Young adults’ accounts of scientific knowledge when responding to a television news report of contested science

This paper reports one aspect of a study of 28 young adults (18–26 years) engaging with the uncertain (contested) science of a television news report about recent research into mobile phone health risks. The aim of the study was to examine these young people’s ‘accounts of scientific knowledge’ in this context. Seven groups of friends responded to the news report, initially in focus group discussions. Later in semi-structured interviews they elaborated their understanding of the nature of science through their explanations of the scientists’ disagreement and described their mobile phone safety risk assessments. This paper presents their accounts in terms of their views of the nature of science and their concept understanding. Discussions were audio-recorded then analysed by coding the talk in terms of issues raised, which were grouped into themes and interpreted in terms of a moderate social constructionist theoretical framing. In this context, most participants expressed a ‘common sense’ view of the nature of science, describing it as an atheoretical, technical procedure of scientists testing their personal opinions on the issue, subject to the influence of funding sponsors. The roles of theory and data interpretation were largely ignored. It is argued that the nature of science understanding is crucial to engagement with contemporary socioscientific issues, particularly the roles of argumentation, theory, data interpretation, and the distinction of science from common sense. Implications for school science relate primarily to nature of science teaching and the inclusion of socioscientific issues in school science curricula. Future research directions are considered.

Utilidad social de conocimientos científicos, grupos de investigación académicos y problemas sociales

El trabajo analiza, desde la perspectiva de los Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, el proceso de construcción de significados de utilidad de conocimientos científicos en el marco de interacciones entre actores heterogéneos en el caso de tres grupos de investigación académicos que orientan parte de su tarea hacia la resolución de problemas sociales. Como resultado, se presenta un análisis de las modificaciones que sufren los procesos de producción de conocimiento y organización del trabajo académico una vez que los investigadores ingresan en redes de relaciones con otros actores; las diferentes modalidades de vinculación entre productores y usuarios de conocimientos y los procesos de negociación de alternativas de uso y de definición de "demandas" en escenarios de interacción.

Utilidad social de conocimientos científicos, grupos de investigación académicos y problemas sociales

El trabajo analiza, desde la perspectiva de los Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, el proceso de construcción de significados de utilidad de conocimientos científicos en el marco de interacciones entre actores heterogéneos en el caso de tres grupos de investigación académicos que orientan parte de su tarea hacia la resolución de problemas sociales. Como resultado, se presenta un análisis de las modificaciones que sufren los procesos de producción de conocimiento y organización del trabajo académico una vez que los investigadores ingresan en redes de relaciones con otros actores; las diferentes modalidades de vinculación entre productores y usuarios de conocimientos y los procesos de negociación de alternativas de uso y de definición de "demandas" en escenarios de interacción.

Utilidad social de conocimientos científicos, grupos de investigación académicos y problemas sociales

El trabajo analiza, desde la perspectiva de los Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, el proceso de construcción de significados de utilidad de conocimientos científicos en el marco de interacciones entre actores heterogéneos en el caso de tres grupos de investigación académicos que orientan parte de su tarea hacia la resolución de problemas sociales. Como resultado, se presenta un análisis de las modificaciones que sufren los procesos de producción de conocimiento y organización del trabajo académico una vez que los investigadores ingresan en redes de relaciones con otros actores; las diferentes modalidades de vinculación entre productores y usuarios de conocimientos y los procesos de negociación de alternativas de uso y de definición de "demandas" en escenarios de interacción.

Methodology choices and the construction of facts:some implications from the sociology of scientific knowledge

This paper has two objectives: first, to provide a brief review of developments in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK); second to apply an aspect of SSK theorising which is concerned with the construction of scientific knowledge. The paper offers a review of the streams of thought which can be identified within SSK and then proceeds to illustrate the theoretic constructs introduced in the earlier discussion by analysing a particular contribution to the literature on research methodology in accounting and organisations studies. The paper chosen for analysis is titled “Middle Range Thinking”. The objective of this paper is not to argue that the approach used in this paper is invalid, but to seek to expose the rhetorical nature of the argumentation which is used by the author of the paper.

Mining Money: the generative capacities of scientific and legal knowledge practices in the making of resource economies

In 1997 a scandal associated with Bre-X, a junior mining firm, and its prospecting activities in Indonesia, exposed to public scrutiny the ways in which mineral exploration firms acquire, assess and report on scientific claims about the natural environment. At stake here was not just how investors understood the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, but also evidence of fraud. Contemporaneous mining scandals not only included the salting of cores, but also unreliable proprietary sample preparation and assay methods, mis-representations of visual field estimates as drilling results and ‘overly optimistic’ geological reports. This paper reports on initiatives taken in the wake of these scandals and prompted by the Mining Standards Task Force (TSE/OSC 1999). For regulators, mandated to increase investor confidence in Canada’s leading role within the global mining industry, efforts focused first and foremost upon identifying and removing sources of error and wilfulness within the production and circulation of scientific knowledge claims. A common goal cross-cutting these initiatives was ‘a faithful representation of nature’ (Daston and Galison 2010), however, as the paper argues, this was manifest in an assemblage of practices governed by distinct and rival regulative visions of science and the making of markets in claims about ‘nature’. These ‘practices of fidelity’, it is argued, can be consequential in shaping the spatial and temporal dynamics of the marketization of nature.

A survey of formalisms for representing and reasoning with scientific knowledge

With the rapid growth in the quantity and complexity of scientific knowledge available for scientists, and allied professionals, the problems associated with harnessing this knowledge are well recognized. Some of these problems are a result of the uncertainties and inconsistencies that arise in this knowledge. Other problems arise from heterogeneous and informal formats for this knowledge. To address these problems, developments in the application of knowledge representation and reasoning technologies can allow scientific knowledge to be captured in logic-based formalisms. Using such formalisms, we can undertake reasoning with the uncertainty and inconsistency to allow automated techniques to be used for querying and combining of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, by harnessing background knowledge, the querying and combining tasks can be carried out more intelligently. In this paper, we review some of the significant proposals for formalisms for representing and reasoning with scientific knowledge.

Attitude in students of Health Sciences toward scientific knowledge

Educating health professionals implies the challenge of creating and developing an inquiring mind, ready to be in a state of permanent questioning. For this purpose, it is fundamental to generate a positive attitude toward the generation of knowledge and science. Objective: to determine the attitude toward science and the scientific method in undergraduate students of health sciences. Materials and methods: a cross-sectional study was made by applying a self-administered survey, excluding those who were transferred from other universities and repeated. The attitude toward science and the scientific method were valued using the scale validated and published by Hren, which contains three domains: value of scientific knowledge, value of scientific methodology, and value of science for health professions. Results: 362 students were included, 86,6% of them graded the attitude toward scientific knowledge above 135 points, neutral scale value. Similar scores were registered in the domains value of scientific knowlede for the human dimension of the students and value of science for health professions. 91,4% of the students graded the value of scientific methodology below 48 points. Conclusions: the favorable attitude of the students can be explained by the contact that they have with the scientific method since the beginning of their studies and its concordance with the evolution of science. The domain value of scientific methodology obtained the lowest grade on the part of the students, which could be related to the lack of knowledge about scientific methodology.