Controversial Science Research Articles

EFFECTS OF SOURCE INFORMATION ON LEARNING AND INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

This study investigated whether source information attached to texts influences multiple-text comprehension about genetically modified (GM) foods—a controversial science topic. Participants in the experiment read two texts from two sources: an expert and/or a layperson. When the two texts presented different attitudes toward GM foods (Experiment 1), expert information facilitated intra-text comprehension. Moreover, expert information was better integrated with other information; when expert information was presented first, later information was less integrated with participants’ understanding, and when expert information was presented last, it was more integrated. When the two texts presented common attitudes (Experiment 2), a similar pattern of effects was observed, but the effects were weaker than those in Experiment 1. Thus, expert source information has the potential to affect the comprehension of scientific information, and careful planning is required for effective risk communication.

“What is the cocoon but a dark cabinet?”

This study examines how Boston editor and publisher Benjamin O. Flower used print culture to circulate and legitimise fringe science in the 1890s. Using evolutionary theory as a template for progress, he considered hypnotism and spiritualism – what he called “psychical research” ‒ as the natural extension of environmental meliorism from the visible to the invisible. This article examines the transatlantic dimension of the idea of a “science of mind” and how it led Flower to formulate a spiritual and materialist conception of the influence of print. It describes the rhetorical strategies, the scientific procedures and institutionalisation policies he adopted in his quest to naturalise the invisible and subject it to the purview of methodological naturalism. Finally, it explores the epistemological foundations of Flower’s redefinition of the boundaries of legitimate science.

Ignorance or bias? Evaluating the ideological and informational drivers of communication gaps about climate change.

Does the relationship between media use and learning about climate change depend more on audiences' scientific literacy on their ideological biases? To answer this question, we evaluate both the knowledge gap and belief gap hypotheses as they relate to climate change. Results indicate belief gaps for news and entertainment content and a knowledge gap for edutainment content. Climate change knowledge among conservatives decreased with greater attention to political news, but increased with greater attention to science news. TV entertainment was associated with a significant decrease in knowledge about climate change among liberals to similar levels as conservatives. Edutainment was associated with a widening gap in knowledge based on respondents' scientific literacy. Implications for informal learning about controversial science through the media are discussed.

Vernacular Eugenics? Santati-Śāstra in Popular Hindi Advisory Literature (1900–1940)

The early decades of the twentieth century saw the development of a popular, albeit hitherto little explored, branch of ‘scientific’ knowledge in the Hindi public sphere. Known as ‘santati-śāstra’ (lit. ‘the science of progeny’ or ‘progeniology’), this branch of knowledge instructed newly-married middle-class couples on how to produce mentally and physically perfect children. This essay begins with a comparison between santati-śāstra and eugenics as it was promoted in India and elsewhere. Analysing two specific issues treated in santati-śāstra literature, it shows that this form of knowledge based its principles not on ‘classical eugenics’ as promulgated by Francis Galton and re-adapted by Indian eugenicists, but on an entirely different set of sources, which included Ayurveda, ratiśāstra, and theories on heredity stemming from a mid-nineteenth-century American phrenologist. Santati-śāstra's singular frame of ‘scientific’ reference, and especially its use of Western ‘fringe science’, provide new insights into the multiple, and sometimes unexpected, ways in which ‘Western science’ functioned as a legitimising source in vernacular texts.

