e hënë, qershor 27, 2005

Which expert should I believe?

As a reader of this journal you are probably a professional scientist with an interest in communicating the importance of what you do to the world at large. We share that interest, and advertise to journalists the work we publish that we feel most likely to be of general interest, via press releases on the EurekAlert! website. This works very well, and papers in Current Biology are frequently covered in the general media.

This is all fine and dandy; good for us, our authors, the science journalists and their readers.... There is an aspect of this process that is, I believe, deadly serious and of the utmost importance. In certain areas of science, public understanding has an influence on behaviour with serious consequences — this is especially true of medical and environmental matters.