Public Understanding of Science Blog

By Alan Cottey Numerous scientists’ warnings of a climate and nature crisis have been issued in recent years, specialised warnings as well as general accounts . My Public Understanding of Science essay ' Climate and nature emergency: from scientists' warnings to sufficient action ' starts with a survey of these warnings. The scientists have achieved considerable success in convincing the world that extreme terms like mass extinction event , climate crisis and climate emergency are justified. There are also many good technical proposals which, applied correctly, could contribute significantly to a turning away from a collision with nature. But in contrast with the spate of warm words from political and business leaders, the actions taken by human culture as a whole, to curb the depredations and repair the damage, are no more than a dribble. The most that can be said for the effect of the scientists’ warnings is that, without their intervention, the increase of em

 By Yaela Golumbic, Keren Dalyot, Yael Barel Ben-David and Melanie Keller. Here is a scenario some of you might find familiar: You decide it's time to promote your physical health, start eating more healthy foods and maybe even lose some weight. You look online for the best scientifically proven diet, and what do you find? A mix of contradicting statements and suggestions, all promising they are the best way to go. This scenario is the basis for the " everyday science reasoning scale "; a scale developed to measure people's ability to reason with science in daily life. Why is it important to measure scientific reasoning? Science is all around us. Whether we choose to or not, we encounter science in numerous daily situations and are expected to make decisions on issues such as health, nutrition, vaccination and more. Making informed decisions requires some familiarity with the scientific concepts used while conducting scientific research and which are fundamental in in

By Larry Au In my recent publication, Testing the talented child: Direct-to-consumer genetic talent tests in China , in Public Understanding of Science, I examined how companies in China have marketed genetic talent tests to parents in China and how experts and parents debated the merits and demerits of using these tests. Companies promise that these tools can help them identify areas of innate talent so that parents can invest time, labor, and money into helping cultivating “quality children” amidst the backdrop of broader social anxieties. And while parents on online forums are often aware of the scientific shortcomings of genetic talent tests, those who opt to use these tests argue that even a slight advantage matters in China’s competitive college admissions landscape. In this post, I extend this article by asking: Who is responsible for genetic talent tests? I argue that the answer to this question is consequential if the scientific community is to reckon with what its members de

By  Susan Howard. I’m writing this blog post as part of the journal’s 30-year anniversary, to give a glimpse behind the scenes of the editorial team: it’s part record, part nostalgia. I am a little taken aback to be writing that I have been the managing editor of PUS for 13 years, starting in the role in the spring of 2009. That’s a good portion of the journal’s history. I’ve watched it go from 6 issues per year to 8, from around a dozen submissions a month to 3 times that; seen production in the UK move to production in India; I’ve worked with three editors each based in a different country with different priorities and editorial styles. Susan Howard, Managing Editor of Public Understanding of Science Martin Bauer supervised my PhD (in stereotypical images of scientists) and we worked on several projects together. When I completed my thesis, very (very) certain that I didn’t want to and shouldn’t be an academic, and starting to train as a counsellor, I was casting around for a job, an

By Elena Milani & Cristina Rigutto Nowadays, if you want to reach the academic community online and share your research outputs with other scholars or journalists, the first place to be is Twitter. However, just being on Twitter is not enough; you need to know how to use it effectively.  For this reason, we, Elena and Cristina - the former and current blog and social media editors of Public Understanding of Science, decided to write a series of posts about the nuts and bolts of Twitter for academics .  The first post of this series is about how to write a good Twitter profile . How should I choose my handle? When we set up a Twitter profile, the first step is choosing a handle. A Twitter handle is the username that appears at the end of your unique Twitter URL and below your name. Twitter handles must contain fewer than 15 characters Twitter handles should be as simple and memorable as possible; for this reason, using  name and surname  is usually the best choice. For example, Cri

By Natasha Strydhorst. Stories and speculations have been swirling throughout the pandemic, seemingly spreading as fast as COVID-19 itself. The stories we see in academic journals and our newspapers of choice, however, are not necessarily the same as those making the rounds via social media and the (however pandemic-constrained) everyday social interactions.  Just which stories—and attendant (mis)perceptions—are making the rounds? We set out to capture a snapshot of these in three U.S. municipalities a little over one year into the pandemic, creating a small but rich smorgasbord of impressions in the midst of a historic global disruption of commerce, travel, workplaces, habits, and—foundationally—health. What that snapshot looks like, in a word: diverse.  We asked 27 participants five core questions: What do you know about COVID-19? What have you heard about COVID-19 that you think may be true? What would you most like to know about the disease COVID-19? What would you most like to kn