Public Understanding Of Science

Gli italiani sono un popolo scientificamente analfabeta? In che modo si informano su questioni scientifiche e tecnologiche? Quali atteggiamenti hanno nei confronti di temi scientifici come le biotecnologie, i cambiamenti climatici, le vaccinazioni o le medicine alternative e complementari? Quanto investe il nostro Paese nel settore ricerca e sviluppo? Quante risorse destina l’Italia per la sanità rispetto agli altri Paesi? L’Annuario Scienza Tecnologia e Società 2022 propone, in forma sintetica e accessibile, una raccolta aggiornata di dati e informazioni provenienti dalle più accreditate fonti nazionali e internazionali, per comprendere lo stato e le trasformazioni della ricerca e dell’innovazione nella società. Questa edizione si caratterizza per l’attenzione al tema della salute e alla rappresentazione grafica dei contenuti. Alcune infografiche permetteranno una lettura più agevole dei dati grazie a un formato comunicativo di facile consultazione e immediata comprensione.

This article addresses the recent attempts to integrate evolutionary history in the US national narrative. Focusing on the cultural, legal, and scientific controversy over Kennewick Man, the ancient human remains discovered in Washington state in 1996, the article explores the narrative politics of American national belonging. Through a popular historical novel on Kennewick Man's life, the article further theorizes nostalgia as a narrative tool in imagining the evolutionary origins of the nation. The article argues that nostalgia produces a temporal dynamic that bridges the gap between national history and global prehistory, and that this dynamic is reinforced through cultural ideas of genetic knowledge. At the same time, prehistoric nostalgia renders problematic ideas of ethnic difference largely invisible.

No hay una sola manera de aprender, ni un solo lugar o momento en los cuales aprendemos. Todo aprendizaje tiene lugar continuamente, desde muchas fuentes y de muchas maneras diferentes. Existen tres sectores educativos principales, el sector educativo formal de escuelas y universidades, el lugar de trabajo, y el sector de libre aprendizaje. De los tres, el que más frecuentemente es descuidado es el libre aprendizaje. Este último sector de aprendizaje incluye museos, televisión, radio, la Internet, revistas, periódicos, libros, parques y organizaciones comunitarias de todo tipo: juveniles, de adultos, religiosas, ambientalistas, de salud, deportes y recreación. Es una vasta infraestructura educativa que apoya el aprendizaje ‘sobre la marcha’ y continuo de todos los ciudadanos. Investigaciones recientes sugieren que cerca de la mitad del aprendizaje y comprensión de la ciencia por el público proviene del sector del libre aprendizaje. Por ello es necesario que quienes formulan política...

Lay understandings of the term “mutation” are explored using three methodologies and three population bases. A community based sample (n = 848) employing a written survey to assess knowledge and understanding indicated good lay understanding of the basic concept of mutation. However, lay people associated mutation with reproductive outcomes, but not with changes in genes across the life span. A student sample (n = 241) employed a written survey to assess connotations of the term mutation. It showed a strong negative response to mutation. A community based sample (n = 120) employing focus groups also showed strong negative reactions to the term mutation and rejection of use of the term mutation in public service announcements (PSAs). The term variation had better response and is recommended as an alternative in genetic counseling and public media. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Human enhancement, the non-medical use of biomedical technologies to improve the human body or performance beyond their 'natural' limitations, is a growing trend. At the same time, the use of these technologies has societal consequences. In societal debates about human enhancement, however, it is mainly the voices of experts that are being heard, and little is known about the public's understanding of human enhancement. The views of the public can give valuable insights, and can, in turn, supplement experts' voices in political decision-making as has been argued before for other emerging technologies. This study presents a systematic literature review of current public perceptions and attitudes towards technologies for human enhancement. Results show that the public's view has not been assessed often. Studies originate mainly from western-oriented countries and cover a broad range of enhancement technologies. In the studies, the majority of respondents hold moder...