House science committee passes controversial science policy bill

House science committee passes controversial science policy bill

Immanuel Velikovsky and the return of the fringe

Many of us who worked in the early sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) cut our teeth on fringe science (e.g., Shapin 1975; Wallis 1979; Collins and Pinch 1982). It was important in arguments with philosophers of science to show that their demarcation criteria for separating the wheat of science from the chaff of error were untenable. Later, what Harry Collins termed the ‘‘hard case’’ for SSK (physics) took priority over the ‘‘marginal case.’’ The SSK research program was to make progress against the head winds coming from philosophy of science by tacking between the most credible science, such as physics, (which was hard to show as social) and the fringe sciences, such as parapsychology, which philosophers considered could only be social because they were in error. With the battle against the philosophers of science won by the mid-1980s, the issue of demarcation was largely left behind. Michael Gordin, a historian of science, in this important book on Immanuel Velikovsky returns us once more to the fringe. You know you are in good hands when the opening sentence begins, ‘‘No one in the history of the world has ever selfidentified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself, ‘I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts.’’’ (1) Quite! Gordin rightly takes up from where SSK left off 30 years ago and makes it the point of his investigation to find out why some sorts of activities, which to all intents and purposes look like the real thing, get labeled and demonized as not the real thing. As we shall see, he advances our understanding of fringe science by making an important new historical argument about this demarcation process. He not only covers the original controversy over the 1950 publication of Worlds in Collision, in which Velikovsky first posited his cosmic catastrophic history of the Earth and its close encounters with the planet Venus, but also sets Velikovsky and his dismissal in the context of postwar science and follows him and his loyal

Communicating science in public controversies: Strategic considerations of the German climate scientists

In public controversies on scientific issues, scientists likely consider the effects of their findings on journalists and on the public debate. A representative survey of 123 German climate scientists (42%) finds that although most climate scientists think that uncertainties about climate change should be made clearer in public they do not actively communicate this to journalists. Moreover, the climate scientists fear that their results could be misinterpreted in public or exploited by interest groups. Asking scientists about their readiness to publish one of two versions of a fictitious research finding shows that their concerns weigh heavier when a result implies that climate change will proceed slowly than when it implies that climate change will proceed fast.

Controversial New Sciences in the Media: Content Analysis of Global Reporting of Nanotechnology during the Last Decade

The potentially controversial science of nanotechnology is only now beginning to infiltrate mainstream public consciousness through media channels. This article suggests the infiltration is taking different forms, depending on the nationality of journalists reporting on the science. Having completed analysis of a large longitudinal international sample of news and feature articles about nanotechnology, we report that journalists in Australia and New Zealand deploy sources ‘direct from the lab’ to highlight scientific advancements; those in Asia emphasise the nation-building potential of nanotechnology; US journalists provide positive coverage across all areas; and those in the United Kingdom offer the most critical analysis and risk reporting. These messages have also evolved over time in each region. Results are integrated with existing research about public perceptions of nanotechnology, and suggest several themes common to all media reporting of nanotechnology, the most important of which reflects positive reporting or acceptance, although safety concerns and health risks also arise.

Secular Increase in the Earth’s LOD Strongly Implies that the Earth Might Be Expanding Radially on a Global Scale

Exactly 101 years ago, German scientist—Alfred Lothar Wegener, sailed against the prevailing wisdom of his day when he posited that not only have the Earth’s continental plates receded from each other over the course of the Earth’s history, but that they are currently in a state of motion relative to one another. To explain this, Wegener set forth the hypothesis that the Earth must be expanding as a whole. Wegener’s inability to provide an adequate explanation of the forces and energy source responsible for continental drift and the prevailing belief that the Earth was a rigid solid body resulted in the acrimonious dismissal of his theories. Today, that the continents are receding from each other is no longer a point of debate but a sacrosanct pillar of modern geology and geophysics. What is debatable is the energy source driving this phenomenon. An expanding Earth hypothesis is currently an idea that is not accepted on a general consensus level. Antiproponent of the expanding Earth mercilessly dismiss it as a pseudo or fringe science with their main point of rejection being the energy source to power this supposed expansion. Be that asit may, we show herein that from the well accepted law of conversation of spin angular momentum, Stephenson [1]’s result that over the last 2700 years or so, the length of the Earth’s day has undergone a change of about +17.00 μs/yr, this result invariably leads to the plausibility the Earth may very be expanding radially at a paltry rate of about +0.60 mm/yr. If correct, this simple fact, automatically move the expanding Earth hypothesis from the realm of pseudo or fringe science, to that of plausible science.

