public communication & engagement
cpikas | July 6, 2010The announcement is dated January 6, 2010, but the report itself is dated July 2010. In any case it's new to me, so I thought I would run through some interesting points. Here's the citation (as much as I can tell):
Proctor,R., Williams,R. & Stewart, J. (2010). If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0. London: Research Information Network. Retrieved July 6, 2010 from http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/web_2.0_screen.pdf
It often seems like people are very negative about the adoption of web 2.0 stuff in science; that is, when they're not hyping…
cpikas | June 21, 2010Another brief observation. I was just reading a popular cooking/recipe magazine and they mentioned that the New York Board of Health did an "academic study" of the new nutrition labeling laws. ARGH. I don't like calling scientific research "academic study" because to me that implies: 1) it's academic - it's a pursuit for it's own sake or for increased knowledge, not for evaluation or application, 2) only scientists in academe do studies, 3) the results might not be accessible for the public.
I ran into this at work and I tried to stamp it out because the vast majority of the work we support…
cpikas | May 1, 2010Anne Jefferson from Highly Allochthonous pointed me to a new essay from Geoscientist Online, the member magazine of the Geological Society (UK). That essay points both to the survey of women geobloggers (previously mentioned here) and a survey done by Lutz Geissler, Robert Huber, and Callan Bentley. (probably haven't mentioned before).
In the Geoscientist essay by Michael Welland, he discusses his own slowness in taking up blogging, but also his enjoyment of the geoblogosphere and the community he finds there. He learns of new things he wouldn't come across in his other readings and he…
cpikas | December 17, 2009One thing that kind of bugs me is that people answer the question "what impact has your funding had" with things like "I hired 3 postdocs and 2 support staff." Dr Lane talked about this at the workshop, but to some extent, I don't think her solution actually got at the bigger problem: societal impact. How has your research - done with our money - made the world a better place (maybe it hasn't, but that's ok, too). In the last post I mentioned a way I think we could start to learn more about how much scientific articles were taken up in the general media. This is at least opportunity for…
cpikas | October 26, 2009(I'm posting things from my old blog while I'm on a much-needed vacation)
This originally appeared December 21, 2007
Implications of newer models of popularization of science for science library collection development*
When we look at science communication - communication about science or by scientists - we normally divide that into communication among scientists (scholarly communication) and communication to non-scientists (variously: popular communication of science, popularization, or the French - vulgarization). Within scholarly communication we have formal scholarly communication (…
cpikas | August 29, 2009So often we hear of large studies like the GSS being used for attitudes towards science. We also hear the results of science achievement metrics and are disappointed. This article provides a great mix between generalizable quantitative understanding gained through use of a validated instrument and more individualized understanding gained through qualitative research using a critical feminist lens. The authors choose this sequential mixed-methods approach to attend to "questioning how to meet the needs of the many while coming to understand the uniqueness of the individuals among the many." …
cpikas | July 12, 2009I'm not an expert on public understanding of science or science communication; however, I've certainly read enough to know that some of the statements constantly being rehashed are not only out of date, but have been repeatedly discredited through peer-reviewed empirical research.
(to be fair - I, too, trotted out some of these ideas before some of this research was pointed out to me *).
Myth 1: Scientists don't want to talk to the public
They do. For example, in a decent sized (n=1354) international study of epidemiologists and stem-cell researchers, 60-70% have spoken with the media about…