The recent arrival of a copy of “The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication” spurred me to look further into the Oxford Handbook series as a whole. What I found was indeed quite a remarkable selection of high-level but still remarkably readable collections of scholarly articles on a wide range of subjects.
Let’s face it; in this day of both social media and an often ill-educated general public, all of us who write about any aspect of science are involved in science communication – or as it is often identified in a hashtag, #scicomm. Consequently, we have a responsibility no only to engage our readers but to inform them in a way that they will not only remember what we wrote but also not be confused by the manner in which it was written.
You know the old saying, “Everybody talks about the weather…” The problem is that while everybody does indeed talk about it, far fewer actually understand it beyond the level of the daily forecast – including me. Which is why I was so excited when I saw the announcement of the publication by Bloomsbury of Alan Watts’ The Weather Handbook; An Essential Guide to How Weather is Formed and Develops under the Adlard Coles Nautical imprint.
With a publication date timed to coincide with the 125th anniversary of its namesake organization, the fourth edition of the RSPB Handbook of British Birds by Peter Holden and Tim Cleeves includes detailed profiles of the 270 most common bird species found in Britain and Ireland as well as slightly shorter entries addressing 26 additional […]