The popular media has emerged as an important source of scientific information. It has been suggested that the portrayal of genetics by the media is often inaccurate--a phenomenon branded 'genohype'--and, as a result, is having an adverse impact on public understanding and policy development. However, emerging data suggest that, in some circumstances, the media reporting of science is surprisin...

Representing motion in a picture is a challenge to artists, scientists, and all other imagemakers. Moreover, it presents a problem that will not go away with electronic and digital media, because often the pedagogical purpose of the representation of motion is more important than the motion itself. All satisfactory solutions evoke motion-for example, dynamic balance (or broken symmetry), strobo...

Although bioethics is an important topic in modern society, it is not a required part of the curriculum for many biology degree programs in the United States. Students in our program are exposed to biologically relevant ethical issues informally in many classes, but we do not have a requirement for a separate bioethics course. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a recent nonfiction book tha...

In the nineteenth century toxicologists participated as experts in criminal poisoning trials and wrote reports at the request of judges and lawyers. In court, they were expected to provide expert advice to lay audiences (juries, judges, lawyers) and, as their conclusions could be decisive in establishing the final verdict, their reports had to be written in a way that was comprehensible to “the...

The use of metaphor in popular science is widespread to aid readers’ conceptions of the scientific concepts under discussion. Almost all research in this area has been done by careful close reading of the text(s) in question, but this article describes—for the first time—a digital ‘distant reading’ analysis of popular science, using a system created by a team from Glasgow and Lancaster. This te...

stories, myths and tales can make ideas a part of popular culture. rea at religious figures have taught with parables; we use fables and fairy tales to teach our children about life; and it has been argued that even the ancient Greek myths might have been deliberate devices for organizing and transmitting information about the natural world to non-scientifically oriented people [I]. Once an ide...