Scientific knowledge is the most solid and robust kind of knowledge that humans have because of the self-correcting character inherent in its own processes. Nevertheless, anti-evolutionists, climate denialists, and anti-vaxxers, among others, question some of the best-established scientific findings, making claims that are unsupported by empirical evidence. A common aspect of these claims is the reference to the uncertainties in these areas of research, which leads to the conclusion that science is uncertain about evolution, climate change, and vaccination, among others. The truth of the matter is that while the broad picture is clear, there exist--and will always exist--uncertainties about the details of the respective phenomena. In this book Kampourakis and McCain show that uncertainty is an inherent feature of science that does not devalue it. In contrast, uncertainty actually makes science advance because it motivates further research.

The first book of its kind, Uncertainty draws on philosophy of science to explain what uncertainty in science is and how it makes science advance. It contrasts evolution, climate change, and vaccination, where the uncertainties are exaggerated, to genetic testing and forensic science where the uncertainties are usually overlooked. Kampourakis and McCain discuss the scientific, psychological, and philosophical aspects of uncertainty in order to explain what it is really about, what kind of problems it actually poses, and why it ultimately makes science advance. Contrary to the public representations of scientific findings and conclusions that produce an intuitive but distorted view of science as certain, we need to understand and learn to live with uncertainty in science.

Research on Public Communication of Science and Technology has been focused on non-experts and mediators. Scientists as communicators has not been explored yet although they are involved in communicative practices. The SHARPER project, in the «European Researchers Night» framework, carried out a study to evaluate the researcher communication strategies. During the 2014-2015 events, information about researcher expectation, preparation and communication strategies were collected using observation and interviews. Moreover, information on the event organization, management and development were recorded. The results of the study showed how different communication approaches affect the relationship between scientists and the public.

There is a considerable interest in knowing how the public, as consumers, voters and citizens relate
to science and technology. There seems to be a broad agreement that science (or scientific) literacy is
a good thing (at least as a contrast to science illiteracy). In the last decades there has been
a proliferation of national and international studies of science literacy, but the concept is foggy
and many different dimensions are suggested. There are also many stakeholders who may have
competing views about what dimensions such a concept might include. This entry will raise some of
the underlying concerns and point to further reading on this very broad topic.

Despite their relative semantic proximity, the fields of public understanding of science (PUS) and social studies of science (SSS) / science and technology studies or science, technology and society (both STS) 1 appear to acknowledge their origins in different traditions, types of practice and trajectories. My purpose in this paper is to examine recent developments in both fields, observing the way they have been shaped in varying contexts and attempting to establish the extent to which they are converging towards a unified space of theory and practice, or whether each one operates relatively independently from the other. With this in mind, I provide a brief summary of the emergence of these fields in Europe, the United States and Latin America in order to identify the modulations characteristic of each context. I then go on to discuss the role played by PUS studies at two types

Scientists are often wary of engaging in policy advocacy as they fear it may result in the perception of bias in their science or abuse of their position. Whilst advocacy need not always result in biased science or an abuse of position, the mere suspicion that it might can be enough to deter a scientist from engaging in it. For climate scientists, this tension is well known, especially given how politically polarising action on climate change can be.
This thesis identifies how, both in theory and practice, climate scientists can engage in policy advocacy in a way that is acceptable to them and their scientific community. By providing a new way of defining advocacy and the roles that scientists can engage in when communicating, I create an advocacy spectrum that maps different communication roles for scientists. Position on this spectrum is influenced by ‘contextual factors’ which determine how a scientist’s communication may be perceived. Depending on which contextual factors are at play, even silence may be interpreted as advocacy. The advocacy spectrum is informed by semi-structured interviews with 47 climate scientists in the UK and USA. In the interviews, I explore their concerns about advocacy and the practical methods they use for managing the tensions they experience when communicating. Analysis of this data helps to further develop arguments in the theoretical literature about science communication, the role of values in science, and the conceptions about scientists as citizens in society. As a result, I identify what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable forms of policy advocacy as perceived by scientists and the scientific community. Combining the experience of climate scientists with the understanding from the theory, I then establish eight methods scientists can use that allow scientists qua scientists to engage in policy advocacy whilst also preserving their scientific credibility and independence.

