Does the public always know best?

The free event, which is open to all, will bring together a panel of experts from fields including journalism and medicine, to ask whether these and other disciplines are being inhibited by the need to respond to public demand?

Provocatively entitled “Does the public always know best?”, the forum is part of a bigger conference on “detachment”, convened by the University’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), which is running until July 3rd.

Far from attempting to claim that members of the public should never be allowed their say, the organisers argue that a healthy demand for accountability in fields such as politics and science is making these areas much more open and democratic than in the past.

At the same time, however, the panellists will be asked if that demand is starting to go too far, and whether, in some cases, we are at risk of confusing what the public say they want, with what is actually best.

“Many professionals are being encouraged to engage more with the public than ever before,” Dr. Tom Yarrow, one of a team of anthropologists behind the event, said.

“Very few people would dream of suggesting that is a bad thing overall, but perhaps we should be asking if it is happening at a cost and whether a better balance between engagement and detachment ought to be struck?

“Some scientists, for example, now feel that they are losing autonomy and the right to research issues that are not driven by commercial opportunities, or a recognisable public interest. This event will ask whether that is a common problem in other fields as well and, if so, whether the need for engagement is actually restricting society’s development overall?”

The forum will look beyond science and academia, examining a whole range of fields where professionals and practitioners are under pressure to engage more directly with the people whom they are meant to serve.

Politicians, for example, frequently speak about the need to “reconnect” with the electorate, while policy-makers increasingly use focus groups to canvass the public for their views.

Similarly, doctors in the National Health Service are asked to emphasise “patient choice” when making decisions about how to treat them, and people working in the media are required to take the opinions of their viewers, listeners and readers into account.

Critics contend that while it may be well-meaning, this drive for responsiveness and accountability is not always beneficial. Some argue, for example, that policy by focus group means that decisions are made according to what people want, rather than what is in their best interests.

The widespread use of radio phone-ins and other forms of feedback has likewise led to criticisms from some quarters that journalists often gather the views of their target audiences, then report them back to the same audiences as if they are “news”.

The forum will bring together representatives from a range of professions and disciplines, including medicine, art, journalism, archaeology and architecture.

Traditionally, each of these fields has demanded that its practitioners maintain a certain level of objectivity and professional distance from the public.

The panellists will be asked to consider whether that distance, or detachment, is now an outdated concept and a barrier to democracy, or whether, on the contrary, an obsession with engagement prevents them from working as they might have done in the past?

The forum will also examine whether such notions of professional distance have changed over time and what the effect of this has been.

“Ideas about connection and engagement have become so commonplace that we want to go against the grain and ask if sometimes detaching oneself from the public mood or demand can be productive, positive and meaningful?” Dr. Yarrow added.

The event, which is open to all, will be held at Girton College, Cambridge, from 6.45pm on Thursday, July 1st and will run until about 8.15pm. A report outlining the main findings will be published online at a later date.

More details about both the forum and the wider conference, “Detachment, the ethics and analytics of disconnection”, can be found at www.detachmentcollaboratory.org. The conference is funded by CRASSH and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).