ABSTRACT
A presentation at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science attempted to account for the factors affecting public perception
of science, drawing no more tangible conclusions than that people are more likely
to support scientific research if they know more about it. Even such a conclusion,
however, cannot be directly credited to better science education (Pearson, 2005).
The debate over cloning is an excellent example. After several years of debate, a
United Nations legal committee has recommended that member nations ban all
forms of human cloning, which includes research on cloning that could someday
generate organs for those who need them to continue living. Some have suggested
that scientists exploring cloning are playing God. If cloning is hampered and
lives are lost as a result, then who, indeed, is playing God, those who clone,
or those who prevent cloning? An examination of cloning reveals that no central
metaphor has emerged that communicates cloning to the public. This book
broadly recommends metaphors and analogies as an epistemological strategy that
can be generative for the scientist, the engineer, and the lay audience, and
specifically for metaphor and analogy to be taught in the scientific and technical
communication classroom.
