Public awareness of science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Public Awareness of Science (PAWS), also public understanding of science is a term relating to the attitudes, behaviors, opinions and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization.

It is a comparatively new approach to the task of promoting science, technology and innovation among the public and provides an integrated and results-oriented view, integrating under a single framework a series of other fields, such as:

science communication in the mass media, Internet, radio and television programs;
science museums, aquaria, planetaria, zoological parks, botanic gardens, etc.;
fixed and mobile science exhibits;
science festivals
science fairs in schools and social groups;
science education for adults;
consumer education;
public tours of R&D parks, manufacturing companies, etc.

How to raise public awareness and public understanding of science and technology, and how the public feels and knows about science in general, and specific subjects, such as genetic engineering, bioethics, etc., are important lines of research in this area.

1 The Bodmer Report
2 Project examples
3 Further reading
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The Bodmer Report

The publication of the Royal Socities' report The Public Understanding of Science (or Bodmer Report) in 1985 is widely held to be the birth of the Public Understanding of Science movement in Britain.[1] The report led to the foundation of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science and a cultural change in the attitude of scientists to outreach activities.[2]

[edit] Project examples

Government- and private-led campaigns and events, such as Dana Foundation's "Brain Awareness Week," are becoming a strong focus of programs which try to promote public awareness of science.

The UK PAWS Foundation dramatically went as far as establishing a Drama Fund with the BBC in 1994. The purpose was to encourage and support the creation of new drama for television, drawing on the world of science and technology[3].

The Vega Science Trust[4] was set up in 1994 to promote science through the media of television and the internet with the aim of giving scientists a platform from which to communicate to the general public.

Richard Dawkins holds a Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at The University of Oxford.[5]