Confronting issues at the science-technology-policy interface with PNS lenses yields something more rigorously managed than politics, less precise than laboratory science, more challenging than either of them, and with the potential to restore integrity to science practice and prudence in policy advice.