The Case of Self-Publishing Science Amateurs and their Quest for Authority in 18-Century Paris: An Introduction to “Fringe Science in Print: Authority, Knowledge, and Publication, 16 -19 Century”

The Case of Self-Publishing Science Amateurs and their Quest for Authority in 18-Century Paris: An Introduction to “Fringe Science in Print: Authority, Knowledge, and Publication, 16 -19 Century”

Upstream public engagement, downstream policy-making? The Brain Imaging Dialogue as a community of inquiry

UK science and policy networks increasingly advocate ‘upstream public engagement’, that is, early public deliberation around potentially controversial science and technology. In the last two decades, neuroscience has advanced considerably, and non-medical uses of brain imaging technologies (BIT) are now raising substantial concerns. The 2010 Brain Imaging Dialogue (BID) brought together scientists, health practitioners, sociologists, philosophers, ethicists, religious representatives, citizens, policy-makers and legal experts to deliberate on non-medical uses of BIT. I present the BID as a community of inquiry that sought to stimulate policy deliberation in Scotland. The paper tells the story of the process from the perspective of the public engagement practitioners who organised it, drawing lessons about the community of inquiry method and concluding with reflections on the challenges of connecting upstream engagement to ongoing policy-making. Taking cues from practitioners’ experiences, I propose an institutional mechanism for the uptake of outputs from deliberative processes.

Seeking Congruency or Incongruency Online?

This study examined how citizens select science information online based on their preexisting issue attitudes. Voluntary national samples browsed through an online news magazine featuring divergent viewpoints about four controversial science topics (stem cell, evolution, genetically modified foods, and global warming). Their online activities, including article selection and the length of exposure, were unobtrusively measured by behavior tracking software. Participants tended to choose science information that challenged rather than supported their views concerning stem cell and genetically modified foods. However, those who perceived that they had sufficient science knowledge and were religious exhibited confirmation-bias, preferring congruent to incongruent information.

Design for Collaboration

Online learning environments offer new opportunities for learning and over the last decade or so a variety of online learning environments have been developed by researchers to facilitate collaborative learning among students. In this paper we will present a case study of a successful collaborative learning design. This involves a near synchronous online seminar where students work in small groups to produce a report that examines media coverage of controversial science, using archives of television news reports. We will analyze the activity's task design features by employing a framework of collaboration enabling design approach proposed by Kirschner et al (2004). We will start with an analysis of the collaborative processes and interaction among participants in this online activity. Then we will examine the features of the task used in this learning environment with respect to the interaction design ideas proposed by Kirschner et al. They suggest that the use of appropriately designed and implemented educational, social and technological affordances is the foundation for stimulating, motivating and maintaining collaboration among learners. We use the framework to identify factors contributing to the success of the activity.

SELLING SCIENCE?

Over the last 20 years science news has been written by dwindling numbers of reporters, with higher workloads, and less time than previously to conduct tasks such as finding, researching, and checking news stories. Simultaneously, a growing science communication sector is developing more power to influence what, and how, such news is reported. This paper examines media coverage of animal–human hybrid embryos in the context of a highly efficient public relations campaign by a coalition of scientists and scientific organisations in the United Kingdom. It draws on the findings of a comprehensive content analysis of UK national press coverage of the issue, and 16 semi-structured interviews with specialist science journalists, key news sources, and press officers on both sides of a polarised media debate. We argue that while science communicators won a convincing media victory, the broad (and unintended) effects of such campaigns highlight concerns about media independence, and the openness and quality of public and scientific debate about controversial science.

