Excellent piece that highlights the research TSS covered here: http://toseescience.org/2012/12/24/using-discovery-narratives-in-science-education/. Virginia Hughes is has also been one of my (Jason’s) favorite science writers for the last couple years at Last Word On Nothing. Continue reading →

Originally posted on Just Science:
Bayer Co. began a survey of science education. A report released this year summarizes the data from 15 years of public opinion on STEM. In summary, 15 universal beliefs emerged: Science literacy is critical for all Americans young and old, scientist or non-scientist U.S. global economic leadership and competitiveness are…

The Final Sunday’s Science Poem

And from my pillow, looking forth by light Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold The Antechapel where the Stature stood Of Newton with his prism and his silent face, The marble index of a Mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone… William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850), Book III lines 58-64 Continue reading →

Seeing v. Hearing Science: Communicating and Constructing Science with American Sign Language

In today’s schools there are often competing accounts of natural phenomena, especially when schools are located in multicultural communities. -William Cobern & Cathleen Loving from Defining ”Science’ in a Multicultural World: Implications for Science Education (2000) Discussions about science communication commonly focus on the problems of written and spoken language. And, in many current debates about … Continue reading →

The Ethics of Perception, Narrative, and Rhetoric

“Facts may not create the rhythm that we want, but they reveal the quirks, the gorgeous imperfections, of life” –Cheri Lucas Rowlands from her blog post, That Thing I Wrote That Wasn’t True: On Facts, Memoir & John D’Agata Cheri Lucas Rowlands, in the above blog post, discusses the ethics of truth-telling in non-fiction narratives. The subject … Continue reading →

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Clashing Perceptions in Severe Weather Communication

Currently on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) website, there is a heading at the top of the weather bar that asks for public comment on the usage of terms like “warning,” “watch,” and “advisory.” This appealed to me because not only am I a weather forecast skeptic, but I am intrigued by the awkward … Continue reading →

Atul Gawande: How Do We Heal Medicine

  http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2kxG1v/www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine.html/ This TED talk of Atul Gawande highlights some of the scientific and cultural barriers that face modern science medicine. interactions between scientists who do basic research and practitioners, who–in theory–take the research and apply it. In this TED talk, surgeon and public health journalist Atul Gawande highlights some of the scientific and cultural barriers … Continue reading →

Global Disease Burden: Uncertainty,Precaution, and Policy Gridlock

The official Global Disease Burden 2010 (GDB) report was released today to a cadre of enthusiastic scientists, clinicians, and public health officials at the Royal Society in London (research that I mentioned this morning in a post about University of Washington scholar Christopher Murray–seen in photo). The project has been underway since 2007, and its results are as anticipated by … Continue reading →

The Social Consequences of Scientific Insularity

Written by Jason Abdilla  Traditionally, scientists dislike the dissemination of their work to the public because it “dumbs down” the purity and rigor of scientific knowledge. What is at stake, then, in keeping scientific knowledge reserved for the secret societies of scientists? This question is central to some recent research discussed in an article from The … Continue reading →