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Date of publication Mar 21, 2007 Category: Editorial

Patterns for dialogue: under construction

by Pietro Greco

NASA has decided to cut by 50% the next two-year budget for the Astrobiology Institute (NAI), and for all of the studies on life in outer space. This reduction follows an announcement made by Dr Michael Griffin, the Administrator of the space agency of the United States Government when, in addressing the Mars Society last summer, he clearly stated that xenobiology studies are marginal to the mission of NASA.

Volume 6Issue 012007
Date of publication Mar 21, 2007 Category: Commentary

The role by scientific publications in science communication

by Martha Fabbri

In their contributions to this special issue, the British science writer Jon Turney and the American scholar Bruce Lewenstein discuss the validity of the book as a means for science communication in the era of the Internet, whereas the article by Vittorio Bo deals with scientific publishing in a broader sense.

Boom and bust in popular science
by Jon Turney

Why should we care about science books?
by Bruce Lewenstein

Scientific publishing: some food for thought
by Vittorio Bo

Volume 6Issue 012007
Date of publication Mar 21, 2007 Category: Commentary

Why should we care about science books?

by Bruce Lewenstein

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?

Volume 6Issue 012007
Date of publication Mar 21, 2007 Category: Book Review

Jaap Willems and Winfried Goepfert (eds.), Science and the power of TV, VU University press and Da Vinci Institute, Amsterdam, 2006

by Matteo Merzagora

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).

Volume 6Issue 012007
Date of publication Mar 21, 2007 Category: Commentary

Scientific publishing: some food for thought

by Vittorio Bo

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.

Volume 6Issue 012007
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 5Issue 042006
Date of publication Dec 21, 2006 Category: Editorial

Systematically sceptical

by Pietro Greco

One can no longer rely on the presumption that scientists comply with the Mertonian value of disinterest and assume that they always tell the truth when spreading the results of their research projects. This can be rightly considered as the gist of the four-page report submitted to the board of the American journal Science by the committee chaired by the chemist John Brauman, from the Stanford University, and comprising three members from the Senior Editorial Board of the same journal, two eminent biologists specialised in stem cell research and a top editor from the other major general press medium of the Republic of Science, the British journal Nature.

Volume 5Issue 042006
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 5Issue 042006
Date of publication Dec 21, 2006 Category: Commentary

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

by Helga Nowotny

When thinking about this contribution, an homage to John Ziman, one question occurred to me repeatedly: what would John have made of the European Research Council? Here is a newly established institution with the sole objective to fund ‘frontier research’ at EU level, based exclusively on scientific excellence and subject to pan-European competition of the best researchers. Would he have interpreted it as a vindication of academic science as a culture, a deliberate turning away from ‘post-academic science’ or even of overcoming it? Or, would he have seen it as the establishment of a small niche, to be recognized (and praised) for its respect for the norms of academic science, whose wider impact still has to be seen?

Volume 5Issue 042006
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 5Issue 042006

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