Enrico Fermi's work gave birth to a real cultural revolution in the Italian scientific scenario. His scientific studies concerned almost every field in physics and had far-reaching effects of which virtually everybody, above all in Italy, is still taking advantage. Two important "by-products" of Fermi's ideas and initiatives will be here taken into consideration: the new way of carrying out research and communicating science invented by Fermi and his group and his publications for the general public, which often stood for high examples of scientific popularisation. Then the focus will shift on
"We can only appeal to society, considering that governments and parties have fallen constantly short of expectations since the late eighties. The public must know that without research there is no innovation, and without innovation there is no state-of-theart. The lack of research is a handicap for the development of the country". The words of Silvio Garattini, director of Milan's Mario Negri Institute, reveal rage and passion. This is how he explained the reasons why more than one year ago 1,500 Italian scientists made an unprecedented, resolute and unmediated appeal to the general public to
What may be defined as the "standard model" of the public communication of science began to develop in the second half of the nineteenth century, gained a clear structure (especially in an Anglo-Saxon context) in the first three decades of the twentieth century and dominated until the nineties. Roughly speaking, the model tends to describe science as a compact social (and epistemic) corpus, largely separated from the rest of society by a type of semipermeable membrane. That is, information and actions can flow freely from science to the rest of society (through the application of technologies
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Yurij Castelfranchi
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This book describes the similarities and differences between scientific inquiry in education and scientific inquiry in other fields and disciplines and provides a number of examples to illustrate these ideas. Its main argument is that all scientific endeavors share a common set of principles, and that each field including education research develops a specialization that accounts for the particulars of what is being studied. The book also provides suggestions for how the federal government can best support high-quality scientific research in education.
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National Research CouncilRich ShavelsonLisa Towne
The Fred Friendly Seminars is producing a three-part, prime-time television series about the ethical, legal and social implications of advances in genetic research and technology. The audience for the series is the general public with special emphasis on the scientific and policy-making communities. Each of the programs will begin with a presentation of the basic genetic science linked to a specific ethical and policy issue and then will engage a panel in a Socratic dialogue based on a hypothetical situation related to that issue. The panel will represent a wide range of perspective including scientists, policy makers and people experiencing the dilemmas presenting in the hypothetical situations. Outreach material for the project will be developed by the National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. The center will produce a 16-page discussion guide designed for by a variety of informal education organizations that reach the general public. This guide will be available in both print and on the project web site. In addition to the guide, the web site include guidelines about how to use segments of the series as catalysts for discussion, a list of annotated resources on genetics, and a behind-the-scenes look at the genomic research labs of the museum.