563888 research-article2015
PUS0010.1177/0963662514563888Public Understanding of ScienceMassarani
P U S
Introduction
Voices from other lands
Public Understanding of Science 2015, Vol. 24(1) 2–5 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0963662514563888 pus.sagepub.com
Luisa Massarani
Museum of Life, House of Oswaldo Cruz, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil
Abstract Since the early 1990s, research in public understanding of science has significantly increased and become more systematic and academic. However, most of papers published by the main journals in the field have as origin the English-speaking world of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand: for example, in this very journal, PUS, two-thirds of the empirical material come from these countries. This paper aims both to call attention to unheard voices, and make space for new ones, from other parts of the world, aiming to open space for new voices.
Keywords developing world, non English-speaking world
Since the early 1990s, research in public understanding of science has significantly increased and become more systematic and academic, including the creation of journals for publishing papers of the field (such as this one). An expression of this is the fact that starting with four editions in 1992, by 2012 the journal Public Understanding of Science (PUS) doubled the number of issues, now publishing eight per year. However, it is well known that size, large numbers or ‘big data’ do not guarantee representativeness of the corpus.
1. Why do we need wider coverage of public understanding of science data? An important issue to be addressed is whether the outputs mirror worldwide thinking and production in the field of public understanding of science and science communication. An analysis was presented by Rick Borchelt at the 12th International Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PCST 2012) in Firenze.1 He identified 1237 papers on science communication published in English in a period of 10 years (2000–2009), by 471 journals, involving 2462 authors – PUS among the top journals. Borchelt showed that the origin of these papers was mostly concentrated in two countries: the United States (427 or 35%) and the United Kingdom (270 or 22%), followed by Canada (77 or 6%), Australia (51 or 4%) and The Netherlands (35 or 3%). Other regions, mainly in the Global South, contributed very little to this field of enquiry – at least as published in English. For example, Corresponding author: Luisa Massarani, Museum of Life, House of Oswaldo Cruz, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Av. Brasil, 4365 CEP: 21040-900 Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
3
Massarani
Latin America was responsible for only 16 papers (1%) in the period. It is true that the review focused only on papers in English, but, still, even people (and I include myself) who defend the need to publish in our own languages recognise the need to publish in the ‘international language of science’. The editor of PUS expressed a declared objective of the journal to extend the coverage of its papers and its database, ‘because public understanding of science and the modern scientific mentality is a global issue’ (Bauer and Howard, 2013: 10). The corpus of 465 PUS papers of the first 20 years (1992–2010) contains report of empirical data from only about 40 countries, while the United Nations counts 193 member states: most would have some scientific activity or understanding to report. The range of countries covered in the pages of PUS has, however, increased from around 10 in the early years to 20–25 in recent years (Bauer and Howard, 2013). However, in line with the observations reported by Borchelt, Bauer and Howard (2013) show that the English-speaking world of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand covers two-thirds of the PUS empirical material. The rest of Europe adds another sixth to the corpus. The data from a final sixth of papers come from Asia, Africa and Latin America. There are increasing insights of PUS from Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea, Greece, Zambia, Turkey, Taiwan, Slovenia, Nigeria, Israel, Columbia and Argentina, while the journal lost contributions from Russia, Uganda, South Africa, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Still, as the current editors recognises, ‘the traditional Anglo-Saxon world clearly dominates the empirical focus of our investigations’ (Bauer and Howard, 2013: 10). Concerns about biased databases of research are not unique to the field of public understanding of science. This is a constant worry in the cognitive and behavioural sciences, psychology and social psychology, where 95% of the real people under observation are North Americans. Researchers talk of a WEIRDly (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) biased database (see Arnett, 2008; Henrich et al., 2010). The British magazine, The Economist (4 January 2014, p. 59), queried whether economics was really ‘the useful science?’ if its data come from mainly Western industrial economies, and, for example, only 2%–3% of publications are based on Latin American data. In the medical world, even randomised control trials are biased because research populations do not match the people who enter hospitals or who take the medication in the end. Here, the bias can make a life risk. All these observations across the research world must also be a wake-up call for public understanding of science research to broaden its database in order to increase its understanding of how science fares in society.
