Mineral Cup is an annual global volunteer-run competition to determine the most popular mineral, decided by public voting and played out mainly on social media. Over nine years of Mineral Cup, nine distinct minerals or mineral groups have been crowned champion, in chronological order: olivine, garnet, ice, magnetite, quetzalcoatlite, fluorite, zircon, rhodochrosite and kyanite. Participants in Mineral Cup can vote for minerals for any reason, ranging from scientific and often esoteric to aesthetic. Factors influencing voting include name or nickname, colour, striking appearance, utility, unusual characteristics, cultural impact, and fun facts. Mineral Cup has a global reach, with over 30,000 voters a year in 2018–2025 encompassing voters from over 100 countries per year. The popular knockout format of Mineral Cup could also be used in a wider range of geoscience competitions, and in late 2025 the first such instance of a spin-off competition (Ore Cup) was held. In the context of declining enrolments in geoscience degrees, we discuss Mineral Cup as a potential tool to promote the joy of mineralogy widely, including to audiences that may otherwise have limited or no exposure to geoscience. Finally, we provide an outline of future directions of Mineral Cup, the reach of which as an entity is currently limited by volunteer time and availability in much the same way as professional society activities are limited by the availability of their members.

Discussions on the relationship between science and society frequently advocate for direct engagement between scientists and lay people. While such engagement is often framed as a remedy for declining trust in science, it introduces a distinct set of ethical challenges. One such challenge concerns the risk of epistemic trespassing, the overstepping of disciplinary boundaries. Another arises when individual scientists, by virtue of their public role, are seen as representatives of “science” as a whole. These issues are further complicated by a less-discussed form of trespassing: the ethical tensions that emerge when scientists draw on non-epistemic sources of authority, such as charismatic or traditional authority (in the Weberian sense), to bolster their public claims. This paper argues that addressing these challenges requires a nuanced, context-sensitive approach. In some cases, the most ethically defensible strategy and pragmatically viable strategy may be not to communicate individually, but rather to contribute to collective efforts that facilitate responsible public communication. By reframing public engagement as a team task, scientists can mitigate the risks of trespassing while still fulfilling their role in fostering trust in science.

Clinical and translational science faces persistent challenges in public trust, effective communication, and siloed knowledge structures. Addressing these issues requires innovative educational and engagement strategies. We present an artist-in-residency program immersed into an undergraduate pathway program to integrate artwork as a tool to enhance science communication, foster public engagement, and build a resilient translational science workforce. Through structured art-science–community interactions, this initiative demonstrates how artistic practice builds a new collaborative communication framework for linking early-career scientists, clinical translational research faculty, and the broader community. The conceptual novelty of our science-art initiative promises to break communication barriers, increase public trust, and develop new, accessible science narratives.

Accessibility at the Sterkfontein Caves UNESCO World Heritage Site limits public and scientific engagement. The authors digitally visualised part of the cave using laser scans and photogrammetry, geospatially integrating the digital cave and fossil datasets. This enables broader access for learners, educators and scientists and enhances scientific outreach potential.

What is persuasion and how does it differ from coercion, indoctrination, and manipulation? Which persuasive strategies are effective, and which contexts are they effective in? The aim of persuasion is attitude change, but when does a persuasive strategy yield a rational change of attitude? When is it permissible to engage in rational persuasion? In this paper, I address these questions, both in general and with reference to particular examples. The overall aims are (i) to sketch an integrated picture of the psychology, epistemology, and ethics of persuasion and (ii) to argue that there is often a tension between the aim we typically have as would-be persuaders, which is bringing about a rational change of mind, and the ethical constraints which partly distinguish persuasion from coercion, indoctrination, and manipulation.

This paper examines mediators’ epistemic obligations during expert interviews. Drawing on science communication, journalism ethics, and social epistemology, I argue that mediators have an epistemic duty to ask good questions of experts. After outlining how expert testimony can harm audiences epistemically and providing a normative framework for mediators’ duty to inform, I examine three strategies to discharge this duty. The credentials monitoring approach, which limits mediators’ role in verifying experts’ qualifications and competence, fails to prevent harmful testimony from genuine experts. The interference approach, which requires mediators to challenge expert claims directly, imposes unrealistically high epistemic standards on mediators and risks counterproductive non-peer disagreements. I propose an alternative: the good questioning approach. By asking expanding and contesting questions that prompt experts to justify claims and make evidence accessible, mediators can fulfill their epistemic duty without needing domain-specific expertise. This framework enhances our understanding of distributed epistemic responsibility in public scientific discourse and offers practical guidance for improving journalistic practice in expert interviews.

Value transparency is thought to promote trust in scientific expertise. Yet, transparency is a complex concept. I will argue that transparency requirements come with a varying extent of engagement: merely disclosing information, providing information that is publicly accessible, or having additional mechanisms for criticism in place. It is often not clear in which sense transparency requirements are to be understood in the context of trust in expertise. However, each sense can backfire in different ways. Merely talking about transparency in a general sense hides these possible trade-offs. This furthermore shows that requiring transparency may come with a greater regulatory force.

