Role Of Science Research Articles

Reflections on science and the governance of alcohol policy

To consider, briefly, science's role in informing alcohol policy, and how science could help reframe the present governance of alcohol policy. Expression of the two project coordinators' reflections based on discussions during project meetings of the Alcohol Measures for Public Health Research Alliance (AMPHORA) project. Three endeavours are considered important for science's role in informing alcohol policy: modelling studies that help predict the outcomes of differing policy approaches; studying the impact of live policy changes as a powerful set of natural experiments; and, improved study of the impact of integrated, coordinated and joined up alcohol policies, as opposed to the impact of individual alcohol policy measures. Three areas where science can contribute to strengthened alcohol policy governance include: analysis of different governance architectures that might promote joined-up actions between different sectors; the design of better metrics that measure the impact of public and private sector actions on health; and, by identifying incentives that help consumers make choices on the use of alcohol that improve health. The impact of science on better alcohol policy governance can only happen if there is more and better dialogue between scientists and those who design alcohol policy.

Heterodox Economics and the Scientist's Role in Society

Introduction present work starts from a simple question: Why should a state pay the salary for an academic researcher in economics? As futile as it might seem, this question raises some important points that need to be discussed carefully. Generally speaking, research should be financed because it is useful for socioeconomic development: knowledge represents a productive input and it increases social welfare. Knowledge drives progress and carries with it positive effects, both on a material and on an immaterial level. As for the first, the role knowledge has played in technological, economical, and social progress was reconstructed in many different analyses, both on a theoretical and on an empirical level (Mokyr 2002; Kuznets 1965). As for the second, human beings like to develop a more complete understanding of the world they live in, even in cases where their increased knowledge does not have an immediate application: this insatiable curiosity (Nowotny 2008) is what drives human endeavors in science, culture, and innovation. How much does this argument indeed hold for economic knowledge, at least in the present situation? In other words: Are we sure that economics is helping us to gain a better understanding of how economic systems really work? Also, is economics helping improve wealth and well-being? Is economic knowledge useful for society, and to what extent? point is worth considering as more and more researchers, even within the economics community, are questioning the effective role and social usefulness of the discipline. Indeed, a sort of paradox seems to arise: a discipline that is so involved with the attribution of value has been at the same time so little concerned in self-evaluating its own contribution to the social progress. Indeed, clear empirical reconstructions of the usefulness of economics for society seem to be almost completely lacking in the literature. Many contributions to the subject are based on mere assertions, speculations, and wishful thinking. Empirical often takes the form of selected, nonrepresentative events that, moreover, are often presented in anecdotal form. Convincing empirical evidence on the effect on the economy and society of economics is missing (Frey 2000: 17). limits of economics, and its difficulties in producing a knowledge that can actually be useful for society, have been dramatically emphasized by the present financial crisis. Economists were not able to warn against what was going to happen. Some even wonder if their recipes, and their blind faith in the market, might have been among the factors responsible for the crisis. An extensive list of all the criticisms that have been raised in this sense by other social scientists, journalists, politicians, and even laypeople is beyond the task of this contribution, but a few examples are worth mentioning. (1) complete incapacity of economists to forecast the crisis and their lack of humility have been fiercely attacked by Giovanni Sartori (2008), a well known political scientist, in an editorial published in the top Italian newspaper. Luca Ricolfi (2009), sociologist and editorialist, noted that the only scholars capable to anticipate the crisis were noneconomists, such as Mandelbrot (2004) or Gilpin (2000). Nassim Taleb (2009), in his bestseller Black Swan, blames the scandal of prediction, that is, the arrogance of economists and their failure to recognize what they do not know, notwithstanding the systematic bias of their expectations. During an academic briefing on the turmoil of the international markets held at the London School of Economics, Queen Elizabeth asked why nobody had been able to notice what was going on. Festival of the Economy, held in Trento, represents one of the most popular events for public discussion of economics in Italy involving many scholars, workshops, and consistent media coverage. One of the main themes of the 2009 edition was The Trial of Economists, in which some of the same arguments discussed here were debated on a public base. …

