Quantum of Science

Influence of anti-scientific views and misinformation is spread through media and social networks. The result is that a lot of parents are scared, misinformed and confused about importance of immunization in early age. From time to time, some media are publishing articles and reports on this issue, consulting the experts in the field, but these examples of good praxis are rare and occasional. There is no constant presence of science-based information about vaccination in public space, on TV, in the newspapers and news sites on the internet. Also, media, especially online media, often publish badly written or badly translated and interpreted articles that highly contribute to public fear-mongering and affect public understanding of science and trust towards medical institutions, and in this particular case - trust towards vaccines. It seems that only a small fraction of parents worldwide refuse to vaccinate their children due to some religious views and that parents who refu...

Authors: Bojan Šošić and Jelena Kalinić  This title might look very uncomfortable, but we won't be talking about anything as horrid as the title suggests. I wanted to write a few words about these two acronyms, PUS and PEST, which concern the promotion of science in the public. The trend of acronyms which “mean something” doesn't always have to have the happiest results. PUS stands for “Public Understanding of Science”, while PEST stands for “Public Engagement with/in Science and Technology. Then we also have PAS – which stands for “Public Awareness of Science”. Behind these, not very pleasant sounding names, stands what we call science advocacy – one of those hard-to-translate phrases. However, behind the translation into our local languages, there is a series of question marks because the translation itself does not explain what it actually means. Essentially, it means all engagement and efforts to bring certain scientific terms, occurrences and processe...