Scientific Knowledge

Around the 50th anniversary of the first human heart transplant, people are once again fascinated by this event and the extraordinary life of the heart transplant pioneer Chris Barnard. By Marina Joubert 3 December 1967 will forever be marked as the day when South African surgeon Chris Barnard astounded the world by becoming the first person to transplant a human heart. The historic surgery

By Aviv J. Sharon, Jim Ryder, Jonathan Osborne, Esther Laslo & Hani Swirski Individuals need to be "science literate" to cope with many demands of everyday life, and much of their science literacy stems from what they learned at school. These are hardly new claims, neither in science education nor in science communication. Still, the term "science literacy" might sound old-fashioned to some

Brian Trench has been appointed book reviews editor of Public Understanding of Science with immediate effect. Brian aims to have books reviewed within a year, at most, of their publication. Most reviews will be shorter (e.g. 750 words) reviews of single publications and a small number will be longer (e.g. 2,500 words) comparative review-essays covering several publications. Brian

Recently, wide-ranging discussions about so-called ‘post-truth’ have also significantly involved science-related topics and science communication. The issue of credibility and reliability of information is obviously central for science communication and public understanding of science. However, some themes deserve more attention in this context. We live in a communication environment that is

The cunning of uncertaintyHelga Nowotny | Malden, MA: Polity, 2016 . Helga Nowotny is author and coauthor of an impressive number of significant contributions to understanding our contemporary late-modern condition with respect to knowledge, science, and technology. She has always emphasized the importance of research-based knowledge, while acknowledging that science is both tentative and

By Noah Weeth Feinstein, Rainer Bromme, Sarit Barzilai, and Ayelet Baram-Tsabari Public engagement with science is widely perceived to be a source of many benefits to society, including benefits to the everyday decision making of its citizens, the quality of its democratic discourse, and the vitality of its scientific research institutions. Examples for such benefits would be the adherence