Public Understanding of Science current issue

Modest witnessing and managing the boundaries between science and the media: A case study of breakthrough and scandal

Haran, J., Kitzinger, J. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

This article works with the figure of the "modest witness" and the concept of "virtual witnessing" to explore the case of the South Korean scientist, Hwang, whose stem cell breakthroughs are now regarded as hoaxes. We analyze the rhetorical techniques used by the scientific establishment and news media to first endorse, and then disavow, Hwang’s work. In particular, we focus on how the rhetoric of disavowal operates to maintain a dominant understanding of the normal relationship between science and the media. We highlight how journalists and scientists framed the original breakthroughs in ways which obscured the mediation of these events, but, once the scandals emerged, began to foreground the media as a problem. This retrospective acknowledgement of mediation also subtly (re)assigned the problem to the world of celebrity scientists and fictional genres and narratives. This lets news reporting, and routine science—journalist relations off the hook.

The Korean press and Hwang's fraud

Park, J., Jeon, H., Logan, R. A. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

This case study explores why South Korean journalists overlooked allegations of scientific misconduct against South Korean scientist Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and even indirectly defended him in 2005—6. Nineteen journalists, who covered Hwang’s story for five of South Korea’s leading daily newspapers, were interviewed. The interviewees added insights about the news coverage of the Hwang scandal not identified in previous literature, such as the difficulties among journalists to suspend their personal disbelief about the criticisms and evidence against Hwang. The findings suggest the news judgments that occurred in Korean newsrooms during the Hwang scandal reflected a socially constructed process of negotiation among news media professionals and between journalists and scientists. The findings also suggest it may be best to consider journalistic mores within a multidimensional framework that includes journalistic perceptions of socio-cultural norms, internal newsroom standards for evidence, newsroom competence and training, normative journalism ethics, news gathering techniques, perceived dissonance and professed risk avoidance.

Public feeling for science: The Hwang affair and Hwang supporters

Kim, J. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

This ethnography investigates how the Hwang affair occurred, how Dr. Woo Suk Hwang attracted supporters, and how groups supporting Hwang evolved. Instead of interpreting Hwang supporters as abnormal people with psychological problems, this study situates them in concrete, messy, and ambiguous contexts in which they struggle to understand the Hwang affair. Distrustful of scientific authorities and official institutions, they have linked Korean nationalism with the hopes and dreams of stem cell research, created conspiracy theories to explain Hwang’s fall, and criticized Korean elites. In particular, this paper emphasizes how Hwang supporters are motivated by admiration of a Korean scientist with humble beginnings (Dr. Hwang), the hope of curing disease through stem cell research, and the desire to build an advanced nation through science. In describing this process, I pay attention to how public feeling for science is produced and how it has evolved in the interactions among government, media, and the Hwang supporters’ organizations. In addition, I argue that institutional incompetence deepens public distrust and as a result fuels the formation and activities of Hwang supporters.

Representations of the stem-cell cloning fraud: from scientific breakthrough to managing the stake and interest of science

Augoustinos, M., Russin, A., LeCouteur, A. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

The meteoric rise of Professor Wu Sook Hwang who had claimed to have successfully cloned embryonic stem cells in two landmark papers published in Science (2004, 2005) came to an abrupt end when it was discovered that the findings reported in both papers had been deliberately fabricated. Given the heightened expectations associated with therapeutic-cloning advances and their potential for alleviating a range of illnesses, this recent case of scientific fraud generated considerable controversy and public interest across the world. This paper examines a sample of texts taken predominantly from the British newsprint media that reported on both the so-called scientific "breakthrough" (as it was initially reported) and the subsequent fraud. Using Gilbert and Mulkay’s analysis of scientists’ discourse as a theoretical framework, our analysis focuses on how competing repertoires of science were mobilized by the media and the scientific community to account for the fraud. Specifically, we demonstrate how the empiricist repertoire of science was repeatedly mobilized in the initial reporting of the stem-cell "breakthrough" which functioned to warrant the scientific veracity and promissory potential of the findings. In contrast, when this so-called "breakthrough" was discovered to be fraudulent, a contingent repertoire was invoked to construct Hwang as a "bad apple," who was unrepresentative of the scientific community in general. We also detail the use of a Truth-Will-Out rhetorical device which in a similar way functioned to warrant the practice of embryonic stem-cell research specifically and the institution of science, more generally.

