AAAS Conference and Spring updates

Naama, Nate, and Nic at an evening AAAS event

Naama, Nate, and Nic at an evening AAAS event

It’s hard to believe we’re already into March, but PoPUS has had an eventful spring semester so far! Most notably, seven student research assistants, Matthew, Jason, and I attended the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC last month. In addition to taking in many relevant talks at the conference, two PoPUS student groups presented posters in the student poster competition.

Victor presents in the Science and Society category

Victor presents in the Science and Society poster session

The first poster was entitled “The Use and Abuse of ‘Understanding’ in Public Understanding of Science.” The student researchers analyzed papers published in the journal Public Understanding of Science from 2010–2015. They used digital text analysis to identify and examine definitions of epistemic success terms, and systematically read and reviewed all papers claiming to measure epistemic states in that time period. The results, generally indicating a lack of differentiation between epistemic states — particularly between knowledge and understanding — and a dearth of instruments attempting to measure understanding. We will be writing up a paper discussing these results this spring. Victor LoPiccolo represented the group, presenting the poster in the Science and Society session.

Jo, Julia, and Melissa at the Social Science poster session

Jo, Julia, and Melissa at the Social Science poster session

The second student poster, “Can You Succeed at Science Without Knowing You’re Trying? The Effect of Priming Intellectual Virtues on Individual Effort and Understanding,” presented our researchers’ attempts to utilize the psychological methodology of priming to increase effort applied to learning a scientific subject. Participants were primed with “intellectual virtues” having to do with focus, motivation, and endurance. The researchers found no significant difference in either understanding or effort (as measured by time spent learning and answering questions) between groups. The null results were presented by Melissa Hopkins in the Social Sciences poster session. This project received an honorable mention!

Congratulations to all of the students who participated in these research projects. These students were in the mix with accomplished graduate students and their work fit right in.

Jason, Nate, and Nic come down to led support

Jason, Nate, and Nic lending support at a poster session

Now that the AAAS meeting is over, we are back to work on these and other important projects. We would also like to welcome three new student research assistants to our group! Carson Maurice ’19 and Naama Kipperman ’17 will be working on our project examining the relationship between understanding of the scientific process and trust in science. Greg Ruda ’17 will be joining the project exploring communication tools for more resilient beliefs.

For more photos from AAAS 2016, check out this album.

November Update

The PoPUS Project had an outstanding November — for which we are thankful! First, we had an amazing turnout for our “Merchants of Doubt” events, including a lively panel discussion following the screening with the film’s director, Robert Kenner, Naomi Oreskes (the historian of science on whose work the film is based), Michael Mann (the renowned climate scientist), […]

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Student-lead Case Studies and Sub-projects

Since this is my first blog post for the Production of Public Understanding of Science, I would like to take this opportunity to express how excited I am to be able to count myself as a member of this team. To learn more about me and my involvement with the project, please see Matthew’s post about my […]

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“Merchants of Doubt” with Panel Discussion

November 5th–6th, 2015 The PoPUS Project is delighted to announce a special public showing of the recent, critically-acclaimed documentary by Robert Kenner, “Merchants of Doubt”, based on the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway. The film features prominently Professor Oreskes, as well as climate scientist (and previous PoPUS visitor) Michael Mann, and “honest liar” Jamy Ian […]

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Student Research Team

Building on the philosophical approach we took to recent work in the social science of science communication last year, we will begin to pursue some empirical work of our own this year with the help of our new postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Jo Huxster, and an expanded team of student research assistants. We bade a fond farewell […]

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The Project Continues!

Dr. Huxster with University of Delaware students

While our funding from the Varieties of Understanding Project officially concluded at the end of June, we’re extremely excited to announce that the Production of Public Understanding of Science (PoPUS) will continue for several more years thanks to a generous grant from the President’s Office at Bucknell. Even more exciting is the fact that this funding has […]

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Varieties of Understanding Midpoint Conference

The Varieties of Understanding Project, which has funded our work for this year put on their first project conference. This “Midpoint Conference” (the project continues for the psychologists — data collection takes time, it turns out!) involved all of the grant-winners as well as commentators and plenary speakers for the Capstone Conference to come in […]

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SRPoiSE Conference 2015

A subset of the PoPUS crew recently traveled to Detroit, MI to present at the Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and Engineering (SRPoiSE) Conference. Three of our research assistants joined us and got a taste of what happens when you put a bunch of philosophers together in a room for a few days. We received […]

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Anthony Leiserowitz, “Climate Change in the American Mind”

Wednesday, April 8th @ 7PM Forum (272 Elaine Langone Center) RSVP on Facebook Here and help spread the word! The Production of Public Understanding of Science Project is pleased to announce that Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, research scientist at the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and Director of the Yale Project on Climate […]

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Themes from Mann’s Visit

We’ve had a very exciting week here at the PoPUS project. We had the good fortune to enjoy a full day and a half with Professor Michael Mann—prominent climate scientist, bigtime advocate for public understanding of climate change, and perennial target of the slings and arrows of outrageous denialism. Our indefatigable guest not only delivered […]

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