INFORMATION ON SCIENCE RELATED MEDIA HOUSE OR ORGANIZATION

INFORMATION ON SCIENCE RELATED MEDIA HOUSE OR ORGANIZATION

The Science Media Centre is an organisation which formed in 2002, two years after the United Kingdom House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology's third report on "Science and Society" in 2000. not in citation givenThis report stated that while science was generally reported accurately in the mass media, there was a need for the promotion of more expert information at times when science is under attack in the headlines, mentioning the public reaction to GM crops, in particular.In order to promote more informed science in the media, the Centre's main function is as a service to journalists, providing background briefings on current scientific issues and facilitating interviews with scientists. Its director is Fiona Fox who is a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a former contributor to its magazine Living Marxism. The SMC's stated aim is to "facilitate more scientists to engage with the media, in the hope that the public will have improved access to accurate, evidence-based scientific information about the stories of the day".The setting up of the Science Media Centre was assisted by Susan Greenfield, the director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. While the Centre is still based in a specially refurbished wing of the Royal Institution, full independence is claimed from all funders and supporters.

The Science Media Centre is funded by over 60 organisations, with individual donations capped at £12,500 per annum. The SMC receives sponsorship from a range of funders including media organisations, universities, scientific and learned societies, the UK Research Councils, government bodies, Quangos, charities, private donors and corporate bodies. For an up-to-date list of funders A 2013 article in Nature stated about the SMC, Perhaps the biggest criticism of Fox and the SMC is that they push science too aggressively  acting more as a PR agency than as a source of accurate science information. In 2002, The Guardian referred to the SMC as a lobby group.

Science communication may generate support for scientific research or study, or to inform decision making, including political and ethical thinking. There is increasing emphasis on explaining methods rather than simply findings of science. This may be especially critical in addressing scientific misinformation, which spreads easily because it is not subject to the constraints of scientific method. Science communicators can use entertainment and persuasion including humour, storytelling and metaphors. Scientists can be trained in some of the techniques used by actors to improve their communication.Partly due to a market for professional training, science communication is also an academic discipline. Journals include Public Understanding of Science and Science Communication. Researchers in this field are often linked to Science and Technology Studies, but may also come from history of science, mainstream media studies, psychology or sociology. As a reflection of growth in this field, academic departments, such as the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have been established to focus on applied and theoretical communication issues. Agricultural communication is considered a subset of science communication from an academic and professional standpoint relating to agriculture-related information among agricultural and non-agricultural stakeholders. Health communication is a related discipline. Writing in 1987, Geoffery Thomas and John Durant advocated various reasons to increase public understanding of science, or scientific literacy.