Back in May of 2013, when the United States was not only still a nation with a functional government but one that led the world in advancements across a range of scientific fields, the first edition of Anne E. Greene’s “Writing Science in Plain English” was published by The University of Chicago Press.
Begun in 2020 with Dr. Kostas Kampourakis’ “Understanding Evolution” (now in its second edition), the Understanding Life series numbers twenty-six volumes – or at least it will with the publication of Dr. Han Yu’s “Understanding Visuals in the Life Sciences” later this month.
As one who has dedicated decades of his life to helping people learn about, understand, and as a result it is hoped care more about the natural world and the present state it is in, I am particularly troubled by AI-generated images of birds and other wildlife as they present the unreal as real, encouraging many of those seeing them and not understanding that they are nothing more than the random collection of data assembled into visual images by an AI image-generating computer program to develop a distorted expectation of how the natural world truly appears.
In continuation of her exploration into effective ways to bridge our society’s present chasm between proponents of science and skeptics of it, Prof. Emma Frances Bloomfield’s new book “Science v. Story” examines four very pertinent present-day challenges to science communicators – climate change, evolution, vaccination, and COVID-19 – from the perspectives of their narratives and their counter narratives, to demonstrate how effective story-telling is essential to effective science communication in the modern world.