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Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Amanda,
I would argue that:
1) We are informal not just because we are optional, but because people 
come in at different levels to us and there is less of an agenda as to what 
they take away.  We have no tests.  You aren't expected to "know the 
information."  We hope that you take away something...(each exhibit will 
have goals...but how formal those are is quite different).  Besides 
that...we are casual!!!
2) Unfortunately I would also argue that science education does have 
agendas - mainly because we are human-based.  A true science education 
would say that any experiment could invalidate a previous theory.  In 
practice we are much less likely to give up our current notions of the way 
the universe works (science), than pure science dictates we should be.  I 
have even seen that evident in the column your organization puts in 
Scientific American.  We often say new scientific theories must "prove 
themselves."  But science relies merely on disproof for there is never 
proof of an idea, just support of it.  My understanding of science is that 
it relies merely on disproof and that when competing theories both explain 
the same phenomena, we take the 'simplest' (I won't detour into what 
'simplest means right now) theory (Occam's Razor).  Yet historically, we 
take the current theory over the new one time and time again.  The beauty 
of science is that eventually people become interested enough in the newer 
theories that they can find differences in predictions between the new 
theories and the old theories and someone tests those predictions.  We 
should want to fit theory to the fact, but often we do the reverse and try 
to fit the fact to the theory.

-William

William Katzman			[log in to unmask]
Director of Exhibits			(828) 322-8169 x307
Catawba Science Center		(828) 322-1585 (fax)
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value" 
-A. Einstein





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Hello,

I have truly enjoyed this discussion. Many brilliant and eloquent opinions
and statements have been made. I have felt somewhat unworthy in 
contributing
to this discussion because I do not work in a museum but rather work with
museums and other formal and informal educational institutions to promote
skepticism and critical thinking towards ideas and claims that are often
dubbed as pseudoscience. (On a side note, it has always bothered me that
museums are considered "informal" but I'm assuming this is because they are
optional?)

The organization I work for is often considered to lie at the other end of
the spectrum to creationist organizations and other
pseudoscientific/paranormal entities, as are science museums and
"traditional" science education in the classrooms (but less often.) I do 
not
believe this to be true, however, because I do not see science educators
(and related institutions) to have an agenda that their ideas must conform
to -- rather the opposite, in my opinion. Our organization has also been
accused of extremism, scientism, dogmatism, and in many ways as much of a
fundamentalist organization as those we stand against.

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