Talking about science in interactive whiteboard classrooms

<span>Teachers using interactive whiteboards (IWB) effectively can engage and motivate students with a range of digital resources to explore science's role in making sense of our world and to construct knowledge of key scientific concepts. The case study research described in this paper illustrates how interactive pedagogies in the IWB classroom were used to support whole class substantive discourse about science. A sociocultural framework structured the exploration of the discourse surrounding four teachers and their students' use of IWB technology in their primary science classrooms. Action research methods and a professional learning intervention were used for both exploring and developing teachers' understanding of the interactive technology and its impact on the nature of classroom talk. Comparing video captured lessons with and without the use of the IWB provided some initial evidence of an increase in students' participation in substantive science conversations and exploratory talk. The preliminary analysis of the data summary across the four case studies suggested that the teachers were using more open questions, greater wait time and required greater participation from students. This research suggests that teachers' effective IWB pedagogy impacts positively on the way students talk about science. Seven principles of effective interactive pedagogy focused on enhancing discourse emerged from the action research. It is recommended that these principles be used with IWB technology to scaffold deep substantial science discourse, which is essential in developing students' scientific literacy.</span>

Unpacking the great transmission debate

The debate about the wisdom of sending interstellar transmissions is well-known to those involved in SETI, and frustrating for many. Its tendency towards intractability is a result of multiple factors, including: different models of the scientist's role as citizen and/or leader; disparate ideas about society's readiness to cope with frontier science; variable political substrates, particularly ideas concerning individual freedom and state control; competing ideologies of globalization; and the perceived relative risks and benefits of contact. (Variations in the latter, i.e. assessments of the risks and benefits of contact, derive partly from different thinking styles, including tolerance for risk, and partly from inferences based upon episodes of biological and cultural contact on Earth.) Unpacking the debate into its components may be of use to those debating policy about SETI transmissions, or at the very least, help keep in focus what, precisely, the perennial arguments are really about.

Dystopian Genesis: The Scientist's Role in Society, According to Jack Arnold

In 1971, Joseph Ben-David's The Scientist's Role in Society reinvigorated the sociology of science by presenting the emergence of autonomous science as a social process. For Ben-David, the history of science was not a history of ideas but a history of social and political developments that created specific social functions for science and for scientists. A social role for the scientist was able to develop only as a result of the unfettered pursuit of knowledge encouraged by the Enlightenment. Paradoxically, the specific social function of science required it to be free of political or religious interference and yet demanded its involvement in solving social problems (often those caused exactly by scientific and technological change ). Science was, therefore, both autonomous and intricately woven into society. Ben- David's account of this relationship between science and society stands in stark contrast to views held in the study of science two decades ear Her. Where Ben-David saw science as deeply embedded in society, internalist historians of science, following Alexandre Koyre, and positivist philosophers of science, following the Vienna Circle, maintained a view of science as an intellectual enterprise that was, at best, removed from, and, at worst, infringed on by, the social and the political spheres. Indeed, this view reflected a development within American society in which science became more and more distanced from social, political, and economic processes. Under pressure from Cold War politics, scientists retreated from public affairs and refrained from associating their work with social or political issues. In the same period, these researchers, especially physicists, detached themselves from the cultural and political centers and developed a pragmatic approach to adapt their work to their suburbanization. While science as an intellectual endeavor was increasingly regarded as striving to transcend all worldly matters in search of objective truth, scientists themselves were becoming more and more involved in the militaryindustrial complex.8 Tension between their traditional role as public advisors on social problems and their new role as secret advisors to the government and the military created a potentially dangerous position for scientists, who were, in turn, regarded with a growing distrust among the American public. Ben-David was well aware of the problems that the scientist's role in society could entail. Public trust in a science that could remain autonomous in the pursuit of knowledge, while its practitioners nevertheless became involved in political and military affairs, was based on Ben- David's belief that knowledge had intrinsic moral value. That belief was fueled by recent scientific successes that he believed raised utopian expectations of a cognitive re-ordering of the world. Few periods in history have seen a utopian belief in the power of science to solve all the problems of mankind as strong as that prevalent in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and few documents from that era depict the subsequent moral crisis of science as strikingly as the movies directed by Jack Arnold between 1953 and 1959. Arnold began his work in science fiction with a critical appreciation of the potential for science to shape society, a Utopian vision he brought to the screen in the 1953 film It Came from Outer Space. In his subsequent movies, however, Arnold began to explore the difficulties inherent in the relationship between science and society, leading him to criticize, reject, and ultimately ridicule the Utopian idea, which Ben-David would continue into the Seventies, that science could morally improve the human condition. While Arnold's films of this period belong to a variety of genres and are the products of different production backgrounds, they can be viewed as forming a coherent narrative about science and its relation to society - a narrative of skepticism that is remarkable for its resonance and style. …

