The science of science communication

Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness

Improved policies for science communication are needed to ensure scientific progress in coming decades. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated massive gaps in science communication, ranging from masking and social distancing mandates to vaccination requirements. These obstacles compounded the pandemic’s tremendous inherent clinical and public health challenges. Although science made immense progress in understanding the virus and designing infection control solutions, society still remains within the pandemic due to flawed understanding, low responsiveness, and widespread misinformation on behalf of the public. Flawed communication plagues national responses not only to the pandemic, but also other long-standing issues such as climate change or nutrition. This Letter proposes a new protocol and framework for effective science communication, designed to educate experts in evidence-based communication, improve public partnership through relatability and modern relevance, and increase empat...

2009

Frontiers in Communication

In this paper, we offer a novel conceptual framework of some of the most important aims for science communication efforts found in the contemporary literature on science communication. We identify several distinct aims present in the literature such as generating public epistemic and moral trust, generating social acceptance, and enhancing democratic legitimacy, and we discuss some of the relations between the different aims. Finally, we examine whether and, if so, to what extent these different aims can be said to have been successfully reached in practice and find that the empirical literature regarding the evaluation of science communications efforts is scarce. We conclude by suggesting that science communicators be attentive to formulating their communicative aim(s) in more precise terms, as well as conduct systematic studies of the effectiveness of their communicative efforts.

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014

The study will investigate the concepts of science communication and its benefits. Being good communicators in general will help scientists to be better science communicators in order to: help the public understand science as part of their real lives, see not only the importance of the science and its source of pleasure and wonder, but also to be able to make decisions about it as citizens, policymakers, funders, etc. help in educating citizenry, concerned about the threats facing our planet to better shape the direction of political and policy decisions, because how scientists communicate this information may have measurable conservation impacts on the future of our planet. More than ever, scientists are called upon to provide assessments, often to non-scientists, on which management policies are built and experts should consider becoming more involved and effective in raising public awareness of these threats. Traditional scientific training doesn't typically prepare scientists to be effective communicators outside academic circles. For scientists, the most important aspect might be how something fits into the given body of research, whereas, the public wants to know how a new finding might impact their lives. By considering the needs of the public audience versus a scientific one, by crafting an appropriate message, and communicating it clearly, more scientists will be more effective at bringing the world of science to the general public. The research methodology was the assessment of the information channels from the literature and the authors' studies. There are many interesting and innovative ways of communicating complicated concepts and the aim of the paper was to present some rules that can be applied to assure that we (scientists and public) are talking the same language, with the purpose to help promote a better understanding of issues facing our lives, thereby stimulating wise and timely action to save what belongs to us all.

EMBO reports, 2016

editorship, the journal has further and remarkably improved its visibility and standing in terms of key publishing indicators. It has also increased the number of issues published per year, attracted more submissions, expanded its global coverage and put more emphasis on solidly grounded empirical research. My vision for the future of the journal is in the first place that this momentum should be continued and consolidated.

Nature Biotechnology, 2009

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately. 514 volume 27 number 6 june 2009 nature biotechnology communication: public engagement and science journalism. These two main themes are interrelated; the dissemination of knowledge is one part of a multifaceted approach toward increasing public involvement in science issues and decision-making. We conclude with specific recommendations for moving forward.

FACETS

For science communication to be effective, scientists must understand which sources of information their target audiences most frequently use and trust. We surveyed academic and non-academic scientists, natural resource managers, policymakers, students, and the general public about how they access, trust, and communicate scientific information. We found trust and use of information sources was related to participant age and group identity, but all groups had high levels of use and trust of personal experience and colleagues. Academic journals were the most trusted source by all groups, and social media the least trusted by most groups. The level of communication between target groups was not always bilateral, with the public generally perceiving their interaction with all other groups as low. These results provide remarkable insight into the flow of scientific information. We present these findings in the context of facilitating information flow between scientists and other stakehol...