Public Understanding of Science

Since the 1950s China’s popular science publishing has been the business of the government, and subject to its will. China adopted a system of planned economies, as the Soviet Union did, until the 1980s when a policy of reform and opening-up was adopted. During the period of the planned economies, popular science publishing was not a commercial but a governmental enterprise. More than 100 million copies of the most representative publication of this period, One Hundred Thousand Whys, have been distributed. The Unmoved Mover Series of the 1990s was a milestone in the new era. What is significant about this series is that it broke through the prevailing mode of science-popularization as ‘serving for industrial and agricultural production, serving for ideology’. China’s popular science publishing has its defects, genetically and culturally. In an age of marketization, popular science books are frequently applauded by the experts, but not enjoyed by general readers.

Atapuerca is an important prehistoric site in northern Spain that yielded the oldest hominid fossils in Europe in 1994. Since 1998 the three co-directors of the research team have in sum (co-)authored more than twenty-five popular science books, a boom without precedent in human-origins research. This paper will put forward three hypotheses. First, that these books were instrumental in achieving public recognition and financial support for the research project. Second, popular books on human origins serve as “enlarged battlefields” and as a meta-forum to expose new ideas to the scientific community. Third, the public visibility of these publications enables their authors to assume new roles that go well beyond their part as paleoanthropologists.

In the popular accounts of the new physics (i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics) by Fritjof Capra and Gary Zukav, the new physics is represented as fatally undermining the universal determinism associated with Newton and Laplace. This paper explores how different metaphors – anthropomorphic metaphors, metaphors of exploration and mapping, and metaphors of shadows – are used strategically by these writers to advance this characterisation of the new physics as indeterministic.

In the early 1980s the computer entered the British home in significant numbers for the first time as many thousands of people purchased their first personal ‘microcomputer’. In this paper I explore the educational character of the home computer boom, a response to unease over the impact of new information technologies. Media, government, social movements and computer manufacturers constituted a systematic effort to enhance the public understanding of a new technology that was anticipated to change the world.

Science kitsch? The combination of these two words rings like an oxymoron. Science – as the common saying has it – exposes, discovers, tells the truth; kitsch conceals, covers, lies. I think, this “shadow” of science deserves a specific scrutiny, not only because it reflects the altered place and role of science in contemporary “knowledge” society but also because it pinpoints the task of relocating science in the “multicultural” context of postmodernism, with its different epistemic claims. The genre of science kitsch may help to regain credit by working as a probe to detect false pretensions, explanatory exuberance and exaggerations in science.

Dissemination of the 2004 discovery of Homo floresiensis, aka the “Flores Hobbit,” provides the case material for an analysis of science communication models, using coverage of the find in science journals, popular science magazines, and UK newspapers. A distinction is made between “popular science” and “public science,” the latter notable for the proactive manner in which it seeks not simply to interpret science for a wider audience, but also expand upon it. The nature of the flows of knowledge between science and nonscience cultures is used to critique both traditional canonical models of science communication, and more recent constructivist accounts like that of Hilgartner’s “continuum” model. The paper concludes by suggesting an extended model that builds on the logic of the river metaphor used by both Hilgartner and Gieryn. It is argued that this more complex, multi-directional, “hydrologic” model provides a richer account of science communication.

What is nanotechnoscience? What are the characteristic features of nanotechnoscience? How do the practicing scientists and engineers, that is, practitioners label their work? How do they see the relationship between science and technology given the fast emerging research area of nanoscience and nanotechnology? Do they still celebrate the differences between these two? Is the relationship between them undergoing a change? Although there are a few scholarly articles available on understanding the concept of “nanotechnoscience,” there is almost no empirical study conducted so far to understand the perspectives of the practitioners. This paper, therefore, focuses on understanding the concept and characteristic features of nanotechnoscience deriving from an in-depth interview-based empirical study among 58 practitioners. The study found about 10 characteristic features of technoscience that were reflected in the research work and perspectives of the practitioners. The technoscientific features drawn from this study could be applied to other emerging technoscience areas.

This study examines the influence of mass media, interpersonal communication, and elaborative processing on public perception of benefits and risks of nanotechnology, based on a large-scale nationally representative telephone survey of U.S. adult citizens. Results indicate that cognitive processes in the form of news elaboration had a significant positive main effect on benefits outweigh risks perception. The influences of attention to science in newspapers, attention to science news on television, and interpersonal communication about science on public perception of benefits outweigh risks were moderated by elaborative processing, after controlling for socio-demographic variables, religious beliefs, trust in scientists, and scientific knowledge. The findings highlight the importance of elaborative processing when it comes to understanding how the mass media differentially influence public benefits outweigh risks perception of emerging technologies. Specifically, high elaborative processing emphasizes higher levels of perceived benefits outweigh risks than low elaborative processing. This study explores explanations for this phenomenon and offers implications for future research and policy.

Survey data on 1217 adults living in Alberta, Canada were collected by Ipsos Reid Public Affairs and made available to us for analysis. The survey questioned participants on issues related to science including their perceived knowledge of science, attitudes toward science, and trust in science and technology. We developed a structural equation model to account for the causal relations implied by the correlations among the variables in the data set. Results show that trust in generalized science and technology is a large determiner of trust in specific technologies, but that trust in specific technologies is not a determinant of overall trust in science and technology. We also found that attitudes towards science have an effect on trust in generalized science and technology whereas perceived knowledge does not. Education and gender contribute to attitudes supporting an increased personal attachment to science, which was the strongest predictor of trust in our model.