Shopping for science

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vi unmig al luw cial- nature ot the birth, the ges in hormone levels after health of the mother and birth and possible vitamin baby, etc.

4) seeking information a more traditional approach from women who had would have achieved. recently given birth, with or Science shops in Britain?

WANT TO BE WHEN YOU ALIVe...

GROW UP? IF IT'S NOT TOO LAST week I wrote about the Dutch 'Science Shops"

- in particular about the University of Amsterdam Science Shop (UvAWW).

The other science shops in Holland have less financial support that the UvAWW but tend to be accepted officially by the universities where • they were set up.

While it is good that science shops should be given state funds to help them bring science to the people (and in particular working class people); this does render them suscep• tible to pressure:

1) Pressure to make their research fit into established patterns of scientific practice, with a scientific elite dispensing knowledge to the ignorant plebs, rather than the cooperative approach that science shop workers would favour.

2) Straight political pressure culminating in cutting off funds if the authorities don't like what they're doing.

Pressure

Already, there has been pressure on the University of Amsterdam to withdraw support from the UvAWW Les Hearn continues his look at 'Science Shops?

from a right-wing Minister of Education.

The other side of the coin of official support is that there are inadequate funds to pay researchers, so that scientists (staff or students) must do science shop research in their spare time.

Science shops try to get round this by getting their universities . to accept science shop projects part of students' course work, with some success. But this increases the tendency for the nature of the research to conform to accepted patterns.

An illustration of just how different research can be comes from a case dealt with by the independent Chemie Winkel (chemistry shop) at the University of Leiden. • Workers at a shipyard asked about hazards to health associated with repairing ships which had been used for incinerating waste chemicals, since there had been a lot of headaches, vomiting and skin rashes, etc., amongst the workforce. Chemistry shop researchers found that information on the dangers of complicated mixtures of chemicals was virtually non-existent. • So they gathered what information they could on the individual chemicals they thought likely to be in the mixtures. Then they got together a detailed questionnaire for shipyard workers and carried out personal interviews.

The resulting inventory of workers' complaints was published in a pamphlet which motivated the workers to take action on working conditions.

Depression

Another example of the inventive and unconventional approach of the science shops comes from the official science shop in Leiden. • They were approached by a women's group, the Women's Foundation on Post-Natal Depression (PND); for information about the causes of PND so as to better understand how to deal with it. They set up a working party which embarked on:

1) a search of the literature on PND in medical, psychological, feminist and general libraries;

2) research in anthropological literature to compare details with other societies and cultures;

8l lanking st hare shan deficiencies might affect how women felt.

SO, WHAT DO YOU GROUND ZERO I MEGATON WARIEND YOU ARE VERY DEAD without PND, with a questionnaire asking about the situations of their work and living circumstances, what sort of help they had in the home, what sort of relationships they were having, their psychological states before giving birth, their physical condition during pregnancy: the The result is a more rounded view, of PND than MUCH TROUBLE...

5 MLL:

DUAR 00K7

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Socialist Organiser no.123 March Page

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