Category: scicomms

After the crisis, economics needs to slow down

This is the twelth post in a six-week series: Rapid or Rushed? exploring rapid response publishing in covid times. Read the rest of the series here. As part of the series, there was a virtual roundtable featuring Professor Joshua Gans (Economics in the Age of COVID-19, MIT Press),  in conversation with Richard Horton (The COVID-19 Catastrophe, Polity … Continued

8 common problems with literature reviews and how to fix them

Literature reviews are an integral part of the process and communication of scientific research. Whilst systematic reviews have become regarded as the highest standard of evidence synthesis, many literature reviews fall short of these standards and may end up presenting biased or incorrect conclusions. In this post, Neal Haddaway highlights 8 common problems with literature … Continued

Policymaking in a pandemic must be decisive, transparent and inclusive

In a pandemic, policymakers have to deal with uncertainty and rapidly evolving information. Ramathi Bandaranayake and Merl Chandana use examples from COVID-19 to draw guidance for how policymakers might respond to these challenges. They argue that Quick, decisive, transparent and inclusive policy is key to successfully responding to pandemics and their socioeconomic effects.   Responding … Continued

Making the invisible visible: how we depict COVID-19

How do you depict a microscopic bundle of proteins that in just a few months transformed the world? Sria Chatterjee (Max-Planck Kunsthistorisches Institut) looks at how the virus has been visualised in different contexts, and how new ways of tracking and seeing its spread have profound implications for individual freedom. This post first appeared on the LSE COVID-19 … Continued

Anti-racist science communication starts with recognising its globally diverse historical footprint

Science Communication is often presented as a unique response to and offshoot of the prevalence of western science in modern societies. Lindy Orthia and Elizabeth Rasekoala argue against this notion, suggesting that a temporally and culturally limited understanding of science communication, in turn promotes a limited discipline of science communication and serves to perpetuate a … Continued

For science communication to be effective it should be evidence based

Effective communication of science to stakeholders across society is a more pressing issue than it has perhaps ever been. Highlighting ways in which science communication as an area of research and practice has struggled to function as an integrated discipline, Eric Jensen and Alexander Gerber argue that for science communication to continue to develop and … Continued

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is an exceptional public health emergency, but we can still learn from the experience of previous epidemics

The spread of COVID-19 poses unique challenges not only to medical researchers, but also to public health authorities and media outlets across the globe. However, the ways in which epidemics interact with human society suggest that much can be learned from previous epidemics. Drawing on the historical response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, … Continued

From scientists, for scientists, and beyond: a method to develop a comic based on your research

Scientists are increasingly challenged to communicate their work to broader, more varied audiences. Responding to this imperative, Jan Friesen and Skander Elleuche have developed a method that provides a simple, flexible framework to translate a complex scientific publication into a broadly accessible comic format. “Even amongst scientists, communication across disciplines is tough. But to communicate scientific findings to the general […]