From Escoffier to Adria: Tracking Culinary Textbooks at the Dublin Institute of Technology 1941–2013

From Escoffier to Adria: Tracking Culinary Textbooks at the Dublin Institute of Technology 1941–2013

Policy entrepreneurs and controversial science: governing human embryonic stem cell research

Policy entrepreneurs are political actors who seek policy changes that shift the status quo in given areas of public policy. This contribution examines the actions of policy entrepreneurs who have sought government funding and favourable regulation to advance human embryonic stem cell research. Those policy entrepreneurs have faced significant opposition owing to the morality issues at stake. Placing the actions of those policy entrepreneurs in a broader context makes two contributions. First, it explores how policy entrepreneurs pursue their goals in the face of intense morality politics. Second, it illustrates how the work of policy entrepreneurs can be both supported and inhibited by ideas, institutions and interest-group politics.

Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture

With Paranormal Media, Annette Hill extends her substantial work on audiences and so-called factual and reality television programming to focus on the apparent growth of supernatural and pseudo-scientific subject matter in an array of popular media, including tourist destinations and experiences. Combining a cultural history, which reaches back to the Victorian era, with a cultural ethnography, which includes focus group and in-depth interviews of working- and middle-class subjects in south-east England, Hill's study offers a prismatic view of contemporary paranormal media texts, events, audiences and consumers. It is, as one would expect, well informed, insightful and never uninteresting, but it is not without its flaws, arguably quite substantial ones. To demonstrate the widespread interest in the paranormal, Hill points to such high-profile television series, novels and franchises as Medium, Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural, Heroes, Flash Forward, Pushing Daisies, Fringe, Being Human, True Blood, Twilight and Harry Potter, claiming that such ‘representations of ghosts, supernaturalism, angels, and fringe science, across multimedia environments’ have gained ‘momentum’ from a ‘[r]esurgence in paranormal beliefs’ (p. 7). As evidence, however, this is questionable, the ensuing claim even more so; and together they indicate a pair of conceptual weaknesses that undermine her otherwise useful study.

Urban high school students’ perspectives about sexual health decision-making: the role of school culture and identity

Studies across fields such as science education, health education, health behavior, and curriculum studies identify a persistent gap between the aims of the school curriculum and its impact on students’ thinking and acting about the real-life decisions that affect their lives. The present study presents a different story from this predominant pattern in the literature. Through a year-long ethnographic investigation of a health-focused New York City public high school’s HIV/AIDS and sex education program, this study illustrates a case in which 20 12th grade students respond positively to their education on these topics and largely assert that school significantly influences their perspectives and actions related to sexual health decision-making. This paper presents the following interpretation of this positive influence: school culture influences these students’ perspectives and decisions around sexual health by contributing to the formation of students’ identities. This paper further shows how science learning in particular becomes important for students in relation to decision-making when it is linked to issues of identity. These findings suggest that, in addition to attending to the design of classroom curriculum, HIV/AIDS and sex education researchers and curriculum developers (as well as those in science education focusing on other controversial science topics) might also explore the kinds of relational and school-wide factors that potentially influence students’ identities, decisions, and responses to school learning.

244th ACS National Meeting

RETURN TO ISSUEPREVNewsNEXT244th ACS National MeetingCite this: Chem. Eng. News 2012, 90, 31, 65Publication Date (Print):July 30, 2012Publication History Published online29 March 2013Published inissue 30 July 2012https://doi.org/10.1021/cen-09031-meetingsCopyright © 2012 Chemical & Engineering NewsArticle Views8Altmetric-Citations-LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit PDF (392 KB) SUBJECTS:Materials,Materials science Get e-Alerts

The persistence of big science and megascience in research and innovation policy

This special section of an issue of Science and Public Policy grew out of an interest in following the politics of the European Spallation Source (ESS) Facility at Lund, Sweden. The ESS spectacle provided a platform from which to review different research infrastructure projects and to place them in the context of science policy as a whole. Large-scale research infrastructure investments are often very visible and controversial science policy investments. This group of five papers provides insights into the persistence of these types of investments in an era where cost efficiency and the contribution of science to innovation and economic development appear to be the dominant rationale for investment.