Research and projects

In general, I try to document to the ways that public communication of science is fundamental to the process of producing reliable knowledge about the natural world. When I can, I contribute to that process. Some of my work is historical, some of it deals with contemporary media issues, and some of it deals with learning science in informal environments (including assessing efforts to facilitate that learning). Most recently, I’ve tried to contribute to broader discussions of public engagement in science.

To see what others think of my work, try looking at my Google Scholar profile. For a more complete list of my publications, you can look at my Publications page.

Historical analysis

My core interest is in historical analysis of public communication of science and technology (with the caveat that my definition of “history” includes anything in this morning’s news).  A few examples:

• History of “public understanding of science” in America. This was my dissertation (summarized in Lewenstein 1992 in the list below), and led to a few articles:
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1989). Magazine Publishing and Popular Science After World War II. American Journalism, 6(4), 218-234.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1992). The Meaning of ‘Public Understanding of Science’ in the United States After World War II. Public Understanding of Science, 1(1), 45-68.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1993). NASA and the Public Understanding of Space Science. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 46, 251-254.

• The history of “cold fusion.”  This was the 1989 claim that two electrochemists had found a way to produce nuclear fusion at room temperature.  Rejected by many scientists as counter to the laws of physics, the claim engendered a scientific subcommunity that continues to this day. The most important outcome of my work was the creation of the Cornell Cold Fusion Archive, a collection of materials available to all researchers. My own publications include:
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1991). Preserving Data About the Knowledge Creation Process: Developing an Archive on the Cold Fusion Controversy. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion & Utilization, 13(1), 78-85.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1992). Cold Fusion and Hot History. Osiris, 2nd series, 7, 135-163.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1995). Do Public Electronic Bulletin Boards Help Create Scientific Knowledge?: The Cold Fusion Case. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 29(2), 123-149.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (1995). From Fax to Facts: Communication in the Cold Fusion Saga. Social Studies of Science, 25(3), 403-436.

• Public Perceptions and Constructions of the Y2K Problem. This project used innovative technology to collect television references from mid-1999 through January 2000 to the “Y2K” or “Millenium Bug” problem. The archive of media clips is available for other researchers to use. The project was conceived and run by then-STS graduate student (now Program Director for Digital Scholarship at the Sloan Foundation) Josh Greenberg, with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

• History of science books since World War II. A historical analysis of the place of books in science communication. The version here is a preprint of the chapter published in the 5-volume History of the Book in America series.

While not quite  historical, some of my recent work draws on the interpretive tradition and perspective that my historical work gives me.

• The Monarch butterfly as a scientific and cultural construction. I was part of a team looking at the Monarch. One publication to which I contributed:
  • Gustafsson, Karin M., Agrawal, Anurag A., Lewenstein, Bruce V., & Wolf, Steven. (2015). The Monarch Butterfly through Time and Space: The Social Construction of an Icon. BioScience, 65(6), 612-622. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biv045.

• The “science of science communication.” I have not been a big part of the SciofSciComm movement, but several of my former students have made major contributions. I did provide some perspective in one publication:
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2017). Scientific Controversies. In K. H. Jamieson, D. Kahan, & D. A. Scheufele (Eds.), Handbook of Science of Science Communication (pp. 73-78). New York: Oxford.

Work on contemporary media

Throughout the 2000s, with several students and colleagues, I spent time looking at contemporary media coverage and other aspects of the public presence of emerging technologies (or emerging technoscience, if you prefer), especially comparisons between media coverage and public opinion. Some of our publications looked at biotechnology and nanotechnology. A few key cites:

• Brossard, Dominique, Scheufele, Dietram, Kim, Eunkyung, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2009). Religiosity as a Perceptual Filter: Examining Processes of Opinion Formation about Nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science, 18(5), 546-558. doi: published online 1 Oct 2008, doi:10.1177/0963662507087304,
• Lee, Chul-Joo, Scheufele, Dietram A., & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2005). Public Attitudes toward Emerging Technologies: Examining the Interactive Effects of Cognitions and Affect on Public Attitudes toward Nanotechnology. Science Communication, 27(2), 240-267. doi: 10.1177/1075547005281474
• Lewenstein, Bruce, Radin, Joanna, & Diels, Janie. (2007). Nanotechnology in the media: A preliminary analysis. In Mihail C. Roco & William Sims Bainbridge (Eds.), Nanotechnology: Societal Implications II: Individual Perspectives (pp. 258-265). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2001). Expertise in the Media. Social Studies of Science, 31(3), 441-444.
• Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2005). Nanotechnology and the Public (introduction to special issue). Science Communication, 27(2), 169-174.
• Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2005). What counts as a “social and ethical issue” in nanotechnology? Hyle: International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry, 11(1), 5-18.
• Nisbet, Matthew C., & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2002). Biotechnology and the American Media: The Policy Process and the Elite Press, 1970 to 1999. Science Communication, 23(4), 359-391. doi: 10.1177/107554700202300401
• Scheufele, Dietram A., & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2005). The public and nanotechnology: How citizens make sense of emerging technologies. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 7(6), 659-667.
• Laslo, E., Baram-Tsabari, A., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2011). A Growth Medium for the Message: Online Science Journalism Affordances for Exploring Public Discourse of Science and Ethics. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 12(7), 847-870, DOI: 10.1177/1464884911412709

Evaluation of science outreach

In the 1990s and 2000s, I became involved in a number of projects designing and evaluating contemporary science outreach projects. Many of these projects involved “citizen science,” especially at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.  Much of the work was done as reports through my consulting company, Seavoss Associates Inc. (which closed in 2012). But a few publications did emerge:

• Brossard, Dominique, Lewenstein, Bruce V., & Bonney, Rick. (2005). Scientific Knowledge and Attitude Change: The Impact of a Citizen Science Project. International Journal of Science Education, 27(9), 1099-1121.
• Phillips, Tina, Lewenstein, Bruce V., & Bonney, Rick. (2006). A Case Study of Citizen Science. In Donghong Cheng, Jenni Metcalfe & Bernard Schiele (Eds.), At the Human Scale: International Practices in Science Communication (pp. 317-334). Beijing, China: Science Press.

