ITHACA, N.Y. -- Graduate students in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Department of Communication at Cornell University are sponsoring a conference, "Science for Sale?: Public Communication of Science in a Corporate World," April 15-17 on the seventh floor of Clark Hall on the Cornell campus. It is free and open to the public.

"Science for Sale?" is an interdisciplinary weekend conference for exploring the mediation of science in a corporate environment. As public presentations of science merge with marketing and as corporate research organizations do more of the work that university researchers conduct, these kinds of observations raise timely questions about the public understanding of science with respect to authorship, ownership and relationships of practice in science and media.

The intersection of science and the corporate world presents a rich site for analyses of public communication and understanding of science, medicine and technology. Public communication is defined broadly for this event to allow critical inquiry into the roles of academic journals, news journalism, museums, speeches, entertainment media, doctor-patient relations, film, advertising, art, literature, the Internet and radio.

The keynote talks are:

• "The Mediating Factor: Science, the Press and Public Relations in the 1930s," presented by Marcel LaFollette, associate research professor of science and technology policy at George Washington University and author most recently ofStealing Into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing , at 3:30 p.m., April 15;
• "Corporate Understanding of the Public -- An Anthropological Approach," presented by Genevieve Bell, an ethnographer and researcher at Intel, at 9 a.m., April 16; and
• "Intersections of Pharmaceutical Marketing and Pharmaceutical Research," presented by Sergio Sismondo, associate professor of philosophy at Queen's University, Canada, and author of The Art of Science , among other books, at 1:30 p.m., April 16.

The conference is sponsored by 17 programs on campus. For more information, see http://www.sts.cornell.edu/conferences/stscomm/index.php.

The conference is sponsored by 17 programs on campus. For more information, see http://www.sts.cornell.edu/conferences/stscomm/index.php.