Group items tagged

The goals for the 5th Living Knowledge conference are: "What innovation is needed to guide research towards public concerns? How can civil society fully participate in the co-creation of knowledge? The 5th Living Knowledge Conference will focus on getting more insight into processes, and develop specific policy recommendations that resonate with public concerns and articulated research needs." On the site we see "PERARES (Public Engagement with Research And Research Engagement with Society) project aims to strengthen the interaction between researchers and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and citizens in Europe." We also see a description of science shops: "small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines - usually free of charge and - on behalf of citizens and local civil society." All these things would be worth looking further into to understand what guidelines people use or recommend for engaging others in scientific & technological change. In brief, they seem very sympatico to the idea of Case 4 of the course (http://ppol749.wikispaces.umb.edu/PBLEngagementCase).

So this seems to be the other theme emerging, how you work with individuals / the public / citizens in shaping scientific research and the dialogue around it.

Committee of examine whether publicly funded agricultural research has influenced the structure of U.S. agriculture and if so, how. They also looked at the role of public-sector agricultural research on changes in the size and numbers of farms. Chapter 5 is of particular interest as it investigates the role of extension policy. There is a free executive summary and the book can be read online from this site.

ResIST is a multinational collaborative research partnership that seeks to explore the role that science and technology in increasing inequalities but also the ways in which science and technology can address these same inequities. The research teams from Germany, Malta, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the US are engaged in 5 separate but coordinated research endeavors. ResIST provides a nice template for how transnational knowledge building might work.

The Public Science Project situated at the CUNY Graduate Center works in a participatory action research agenda.  They work in collaboration with groups on the ground. The website states:  "PAR Collective, we began our work as a coalition of activists, researchers, youth, elders, lawyers, prisoners, and educators, launching projects on educational injustice, lives under surveillance,and the collateral damage of mass incarceration. Most of our projects have been situated in schools and/or community-based organizations struggling for quality education, economic opportunities, and human rights. Knowledge-sharing research camps set the stage for most of our research, designed to bring together differently positioned people around a common table to design and implement the research: youth and educators; young people who have been pushed out of schools and mothers organizing for quality education in communities under siege; prisoners, organizers, and academics. Most projects have vibrant advisory boards of youth, community elders, educators and/or activists to shape the work and hold us accountable to the needs and desires of local communities." They conduct research, trainings, and consulting services as well as resources for PAR.

The American Climate and Environmental Value Survey (ACEVS) is the third application of sophisticated psychographic research on American environmental and climate values. The goal of ACEVS is to increase the leverage, scale, reach, and most importantly, efficacy, of climate and environmental initiatives by empowering the movement with proven research and methodology for authentically engaging Americans in climate and environmental solutions, bringing these Americans to solutions on their own terms, in context of their choosing, and for their personal benefit.

This survey includes a section on what influences people (primarily the media). It also begins with the comment that "cap and trade" is now "toxic." It would be interesting to connect the dots here (as Oreskes & co-author do in Merchants of Doubt), so that we see who was behind the push against cap and trade. Ironically, cap and trade originated as a free market alternative to government regulation of how much pollution could be emitted.

Fred Singer!

Meredith Minkler reviews the current status and practice of CBR in the U.S. and abroad, providing reasons to undertake this admittedly more-complex path for public health research in particular (identifying questions that reflect real community concerns; achieving informed consent and building community capacity; increasing cultural sensitivity and validity of measurement tools, data interpretation, and interventions; uncovering critical lay knowledge; and improving participant recruitment and retention). Along with ethical issues, Minkler uses case study examples to highlight other challenges inherent in the practice, and provides some guidelines for engagement. To my mind, her review is balanced and raises several issues not touched upon by other scholarly writings re: CBR process and practice.

This piece talks about activism that hampers scientific research, innovation and industries that are related to things suc as "pesticides, food additives, chemicals in general, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power, and biotechnology." The article states that the scientific illiteracy of the general public makes it easy for activists to generate support for increased regulation and dampening of efforts in these areas. How do you help communities assess scientific information? How do you help them look at not only the research, but the context of the research? How should informed decisions about potentially harmful technologies and processes be handled? How do you support and engage in honest and open dialogue and debate about complex and unknown outcomes?