2. More of the same or different voices? In the meantime, researchers in other parts of the planet – as myself – have a different perspective and see more things happening. Latin America, for example, my own region, has been the stage of a significant increase in research in the field of public understanding of science. An indicator of the health of the field in Latin America is the increasing number of PhD theses and Master’s dissertations over the years. Brazil is a good example: the first thesis identified in science communication was defended in the 1980s; at present, more than 100 dissertations and theses are defended every year.2 In the period of 2010–2012, for example, 279 dissertations and theses were defended in PUS. Other regions, such as Asian countries, have also increased contributions to the field. Despite these laudable changes, outputs from regions outside of the traditional Anglo-Saxon world are still mostly invisible. This was the context in which this Special Issue collecting and stimulating ‘Voices from other Lands’ was suggested. Aiming to hear the ‘unheard voices’, we made a public call inviting researchers from other ‘lands’ – including Latin America, Africa and Asia – to
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
4
Public Understanding of Science 24(1)
submit papers on all aspects of the inter-relationship between science (including technology and medicine) and the public. Around 5–10 papers would be selected for this Special Issue. In total, 16 papers were submitted to the regular blind peer-review process, from Argentina, Brazil, China, Israel, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Suriname, South Africa, Taiwan and Thailand. This issue joins six of these papers, involving six countries: Argentina, Ghana, Mexico, Suriname, Taiwan and Thailand. They exhibit a diversity of issues in public understanding of science: science museums, mass media, public health activism and the history of science communication. They bring to attention different stakeholders in the dialogue between science and society, including scientists, journalists, communication professionals, indigenous people and both explainers of and visitors of science museums. But you may ask, do these voices from other lands say more of the same or are they really different voices? About 10 years ago, the launch of SciDev.Net (http://www.scidev.net) – a website which is the world’s leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis on information about science and technology for global development – opened the door for a whole new world little known by the main science information sources in English, reshaping the geopolitics of science reportage. With editions from the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, and South-East Asia and Pacific, it brings new voices to the debate looking at how science plays a different role in different contexts. Understanding this new map, however, is a puzzle in construction. This current issue of PUS in your hands is, of course, insufficient to address the question ‘do these voices from other lands say more of the same but from a new context, or are they new voices?’ due to the way the papers were collected and the few pages for a big world. But they can shed some light or, more likely, start a debate on these issues, and they demonstrate that this journal is seeking to open space for new voices. While we seek new voices, some issues related to the field are present across contexts. However, similar problems may be solved differently in different contexts. For example, the need for more training in science communication tailored to different stakeholders seems to be universal across the globe, as highlighted, for example, by Sánchez-Mora et al. (2015) and Appiah et al. (2015) in Mexico and Ghana, respectively. However, different contexts might well require different types of training; the role of the science communicator (and communication) should reflect the specific context. For example, it seems that mass media are among the main sources of science information around the globe, as highlighted by surveys in different countries. But while in the United States most of the population have access to formal education (and to formal science education disciplines), this is not necessarily the case for countries in Africa or Latin America. In other words, in some countries, most access to science is provided by the mass media. This leads to another fascinating issue: the way different audiences make sense of science coverage in different countries and cultures – to mention only one part of the field of science communication – still needs nuanced attention. Other similar trends around the globe may have to do with the influence of the traditional Anglo-Saxon world in science communication. A good example is the hands-on science museum, which has been replicated around the globe, many following the ‘spirit’ (and sometimes just cloning exhibits) of the San Francisco Exploratorium. This has, of course, a positive aspect: avoiding reinventing the wheel. But increasingly there have been calls for science museums to focus on more local issues, both in format and in content. Furthermore, researchers have been challenging the idea that visitors are the same around the world – an aspect discussed in this issue (see Murriello, 2015; Kamolpattana et al., 2015). Scientists, whose profession has been shaped by international trends, may behave differently towards science communication according to the culture in which they are embedded (see Lo and