Ethnological research of the city Brno: Stability and metamorphosis of Moravian metropolis

The contribution aims to describe development of the ethnological research of the City Brno as the part of Czech - and former Czechoslovak - urban ethnology. Shortened it deals with the beginnings of research in 50ies of the 20th century, with methods and results of research and, in more details, it describes interdisciplinary projects after 1989. In recent decades there were realised such important projects like Das multikulturelle Brunn an der Schwelle zum EU-Beitritt (Multicultural Brno entering European Union), or Memory of the town, and interdisciplinary project based on sociological and geographical quantitative analysis Socio-Spatial Consequences of Demographic Change for East Central European Cities where ethnology played the role of science based on qualitative analysis and methods. The main part of contribution defines the cultural identity of Brno´ citizens and interethnical relations, as well, as the result of repetitive field research and from the point of view of ethnology.

Comment: NATO committee fosters science's role in security

Comment: NATO committee fosters science's role in security

WE-C-213A-02: ACR MRI QC Program

In recent years, the American College of Radiology (ACR) Magnetic Resonance Accreditation Program (MRAP) has been adopted by over 4600 sites, nearly half of the estimated MRI facilities in the United States. Those sites agree to follow a weekly QC program set up and monitored by a qualified medical physicist or MR scientist. This lecture will overview the QC requirements for high and low field MRI units from multiple vendors. Each unit has different terminology for center frequency and transmitter gain and different methods of locating them. These need to be known by the medical physicist and shown to the technologist. Suggestions will be given for teaching the QC to technologists. Suggestions will be given for establishing baselines and monitoring the QC program. Examples will be shown of evaluations of both properly functioning MRI scanners and poorly functioning units. Learning Objectives: 1. Learn the technologist QC requirements for the ACR MR accreditation program and the physicist / MR scientist's role in setting up the program. 2. Learn how to locate the applicable QC parameters on different MRI systems. 3. Learn how to establish MR QC baselines and evaluate the technologist QC program.

Scientific Discrimination and the Activist Scientist: L.C. Dunn and the Professionalization of Genetics and Human Genetics in the United States

During the 1920s and 1930s geneticist L.C. Dunn of Columbia University cautioned Americans against endorsing eugenic policies and called attention to eugenicists' less than rigorous practices. Then, from the mid-1940s to early 1950s he attacked scientific racism and Nazi Rassenhygiene by co-authoring Heredity, Race and Society with Theodosius Dobzhansky and collaborating with members of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) on their international campaign against racism. Even though shaking the foundations of scientific discrimination was Dunn's primary concern during the interwar and post-World War II years, his campaigns had ancillary consequences for the discipline. He contributed to the professionalization of genetics during the 1920s and 1930s and sought respectability for human genetics in the 1940s and 1950s. My article aims to elucidate the activist scientist's role in undermining scientific discrimination by exploring aspects of Dunn's scientific work and political activism from the 1920s to 1950s. Definitions are provided for scientific discrimination and activist scientist.

“The End of Faith?” Science and Theology as Process

Abstract: A spate of recent books would claim that science's only role vis a vis theology is to discredit it. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, credits religious faith as the source of much of the violence in today's world. Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, views religion as, at best, a profound misunderstanding, and at worst a form of madness. Both find an antidote to such irrationality in science. To Harris and Dawkins religion is a body of accumulated knowledge. However, religion can also be thought of as a process, one based on experience, questions, and results. One group that has systematized such a process is the Society of Friends, or Quakers. The Quaker tradition shows that it is quite possible for religion to rest on experience and questioning, and for these to form the basis for an active and involved faith, one that need never reject science and its findings, but will temper their use with the best wisdom that can be gained from personal and communal experience.

Bias and Its Impact on Expert Testimony: How the Thoughts of the 17th Century Enlightenment Can Help the Forensic Scientist

Part of a forensic scientist's role is to provide an unbiased and objective opinion, often in some type of dispute resolution process such as a trial. The purpose of this article is to look into the role of bias in an expert's opinion and how it can have a deleterious impact on one's testimony. The writings of the 17th-century philosophers Francis Bacon and René Descartes are discussed and their findings on the bias problem explored. Examples of where bias can appear within the testimony of an environmental expert are also explored and ways to alleviate this problem are provided.