Science communicators are widely acknowledged to have an important role to play in the public understanding of science. Despite this acknowledgement, the role is often seen as one of simply transporting information, like so many potatoes on a conveyor belt, from the world of science to the public (the transportation model) or else as a relatively straightforward matter of simplification and translation (the translation model). The aim of this chapter is to show that there is more to the communi- cation of science than this supposedly value-free simplification and packaging; and that science communication involves selection and definition, not just of which 'facts' are presented to the public, but of what is to count as science and of what kind of entity or enterprise science is to be. That is, science communicators act as authors of science for the public. They may also, however, by dint of their own institutional status, give implicit stamps of approval or disapproval to particular visions or versions of science. That is, they may act as authors with special authority on science - as authorisers of science.

Este trabajo aborda un episodio muy polémico e ilustrativo que ha tenido lugar en el complejo ciencia y tecnología propio de las sociedades occidentales contemporáneas. Se muestra así que en el debate general sobre las posibles consecuencias humanas y ambientales adversas derivadas de la libre proliferación mundial de los alimentos transgénicos confluyen posiciones científicas y técnicas muy divergentes e incluso claramente enfrentadas y contradictorias. En virtud de la tensión esencial entre un enfoque más tradicional y conservador frente a una perspectiva más innovadora y revolucionaria, se analiza cómo un reconocido y prestigioso experto en este campo de conocimiento pudo convertirse en muy poco tiempo en un profesional deshabilitado de su puesto de trabajo y en un investigador en gran medida desacreditado y desautorizado.

The rapid growth in consumption of bottled water across the globe has drawn attention of policy makers and academicians alike. However, its consumption practices have been examined primarily in the context of industrialized countries. Drawing on studies of Science, Technology and Society, Public Understanding of Science, and institutions, this article explores the nuances of the consumption conundrum of bottled water in India. This mixed method study relies on data collected through surveys and ethnography of consumption practices at selected sites in Delhi. We find reasons for bottled water consumption to vary with the site of consumption. Although the notions of “purity” and “scarcity” drive consumption behavior, these attributes are far from being objective. Rather, they are shaped by a complex mix of sociocultural factors, public understanding of science, and trust on various institutional mechanisms of water provisioning.

Este capítulo hace una reflexión sobre el concepto Apropiación Social de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ASCyT) y propone entenderlo como un objeto de frontera (Star y Griesemer, 1989) para el cual las  encuestas de percepción pública de la ciencia y la tecnología han sido uno de sus principales mecanismos de estandarización. El capítulo está dividido en tres secciones. En la primera se discute sobre los diferentes significados que suelen darse al concepto de ASCyT y las razones por las cuales ésta puede ser entendida como un objeto de frontera. La segunda sección, trata sobre las encuestas de percepción pública de la ciencia y la tecnología, el modelo sobre el cual están sustentadas, sus ventajas y dificultades. En la tercera parte se hace una breve reflexión sobre las implicaciones que tienen las encuestas como estándares.

This Impact Report identifies and summarises the diverse impacts, resulting from the £500m of UK funding of Science and Technology in 2013, using numerous quantitative metrics and short case study extracts.  It shows how the varied impacts of a national science and technology organization and its many funded programmes can be annually identified, captured, tracked, and summarised in a public document.

The report was produced for, and by, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) -  the UK Research Council responsible for funding: (1) all UK astronomy, particle and nuclear physics research, (2) related UK science and technology facilities (e.g. as Harwell and Daresbury), (3) the UK contribution to international science (e.g. CERN, international telescopes and space missions), (4) innovation and business spin-off programmes, and (5) UK public engagement activities.

The Report was co-researched and co-authored by the STFC Impact Team, including myself while Impact Evaluation Manager in 2013, with Dr. Claire Dougan-McCallie (lead author/Head of Impact) and Jenny Beard, with additional input from senior managers, and many data and case study contributions from other key managers across STFC.