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
5
Massarani
Peters). Equally, public health activism seeking to engage Indigenous people and aiming to empower them requires understanding of their unique situation rather than framing the problem in terms of impact of technology, as in the case of Peplow and Augustine, on mining. This issue of PUS, thus, will not bring you definite answers on how much and how researchers from other lands contribute different views and perspectives for research in public understanding of science. However, we want to raise the question, extend the invitation and stimulate your curiosity about what is happening beyond the usual crowd. More than a century ago, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace travelled to the tropics and were inspired to formulate their theory of evolution. We want to invite people outside the Anglo-Saxon world to explore more public understanding of science in different lands and thus bring new ideas to this publication outlet. We believe that the encounter of people from different lands and cultures can mutually inspire and thus contribute to this exciting field. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Notes 1. See http://pt.slideshare.net/OPARC1/firenze-phd-slides?from=share_email 2. See the Improvement of Higher Education/Ministry of Education database which reports masters and PhD dissertations at http://www.capes.gov.br/
References Appiah B, Gastel B, Burdine JN, et al. (2015) Science reporting in Accra, Ghana: Sources, barriers and motivational factors. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 23–37. Arnett JJ (2008) The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to be less American. American Psychologist 63(7): 602–614. Bauer Martin W and Howard S (2013) Public Understanding of Science: Compiled Bibliography, 1992–2011 (Report). London: Public Understanding of Science. Henrich J, Heine SJ and Norenzayan A (2010) The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33(2–3): 61–83. Kamolpattana S, Chen G, Sonchaeng P, et al. (2015) Thai visitors’ expectations and experiences of explainer interaction within a science museum context. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 69–85. Murriello S (2015) The palaeontological exhibition: A venue for dialogue. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 86–95. Sánchez-Mora C, Reynoso-Haynes E, Sánchez-Mora AM, et al. (2015) Public communication of science in Mexico: Past, present and future of a profession. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 38–52.
Author biography Luisa Massarani is Director of Red POP, the Network for the Popularisation of Science and Technology for Latin America and the Caribbean; Researcher at the staff of the Museum of Life (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Regional Coordinator of SciDev.Net for Latin America and the Caribbean (http://www.scidev.net).
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
PUS0010.1177/0963662514563888Public Understanding of ScienceMassarani
P U S
Introduction
Voices from other lands
Public Understanding of Science 2015, Vol. 24(1) 2–5 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0963662514563888 pus.sagepub.com
Luisa Massarani
Museum of Life, House of Oswaldo Cruz, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil
Abstract Since the early 1990s, research in public understanding of science has significantly increased and become more systematic and academic. However, most of papers published by the main journals in the field have as origin the English-speaking world of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand: for example, in this very journal, PUS, two-thirds of the empirical material come from these countries. This paper aims both to call attention to unheard voices, and make space for new ones, from other parts of the world, aiming to open space for new voices.
Keywords developing world, non English-speaking world
Since the early 1990s, research in public understanding of science has significantly increased and become more systematic and academic, including the creation of journals for publishing papers of the field (such as this one). An expression of this is the fact that starting with four editions in 1992, by 2012 the journal Public Understanding of Science (PUS) doubled the number of issues, now publishing eight per year. However, it is well known that size, large numbers or ‘big data’ do not guarantee representativeness of the corpus.