In this area, I should include my work on the U.S. National Research Council committee on Learning Science in Informal Environments, published in 2009 as

• Bell, Philip, Lewenstein, Bruce V., Shouse, Andrew, & Feder, Michael (Eds.). (2009). Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. [It is available as a free download from the NAP.]

Public engagement in science

Finally, a recent strain of my work has looked at a range of topics in “public engagement in science,” with particular attention to the multiple meanings of that term, including “citizen science.”  Some products include:

• Citizen science
  • Shirk, Jennifer L., Ballard, Heidi L., Wilderman, Candie C., Phillips, Tina, Wiggins, Andrea, Jordan, Rebecca, McCallie, Ellen, Minarchek, Matthew, Lewenstein, Bruce V., Krasny, Marianne E., Bonney, Rick. (2012). Public Participation in Scientific Research: A Framework for Intentional Design. Ecology and Society, 17(2), 29-48. doi: 10.5751/ES-04705-170229
  • Cooper, Caren B., & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2016). Two meanings of citizen science. In D. Cavalier & E. B. Kennedy (Eds.), The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science (pp. 51-62). Tempe, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2016). Editorial: Can we understand citizen science? [special issue on citizen science]. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 14(4), online only at http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/15/01/JCOM_1501_2016_E.
  • Pandya, Rajul, & Dibner, Kenne Ann (Eds.). (2018). Learning through Citizen Science: Enhancing Opportunities by Design. Washington, DC: National Academies Press [free download, here]. [I was a member of the committee that produced the report.]
  • Phillips, Tina, Ballard, Heidi, Bonney, Rick, & Lewenstein, Bruce. (2019). Examining engagement in science through citizen science: Moving beyond data collection. Science Education, 103(3), 665-690. doi:10.1002/sce.21501.
• Ways of thinking about “public engagement with science,” including other dimensions of what I like to call “public communication of science and technology,” though the label “science communication” (or #scicomm) has become more widely used.
  • McCallie, Ellen, Bell, Larry, Lohwater, Tiffany, Falk, John, Lehr, Jane H., Lewenstein, Bruce V., Needham, Cynthia, & Wiehe, Ben. (2009). Many Experts, Many Audiences: Public Engagement with Science and Informal Science Education.  A CAISE Inquiry Group Report (pp. 83). Washington, DC: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education. [free download]
  • Brossard, Dominique, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2010). A Critical Appraisal of Models of Public Understanding of Science: Using Practice to Inform Theory. In LeeAnn Kahlor & Patricia Stout (Eds.), Communicating Science: New Agendas in Communication (pp. 11-39). New York: Routledge.  [A note about this paper: An earlier version has circulated in manuscript form–for example, here–for many years, and has been cited as “Lewenstein 2003” or “Lewenstein 2004,” with the title “Models of Science Communication.”  The cite here is the formal publication.]
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (initiator). (2012-). Wiki page: Public Engagement in Science. [In 2016, the entry was changed from a wiki to a stable text. The fundamental structure and most of the text comes from my initial work. The current version is here: https://www.informalscience.org/news-views/public-engagement.]
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2015). Identifying what matters: Science education, science communication, and democracy. Journal of Research on Science Teaching, 52(2), 253-262. doi: 10.1002/tea.21201.
  • Davies, Sarah R., Halpern, Megan, Horst, Maja, Kirby, David, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2019). Science stories as culture: Experience, identity, narrative and emotion in public communication of science. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 18(5), online only, A1801, http://doi.org/10.22323/2.18050201.
  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2019). Editorial introduction: The need for feminist approaches to science communication. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 18(4), online only, C1801, http://doi.org/10.22323/2.18040301.
• Another thread in this work looks at training for science communication and public engagement:
  1. Baram-Tsabari, Ayelet, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2013). Assessing scientists’ written skills in public communication of science. Science Communication, 35(1), 56-85, doi: 10.1177/1075547012440634.
  2. Baram-Tsabari, Ayelet, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2017). Science Communication Training: What are We Trying to Teach? International Journal of Science Education — Part B: Communication and Public Engagement, 7(3), 285-300. doi:10.1080/21548455.2017.1303756.
• Finally, a few miscellaneous recent articles — often the initiative of the lead author, and I’ve just provided a sounding board as their ideas develop.
  • Entradas, Marta, Marcelino, Joana, Bauer, Martin W., & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2019). Public communication by climate scientists: What, with whom, and why? Climatic Change, 154, 69-85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02414-9
  • García-Guerrero, Miguel, Lewenstein, Bruce, Michel-Sandoval, Bertha, & Esparza-Manrique, Viridiana (2020). Los talleres de ciencia recreativa y la retroalimentación acción-reflexión [Recreational science workshops and action/reflection feedback]. JCOM-América Latina: Journal of Science Communication in Latin America, 3(1), online only, N0302, http://doi.org/10.22323/3.03010802.
  • García-Guerrero, Miguel, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2020). Science recreation workshops groups in Mexico: a study on an emergent community. International Journal of Science Education, Part B: Communication and Public Engagement, 10(2), 133-148. doi:10.1080/21548455.2020.1719293
  • Lopes de Oliveira, Diogo, Moreno, Erick, & Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2021). Media representations of official declarations and political actions in Brazil during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Frontiers in Communication. 6, Article 646445 (online only). http://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.646445.

[Last update: 20 August 2021]