Scientists’ Bestsellers: Alternative Spaces for Doing Science by Communicating

• In Event: Science Communication - II: Making Science in Public

Abstract

How do popular books by scientists feed back into scientific knowledge production? With this broad question in the background, I aim to contribute to science and technology studies literature on popular science books by going beyond seeing these works as mere objects of science communication. My analysis relies not only on bibliometric methods, but also has a qualitative component with a comparative lens. In this paper, I first focus on two bestsellers, both written by renowned scientists for a general audience, and study how they are cited in academic publications. Second, I critically view the boundary between popular and academic through comparison of these bestsellers to books published by university presses on similar topics. This qualitative analysis relies on an assumed difference between books published by the academic press and non-academic publishing houses; however, at the same time, it queries this distinction by reconsidering what upstream and downstream might mean, especially in cases of emerging and controversial topics of research. With this paper, I aim to complicate further our understanding of scientists’ bestsellers as part of science, by viewing these books as alternative spaces for doing science by communicating rather than as mere tools of communicating scientific knowledge.

Author

• Kaya Akyuz, University of Vienna, Department of Science and Technology Studies