Latest ArticlesKnowledge distribution force which promotes the highly effective flow of knowledge serves as an important factor affecting innovative capability and performance. Basic research, in essence, is a process of reproduction and co-production of knowledge, the performance of knowledge flow will not only affect its ability and performance in basic research, but also will affect the sound application of achievements coming from it. The paper, adopting the analytical method of knowledge flow, is to discover the major problems facing science popularization in basic research.
According to the classification of genetics, science can be divided into 3 historical paradigms, namely, classical natural history one, modern math one, and contemporary STS one (science, technology and society), since entering into the stage of contemporary science, STS has gone through a complex evolution process, specifically, from field to discipline, from discipline to cross-discipline, trans-disciplinary and science paradigm. In terms of people's understanding of STS, the most significant aspect is that they have established a series of new concepts and perspectives which are used for promoting the coordinated development of science, technology and society, and especially that the newly established and proposed concept on science has brought about new concept on popularization.
Science extending activity is the general term of the science popularization activities carried out by such public groups or organizations as institutions of higher learning, science and research institute, academic groups of science, and science foundation aiming at promoting the scientific literacy of the general public and boosting the communication between the public and scientist. It is of a necessity for the researchers to conduct two-way science popularization activities, namely science extending activity, to the public on an equal footing according to their researches, this is the social responsibilities of the scientists. Such kind of activity initially came to be known during the late of 1990s and the beginning of this century in USA and some European countries, the reason why great emphasis should be put on the dialogue and communication between the public and the scientists is that the development of science can not be going further without the public support and that the decision making of science needs the participation of the public. Despite the fact that the conduction of science extending activity in Japan was slightly later than that in USA and Great Britain, less than a decade in the past witnessed its realization of being institutionalized in Japan. It is good, but plenty of problems need to be resolved prior to doing a great job in science extending activity.
There exist inevitably large numbers of conflicting interests in the science popularization of climate change studies. These conflicts are typically associated with political stance, strategy of industry development, academic viewpoints and media strategy. In order to enhance and improve science communication of climate change studies, public interest as an ethical priority should be strengthened. institutes and agencies sponsored by the government or public fund are supposed to share their scientific resources to promote the transparency and demystification. Scientists should be responsible for the complete stages of research, including the popularization. The legal regulation and ethical rules for handling conflicting interest should be accelerated to establish, including disclosure and withdraw. The media should be required to keep the moral principle of rigor and accuracy. Finally, the scientific understanding of climate change should be improved so as to raise fundamentally the capability of science popularization of climate change studies.
This paper shares and makes a study of some cases involving the interrelation between science popularization and scientific research on such national famous science webs as http://songshuhui.net/ and http://www.guokr.com/. The specific cases from the webs are stated as follows: science popularization promotes the interdisciplinary exchange among the science communities, science popularization helps to integrate the social resources used for science research, science popularization elevates the influence of the scientific achievements, how to win the public trust, and science popularization makes the relevant arguments being debated hotly and makes its achievements enlightened.
The illustration of the achievements for the basic science disciplines is made in a rigorously logical and systematical manner, through which the professional term of science community has come into shape, becoming a channel for the social elites to have themselves expressed in the traditional science communication. In modern times, the newly emerging media help to facilitate the birth of new communication era, the ways for the public to gain access to the science information in the web era are characteristic of deconstruction quite different from the previously traditional ways which gave emphasis on strong construction and linearization. How to make the relations between science community and basic science research more interlinked, and how to make it adapt to the new communicating platform in which a huge number of people have themselves expressed to avoid the demise of the dominance of the discourses has become an unavoidable topic of strategic significance.
With the rapid social and economic development, science communication of basic research has important practical significance. Therefore, the relationship between basic research and science communication is considered to be discussed initially. Then science communication on the basic research of aquatic food safety is explored and attempted combined with the construction and practice of food quality and safety discipline, one of the national characteristic majors, in Zhejiang Gongshang University. In addition, the problems existing in the science communication are analyzed followed by the possible solution methods. In a word, the above analysis is to provide a certain reference for the science communication of basic research.
A great number of changes have taken place in the relation between science & society and something occurring in science research since the second half of 20th century, science in the contemporary era needs to be open to the public, science communication proves to be a pivotal route and mechanism to promote and realize this kind of being open, what is more, to strengthen institution building is a must to promote science communication to the public and the society as a whole.
This paper, taking People's Daily, a representative of print media, as an example, analyzes the role and position of the mass media playing in basic research, and puts forward some suggestions regarding how to promote the research by resorting to help from mass media, these suggestions are stated as follows, to set and determine different targets accordingly, to choose relevant media, to closely cooperate with media, to select appropriate reporting ways and channels, to invite journalists to make a coverage of some basic research ahead of time, and to actively provide some professional training and knowledge concerning science popularization to the media.
Over the years, the government has continually made improvements in cultivating science talents, however it cannot meet the needs of the national science and technology dissemination and popularization work. How to construct science popularization professional workforce is the current urgent problem to address in the innovation system of the country. This paper analyzes 2010 national scientific and statistical data, full-time personnel working on science popularization, team status of full-time personnel in China, and proposes a Science Popularization Talent Development Plan as a strategic goal, countermeasures and suggestions.