Research in this area stretches across disciplinary boundaries, university departments, funding agencies and field-specific journals, is the subject of inquiry at journals like Science and Nature, debated in the media and at blogs, and the focus of top-selling books.
Indeed, as New Scientist magazine proclaimed in a recent cover story: "It may be high time US scientists put aside their own skepticism about the 'soft' social sciences, and embrace what these studies have to say" about the communication processes shaping debates ranging from climate change to stem cell research.
Enter the National Academies.
Marshaling the very best of its convening and agenda-setting function, on May 20-21 in Washington, DC, the Academies hosted a prestigious 2-day Sackler Colloquia surveying the state-of-the-art of social science research on communication, connecting this research to its implications for science-related governance, policy and public engagement.
