insistent quest for the meaning of things. The question is one that faces "everyman" from the child's first awareness of the mystery of life to the adult's apprehension of the mystery of death. As one existential writer put it, "I know only two things?one, that I will be dead someday, two, that I am not dead now. The only question is what shall I do be tween those two points." Does nihilistic literature and philosophy have the answer?wallowing in nothingness? Are the Madison Avenue thought controllers right in their claim that the time for the individual has passed and that we should conform to collectivities because there is safety in numbers? Shall we follow the "beat generation" and the "angry young men" who say we should conform to non-conformity in the name of pure rebelliousness and non-constructive creativity? Or should we just capitu late with the "positive thinkers" who say that all this concern about what things mean is too nerve-wracking, and that the problems of life can best be met by taking existential tranquilizers in the form of sugar coated mottos? The way in which contemporary man is clutching at straws in his search for meaning is symptomatic both of the depth of his concern and of the inadequacy of the answers which are emerging. In the material which follows, I will develop this theme primarily by elaboration of relevant material on the problems of reality and value, and the psy chology of perception and personality. Since the search for meaning ultimately implies an effort to arrive at something irreducible, it seems reasonable to open the inquiry with the question of knowledge and reality.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27827428.pdf

The search for meaning.

Afraid to travel after COVID-19? Self-protection, coping and resilience against pandemic 'travel fear '

Public participation in scientific projects is flourishing globally as part of projects labeled “citizen science” (CS). Already, a number of professional networks for CS stakeholders have been founded, for example, the US-based Citizen Science Association, the European Citizen Science Association, and the Australian Citizen Science Association.



As citizen science (CS) continues to grow, researchers and participants should move toward a shared understanding of what the practice is, what it is not, and what criteria CS projects must fulfill to ensure high-quality participatory research. Image credit: David Cutler (artist).



But what exactly qualifies as CS? It is interpreted in various ways (1) and takes different forms with different degrees of participation (2). In fact, the label CS is currently assigned to research activities either by project principal investigators (PIs) themselves or by research funding agencies. Against this backdrop, critical observers of CS, such as Guerrini et al. (3), have drawn attention to important legal and ethical issues including intellectual property and scientific integrity. Similarly, Vayena and Tasioulas (4) note the importance of protecting the interests of research participants in biomedical participant-led research, and Buyx et al. (5) note the need for a solidarity-based practice of CS to fully exploit its potential, making “every participant a PI.”

In light of the rapid growth of CS, present concerns, and calls for further improving the value of CS, we see several issues for policymakers, funding agencies, and citizens. Specifically, we believe that researchers and participants should move toward a shared understanding of what CS is, what it is not, and what criteria CS projects must fulfill to ensure high-quality participatory research (6). Establishing criteria will help ensure that CS projects are rigorous, help the field flourish, and where applicable encourage policymakers to take CS project data and results seriously.

Politicians throughout Europe understand CS … 

[↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: florian.heigl{at}boku.ac.at.

 [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/17/8089.full.pdf

Opinion: Toward an international definition of citizen science.

Following up on suggestions that attitudes toward science are multi-dimensional, we analyze nationally representative survey data collected in the United States in 2014 ( N = 2006), and demonstrate the existence of a science confidence gap: some people place great trust in scientific methods and principles, but simultaneously distrust scientific institutions. This science confidence gap is strongly associated with level of education: it is larger among the less educated than among the more educated. We investigate explanations for these educational differences. Whereas hypotheses deduced from reflexive-modernization theory do not pass the test, those derived from theorizing on the role of anomie are corroborated. The less educated are more anomic (they have more modernity-induced cultural discontents), which not only underlies their distrust in scientific institutions, but also fuels their trust in scientific methods and principles. This explains why this science confidence gap is most pronounced among the less educated.

A science confidence gap: Education, trust in scientific methods, and trust in scientific institutions in the United States, 2014

Conversations about climate change at the science-policy interface and in our lives have been stuck for some time. This handbook integrates lessons from the social sciences and humanities to more effectively make connections through issues, people, and things that everyday citizens care about. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding that there is no 'silver bullet' to communications about climate change; instead, a 'silver buckshot' approach is needed, where strategies effectively reach different audiences in different contexts. This tactic can then significantly improve efforts that seek meaningful, substantive, and sustained responses to contemporary climate challenges. It can also help to effectively recapture a common or middle ground on climate change in the public arena. Readers will come away with ideas on how to harness creativity to better understand what kinds of communications work where, when, why, and under what conditions in the twenty-first century.