Varied key impacts are identified and reported including:

• Research amongst the best (by citation impact) in astronomy, nuclear and particle physics.
• Supported research of 226 Principal Investigators in 70 universities, led to 1,100 peer-reviewed papers in 2012.
• Facilities (the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and CLF) were used in 2012/13 by over 4,200 unique users , in over 2,400 experiments, producing over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

• Technology from CERN benefited the UK economy by over £100 billion every year.
• Funding the development of the UK’s space, internet and computer animation industries, returned over £500 billion to the UK economy per annum.
• Funded Innovation Campuses hosted over 230 enterprises and supported over 5,000 jobs.
• UK industry won £43 million in contracts from the international subscriptions funded, and had accumulated a total of £150 million since 2005.

• Funded research inspired future generations to study STEM subjects, attracting 90% of UK undergraduates to study physics, funded 782 PhD students  and 16,800 student training days.
• Between 2009 to 2012 public engagement programmes engaged people on 58 million occasions, with 2 million people engaged in face-to-face activities in 2013 alone.

The United Nations Decade on Biodiversity (2011–2020) is the global initiative supporting the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and associated Aichi Biodiversity Targets. The first of these Targets states that “by 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably”. The world’s zoos and aquariums have long aimed to support this goal of engendering public understanding of biodiversity and the need to conserve it. Given zoos and aquariums attract over 700 million visits worldwide each year, these institutions have substantial educational potential.. However, their educational impacts have not been evaluated on a large-scale international basis. Here we show that a significant number of people from across the globe end their visits to zoos and aquariums with improved understanding of biodiversity and how to protect it. Our pre-/post-visit repeated-measures survey (n=6,357; 30 institutions), we found that there was an increase from pre-visit (69.8%) to post-visit (75.1%) in the number of respondents demonstrating at least some positive evidence of biodiversity understanding. Similarly, there was an increase from pre-visit (50.5%) to post-visit (58.8%) in the number of respondents that could identify an individual-level pro-biodiversity action. Our results demonstrate that zoos and aquariums can be effective providers of pro-biodiversity public education, thereby making a positive contribution towards achieving UN Aichi Biodiversity Target 1.

Studies about mass media framing have found divergent levels of influence on public opinion; moreover, the evidence suggests that issue attributes can contribute to this difference. In the case of climate change, studies have focused exclusively on developed countries, suggesting that media influence perceptions about the issue. This study presents one of the first studies of media coverage in a developing country. It examines newspapers' reporting in Peru during the Fifth Latin America, Caribbean and European Union Summit in May 2008. The study focuses on the frames and the sources to provide an initial exploratory assessment of the coverage. The results show that the media relied mostly on government sources, giving limited access to dissenting voices such as environmentalists. Additionally, a prominence of "solutions" and "effects" frames was found, while "policy" and "science" frames were limited. The results could serve as a reference point for more comprehensive studies.

Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary is the first sustained study of string theory as a cultural phenomenon, synthesizing developments in continental philosophy of science, contemporary cognitive linguistics, and literary criticism to examine the role the imagination plays in the production and dissemination of string theory as scientific knowledge.

The book’s main claim is that the imaginative component of string theory is both integral and indispensable to it as a scientific discourse. In contrast to an orthodox scientific realism that sorts the “pure” concept of mathematical argument from the “illustrative” image of prose exposition, the book defines a scientific imaginary as a complex of images that: one, grounds scientific concepts in the ordinary cognitive linguistic processes that organize embodied human experience; two, mediates between human agency and the agency of the objects a theory posits as real phenomena; and three, situates the theory within a broader cultural context. Without this connective tissue, scientific knowledge such as string theory would have no epistemological footing. Within its technical discourse, an imaginary that complements mathematical argument allows string theorists to project themselves into the cosmos in such a way that strings as phenomena become substantiated and legitimized. It is this imaginary, rather than mathematical argument, that survives the move from technical discourse to popularizations and ultimately to literary texts. In effect, a string theory imaginary facilitates a virtual domestication of a cosmos that was heretofore remote, alien, and incomprehensible. By following the migration of the image of the string through these various discourses, we are able to see how string theory as a cosmic order, with all the cultural authority that this implies, is constructed.

This Introduction to the special issue of Science in Context devoted to "Science in Film and the Deficit Model" provides a historical overview of the "deficit model" in the fields of science popularization and the public understanding of science, and examines its resilience in spite of abundant criticism.