THE SCIENTIST AS STATESMAN: BIOLOGISTS AND THIRD WORLD HEALTH

Abstract.One of the most threatening problems the world faces is the growing poverty crisis and the related human rights inequalities and the spread of diseases in underprivileged areas. Human rights and relief organizations try hard to contain the devastation of these interconnected difficulties. What is the role of the biomedical scientist in this endeavor? The challenges that biomedical scientists face in their research lead us to question whether scientists can go beyond the time‐consuming realm of experimental investigation and engage the issues of society in a more public way. I suggest how the scientist's role can be expanded in our complex and precarious world, introducing the idea of the modern biomedical researcher as scientist, scholar‐philosopher, and statesman for the scientific community and the larger human rights community. I provide examples of where the scientist can interface with human rights organizations, medical doctors, political and civic leaders, and the science‐religion dialogue. My argument reveals the emerging role of the biomedical scientist as one of public service in addition to and beyond the realm of the experimental investigator. This role, however, is formidable, and I list some of the obstacles it entails.

Understanding the Earth scientist's role in the pre-restoration research of monuments: an overview

Abstract To understand the role of the earth scientist in the pre-restoration research of stone monuments, it is necessary to summarize the tasks that he/she can fulfil. Pre-restoration research into building materials is generally conducted to provide information on types of material, their damage and repair. Although the technologist and restorer must manage the practical aspects of repair, the earth scientist can make a significant contribution in terms of material research. First, he or she can answer questions on the nature of the stone(s) used, their provenance (location of the quarry), and their weathering characteristics in terms of the deterioration of physical and mechanical properties and destruction of rock fabric. Second, the earth scientist can research the physical and mechanical properties of new stone proposed for as a replacement for decayed stonework, including recommendations for alternative materials where stone from the original quarry is no longer available.

When supply meets demand, yet no market emerges: the contribution of integrated environmental assessment to the rationalisation of EU environmental policy-making

The paper discusses systematic barriers for an enhanced institutionalisation of integrated environmental assessments at the level of European Union (EU) environmental policy-making. It draws from recent experiences of a programme that aimed to provide useful assessments as a basis for more rational decision-making in this field. Two complementary explanations are given to account for the difficulties the programme met in achieving its goals. First is the way science's role in the policy process depends on the degree to which a policy problem is well structured, that is, the degree to which it bears a consensus both on relevant values and relevant knowledge. The second explanation is an institutional one that emphasises the difficulties of establishing a social relationship between 'providers' and 'users' of scientific assessments at the EU level. © Beech Tree Publishing 2006.

Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness: A New Perspective on Unity and Brotherhood by Sarah Hudspith (review)

