Apologies in advance to the editorial staff and to the larger Science in Society community for this post, but I think it warrants mention that the innovations I proposed in the abstract as a first-grader are finally becoming a reality.  In something that qualifies as vaguely scientific, Topps, the baseball card company, has teamed up with Disney CEO Michael Eisner to create animated 3D baseball cards.  Hold the card up to a webcam and a fully-rendered 3D model appears, complete with animations of stretching, pitching, hitting… the whole nine yards…or innings.

Glass-half-empty, maybe this is a marquee example of the ways in which funds for science and technology are completely misdirected to frivolous endeavors, but I prefer to view it as a testament of science as an innovating force.  Scientists have taken a medium normally limited to low-quality cardboard packaged with stale, flavorless gum and transformed it into a stage on which a digitalized Ryan Howard can clean his cleats and practice his swing.

While it’s entirely possible that I just like cool, animated, 3D baseball cards, I also think that if it is possible for science to so completely transform lighthearted technology such as this one, it also must be possible to make similar revolutions in the development of cancer treatments, embryonic stem-cell research, and perhaps other serious disciplines and technologies.  But it’s true that I still do really like 3D baseball cards.

Last week, I spent a little time talking about the differential effects of graphic versus text-only warning labels on cigarette packs.  Research verifies that the more jarring, graphic labels actually have a measurably increased affect on the reception and recognition of the message.  That is to say that the cigarette packages with a more graphic label increased public awareness of the side-effects of cigarettes smoke much more than did the text-only packages.

The lesson, I believe, is that science’s role in public policy isn’t limited writing the laws.  Science, in addition to providing data to form a good policy, also has an important role in communicating it to the public effectively.  The cigarette labels provide just one example that intelligently designed communication can significantly increase the effectiveness of a policy.

Another example of how more effective communication can affect policy arises with the way the fuel efficiency of our cars is displayed.  Right now the government mandates that the fuel efficiency of every car sold within the United States be displayed as estimations of both highway and city-driving miles-per-gallon (MPG), in an effort to promote purchasing more fuel efficient cars.  An article by Duke University professor Richard Larrick in the June 2008 issue of Science suggests that MPG might, in fact, be a little misleading.  Larrick argues that MPG misrepresents true fuel efficiency and that it might be causing consumers to make the wrong decisions when upgrading their automobiles.

He suggests that an alternative metric, gallons-per-mile or GPM, is, in fact, a better way to display the information.  Why is this so?  (Read more…)

Sorry for the delay, I was in Mexico City this past week.  It’s a beautiful city that in almost no way resembles the crime-ridden streets and smog-filled air that had been described to me.  Every other block is a park with a fountain, and the blocks are lined with storefronts selling  hot coffee, fresh fruit, and cigarettes sold either individually or a pack at a time.

I don’t smoke, but out of curiosity I examined the packages, wondering what kind of cigarettes they smoke in Mexico City.  I found, almost to my disappointment, that the packs looked nearly identical the ones in the United States.  They have the same brands and the same cowboy-centric advertising campaigns, but there is a difference.  The warnings were printed in a small, black font that was easy to ignore.

It was actually in striking contrast to warnings I had seen in other parts of Central and South America.  In Brazil the entire back panel of the package was taken up with jarring, almost morbid images portraying the maleffects of smoking.  Sometimes it was a graphic image of a tumor, other times a haunting image of an underweight baby.  The contrast between the Mexican and Brazilian cigarette packages couldn’t have been greater.  I had to wonder if it made a difference. (Read more…)

Until very recently, I had assumed that the growing wealth of information provided by online search engines, both scientific and otherwise, was an unambiguously good thing.  It turns out that might be less true that I first thought.   I came across an article in Slate that documented Yahoo!’s attempt to fend off a hostile takeover by Microsoft by outsourcing its advertising operations to Google.  Yahoo!, in exchange for a large some of money, allowed Google to control which advertisements accompany Yahoo! search results, how often, and in relation to which content.  And while it is true that any advertising department, even Google’s, has limitations to its influence, it is also true that the ability to easily locate and view information should also come with the understanding that the purveyors of this information have a great deal of influence over what you access, and how, exactly, you access it. (Read more…)