Public Understanding of Science Blog

 By Robin Bayes.  Photo Credit:  John Englart On July 4, 2025, American climate policy was upended as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) rolled back or canceled many clean energy tax incentives in the United States. Supporters touted this move while opponents lambasted it, each side claiming the moral high ground. While Republican House Budget Committee members argued that the OBBBA stops climate activism as a weapon to harm working families , the Committee’s Democratic caucus argued that it betrays the middle class by killing clean energy jobs and investments. When political messaging uses this kind of harm-based moral rhetoric to escalate the climate policy debate, there may be lasting consequences. Moralizing science and technology is associated with divisive characteristics In a recent short article published in Public Understanding of Science , I examine how moralization affects the way everyday people approach policy debates about science and technology....

 By Alexandre Morin-Chassé. Photo Credit: Unsplash On July 22, 2011, just before carrying out terrorist attacks that claimed 77 lives in Norway, Anders Breivik released a 1,500-page manifesto. In this document, he detailed his preparations for the attacks and shared his views on various political and social issues.  Among his extensive arguments, Breivik criticized "cultural Marxists" for ignoring scientific evidence suggesting that genetics plays a major role in human abilities and behavior. He advocated for genetic screening and birth control to prevent the extinction of the Nordic race and to increase its average IQ.  Breivik is not the only extreme-right terrorist to espouse such views; manifestos from the shooters involved in the 2019 Christchurch and 2022 Buffalo attacks also included essentialist claims about genetics and their social implications. Albeit a notable viewpoint among lone actor terrorists on the extreme right, little is known about the extent t...

 By Brian Park. Image generated by ChatGPT. In today’s world, where science and technology are deeply woven into our daily lives, you would expect science education to keep pace. Yet, for some college students, their high school science classes didn’t quite do the job. As part of my doctoral research , I interviewed ten college students in the U.S. with STEM backgrounds to find out just how prepared they felt for postsecondary education and what they wished had been different. Their insights weren’t just thoughtful, but also a call to action. The problem: A disconnect between American high school and college STEM The transition from high school to college is already challenging. But for students pursuing STEM majors, that leap can feel more like a chasm. Despite taking science classes in high school, many students reported feeling unprepared for the academic rigor and conceptual depth of their college courses. One recurring theme from the interviews was a sense of insufficient know...

By Declan Fahy. Michel Claessens,  former head of communication for the ITER project. What happens when an organisation’s science communication becomes replaced by politically-motivated public deception?   Michel Claessens was in such a situation as part of his work as head of communication between April 2011 and March 2015 for the ITER project, a massive energy project located in the south of France. At the facility, some 33 nations are collaborating to build a nuclear fusion device. It is one of the world’s largest scientific projects, but one, Claessens argues, that has a definite political dimension, including its promotion of nuclear power. Claessens, who was also a former head of communication in the Directorate-General Research and Innovation of the European Commission, details in the May 2025 issue of Public Understanding of Science his concerns over hype, research integrity and the merging of science communication and marketing in publicly funded big science pr...