Science, News and the Public explores the adverse ways in which scientific activities are reported in news media.

As the rate of scientific discoveries and developments accelerate, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand and relate these events to our everyday lives. The daily activities of science are obscured behind an ever-thickening screen of corporate, civil and military secrecy, whilst the news media - the only major space left for public engagement in science development - represent it in a way that tends to drive people away from science rather than attract them to its issues and debates.

This book explores the shift in science news communication, demonstrating that journalism needs to change the way it deals with science - altering its traditional mindsets and abandoning its much-discredited techniques - if it is to maintain or regain its role as a principal force that encourages discussion and understanding of science in the public sphere.