Can (and should) there be a "Mediterranean model" of science communication? For those of us who work in the field of science communication in a country which is on the Mediterranean Sea, this has always been a question that spontaneously leaps to mind. This is because we "feel" there is something intangible in our way of communicating science that is rather similar to the way of a French, Spanish (or even Brazilian) colleague of ours, whereas it is slightly different from that of an American or British one. And yet, the more in depth this question is studied in time, the more complex the
Never have there been so much science and so much technology on so many sides as now. The expansion of scientific information in the social sphere is frankly impressive. In newspapers and movies, on television and radio, scientific ideas circulate freely every day of the week. Science is in cell phones, shampoo, compact discs, Olympic athletes' clothing, food, perfumes, and in so many places that trying to enumerate them would be insane. After all, why should it be particularly strange to speak of science and technology if scientific thought finally molds our deepest fibers? Today's society
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Carmelo Polino
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In a beautiful Barcelona, bathed in sun, the 8th PCST Congress was celebrated at the beginning of June. Besides the magnificent location of this year, there are several other reasons to commemorate the event. The first reason is that the community of professionals and scholars interested in Public Communication of Science and Technology (science journalists and writers, scientists, sociologists, teachers, historians, science museum curators, etc.) is growing quickly.
Halliday has demonstrated that changes in discourse function covary with changes in the grammatical resources a language makes available to construe discourse. Specifically, he outlined the ways in which nominalisation evolved as a resource for construing scientific reality as a world of logical relations among abstract entities. In the present article, Halliday’s theory of the scientific text as process will be outlined. The founding principle of this theory, how grammatical metaphor has introduced changes in scientific English, will be illustrated through analysis of selected lexical items
The problem of accessing data is as old as science itself. Complete popularisation of scientific data (of a theoretical model), and even more so of the methods and materials used during an experimental process and of the empirical data amassed, has always been considered an essential part of the process of authentication, duplication and filing of scientific knowledge. It is also true, however, that this theory has always been a complex riddle with no simple solution. Strangely enough, in today's era of instant communication, the challenge of information access seems to be facing new, daunting
Free information works. In the sense that Open Access Journals, scientific journals which can be accessed at no cost, thereby guaranteeing free access to everyone, are at the same time able to guarantee the same quality as or even better than- that of traditional journals, which can only be read by those willing to pay a price, be it the cover price or a subscription.
At the beginning of the new millennium, science is not only a neutral system or an objective methodology of knowledge, but also the implicit basis of the totality of our culture. Though science and its derivates are omnipresent in daily life, its basic ideologies and functional mechanisms are in most cases not fully visible to the subject. In using the most evolved systematical-critical model of psychoanalysis provided by the French thinker Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), an enlightening analysis of western science can be made, which contributes not only to a better understanding of its own
Analysis of popular science magazines can offer a significant contribution to the study of the history of science popularisation and the relation between the language of science and everyday language in Italy. This paper reconstructs the history of science popularisation through analysis of popular science magazines published in Italy from 1788 to date. The material examined consists of 80 popular science magazines covering various scientific disciplines, reporting current issues and targeted at a non-specialist public. Such material had never been gathered and organised in a systematic way
There is a substantial divergence between the standards of integrity associated with "good science" and the problems imposed by the conflict of interest on research, specially in the biomedical field. There are at least as many ways in which information may be altered and the production of new scientific knowledge may be affected as there are links that can be established between researchers, private companies, and editors and staff of the specialized press. The pressures resulting from this high number of connections can affect all stages of research, from trial design to data analysis, from
Scientific communication in court is particularly important for the understanding of the process of post-academic science communication. The purpose of this study, carried out through a qualitative approach, is: 1) verify whether and how the dynamics of an expert's science communication in court can be traced back to the problem of public science communication. 2) underline specific characteristics of science communication in court. 3) propose a sample of a "general table on science communication", in order to be able to analyse every possible communication between the different parties of a
To appreciate what a huge difference there is between the author of a peer-reviewed journal article and just about any other kind of author we need only remind ourselves why universities have their "publish or perish" policy: aside from imparting existing knowledge to students through teaching, the work of a university scholar or scientist is devoted to creating new knowledge for other scholars and scientists to use, apply, and build upon, for the benefit of us all. Creating new knowledge is called "research", and its active use and application are called "research impact". Researchers are
In the midst of a debate on access to information, the World Health Organization and the FAO have decided to develop a strategy to guarantee the right of poor countries to have free access to scientific publications. This right is often denied, mainly because of high subscription costs. For this reason, universities and research centres in southern countries must forego buying magazines, which are a valuable instrument for updating, and exchanging information on research and scientific issues. This choice has been made in an historical period when the industrialized world is marked by a