"For scientists, the struggle between their work and the way society views that work is nothing new, says Francesca Grifo, director of the scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. After all, she says, Galileo was forced by the Catholic establishment to renounce his evidence for a sun-centered solar system, and Darwin's ideas have been a political football for more than a century." This article places the current Tennessee proposed bill on "academic freedom" in the context of other challenges the scientific community faces when trying to reconcile their knowledge and research within the context of social believes and attitudes.

an initiative to build an international infrastructure, open to public as well as researchers. mimics what it studies.

The documentation from this 2005 Congressional hearing may help insert some of the science Peter was prompting us to incorporate into our case investigations -- GIS, communications science, demographics, and others are brought to bear; the Q&A toward the end give some sense as to what the decisionmakers (Members of the House) took away from the expert scientists' presentations.

Scientific research plays a very important role in the development of the areas discussed; for example, information data collection and development and improvement of hazard and risk assessment models. These programs are critical since we live in a country with so many natural risks year round.

Indeed very comprehensive. I find interesting when they ask the effect of the local environment in shaping our perceptions of risk. It was interesting to see how people felt in Southesat Lousiana before and after hurrican Ivan.

With a PhD in Biochemistry from Oxford, Nich Anthis combines his dual passions in science and politics to comment on issues and research that are at the intersection of both. Nick writes: "Recognizing science as a path toward understanding nature, distinct from corporate and other applications, The Scientific Activist opens up a new dialogue on the proper role of science in an ever changing society. The truth isn't always black or white, but an informed public is an empowered one, so I won't shy away from the complex issues. Most importantly, though, The Scientific Activist takes on the people and obstacles standing in the way of the progress and proper application of science. Enemies of science, beware!" He is working towards more nuanced and complex understandings of what science means and what role it plays in a complex world.

In this editorial from the October 2010 volume of "Science," Bruce Alberts suggests a system of STEM (science, technology, mathematics, and engineering) merit badges for children ages 5-18 to earn awards in schools. He compares this system both to the system used by the Boy and Girl Scouts, and to the system of AP (Advanced Placement) courses currently used in high schools today. It is suggested that this will help students maintain the curiosity they feel towards science in the early years into their high school careers, by when children have often lost interest.

I've recently come to the term STEAM which ads "art" into the traditional STEM equation. I also found this link while doing this quick research - http://ilandsymposium.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/art-science-activism-and-bicycles/. This combined with Rhoda's post about Digital Storytelling makes me wonder what role creativity (from stories to visualizations) play in this equation.

Not being familiar at all with STEM, I am interested in seeing what connections might be found with further inquiry into how stories and the way they are shared can have an effect on positive change, education and personal connections to issues that often seem too big.

A group of sci­en­tists is call­ing for major fed­eral ac­tion in order to deal with the threat posed by Mon­santo's GMO crops, now pe­ti­tion­ing the EPA to ad­dress the issue head on.

Thanks Felicia - This supports what I had read about Monsanto corn during my CCD research. But I was not aware of the BT-rootworm issue, only the super-weeds mutating because of RoundUp resistance that has also been genetically modified in Monsanto corn. Honeybees do collect pollen from corn when they are desperate even though they are not needed for pollination of corn.

In California, under state proposed regulations, water pumping from local rivers would be illegal in order to protect a threatened species of salmon. This might clash with grape growers who utilize this water to protect their crops from low temperatures. Legislators must find a solution for the issue at hand without damaging either party.

Similar conflicts over water take place all over the semiarid western US. In Idaho researchers found a way to use satellite imagery (Landsat) to monitor and measure water consumption by agriculture, and identify specific agribusinesses with destruction of streams, for enforcement and litigation support. Their work received a Harvard award for innovation in government. This is not a first for technical solutions for environmental enforcement, but it's an extremely important step in large-scale water management - which will become a bigger and bigger part of our daily life. It may also preserve the USGS Landsat program, which is in danger of abandonment. (This is near to my line of work, as it happens.) (http://ashinstitute.harvard.edu/corporate_site/innovations/innovations_news/mapping_evapotranspiration_wins_innovations_in_american_government_award; more links if you're interested.) Alex_Brown@uml.edu http://gis.uml.edu/abrown2

From the Heritage Foundation -- a free market analysis of the outcome of the Copenhagen talks. Results have ended with non-binding agreements and no new commitments to amp up emission reductions. Yet stricter agreements were likley to slow GDP growth in the US as well as pose challenges to sovereignty and national security.