888 Reviews the discussion revolves is arguably a similar weakness. Nevertheless, the revelation of how, in the run-up to the 1905 revolution, psychiatrists reclassified as sane certain progressive writers who had previously been diagnosed as mad (Maksim Gorky pri? mary among them) provides a fascinating insight into the science's role in organizing society. Overall, although Diagnosing Literary Genius makes only a modest contribution to our understanding of the reception of major writers such as Gogol and Dostoevsky, its primary aim of broadening our understanding of the role of psychiatry in literary history is clearly achieved. The writing of pathographies provided a stage for physi? cians who wanted to express a world-view and supplement their professional claims with moral authority. This integration of their special scientific interests within a wider culture is what makes the study of Russian psychiatry such a rich subject. University of St Andrews Claire Whitehead Dostoevsky and theIdea ofRussianness: A New Perspective on Unity and Brotherhood. By Sarah Hudspith. (BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies) London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2004. x + 228 pp. ?60. ISBN 0-415-30489-x. With the completion of Joseph Frank's monumental five-volume study of Dosto? evsky's life and work, not to mention a hundred years of Dostoevsky criticism sym? pathetic to, or focused on, his Christian and Slavophile thinking, the most difficult of tasks is finding 'a new perspective'. Sarah Hudspith, it becomes clear from the very beginning, is not just a sympathizer or a focused critic: she is a believer. This in itself does not make for an entirely new perspective, but it certainly creates a more impassioned and consistent defence. What she achieves in this clearly written, beautifully presented, impeccably referenced, and grossly overpriced book is a parallel study. The evolution of Dostoevsky's thought on the Russian people, on Orthodoxy, and on Western Europe occupies the foreground, and a discussion of Slavophile thought, from Khomiakov to Aksakov, runs simultaneously in the background. This makes sense, in that Dostoevsky's career as a writer chronographically matches the Slavophile parabola, as it emerges from Romantic utopianism, revitalizes Orthodoxy, and then hardens into a sclerotic anti-Muslim and anti-European jingoism. The difficultythat this reviewer has is that Dostoevsky, like Tolstoy, is not nearly as wise or persuasive a thinker as the fictional characters he invents. Even the magnificent rhetoric of Dostoevsky's Pushkin speech, however sacrosanct a moment it may be in Russia's self-image, disintegrates on closer examination into a series ofnon sequiturs, begged questions, and megalomaniac nationalism. Hudspith is controlled, well-read, and perspicacious enough to see the absurdities, inconsistencies, and inadequacies of Dostoevsky's statements on Europe. In the firsthalf of her study, which is devoted to Dostoevsky's journalism and to the semi-fictional Notes from the House of the Dead, she traces the development of his thinking from his first contacts with Nekrasov, Belinsky, and Speshnev and lays emphasis on the cathartic role ofthe Siberian prison and his firstprolonged encounter with the narod. When she comes to Winter Notes on Summer Impressions she fails, however, to concede the lapse from the genuine recollection of experience in Siberia to the preposterous distortion of ill-understood encounters in London, where the fogof Hay market and total ignorance ofthe language and culture make Dostoevsky a bad, unreliable observer. When Konstantin Leontiev berates the average Western bourgeois as 'The Ideal and Instrument of Universal Destruction', his wit and passion give his lunatic constructs at least a poetic validity. Dostoevsky denouncing the West, on the other hand, has only the intolerance and the banality of an Osama bin Laden. MLRy 100.3, 2005 889 Hudspith does admit Dostoevsky's xenophobia, but there are aspects of Dosto? evsky's ideal of brotherhood which she leaves unmentioned, and which are now being explored by other critics, notably his anti-Semitism and his refusal, even in private correspondence not destined for publication, to accept fair-minded remonstrance. If Dostoevsky is to convince, let alone convert, it can only be through his fictional characters. The second half of this study is far more successful. It deals with the major novels, and very properly includes...

Determining Computing Science's Role

Computing science's commercialization has powerful implications for society and the profession.

Textbooks, popular lectures and sermons: the quantum chemist Charles Alfred Coulson and the crafting of science

In this paper I address C. A. Coulson's teaching activities, writing textbooks and delivering popular science lectures, as well as his popular lectures on religion and the ‘scientific’ sermons delivered in his capacity as a lay preacher of the Methodist Church. I will pay particular attention to his thoughts on science. His commitment to forging a way to reconcile science and religion was built upon a reflection on the aims and methods of science within the broader framework of science's role in post-Second World War society. By noting that Coulson valued chemistry, mathematics and science in general, as a kind of religious activity, I argue that he wrote masterful textbooks and delivered popular science lectures as lay sermons. These were activities which Coulson pursued energetically to build a community of science adepts and proselytes. And winning young, and indeed not so young, people to science meant teaching them one of the languages that could be used to reach God. In the same way, I extend my argument to his popular lectures on religion and his ‘scientific’ sermons and claim that they should be viewed as popular science lectures addressed to an audience that was often ignorant, or even suspicious, of science.

Short Communication Science's Role in Natural Resource Decisions

<b>Short Communication</b> Science's Role in Natural Resource Decisions

Creation of Educational Resources: A Research Scientist's Role

Material and resources for use in science education must contain accurate, up-to-date data and research results. Clearly when curricula and other materials for use in informal science education and for public understanding of science are developed, the direct interaction and influence of research scientists is beneficial. What is the role of scientists in resource development? In colleges and universities, educational materials are scientist-centric since scientists are the principal science educators and therefore create the specific courseware they need. In a pre-college educational environment, and in science museums (for example), appropriate product creation is driven by experienced educators and other experts. The research scientist, drawn from a research environment, may not be the best instigator of those resources.

Collaborative Nanoscience Laboratory with Integrated Learning Modules

Creation and maintenance of virtual laboratories needs an interdisciplinary project team with didactic and technical staff and also experts of the field. NANO-WORLD, a collaborative nanoscience laboratory, developed as part of the Swiss Virtual Campus, is built on top of an e-learning portal. Interactive real-time simulations of nanoscience experiments inspire students to access e-learning modules. Remote experiments with mobile notification services increase the learning motivation of students. They can directly explore phenomena in nanoscience and take over the role of scientists.