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Science Communication

Field studying how scientific findings and institutions are communicated to and perceived by the public, including trust and media framing.

Current stories

scienceOne report1 publisher

UK and Swedish respondents rated businesspeople and advocates above scientists on health and education

Manchester and KTH researchers found 6,198 UK and Swedish adults rated scientists above government officials but no higher than businesspeople or advocates. Credibility on technology's consequences did not carry over to health, education or employment.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Saying 'a girl is the champion' lowered adults' view of women's ability in an invented activity

Naming a champion's gender made adults more likely to call women less capable, a study of more than 1,100 US children and adults found. The tasks used invented activities, so no real campaign was tested.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

NIH reorganises its website around eight topic hubs from Monday

NIH launches a redesigned website on Monday that sorts its information into eight topic hubs, grants among them, instead of by its 27 institutes. Old sites stay up until redirects are in place, so grant seekers will meet the harder test later, as those sites close.

Publishers:statnews.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives45
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

UConn study catalogues how three women astronauts blend science and personal life on Instagram

UConn researchers coded 194 Instagram posts by three women astronauts and found them deliberately pairing science with personal, feminine content. Because the analysis covered the posts themselves, it documents a strategy without testing whether that strategy makes audiences trust the science more.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+20
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

Two GLP-1 studies show 'control' can mean assigning a drug or adjusting records afterwards

Two GLP-1 studies covered by the Washington Post used 'control' to mean an untreated group in one and a four-variable adjustment in the other. Only the first let researchers choose who took the drug, a statistician writes in The Conversation.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

A Yellowstone super-eruption scenario starts eight weeks out with a migrating earthquake swarm

A thought experiment published by The Conversation walks a Yellowstone super-eruption from the first earthquake swarm to a VEI 8 blast, and the timeline it lays out hands monitoring staff two months of ambiguous signals.

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+38
Incentives50
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

Science's credibility trails its perceived value by at least 17 points in a national survey

NC State researchers surveyed 1,854 Americans and found 60% or more interested in science or convinced it benefits society, 43% calling it credible and 39% feeling they belong in it. The fix they propose rests on about 260 self-selected participants.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption25
Hype gap+18
Incentives45
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Project RattleCam's Pennsylvania camera caught newborn timber rattlesnakes on Sept. 8

Project RattleCam's livestreams put dated newborn sightings on the record in California, Colorado and Pennsylvania this season, including a litter from a five-year-old female the project first saw as a newborn in 2021.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption52
Hype gap+14
Incentives66
Confidence61
scienceOne report1 publisher

Frankfurt students rated zoos more harshly than conventional livestock farming

Goethe University researchers had 1,143 students score five forms of animal keeping on the same scale, and zoos, which face routine inspection under German husbandry guidelines, came out worst of the five.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence46
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+18
Incentives58
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Political values predict which hardships Britons count as poverty at all

In 2,642 responses to the 2022 British Social Attitudes Survey, agreement that a described circumstance counts as poverty ran from 41% to 80%, with the ideological gap widest exactly where agreement was thinnest.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence48
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+14
Incentives62
Confidence46
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Roman inherits astronomy's thirty-year queue for observing time

The telescope's first proposal round came back twelvefold oversubscribed. Hubble and Webb have posted the same result for years: the figure describes how much telescope time exists, not Roman's standing in particular.

Publishers:forbes.com

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption74
Hype gap−12
Incentives62
Confidence55
scienceConfirmed3 publishers

Fourteen shark teeth place a nutrient-rich Cretaceous shelf under Egypt's Western Desert

The Abu-Tartur assemblage now runs to seven lamniform species. The phosphate bed that preserved them is a condensed section, which is why the authors read productivity out of it rather than a living community.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 38%
Operator
Operator 34%
Investor
Investor 28%

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption20
Hype gap+18
Incentives40
Confidence71
scienceOne report1 publisher

Hansen says this El Nino is already the strongest; two of three metrics still put it behind

Subsurface heat content has passed the 1997-98 super event with the peak still months away, while the surface index has not. The furthest-out year any quoted scientist names is 2026.

Publishers:newscientist.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+45
Incentives45
Confidence58
scienceOne report1 publisher

The 62% problem: most US adults say they can barely follow statistics

A PLOS One survey of 1,000 adults puts regular statistics users at 11%. If you publish risk numbers, forecasts or dashboards, that is your readership.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence54
Adoption22
Hype gap+26
Incentives58
Confidence51
scienceOne report1 publisher

Two-thirds want glyphosate banned, and almost nobody has been reading about it

Annenberg finds 70% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats favor banning the herbicide, while most respondents say they have heard little about it. A one-point party gap is not a gap at all.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption22
Hype gap+18
Incentives55
Confidence62
scienceOne report1 publisher

Psilocybin Heads Into Anorexia Trials, Where the Bar for Progress Is a 5% Death Rate

Scientific American's Science Quickly walked through early psilocybin research in anorexia nervosa. The condition kills about 5% of patients within four years of diagnosis, which is the real story.

Reality

Evidence32
Adoption9
Hype gap+14
Incentives44
Confidence33
scienceOne report1 publisher

Mitchell's complaint: we grade models with human exams when the control group is animals and infants

On Quanta's podcast, the Santa Fe Institute's Melanie Mitchell says we lack adequate methods for measuring machine cognition, and points to how psychologists test babies and animals.

Reality

Evidence32
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives30
Confidence45
scienceOne report1 publisher

A vaccine communicator's testable claim: hesitancy answers to burden, not to better facts

Elisabeth Marnik grew up with no vaccines and now runs a science communication group. Her account puts the decisive failure in the consultation room, not in the pamphlet.

Publishers:statnews.com

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption21
Hype gap+28
Incentives52
Confidence44
productOne report1 publisher

How a short GNET essay on AI slop became a settled fact about children's brains

The document behind this week's headlines is an analytical essay built on the authors' own TikTok monitoring: no cognitive testing, no sample of children, no control group.

Publishers:thenextweb.com

Reality

Evidence30
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+72
Incentives55
Confidence62