News Brief: New Paper on Social Media for Scientists

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Scientists, Trust, Media and Climate Change

Posted 12 April 2013 by Matt Shipman

Who do you trust? That question is at the heart of public debate on climate change. If you trust the scientific community, which overwhelmingly acknowledges the reality of climate change, then you likely think climate change is a global problem that requires a global response. If you don’t trust scientists, then you may have no strong feelings about climate change – or you may think that it’s some sort of hoax. The relationship between trust and public perceptions of climate... Read more

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Gender Bias in Researcher-to-Researcher Communication

Posted 22 March 2013 by Matt Shipman

Science communication extends beyond the attempts of reporters and scientists to communicate with nonexpert audiences (i.e., the so-called “general public”). For example, science communication also describes the efforts of researchers to communicate with each other. And, as a recent study points out, that process includes challenges that researchers have little control over. Challenges like gender bias. Among other findings, an Ohio State University study found that graduate students rated research abstracts as having greater “scientific quality” when they thought the... Read more

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Study: Trying to Popularize Science Won’t Hurt You (and Probably Won’t Help You)

Posted 21 February 2013 by Matt Shipman

I write, and think, a lot about science outreach activities. I define the term broadly, to cover any efforts to communicate about scientific topics to any audience outside of one’s own discipline. One idea that crops up fairly often is that such efforts to “popularize” science could adversely affect one’s career – particularly in academia. And, while this has been the subject of some research, I hadn’t run across a large-scale study that evaluated the hypothesis that outreach efforts will... Read more

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Let’s Find Out What Science Outreach Can Accomplish

Posted 15 February 2013 by Matt Shipman

[Note: This post first ran Feb. 13 on Nature's Soapbox Science blog.] Many people, including me, will tell you that science outreach is important. This is nothing new. The public lectures of Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday are thought of as crucial elements in the popularization of science in the 19th century, and they are as likely to be remembered for those outreach efforts as they are for their scientific contributions (which were considerable). But here’s the thing – we can’t prove it. Scientists pride... Read more

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We Studied a Zoo: How Two Studies Assessed Outreach Impact

Posted 11 February 2013 by Matt Shipman

At the ScienceOnline conference earlier this month, I was bemoaning the dearth of literature evaluating the impact of science outreach activities. Luckily, Mun Keat Looi was part of this conversation, and he steered me to a 2012 paper he thought I’d find interesting. He was right. The paper, “Assessing Public Engagement with Science in a University Primate Research Centre in a National Zoo,” was published in April 2012 by PLOS ONE. The authors note in the opening lines of their... Read more

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Art as a Science Communication Tool: I Need Your Help

Posted 4 February 2013 by Matt Shipman

Visual art has the power to inspire, provoke and fascinate. I know some incredibly talented artists that focus on scientific subjects, and I think their work is a beautiful and valuable science communication tool – but I'm having a hard time quantifying that value. So I want you to help me out. As a flack, I primarily use art (still images or video) to draw attention to a story. I rarely (if ever) use it to help tell a story... Read more

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Don’t Panic: Challenges Regarding Science, News and Comments Online

Posted 7 January 2013 by Matt Shipman

A recent “Perspectives” commentary in Science on the importance of online science news – and associated challenges – has (unsurprisingly) gotten a fair amount of attention in the science communication community. Not all of it good. But I think that, at the very least, it presents a good opportunity to lay out some of those challenges and, hopefully, spark a productive discussion about how to address them. The commentary also refers to a forthcoming paper on the impact of online... Read more

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Some Thoughts on Facilitating Science Communication by Scientists

Posted 26 October 2012 by Matt Shipman

Earlier this year, there was another science communication blame-a-thon, with some people calling on scientists to do more outreach and some scientists wondering why they were being picked on. While both sides made valid points, I'm not sure this advanced the cause of science communication. I wrote a post at the time, asking scientists what they need to facilitate their involvement in outreach efforts. The comments on that post are worth reading, but one of the things that jumped out... Read more

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