Archive for the tag "Communicating science"

Passion and chocolate in the national health service (02/06/08)

Britain’s National Health Service is getting passionate about chocolate, erections and good science. The NHS website has a fantastic new(ish) section called “Behind The Headlines”, a rapid-response force for some of the nonsense that passes for “science” in the newspapers every day.
In the last couple of weeks the site has picked up studies that purport [...]

Science in Congress: is there any? (13/04/08)

Policies on AIDS, recreational drugs and a warming world are struggling their way through Congress at the moment; they always seem to emerge slimmer on the science once they’ve made it through the endless committees, discussions and debates. If you’re in the New York area, you might pick up some tips on why from this [...]

Should professors be human, too? (21/03/08)

Professors are baring their souls and tastes on line, Stephanie Rosenblum of The New York Times reports with some incredulity. She rightly questions whether sharing your taste in music and your cat snaps with students really makes you a better teacher.
“Sam Gosling, a psychologist and an associate professor at the University of Texas at [...]

Nerd alert: Why humans take no notice of scientists (27/02/08)

Scientists continute to agonise about why no-one takes any notice of us. Allowing the public to get hold of science by publishing important findings on line is a magnificent first step. But the wonderful, open-access Public Library of Science may have scored an own goal this week, with the publication of a paper [...]

Named reporting: scientists can’t manage it (21/02/08)

Public health scientists love to whinge that no-one listens to us. We wring our hands endlessly over what we can do to better communicate the results of research to policy makers and the public. And yet a new study suggests that some scientists can’t even report their own names and e-mail addresses correctly. And the [...]