Millions of children visit zoos every year with their parents or schools in order to learn about wildlife firsthand. Moreover, public conservation education is a basic requirement for membership in professional zoo associations. However, in recent years there has been increasing criticism of zoos from animal rights groups for failing to demonstrate their averred value for public understanding of conservation and related biological concepts such as animal adaptation to habitats. Indeed, no study to date has fully assessed scientific learning for the key zoo audience of children. The present study represents the largest (n=3018) and most methodologically robust investigation of the educational value of zoos for children aged 7-15 ever conducted worldwide. This research evaluates the relative educational impact of educator-guided and unguided zoo visits at ZSL London Zoo, both in terms of the development of new knowledge about conservation biology and changing attitudes towards wildlife conservation. Results show a strong statistically significant increase in learning about animals and habitats from pre- to post-zoo visit. Moreover, zoo visits supplemented by an educational presentation almost doubled the aggregate increase in scientific learning found for unguided zoo visits. Conversely, negative changes in children’s understanding of animals and their habitats were much more prevalent in unguided zoo visits. Overall, this study offers the strongest evidence to date of the potential educational value of visiting zoos for children and young people. However, it also identifies problematic patterns that can emerge if zoos’ educational provision is insufficient. Given that hundreds of millions of people visit zoos every year, rigorous assessment of their value as sites for public conservation education holds important implications for public knowledge and attitudes towards key concepts relating to conservation biology.

Enacting inquiry activities in science classrooms is beneficial for student learning as it places a strong emphasis on the learners’ development of scientific thinking (Dewey, 1910).

The above quote is from an article written by John Dewey, possibly the most influential psychologist and philosopher of education in the past century. The article was published as an invited feature in the prestigious journal Science more than a century ago. As we can see, inquiry-based science education (IBSE) is no newcomer.

In the following, we will look at how IBSE has re-emerged on the European and international educational agenda for the STEM subjects. We will look at the meanings of inquiry-based science education and discuss the benefits that IBSE is asserted to have for the quality of teaching and learning and what research says about these claims. IBSE has become a key concept in the multifaceted initiatives taken by the European Commission for the promotion of the STEM subjects. Assessing and measuring the outcomes of STEM teaching is, however, very complicated and give widely differing results, depending on what you want to achieve. In any case, one should not restrict the assessment to look for higher scores on standardized achievement tests. Key concerns when judging the quality of IBSE should also be related to the students' development of positive attitudes, critical thinking, engagement, interest and motivation. A life-long perspective may be more important than measurable immediate results.

O intuito que motivou esta pesquisa foi, em um escopo mais alargado, perceber em que medida a divulgação científica está mudando com o uso da Internet no Brasil. Mais especificamente, perceber como os modelos de comunicação pública da ciência se confluem no espaço digital e, perceber se, com o advento das tecnologias em rede, estaria surgindo um novo modelo para além das noções de déficit, diálogo e participação em divulgação científica (TRENCH, 2008) como se conhece hoje. Os caminhos apontados pelo estudo, no entanto, fizeram com que se chegasse a outras avaliações, mais interessantes do que o que o plano inicial poderia prever. Ao invés de fazer uma correspondência entre teoria e prática, modelo e aplicação através de uma análise discursiva dos manuais de divulgação científica (para observar como materializam a ideia de “modelo de comunicação pública de ciência”) e da análise de páginas na Internet para saber como déficit, diálogo e participação se manifestam na prática, foi possível revisitar e colocar alguns questionamentos sobre a própria noção de “modelo” e tomar o mapeamento de campo também como problema. A partir daí, foi possível sugerir que o conceito de modulação, de Gilles Deleuze (2000) pode ser um caminho interessante para ajudar a pensar estes modelos, bem como perceber algumas questões que inquietam uma parcela dos divulgadores de ciência no Brasil no que toca sua própria prática – e algumas ideias que informam suas opiniões sobre jornalista, cientista e público. Assim, foi possível perceber, ainda que de forma inicial, que pode ser que modelo e modulação se sobreponham e funcionem sem a necessidade de que um prescinda do outro, embora sejam formulações diferentes. E pode ser que esta seja uma das formas como a divulgação científica aponta para mudanças no meio digital.

