washington

The governing council of the American Physical Society (APS) has rejected the first draft of a statement defining science for the public, which the society's public affairs panel has been preparing for three years. According to an official familiar with the discussion, some members were concerned by a proposed reference to “other approaches” to understanding nature.

Others are said to have been worried about public misunderstanding of the statement's references to “falsifiability”. The authors of the draft 200-word statement have been asked to confer with scientific societies and other interested parties before coming back with a new version later this year.

The case for such a statement has been recently confirmed by opinion polls showing that public belief in forms of pseudoscience — such as faith healing and astrology — is growing in the United States. But the rejection of the draft, although not unusual for such a policy statement, illustrates the difficulties that scientists face in trying to draw a recognizable line between their own work and pseudoscience.

The statement, entitled “What is Science?”, defines science as “a disciplined quest to understand nature in all its aspects” and explains that it demands both “open and complete exchange of ideas and data” and “an attitude of scepticism about its own tenets”.

It stresses that scientific results must be capable of reproduction, modification or falsification by independent observers. And it closes by noting that “scientists value other, complementary approaches to and methods of understanding nature”, but that “if the alternatives are to be called scientific, they must adhere to the principles outlined above”.

Following the draft's rejection by the council at a meeting last week in Columbia, Ohio, the APS may now draw up two statements — one for wide public dissemination and the other a more rigorous explanatory statement for scientists themselves.

The society decided to produce the statement in response to the concerns of key members that ‘pseudoscience’ is not only winning increased public attention but may even be causing confusion among science students. APS members have been active in criticizing this trend not just in cases related to physics — such as the alleged discovery of ‘cold fusion’ — but also in other fields, such as alternative medicine.