We face austerity, privatisation, and toxic influence. But we are growing, and cannot be beaten

OVER the past week, a great festival of working people and activists have gathered in Glasgow alongside Cop26 for the People’s Summit.
The Star has done well in giving only perfunctory coverage to the rote machinations of the “climate glitterati” in the conference halls, choosing instead to give more space to the real sites of intellectual activity in the city — the places where activists and workers have convened to speak to each other.
Over the past few weeks, members of the Science and Society team have been privileged to take part in discussions about science and politics: first at an event hosted by the Marx Memorial Library and also at a People’s Summit event run by the Cut-Through Collective. We’ve been able to join in valuable discussions about how science is actually practised.
After a bifurcating education system that divides people entering university into “scientists” and “non-scientists,” the model of academic science is a hierarchical pyramid.



