This paper draws upon 10 interviews conducted with staff at two science centres as part of a research project on science centres and social and cultural inclusion. The authors argue that these science centres have developed a highly differentiated configuration of science that stands at some removes from the standard conception of science as a highly structured body of scientific knowledge and expertise. They call it "official science." Their concern is to examine how "official science" is mediated, re-inflected, and reinterpreted in science centres. The authors highlight the factors, circumstances, and objectives that combine to re-inflect official science, and reframe it as a communicable, relevant, and engaging set of exhibits, activities, and events. They conclude that science centres have a valuable contribution to make to the reinsertion of science into the public sphere. Science centres have great potential to resocialize and democratize science by submitting its claims to public communicative rationality. The biggest challenge for science centres is not so much how to feed into the rationality of science by enhancing its communicative rationality, as how to ensure that the public of public rationality is duly representative of the diverse sections of the public who, it should be borne in mind, have differential access to the public sphere, and to the enabling conditions for effective participation in it. (Contains 40 notes.)