Why should we care about science books? After all, we live in a "new media" world where students, researchers, and the public use the World Wide Web for all their information needs. Cutting edge research appears on "preprint archives" or "open access" online journals, text"books" appear as online sites with interactive presentations and links to presentation, for creating public discussion and dialogue, and even for archiving current research. In that kind of world, what’s the purpose of looking at "old fashioned" books?

We live in a period where new media develops at amazing speed: the case of Youtube, becoming in few months one of the most visited website in the world, or the incredibly fast diffusion of audio and video podcasting, or the acquired relevance and authoritativeness of blogs in the dissemination of scientific information, are paradigmatic. Yet, there is little doubt that old media such as traditional television remain a reference for the largest sector of the population. Indeed, all surveys show that when dealing with scientific information, television remains the most relevant medium by a large majority of European (although in eastern Europe, due to a more trustful reputation, radio has also a particularly relevant position, and the internet is gaining favour among younger audiences).

The obvious thing to say about popular science publishing in the last twenty years is that there has been a lot of it! That is important in itself. But it also means it is hazardous to offer general comment. The British journalist and commentator Bryan Appleyard recently wrote in the Sunday Times that the “hard stuff” in science was no longer attracting so many readers. Books answering many small questions about the world, or evoking a sense of wonder, do better - he reckons - than those which offer large certainties based on a scientific, or scientistic view of the world. That type, Appleyard claims, dominated the field for years after Steven Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, with its promise of a theory of everything.

Scientific publishing, here to be considered in a broader sense, as publishing of both specialised scientific journals and science popularisation works addressed to a wider audience, has been sailing for some years on troubled waters. To gather some possible food for thought is the purpose of this brief article.

The attacks of September 11 2001 and in particular, the sending of letters containing anthrax spores the following October had a profound effect on society, and at the same time on science and its communicative mechanisms. Through a quanto-qualitative analysis of articles taken from four publications: two daily newspapers, the Corriere della Sera from Italy and the New York Times from the United States and two science magazines, Science and Nature, we have shown how the aforementioned events provoked the emergence of media attention regarding bioterrorism. A closer reading of the articles shows that today, science – including that found in science magazines – is closely related to politics, economics and the debate over the freedom to practice communicate. The very mechanisms of communication between scientists were changed as a result of this debate, as can be seen from the signing of the Denver Declaration in February 2003, which brought about the preventative self-censorship of publication of biomedical research findings.

Science information professionals need to make choices through which media they want to communicate with the public. In reaching large audiences outside the domain of formal diffusion of knowledge, the choice may be between the old medium television and the new medium Internet. It seems that general scientific research is focused more and more on the Internet as a favorite means for information exchange and that the old mass medium television plays only a minor role. But when we look at (1) how the public spends their leisure time on television and the Internet, (2) how effective these media are in transferring information, and (3) how much these media are trusted as reliable sources of information, the old medium television should still be regarded as the number one medium to be used for science communication, although there are some limitations for its use.

The debate on Darwin’s theory of evolution is a unique case for observing some particular ways in which science is perceived and experienced in society. It is a dispute which is really not very scientific at all, since it ultimately derives from the attempt to discredit a corroborated scientific explanation (and to limit its teaching) by fundamentalist fringe groups of religious and political movements of various extraction. However, it is undeniable that the clash between creationists and evolutionists must also involve, in a critical and self-reflective way, the communicative weaknesses of science and its inability to assert itself as a widespread and fully shared culture, as was also stressed by the Nature magazine in April 2005. With an international viewpoint, ranging from the United States to Europe, from Australia to Italy, in this dossier we try to make a summary investigation of the current state of the debate, with a particularly attentive eye on the communicative strategies that contend in the two fields.

In their essay which appeared in 1972 in Models in Paleobiology, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, introducing the theory of punctuated equilibrium, stressed the fact that no scientific theory develops as a simple and logical extension of facts and of patiently recorded observations, and that the particular vision of the world that the scientist adheres to is able to influence, even unconsciously, the way in which data are collected, selected and then interpreted. Scientists, being aware of the existence of an intrinsic problem of prejudice in their scientific research activity, know that, in order to produce original and innovative ideas, it is fundamental to try to revolutionise their research image, to look at reality in a new light, to read data with alternative viewpoints.

I would like to celebrate not one, but two major news stories about evolution that help further cast the forces of intellectual darkness — meaning creationism and intelligent design — back into the shadows where they belong.

In addition to their intrusive presence in American schools, creationists - or more modern epigones thereof, known as “intelligent designers” - are also and unexpectedly to be found in other countries. Take the United Kingdom as an example. Over the past few years, Darwin’s homeland has actually been witnessing attempts to introduce literal faith in the Bible into school programmes in a way which does not significantly differ from the one adopted in the United States. It is multi-billionaire Howard H. Ahmanson who generously finances the Discovery Institute across the Atlantic, one of the dissemination centres of the creationist “creed”.