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• Date of publication Oct 22, 2007 Category: Article

  The biography of scientists as a means of communicating science: analogies concerning a hermeneutic or empirical problem

  by Maria Francisca Carneiro

  Sometimes scientists live real dramas or undergo social and psychological conflicts which have a positive or negative influence on the development and recognition of their research, discoveries and inventions in society, including the way they are recorded in history. This being so, the question is: to what extent can science be communicated to the public at large by the use of scientists' biographies as a motivational strategy? The controversy arises from the fact that usual (classical) science has traditionally argued for the separation (or de-linking) of the research (the object) from the researcher (the subject).Thus, if the above-mentioned motivational strategy is used in scientific communication, it could break a dominant methodological trend and consequently lead to a questioning of the myth of axiological neutrality in science. The communication of science by means of scientists' biographies could be useful for reaching a specific public, more directed towards emotional aspects, thereby awakening its interest in science, even amid cultural differences and in environments where interest in science and its utility is lacking. It could also reveal human aspects of the everyday life of scientists, bringing them closer to the public at large, which would contribute to the dissemination of science and knowledge.

  Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

• Date of publication Jun 21, 2007 Category: Article

  Museums for Science Education: can we make the difference? The case of the EST project

  by Maria Xanthoudaki , Brunella Tirelli , Patrizia Cerutti , Sara Calcagnini

  This paper addresses the role of museums in education in science and technology through the discussion of a specific project entitled EST “Educate in Science and Technology”. The Project puts together methodologies and activities through which museums can be used as resources for long-term project work. In-service training for teachers, work in class with learning kits or with materials brought in by a Science Van, and visits to the museum are planned and developed jointly by museum experts and teachers. The Project proposes a teaching and learning model which sees the museum experience as central and integral part of a teaching and learning process with more effective outcomes. The analysis of the Project activities and methodologies is based on the work carried out at the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci, which perceives the learner (the visitor) at the heart of its educational methodologies and provision.

  Volume 6 • Issue 02 • 2007

• Date of publication Mar 21, 2007 Category: Letter

  The output for the Master’s degree in Science Communication at SISSA of Trieste

  by Donato Ramani , Nico Pitrelli

  What professional future awaits those who have attended a school in science communication? This has become an ever more urgent question, when you consider the proliferation of Masters and post-graduate courses that provide on different levels a training for science communicators in Europe and all over the world. In Italy, the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste has been for fourteen years now the seat for a Master’s degree in Science Communication that has graduated over 170 students. This letter illustrates the results of a survey carried out in order to identify the job opportunities they have been offered and the role played in their career by their Master’s degree. Over 70% of the interviewees are now working in the field of science communication and they told us that the Master has played an important role in finding a job, thus highlighting the importance of this school as a training, cultural and professional centre.

  Volume 6 • Issue 01 • 2007

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2006 Category: Commentary

  John Ziman

  by Pietro Greco

  What pushed His Excellency Enrico Fermi, acclaimed Academician of Italy entitled to a state car and driver, to leave Italy all of a sudden in December 1938 in order to reach New York, after a short stop in Stockholm for the ceremony that celebrated him as a Nobel laureate for physics, and to accept a job as a simple physics lecturer at the Columbia University?

  An eloquent and persuasive Mr. Smee

  by Erio Tosatti

  An insider’s view on science and society. Re-reading John Ziman

  by Ana María Vara

  Real science is excellent science – how to interpret post-academic science, Mode 2 and the ERC

  by Helga Nowotny

  Volume 5 • Issue 04 • 2006

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2006 Category: Commentary

  An eloquent and persuasive Mr. Smee

  by Erio Tosatti

  John Ziman with his old-fashioned ways, was a real British gentleman of the colonies. Born and raised in New Zealand, Ziman belonged to that large group of men and women that went back to their fathers’ land in the last century from the Commonwealth countries. In many cases, they were individuals with an outstanding intellect and, therefore, a real tresure trove for Great Britain, which drew from those remote places not only gems, tea, perfumes and raw materials, but also enlightened minds and reliable personalities.

  Volume 5 • Issue 04 • 2006

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2006 Category: Commentary

  An insider’s view on science and society. Re-reading John Ziman

  by Ana María Vara

  A physicist. That is what John Ziman was in the beginning. As he tells us in “On being a physicist,” this implies a kind of nationality, that is, a laboriously learned identity that, at the end of the day, becomes natural. Physics was for him a way of seeing and a way of thinking, inextricably embedded in his own being: “a deeply rooted mode of personal existence.”

  Volume 5 • Issue 04 • 2006

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2005 Category: Editorial

  Amphibious Environments in Science Communication

  by Yuri Castelfranchi

  The historian Marshall Berman wrote that living in modern times means "to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation [...] and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know".

  Volume 4 • Issue 03 • 2005

• Date of publication Jun 21, 2005 Category: Article

  The sociological nature of science communication

  by Andrea Declich , Luciano d'Andrea

  The article proposes a reflection on science communication and on the communicative processes characteristic to the production of new-found knowledge. It aims to outline the role that sociology can play within this frame for greater understanding. The article first defines the main evolutionary trends in scientific research in recent decades, with particular reference to the emergence of new social actors. Following on from this, it will look at some of the epistemological conditions that may strengthen the sociologist's role in the cognition of scientific production. Using this as a premise, we will look at a typology for science communication and its components, as well as some of its governing principles. The conclusion of the article indicates the added value that can be gained from the use of such a model, with the particular aim of identifying indicators that allow the evaluation of scientific research in sociological terms as well as those already in existence.

  Volume 4 • Issue 02 • 2005

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2004 Category: Focus

  Science, Communication and Society in Brazil, the narrative of deficit

  by Rafael Evangelista , Marta M. Kanashiro

  If there is a peculiarity in the way of doing science and in the way of communicating science in Brazil, it is in the use of the idea of "deficit" in political and economic discourses, as well as in the discourses of socio-technical networks. Our proposal here is not to affirm or reject the existence of this deficit, but rather to understand its workings and its construction as a way of bringing about networks of interest that make use of this idea. For us, this is not an idea which is restricted to the discourse of researchers or of journalists and scientific broadcasters; there is also an echo in the general society, and in different spheres and situations. The idea of deficit with regard to scientific knowledge is functional in Brazil, in conjunction with the idea that the country itself has a deficiency in relation to developed countries. It is as if there were two levels of deficit which join together and empower each other.

  Volume 3 • Issue 04 • 2004

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2004 Category: Focus

  Science communication in an era of diversity

  by Yuri Castelfranchi

  The eighth convention of the PCST (Public Communication of Science and Technology) network, which took place in Barcelona this June, emphasised an increasing richness in reflection and practice with regard to several themes to do with science communication. This growing variety mirrors the different approaches gradually coming about in different cultural and geographical contexts. In particular, the Focus of this issue of JCOM concentrates on a presentation of the models of interpretation of science communication referring to the Mediterranean and South American cultural area.

  Volume 3 • Issue 03 • 2004