1. Why do we need wider coverage of public understanding of science data? An important issue to be addressed is whether the outputs mirror worldwide thinking and production in the field of public understanding of science and science communication. An analysis was presented by Rick Borchelt at the 12th International Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PCST 2012) in Firenze.1 He identified 1237 papers on science communication published in English in a period of 10 years (2000–2009), by 471 journals, involving 2462 authors – PUS among the top journals. Borchelt showed that the origin of these papers was mostly concentrated in two countries: the United States (427 or 35%) and the United Kingdom (270 or 22%), followed by Canada (77 or 6%), Australia (51 or 4%) and The Netherlands (35 or 3%). Other regions, mainly in the Global South, contributed very little to this field of enquiry – at least as published in English. For example, Corresponding author: Luisa Massarani, Museum of Life, House of Oswaldo Cruz, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Av. Brasil, 4365 CEP: 21040-900 Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
3
Massarani
Latin America was responsible for only 16 papers (1%) in the period. It is true that the review focused only on papers in English, but, still, even people (and I include myself) who defend the need to publish in our own languages recognise the need to publish in the ‘international language of science’. The editor of PUS expressed a declared objective of the journal to extend the coverage of its papers and its database, ‘because public understanding of science and the modern scientific mentality is a global issue’ (Bauer and Howard, 2013: 10). The corpus of 465 PUS papers of the first 20 years (1992–2010) contains report of empirical data from only about 40 countries, while the United Nations counts 193 member states: most would have some scientific activity or understanding to report. The range of countries covered in the pages of PUS has, however, increased from around 10 in the early years to 20–25 in recent years (Bauer and Howard, 2013). However, in line with the observations reported by Borchelt, Bauer and Howard (2013) show that the English-speaking world of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand covers two-thirds of the PUS empirical material. The rest of Europe adds another sixth to the corpus. The data from a final sixth of papers come from Asia, Africa and Latin America. There are increasing insights of PUS from Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea, Greece, Zambia, Turkey, Taiwan, Slovenia, Nigeria, Israel, Columbia and Argentina, while the journal lost contributions from Russia, Uganda, South Africa, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Still, as the current editors recognises, ‘the traditional Anglo-Saxon world clearly dominates the empirical focus of our investigations’ (Bauer and Howard, 2013: 10). Concerns about biased databases of research are not unique to the field of public understanding of science. This is a constant worry in the cognitive and behavioural sciences, psychology and social psychology, where 95% of the real people under observation are North Americans. Researchers talk of a WEIRDly (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) biased database (see Arnett, 2008; Henrich et al., 2010). The British magazine, The Economist (4 January 2014, p. 59), queried whether economics was really ‘the useful science?’ if its data come from mainly Western industrial economies, and, for example, only 2%–3% of publications are based on Latin American data. In the medical world, even randomised control trials are biased because research populations do not match the people who enter hospitals or who take the medication in the end. Here, the bias can make a life risk. All these observations across the research world must also be a wake-up call for public understanding of science research to broaden its database in order to increase its understanding of how science fares in society.
2. More of the same or different voices? In the meantime, researchers in other parts of the planet – as myself – have a different perspective and see more things happening. Latin America, for example, my own region, has been the stage of a significant increase in research in the field of public understanding of science. An indicator of the health of the field in Latin America is the increasing number of PhD theses and Master’s dissertations over the years. Brazil is a good example: the first thesis identified in science communication was defended in the 1980s; at present, more than 100 dissertations and theses are defended every year.2 In the period of 2010–2012, for example, 279 dissertations and theses were defended in PUS. Other regions, such as Asian countries, have also increased contributions to the field. Despite these laudable changes, outputs from regions outside of the traditional Anglo-Saxon world are still mostly invisible. This was the context in which this Special Issue collecting and stimulating ‘Voices from other Lands’ was suggested. Aiming to hear the ‘unheard voices’, we made a public call inviting researchers from other ‘lands’ – including Latin America, Africa and Asia – to
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
4
Public Understanding of Science 24(1)