Understanding public support for stem cell research: media communication, interpersonal communication and trust in key actors

Liu, H., Priest, S. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

This paper analyzes data from a 2005 telephone survey of 1200 people in the US that included questions about attitudes toward stem cell research and a broad range of communication variables. After all controls, trust in university scientists and religious leaders, exposure to national television news, familiarity, and religious service attendance produced statistically significant main effects on perception of research benefits, together explaining about 31% of the variance. Interpersonal communication may also have contingent effects.

Embryonic stem cell: A climax in the reign of the Brazilian media

Jurberg, C., Verjovsky, M., Cardoso Machado, G. d. O., Affonso-Mitidieri, O. R. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

In the last few years, embryonic stem cell research has been widely debated in Brazil and a "star" in the national media. Because of the notoriety of the issue, the media have sometimes been criticized for oversimplification, exaggeration and distortion. In this context, we analyzed the media during an important time: in 2008, the Federal Supreme Court held historical hearings to decide whether Brazilian scientists could continue using embryonic stem cells. First, we focused on letters sent by readers to one of the most popular newspapers, O Globo. Second, we analyzed the Brazilian news coverage of embryonic stem cells during a crucial week in the public debate. At the end of May 2008, under pressure from Brazilian media and society, the Ministers of the Supreme Court approved research using embryonic stem cells.

Believing in both genetic determinism and behavioral action: a materialist framework and implications

Condit, C. M., Gronnvoll, M., Landau, J., Shen, L., Wright, L., Harris, T. M. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

A disparity exists between studies reporting that genetics discourse produces deterministic or fatalistic responses and studies reporting that the majority of laypeople do not hold or adopt genetically deterministic views. This article reports data from an interview study (n = 50), and an interpretation of those data grounded in materialist understandings of discourse, that explains at least part of the disparity. The article employs a detailed reading of an illustrative transcript embedded in a quantitative content analysis to suggest that laypeople have incorporated two sets of public discourses—one that describes genetic causation and another that describes behavioral causation. These different discourse tracks are presumed to be encoded in different sets of neural networks in people’s minds. Consequently, each track can be articulated upon proper cueing, but the tracks are not related to each other to produce a discourse for speaking about gene—behavior interactions. Implications for the effects of this mode of instantiation of discourse in human individuals with regard to genes and behavior are discussed, as well as implications for message design.

Assessment of Slovene secondary school students' attitudes to biotechnology in terms of usefulness, moral acceptability and risk perception

Crne-Hladnik, H., Peklaj, C., Kosmelj, K., Hladnik, A., Javornik, B. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

Quantitative and qualitative studies among 469 high school students of average age 17 years were conducted. The students’ attitudes to four practical applications of biotechnology were examined: genetically modified plants (Bt corn), genetically modified animals (salmon), and hemophilia germ line and somatic gene therapy. Each of the four applications was examined from three different viewpoints: usefulness, moral acceptability and risk perception. Bt corn production proved to be the most acceptable in terms of both usefulness and risk perception. Values for genetically modified salmon and germ line gene therapy were comparable, but much lower than those for the other two applications; this was true for both usefulness and moral acceptability. In addition, students found genetically modified salmon to be ethically much less acceptable than Bt corn. Significant gender differences were observed in the case of germ line gene therapy and genetically modified salmon.

Scientific controversies in museums: notes from a semi-peripheral country

Delicado, A. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

This research note discusses the representation of scientific controversies in museums in a particular national context, Portugal. Despite the recent development of the national scientific system and the field of science museums, the connection between science and society has remained weak. The description of the content of scientific exhibitions, namely about controversial issues, shows that science is still portrayed as beyond dispute and unequivocally beneficial and the public is dismissed as irrational and in need of enlightenment. The role of museums as forums for debate and exchange of ideas is yet to be fulfilled.