Knowledge talks

Another example of the way that certain ‘talk’ sometimes starts leading a life of its own. The Netherlands like to benchmark themselves against other nations (what nation doesn’t?). Especially in the field of science and innovation policies, the Dutch have had a close watch on Finland for a long time.

But now the Dutch Scienceguide publishes an interview with the Dutch Prime Minister on the Dutch innovation policy. In the interview, another country enters the stage as an example for the Dutch knowledge society: Canada. Rather strange that at the same day ‘Digitalhomecanada’ publishes an article with the title ”9 Million Canadians can’t meet demands of knowledge society”….

Dutch images

In between coming back from a visit to the ANZCIES conference in Coffs Harbour (and a bit of scuba diving; I’ll post some pictures on my website soon) and getting ready for leaving to the US, I found a small article on the Dutch Scienceguide.

The Free University of Amsterdam recently held a survey on the image of various academic disciplines. They surveyed young people between 11 and 24. The results? 21% of them thought of Astrology as a very scientific discipline, while only 12% and 9% thought of Political Science resp. Public Policy/Public Admin as a scientific discipline. Astronomy and Chemistry score the highest with 42 and 65%. History was seen as scientific by only 17%. The field of Anthropology wasn’t well known by the youngsters: 16% did not have any opinion on this discipline.

So, what’s wrong with the image of Political Science? Or is it the young people?