Science Museums: Magic or Ideology? considers how exhibits on science and technology set up complex and unusual associations between natural and social orders. This volume analyzes how scientific information is presented via narratives of scientific achievement interwoven with discourses that merge not only scientific but also political and cultural trends. Genetic engineering, for example is usually presented to the public as full of promise and progress even as the inevitable course of cutting-edge research while it is increasingly cast within an aura of modern obscurantism. The book goes beyond the discussion of exhibition content and design beyond that traditionally found in other museum studies volumes. Science exhibits in Europe and America were selected to force a discussion of similarity and multiplicity in exhibition practices, as a result, the comparison highlights critical scientific gaps and disturbing ideological conflicts that result in the obscuring of objectivity.