Public Understanding of Science Blog

By Martin Sedlár. Image source: Magnific. Medical research helps us diagnose diseases earlier, treat them more effectively, and prevent them entirely. But none of this would be possible without people willing to take part in studies. And that’s where a major challenge appears: recruiting participants is not easy. This raises a simple but important question: what factors make some people willing to take part in medical research while others hesitate? What we wanted to find out Previous research has identified a range of factors associated with participation in medical research. However, researchers have given surprisingly little attention to the role of scientific literacy—that is, how people think about, understand, and engage with science. At the same time, we know that people’s beliefs about medical researchers—especially whether they trust them or believe in conspiracy theories about them—are likely to play a role. To explore how these factors relate to willingness to participat...

By Brian Park. Image source: Cosmacon. In recent years, bakuchiol has gained widespread attention as a “natural alternative” to retinol , appearing in everything from dermatologist recommendations to viral social media posts. Marketed as gentler yet equally effective, bakuchiol has quickly entered public discourse as a scientifically backed skincare solution. However, its rise highlights an important question central to the public understanding of science: how do people interpret, trust, and act on scientific claims about emerging ingredients? The Appeal of “Natural” Science Public interest in bakuchiol is not driven by chemistry alone. Instead, it reflects a broader cultural preference for products labeled as “natural.” Scientific evidence does suggest that bakuchiol can influence pathways associated with skin aging, including collagen production and oxidative stress. Yet, in public-facing narratives, these mechanisms are often simplified into marketing phrases such as “plant-based re...

By Rishabh Kachroo. Inaugurating the forty-fifth session of the Indian Science Conference, Madras, 6 January 1958. Source: The Nehru Archive. The Curious Afterlife of Scientific Temper “Scientific temper” has never been just another term for the Indian republic. Enshrined in the Indian constitution through the 42nd amendment in 1976 and popularised before that in India by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as an intellectual orientation and a civic ethos, scientific temper was imagined as a moral infrastructure for democratic life and a hopeful bulwark against dogma, obscurantism, and the inertia of inherited inequalities.  Today, however, it rarely evokes the ethical urgency that it once carried. It merely lingers as a vaguely pedagogical trope, invoked occasionally in textbooks and science day speeches.  Before we go any further and discuss why science temper’s decline matters, it would help to have a working definition of the term. In the Indian context, scientific temper is...

By Felix Eichbaum. Portrait of Julien Offray de La Mettrie by Georg Friedrich Schmidt.  Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751), a French physician and philosopher, stands as one of the most provocative and systematically marginalized figures of the Enlightenment.  Alternately discredited as the radical materialist Monsieur Machine and praised as a visionary medical reformer, La Mettrie’s career and reputation have been constantly shaped by the ideological lenses through which he has been read (Cryle, 2006; Jauch, 2012; Wellman, 1992).  One aspect of his legacy, however, has received little to no attention yet: his role as popularizer and communicator of science.  To explore this gap, three strands of La Mettrie’s activity are examined: his translation of scientific texts, his satirical engagement with societal and scientific discourse, and his contributions to public health advocacy.  Building on the premise that historical strategies of science popul...

By Lena Zils. Image credit: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. A pandemic. A public trying to make sense of it all. In moments of uncertainty, science moves to the centre of public life, and so does the question of how much people trust it. A new longitudinal study from Switzerland asks: what actually moves public attitudes toward science, and does a pandemic change the answer? Most research on public attitudes toward science captures a single moment, a snapshot. But attitudes don't work like snapshots. They shift, accumulate, and respond to the world around them. That's why we followed the same individuals across three waves of the Science Barometer Switzerland between 2016 and 2022, tracking how their views on science evolved through calmer times and through the upheaval of COVID-19. The findings are nuanced, occasionally surprising, and carry real implications for anyone trying to communicate science to the public. The Pandemic Changed the Rules During the pre-pandemic period...