Creative (Climate) Communications: Productive Pathways for Science, Policy and Society

Contextualizing educational differences in "vaccination uptake": A thirty nation survey.

In this article, we analyze Special Eurobarometer (2010) data via multilevel regression modeling and answer two questions: (a) How a country’s democratization level is related to the rate of public engagement with science and (b) who are those citizens who participate in science policy-shaping and express their approval for democratic governance of science? Reflexive modernization and institutional alienation perspectives are used to examine those issues. It has been shown that more democratic societies on average have higher rates of public participation in science and support for democratic control of it. Moreover, those well educated and knowledgeable in the topic of science are more likely to engage with science, which supports the reflexive modernization perspective. However, distrust in scientists being considered as an indicator of institutional alienation from science is also crucial in both predicting actual engagement and support for public control over it.

Science to the people: A 32-nation survey.

Today, the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis is shaping a world where previously treatable infections can kill. This has revitalised the development of antibiotic alternatives, such as phage therapy. The therapeutic use of phages, viruses that infect and kill bacteria, was first explored over a century ago. However, most of the Western world abandoned phage therapy in favour of antibiotics. While the technical feasibility of phage therapy has been increasingly investigated in recent years, there has been minimal effort to understand and tackle the social challenges that may hinder its development and implementation. In this study, we assess the UK public’s awareness, acceptance, preferences and opinions regarding phage therapy using a survey, fielded on the Prolific online research platform. The survey contained two embedded experiments: a conjoint and framing experiment (N = 787). We demonstrate that acceptance of phage therapy among the lay public is already moderate, with a mean likelihood of acceptance of 4.71 on a scale of 1 (not at all likely to accept phage therapy) to 7 (very likely to accept phage therapy). However, priming participants to think about novel medicines and antibiotic resistance significantly increases their likelihood of using phage therapy. Moreover, the conjoint experiment reveals that success and side effect rate, treatment duration, and where the medicine has been approved for use has a statistically significant effect on participants’ treatment preferences. Investigations altering the framing of phage therapy, to highlight positive and negative aspects, reveal a higher acceptance of the treatment when described without using perceived harsh words, such as “kill” and “virus”. Combined, this information provides an initial insight into how phage therapy could be developed and introduced in the UK to maximise acceptance rate.

/pdf/phage-therapy-and-the-public-increasing-awareness-essential-26o09zlb.pdf

Phage therapy and the public: Increasing awareness essential to widespread use

Research on African-Americans’ relationship with science, while relatively sparse, in general suggests higher levels of alienation than among their White counterparts, whether in the form of less positive attitudes to science, or lower scientific literacy. In this article, we leverage social identity theory to examine the role of racial social identity and ingroup evaluation as putative mechanisms that produce these disparities. We use data from the General Social Survey, pooled over three waves, as the basis for our investigation. The results of the analysis indicate that, when controlling for other covariates, there is no statistically significant difference in the effect of racial self-identification on science knowledge among African-Americans and Whites. However, we provide evidence that the effect of favourable ingroup evaluation on science knowledge differs in these two groups, being more positive for African-Americans compared to Whites.

/pdf/social-identity-and-racial-disparities-in-science-literacy-38wja041.pdf

Social identity and racial disparities in science literacy

Previous research shows that public trust in scientists is often bound up with the messages that they convey and the context in which they communicate. However, in the current study, we examine how the public perceives scientists based on the characteristics of scientists themselves, irrespective of their scientific message and its context. Using a quota sample of U.S. adults, we investigate how scientists’ sociodemographic; partisan; and professional characteristics affect preferences and trust towards them as a scientific adviser to local government. We find that scientists’ party identification and professional characteristics appear to be prominent to understand public preferences towards them.

/pdf/public-perception-of-scientists-experimental-evidence-on-the-6z1l28m8.pdf

Kirils Makarovs

Papers

Contextualizing educational differences in "vaccination uptake": A thirty nation survey.

Science to the people: A 32-nation survey.

Phage therapy and the public: Increasing awareness essential to widespread use

Social identity and racial disparities in science literacy

Public perception of scientists: Experimental evidence on the role of sociodemographic, partisan, and professional characteristics