Narrating Science and the Public Good: Insights from Australian Stem Cell Research

Science policy actors increasingly invoke the public good in their visions for supporting and doing scientific research. But how do they and working scientists make sense of this relationship? And what do their perspectives mean for the normative question of how we ought to think about the interface of science and public good? While STS has much to contribute here, we have seen little sustained engagement with these questions in the field, a gap we seek to address. We revisit Michel Callon’s 1994 article ‘Is Science a Public Good?’, putting his contribution in conversation with more recent STS insights and empirical findings on narratives around stem cell research in Australia. Based on this analysis, we identify three narratives of science and public good: two that are prominent in contemporary discussions (essentialist, market-oriented) and another that speaks to possible alternatives (ambivalent). Seeking to expand upon the ambivalent narrative in order to point towards more normative possibilities, we argue that today the challenge is to transform how scientific research is configured in this world in order to allow diverse publics, priorities, and pathways to be built in pursuit of public good.