Public Understanding of Science最新文献

Generative artificial intelligence in general and ChatGPT in particular have risen in importance. ChatGPT is widely known and used increasingly as an information source for different topics, including science. It is therefore relevant to examine how ChatGPT portrays science and science-related issues. Research on this question is lacking, however. Hence, we simulate "interviews" with ChatGPT and reconstruct how it presents science, science communication, scientific misbehavior, and controversial scientific issues. Combining qualitative and quantitative content analysis, we find that, generally, ChatGPT portrays science largely as the STEM disciplines, in a positivist-empiricist way and a positive light. When comparing ChatGPT's responses to different simulated user profiles and responses from the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 versions, we find similarities in that the scientific consensus on questions such as climate change, COVID-19 vaccinations, or astrology is consistently conveyed across them. Beyond these similarities in substance, however, pronounced differences are found in the personalization of responses to different user profiles and between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.

Today, the dominant climate change discourses affirm its anthropogenic nature and the urgency for policies. However, minority discourses remain active in the worldwide debate, refining arguments beyond simple denial-as shown regarding formal/official discourses of the United States and European far-right parties. This makes it necessary to examine the public understanding of climate change in everyday, informal minority discourses, looking at how they work for broadening societal space for "quarantining" the transformative potential of climate change meanings/policies. For this, we analyze readers' comments on climate change articles from two Portuguese newspapers, drawing from the frameworks of neutralization techniques and meaning barriers. Findings show that although denial of anthropogenic climate change remains, discursive efforts concentrate on person-stigmatizing depictions of climate change actors, delegitimized as "elites" in populist vocabularies, reflecting a consistent alignment between everyday discourses and those of the United States and European official far-right. We discuss the functions this pattern may have for the growth of climate change minority positions.

The coronavirus pandemic increased the role played by scientific advisers in counselling governments and citizens on issues around public health. This raises questions about how citizens evaluate scientists, and in particular the grounds on which they trust them. Previous studies have identified various factors associated with trust in scientists, although few have systematically explored a range of judgements and their relative effects. This study takes advantage of scientific advisers' heightened public profile during the pandemic to explore how people's trust in scientists is shaped by perceptions of their features and traits, along with evaluations of their behaviour and role within the decision-making process. The study also considers people's trust in politicians, thereby enabling us to identify whether trust in scientists reflects similar or distinctive considerations to trust in partisan actors. Data are derived from specially designed conjoint experiments and surveys of nationally representative samples in Britain and the United States.

In recent decades, members of the general public have become increasingly reliant on findings of scientific studies for decision-making. However, scientific writing usually features a heavy use of technical language, which may pose challenges for people outside of the scientific community. To alleviate this issue, plain language summaries were introduced to provide a brief summary of scientific papers in clear and accessible language. Despite increasing attention paid to the research of plain language summaries, little is known about whether these summaries are readable for the intended audiences. Based on a large corpus sampled from six biomedical and life sciences journals, the present study examined the readability and jargon use of plain language summaries and scientific abstracts on a technical level. It was found that (1) plain language summaries were more readable than scientific abstracts, (2) the reading grade levels of plain language summaries were moderately correlated with that of scientific abstracts, (3) researchers used less jargon in plain language summaries than in scientific abstracts, and (4) the readability of and the jargon use in both plain language summaries and scientific abstracts exceeded the recommended threshold for the general public. The findings were discussed with possible explanations. Implications for academic writing and scientific communication were offered.

Research has shown a great distrust among youths toward political representatives, who they demand should "listen to the science." However, less research has been done on youths' own trust in science. This study explores and explains how youths who are environmentally active in two different environmental youth organizations relate to science in social media, whether they trust science, and how youths' relation to science creates a discursive context in which they may develop their identity. The study uses the approach of discourse analysis to examine social media content published on Facebook by Fridays for Future Sweden and Fältbiologerna (the Swedish Field Biologists). The study shows (i) how subject positions for scientists and youth are created in relation to one another based on different expressions of youths' trust in science and (ii) how environmental youth organizations, by identifying with science, make youths important actors in the discourse on climate change.

Numerous studies have explored internal factors such as cultural values and acquired knowledge accounting for how people engage with science. However, it remains unclear how external factors embedded in science texts relate to audience engagement. A content analysis of 298 text-based popular science news articles and their following 5852 reader comments was conducted in two Israeli audiences, science-minded and general readers, to explore how the accessibility strategies embedded in these articles relate to cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement. Findings indicated similar patterns of relationship between accessibility strategies and engagement expressions for both audiences; however, the relationships were more pronounced for general readers compared to science-minded readers. Using jargon and a narrative writing style increased the odds of positive emotions in reader comments, whereas addressing socio-scientific issues increased the odds of cognitive expressions. These results may contribute to a fuller understanding of ways to drive meaningful public engagement.

The rise of new media technologies has reshaped the landscape of science communication. There is little research on scientists' outreach participation and its possible predictors in different media contexts. Based on a national survey of 8,533 scientists in China, this study examined multiple direct and personal norm-mediated predictors of scientists' intentions to participate in public outreach via legacy media versus social media. Our findings revealed two consistent direct predictors (past outreach participation and personal norms) and two inconsistent direct predictors (descriptive norms and intrinsic rewards) that are significant only for participating via social media in the Chinese context. Moreover, our findings suggest a significant mediation effect of personal norms on the influence of various social norms (descriptive and subjective) and rewards (intrinsic and extrinsic) on Chinese scientists' intentions to participate in public outreach via media. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The debate that followed the first-in-human cardiac transplantation of a genetically modified pig organ emerged as a discussion of social justice when the patient's criminal record was revealed. This article aims to make sense of this debate by understanding the role of the 'public' today, particularly in relation to the governance of biotechnology. The relationship between the public and science is increasingly mediated through citizen participation. However, the public debate that unfolded on matters of social justice can be seen as an unmediated public discourse, which carries the risk of producing unpredictable outcomes. The content of the debate gains significance due to the functional differentiation of society. The medical subsystem does not consider the patient's history in terms of their involvement in the legal sphere, that is, their criminal record. Nevertheless, normative judgements are transferred across functional systems, allowing for the influence of public opinion and the potential for public scorn.

As population-related climate change research increases, so does the need to nuance approaches to this complex phenomenon, including issues related to cultural and linguistic translations. To explore how climate change is understood in understudied societies, a case-study approach is taken to address social representations of climate change by inhabitants of a Maore village in the French island of Mayotte. The study explores how local fishers understand the issue when considering observed environmental changes. Based on analyses of 30 interviews, the study found that social representations and related climate change discourses are not well established, except for individuals in close contact with French institutions. Issues regarding local culture and language reveal the importance of understanding the different components of climate change. Climate change communication and awareness-raising on the island are explored, as well as considerations of culturally and linguistically complex settings with a Global North/Global South interface.

This study assesses whether the Democratic Party holds issue ownership over science in the United States. We analyze data from a national survey that asked 1041 adults questions specifically designed to measure perceptions of science ownership. While the results suggest that the Democratic Party does hold a significant advantage in ownership of science in an abstract sense, perceptions of ownership of specific types of science vary across the two parties. Those who identify as Independents drive much of the aggregate perceptions of ownership of science, whereas partisans' perceptions of issue ownership of science are mostly driven by in-party favoritism. Post hoc analyses suggest that news media use contributes to perceptions of science ownership and reinforces affinity-party preference.