Which additional epistemic skills or attributes must a competent journalist possess in order to produce competent science journalism? I aim to answer this question by bringing together insights from journalism, science communication, and epistemology. In Section 2, I outline the Epistemic Challenge for Science Journalism. In Section 3, I present the dominant answer in the literature, the Knowledge-Based Solution, and argue against it. In Section 4, I propose an alternative, the Confirmation-Based Solution. In Section 5, I argue that this solution can address recent concerns regarding journalistic objectivity. Section 6 discusses my proposal in the context of epistemological debates about norms of assertion. Section 7 concludes.

The relevance of education and outreach (E&O) activities about the Antarctic Treaty has been recognized at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) and at the Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP). This study examines the key topics and the target audiences detailed in papers submitted to the ATCM on E&O. Since the Antarctic Treaty entered into force in 1961, a total of 216 ATCM papers on E&O have been produced. The number of papers has increased substantially since the mid-1990s. ‘Science’ (76.9%) and ‘Wildlife/Biodiversity/Environment’ (75.5%) were the most addressed topics in these papers, while the ‘Public’ (81.0%) and those attending ‘Schools’ (69.0%) are the main target audiences. ‘Science’ in ATCM papers increased ~120-fold from 1961–1997 to 2015–2023, while ATCM papers discussing engagement with the ‘Public’ increased ~40-fold during the same period. ‘Climate change’ was first mentioned in 2006, and the number of papers per year increased fourfold by 2015–2023. This study shows the increasing interest in E&O through time, addressing key topics to relevant audiences related to the Antarctic region. From an educational perspective, attention should be paid to emerging topics (e.g. equity, diversity and inclusion), and the engagement of early-career professionals and educators should be made a priority.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is, at its core, a grand endeavour in communication. While we hope to detect signals from intelligent civilisations beyond our solar system, searching for cosmic company has profound implications for our species’ curiosity, technological capabilities, and innate need to connect socially. It gives pause for thought that while we focus the search and post-detection, we undervalue what evolutionary psychologists assert, neuroscientists have demonstrated, science communicators know works in connecting science with society, and journalists employ: We are hardwired for storytelling by evolution, remaining our most effective form of communication. What if the most important message is not from the stars but what the search tells about wanting to know what is in the last chapter of one of the most profound stories ever told? Should the experiment succeed, the stories of survival of intelligence from a distant civilisation may be of most interest.

The last day of the Kavli-IAU symposium featured a fourth discussion, which was about the future. The discussion focused on the changing landscape of scientific research and the allocation of funding and their implications for the ideal scientist of tomorrow. It was chaired by H. Landt, who was joined by the four panellists E. Chatzichristou, J. R. A. Davenport, M. G. Edmunds and D. H. Grinspoon.

In this study, we examine the social media response statistics to a recent astrobiology headline about the discovery of phosphorus on Venus, which led to a media outbreak of ‘Life on Venus?’ claims. We estimate its impact scale by comparing it with other events.

Until recently, statistical consultants did not have to worry about being replaced by artificial intelligence. There was no statistical analogue to ‘Dr Google’ before ChatGPT arrived on the scene. Although ChatGPT (most of the time) adequately responds to basic queries such as the assumptions of different statistical tests or summarises relevant manuals on statistical software providing clear instructions with point-and-click software such as SPSS, there are many important aspects of statistical consulting that ChatGPT does not cover. This tutorial article is about these aspects: a summary of what statistical consulting is, its purpose and possible settings during the empirical research cycle, the role and responsibilities of the consultant and the client, how to ensure a good consulting experience, how to prepare for a consulting session, typical questions and more. The article was written for researchers who are considering contacting a statistician for the first time and aims to facilitate a good and fruitful consulting experience for all parties involved.

Much ink has been spilled on the scientist–practitioner gap, that is, the apparent divide between knowledge published in academic peer-reviewed journals and the actual business practices employed in modern organizations. Most prior papers have advanced meaningful theories on why the gap exists, ranging from poor communication skills on the part of academics to paywalls and other obstacles preventing the public from accessing research in industrial-organizational psychology (I-O). However, very few papers on the scientist–practitioner gap have taken an empirical approach to better understand why the gap exists and what can be done about it. In our focal article, we specifically discuss the gap as it pertains to small businesses and present empirical data on the topic. Drawing from our experiences working with and in small businesses before entering a PhD program, we suggest that a primary reason for the existence of this gap is the differences between large and small businesses, and we advance two theory-driven reasons for why this is the case. Next, we compiled abstracts and practical implications sections from articles published in top I-O journals in the past 5 years, then we collected ratings and open-ended text responses from subject matter experts (i.e., small business owners and managers) in reaction to reading these sections. We close by recommending several potential perspectives, both for and against our arguments, that peer commentators can take in their responses to our focal article.