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This chapter explores how and why a younger generation of British scientists adopted Nature as a forum of scientific communication in the 1870s and 1880s. Although men of science Norman Lockyer’s age and older, including the prominent X Club, certainly contributed to the journal, they did not see Nature as a particularly desirable place to conduct scientific debates—with the notable exception of Charles Darwin. The older generation preferred more established venues such as literary periodicals or the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In contrast, younger men of science—those born in the 1840s and later, such as E. Ray Lankester and George J. Romanes—adopted Nature as the primary forum where they could debate the most important scientific questions of the day before a knowledgeable readership. The contributions of this younger generation established Nature as essential reading for British men of science in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Niklas Luhmann proposed that different social systems, such as law and science, encode information using different binary codes and programmes. A plausible consequence is that communications within those systems – for example law cases for the law system and academic journal articles for the (social) science system – should have not only different surface structures, for example style and convention, but also different semantic structures. However, it is critical to control the input to the two systems, insofar as this should relate as nearly as possible to identical topics. This chapter presents an empirical study aimed at providing some scientific evidence to support Luhmann's theory about social systems. Measurable and statistically reliable differences were observed in the semantic structure between the law and science systems of communication. The terms related to a particular domain had a higher average weight within the network associated with this domain than with the network associated with the other domain.

Communicating one’s research to lay and professional audiences is a key to research and career success. Such communications as news releases affect professional citations of scientific papers. Communication skills also directly aid both research and teaching by making the researcher a more effective purveyor of knowledge. In today’s media environment, researchers are in essence media outlets, able to reach their audiences directly through news releases, websites, social media, and other content. Creating such explanations also protects researchers professionally by ensuring that their research is conveyed to audiences as they wish.

In the early morning hours of April 6, 2009, a devastating earthquake struck the city of L’Aquila, Italy, killing hundreds of people. Many of L’Aquila’s residents were not prepared for the earthquake and felt betrayed by scientific experts who were tasked with public safety. Three years later, in a shocking outcome, a group of seven scientists and public officials were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison. Although the L’Aquila Seven’s convictions were eventually reversed, this controversy illustrates the unintended consequences of scientists and public officials engaging in myth-historical boundary work but ignoring their duty to accurately communicate scientific ideas. The chapter grapples with the tension inherent in the juxtaposition of a scientific ideal and concrete scientific practice as it relates to notions of consensus and the communication of scientific uncertainty.

Researchers should chart a communication strategy to maximize the benefit of their communications to their research and career. They first need to free themselves from the attitude that they should fear communicating to lay audiences because of the inherent imprecision of lay communications. Also, they should overcome the fear of communicating beyond their peers because their peers might judge them harshly. They should have a “do-tell” strategy that they communicate as much as possible about their goals and research advances. Such a strategy ensures that their work will reach audiences that they might not have expected. They should also have a “strategy of synergy,” in which they use such content as news releases to reach multiple audiences beyond the media.

A variety of resources exist that guide researchers on the empirical aspects of measurement issues, with a focus on factor analysis. These resources are helpful for promoting rigorous research, consistency in the use and interpretation, and helping ensure consistency among reviewers in the peer review process. One limitation of these resources is the minimal attention given to the theoretical and conceptual issues that must be fully considered and appreciated before we can make substantive interpretations of empirical results. The purpose of this chapter is to fill this gap in practical resources by offering both authors and reviewers suggestions for thinking about key theoretical and conceptual issues in measurement. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part contains a few guiding principles that are necessary in advancing the field's thinking about measurement issues. These are considered guiding principles because they do not prescribe or proscribe any particular action. Rather, they are intended to serve as a lens for thinking about key measurement issues that are often problematic in social work publications. The second part of this chapter presents a set of strategies to improve measurement reporting practices in social work research.

Contrary to what many researchers believe, lay audiences see scientists in a very positive light, meaning that they have a natural credibility. Researchers need to understand audiences in order to communicate effectively. Audiences are “need-to-knowers,” concentrating on topics that are particularly relevant to them. They also communicate within their own values, so scientists need to use communication strategies that take such personal values into account. Scientists also need to “pop their perceptual bubbles” that prevent them from understanding audiences. That is, they need to understand that audiences are not as engaged in science as they are and that their egos should not lead them to use technical terms when communicating with lay audiences.

Deciding whether to be a “public scientist”—using the media spotlight to highlight important issues—means deciding whether one is a natural explainer. Also, it must be decided how much time and effort can be committed to such outreach and how it impacts research and other activities. Explaining research does offer satisfactions, in that the researcher is contributing to public understanding of science. One problem is that the coverage of science and technology is small and shrinking. That said, opportunities to reach the public directly through websites and social media are considerable. The role of public scientists and the importance of explaining research in general are becoming ever more critical because failure to bridge the information gulf between researchers and the public will hamper, perhaps tragically, our ability to solve the massive global problems we face—climate change, resource depletion, ecological damage, food security, and disease.

This chapter will help you more effectively reach your peers, but it also aims to enhance your communications with lay audiences. Giving compelling talks means freeing oneself from text by sufficient practice in learning the talk, speaking from points rather than reading from text. It also means organizing the talk to engage the audience, designing slides that communicate effectively as a complement to your performance, using dramatic and professional visuals to enhance your presentation, and using engaging stagecraft. Also useful are memorable models such as molecular models, demonstrations, and pass-arounds; combining them with speech and stagecraft will create a multimedia explanation of your work. Managing questions is also important to clarify points, to be responsive to your audience, and to avoid unproductive confrontation.

This chapter looks more closely into the epistemic normativity of a particular constative—conjecture—and examines and accounts for the contextual variation of its propriety. The chapter has two aims: (1) it breaks new ground in that it develops the first fully fledged account of the epistemic normativity of conjecture in the literature; (2) it goes sharply against orthodoxy, in arguing that the epistemic requirements placed on us by conjecture are stronger than those governing assertion. According to the view developed here, one’s conjecture that p is permissible only if one knows that one has warrant, but not sufficient warrant, to believe that p.