submit papers on all aspects of the inter-relationship between science (including technology and medicine) and the public. Around 5–10 papers would be selected for this Special Issue. In total, 16 papers were submitted to the regular blind peer-review process, from Argentina, Brazil, China, Israel, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Suriname, South Africa, Taiwan and Thailand. This issue joins six of these papers, involving six countries: Argentina, Ghana, Mexico, Suriname, Taiwan and Thailand. They exhibit a diversity of issues in public understanding of science: science museums, mass media, public health activism and the history of science communication. They bring to attention different stakeholders in the dialogue between science and society, including scientists, journalists, communication professionals, indigenous people and both explainers of and visitors of science museums. But you may ask, do these voices from other lands say more of the same or are they really different voices? About 10 years ago, the launch of SciDev.Net (http://www.scidev.net) – a website which is the world’s leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis on information about science and technology for global development – opened the door for a whole new world little known by the main science information sources in English, reshaping the geopolitics of science reportage. With editions from the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, and South-East Asia and Pacific, it brings new voices to the debate looking at how science plays a different role in different contexts. Understanding this new map, however, is a puzzle in construction. This current issue of PUS in your hands is, of course, insufficient to address the question ‘do these voices from other lands say more of the same but from a new context, or are they new voices?’ due to the way the papers were collected and the few pages for a big world. But they can shed some light or, more likely, start a debate on these issues, and they demonstrate that this journal is seeking to open space for new voices. While we seek new voices, some issues related to the field are present across contexts. However, similar problems may be solved differently in different contexts. For example, the need for more training in science communication tailored to different stakeholders seems to be universal across the globe, as highlighted, for example, by Sánchez-Mora et al. (2015) and Appiah et al. (2015) in Mexico and Ghana, respectively. However, different contexts might well require different types of training; the role of the science communicator (and communication) should reflect the specific context. For example, it seems that mass media are among the main sources of science information around the globe, as highlighted by surveys in different countries. But while in the United States most of the population have access to formal education (and to formal science education disciplines), this is not necessarily the case for countries in Africa or Latin America. In other words, in some countries, most access to science is provided by the mass media. This leads to another fascinating issue: the way different audiences make sense of science coverage in different countries and cultures – to mention only one part of the field of science communication – still needs nuanced attention. Other similar trends around the globe may have to do with the influence of the traditional Anglo-Saxon world in science communication. A good example is the hands-on science museum, which has been replicated around the globe, many following the ‘spirit’ (and sometimes just cloning exhibits) of the San Francisco Exploratorium. This has, of course, a positive aspect: avoiding reinventing the wheel. But increasingly there have been calls for science museums to focus on more local issues, both in format and in content. Furthermore, researchers have been challenging the idea that visitors are the same around the world – an aspect discussed in this issue (see Murriello, 2015; Kamolpattana et al., 2015). Scientists, whose profession has been shaped by international trends, may behave differently towards science communication according to the culture in which they are embedded (see Lo and
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
5
Massarani
Peters). Equally, public health activism seeking to engage Indigenous people and aiming to empower them requires understanding of their unique situation rather than framing the problem in terms of impact of technology, as in the case of Peplow and Augustine, on mining. This issue of PUS, thus, will not bring you definite answers on how much and how researchers from other lands contribute different views and perspectives for research in public understanding of science. However, we want to raise the question, extend the invitation and stimulate your curiosity about what is happening beyond the usual crowd. More than a century ago, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace travelled to the tropics and were inspired to formulate their theory of evolution. We want to invite people outside the Anglo-Saxon world to explore more public understanding of science in different lands and thus bring new ideas to this publication outlet. We believe that the encounter of people from different lands and cultures can mutually inspire and thus contribute to this exciting field. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Notes 1. See http://pt.slideshare.net/OPARC1/firenze-phd-slides?from=share_email 2. See the Improvement of Higher Education/Ministry of Education database which reports masters and PhD dissertations at http://www.capes.gov.br/
References Appiah B, Gastel B, Burdine JN, et al. (2015) Science reporting in Accra, Ghana: Sources, barriers and motivational factors. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 23–37. Arnett JJ (2008) The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to be less American. American Psychologist 63(7): 602–614. Bauer Martin W and Howard S (2013) Public Understanding of Science: Compiled Bibliography, 1992–2011 (Report). London: Public Understanding of Science. Henrich J, Heine SJ and Norenzayan A (2010) The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33(2–3): 61–83. Kamolpattana S, Chen G, Sonchaeng P, et al. (2015) Thai visitors’ expectations and experiences of explainer interaction within a science museum context. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 69–85. Murriello S (2015) The palaeontological exhibition: A venue for dialogue. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 86–95. Sánchez-Mora C, Reynoso-Haynes E, Sánchez-Mora AM, et al. (2015) Public communication of science in Mexico: Past, present and future of a profession. Public Understanding of Science 24(1): 38–52.
Author biography Luisa Massarani is Director of Red POP, the Network for the Popularisation of Science and Technology for Latin America and the Caribbean; Researcher at the staff of the Museum of Life (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Regional Coordinator of SciDev.Net for Latin America and the Caribbean (http://www.scidev.net).
Downloaded from pus.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