A review of research on public understanding of science, done for the old Committee on PUS/The Royal Society back in 1998. People still look for it occasionally and it's hard to track down so putting it here for convenience.
NB - upload here has screwed the typography, but if you download the PDF that results is readable.

Public opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) remains strong. By contrast, studies demon- strate again and again that GM crops make a valuable contribution to the development of a sustainable type of agriculture. The discrepancy between public opinion and the scientific evidence requires an explanation. We argue that intuitive expectations about the world render the human mind vulnerable to particular misrepresentations of GMOs. We explain how the involvement of particular intuitions accounts for the popularity, persistence, and typical features of GM opposition and tackle possible objections to our approach. To conclude, we discuss the implications for science education, science communica- tion, and the environmental movement.

En el campo académico que aborda el tratamiento del alcoholismo y la
drogadicción en México, muchas investigaciones asumen que educadores
avalados por el gobierno están haciendo frente a la brecha de conocimiento
científico que afecta a operadores de centros de tratamiento “mixtos”, organizaciones
que combinan el trabajo profesional de la salud con planteamientos
de grupos de ayuda mutua como los establecidos en Alcohólicos
Anónimos. En contraste, este artículo argumenta que si bien los operadores
carecen de conocimientos científicos especializados y acreditados, al
mismo tiempo poseen fluidez y un entendimiento propio de conceptos
científicos que juegan un papel central para la definición de la ciencia de las
adicciones. Adicionalmente, su uso del discurso científico es sólo una de
las muchas herramientas empleadas en el servicio de atención a las adicciones
y en el reclamo de jurisdicción técnica entre expertos más tradicionales
como los profesionales médicos. Para concluir, este artículo argumenta que
la manera en que se distribuyen los conocimientos especializados entre expertos
acreditados y no acreditados en la actualidad probablemente continuará
favoreciendo las explicaciones científicas que sean compatibles con
el paradigma planteado por grupos de ayuda mutua.
Palabras claves: drogadicción y alcoholismo, tratamiento de la adicción,
alcohólicos anónimos, comprensión pública de la ciencia, normatividad
de servicios de salud, estudios sociales de la ciencia y la tecnología, conocimientos
especializados.

Abstract
Many accounts of Mexico’s alcoholism and drug addiction treatment field
assume that government sanctioned educators are working to fill a scientific knowledge gap among the operators of “mixed” treatment centers, treatment
organizations that combine the work of health professionals with
mutual aid group approaches such as that found in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I argue, however, that while operators lack credentialed forms of expertise,
they possess their own type of fluency in scientific concepts and play a
central role in defining what addiction science is. Furthermore, operators’
use of scientific discourse is one of many tools they apply in service of
treating addictions and claiming technical jurisdiction among more traditional
types of experts, such as medical professionals. In conclusion I argue
that the current way that expertise is distributed between both credentialed
and non-credentialed experts in the field will likely continue to favor
scientific explanations that are compatible with the mutual aid paradigm.
Keywords: addiction and alcoholism; addiction treatment, alcoholics
anonymous, public understanding of science, health service regulation,
science and technology studies, expertise.

"‘Science and religion dialogue’ is gaining much more attention in the contemporary world, especially after the emergence of it as an academic field within theology in the 1960s. The field itself is anchored on the conviction that there are possibilities for mutual cooperation and engagement between science and religion. The literature developed on science-religion dialogue shows that the methodologies in the field are profoundly dependent on Christian theology, religious philosophy and the philosophy of science, along with the recent endeavors to incorporate insights from the feminist and post colonial studies of science. However, it seems that so far no attempt has been made to introduce ‘Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’ (SSK) into the field of science and religion dialogue as a valid source of methodological insights about the process of knowledge production in modern science.

The intention of this paper is to demonstrate that ‘Public Understanding of Science’ (PUS), an area of research that comes under Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, can be of immense contribution to the dialogue between science and religion."