This paper reviews some changes and continuities in science–society relations which have shaped this journal’s birth and development. I argue that the main focus on publics has been developed with insufficient primary attention to problematising what is meant by ‘science’ in its variable public forms, including discourses. We cannot understand ‘publics’ in relation to ‘science’, unless we also ask, searchingly, what is it that they experience as such, in all its multiple self-contradictions and confusions? Thus I reiterate the point made in the inaugural issue, still neglected in mainstream science and policy, that ‘science’ needs to be critically addressed in several dimensions, as part of public understanding of science research. First, instrumental pragmatic scientific meanings, useful in their own parochial situations, should not be given automatic sovereignty in public issues. Second, public concerns where they exist should not be interpreted and judged against this presumptively entrenched scientistic normative baseline.
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