UAH awards first place to Manuel Peinado Lorca in the Science Promotion and Dissemination Awards

Manuel Peinado Lorca, Professor in the Department of Life Sciences and Researcher at the Franklin Institute of North American Studies at Universidad de Alcalá, has won the first prize for his extensive work of scientific dissemination through the media and has contributed to the improvement of the image of the UAH.

- First of all, many congratulations on the prize you have received, can you tell us what your work of dissemination has consisted of you that you have obtained this prize?

Thank you very much for your congratulations. The award, which I thank the Jury and I will not be the one who questions his decision, has been awarded to me mainly by my articles of dissemination in various blogs and in digital press. The most widely used media of these is The Conversation, a source of news and analysis written by the academic and research community and directed directly to society, in which I have published some fifty articles that have had almost five million readers in just over a year and a half.

My personal blog 'Sobre esto y aquello'  (About this and that in english) has more than half a million readers, and I also collaborate in other university blogs such as Diálogo Atlántico or Grupo de Investigación en Ecocrítica (Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities, GIECO). I have also published articles in the written press and I have taken part in radio and television programs related to the environment or nature.

- What are the latest topics that you are most proud to have disclosed in the media?

I´m particularly pleased with a number of articles published during the pandemic containment phase, in which I addressed the biological aspects of COVID. Together, those articles have surpassed one million readers and one of them, in which I linked COVID-19 with bats and pangolins, is my most read article with 350.000 readers.

In that period of the beginning of the pandemic, when there was a lot of missinformation and fake news. I tried to make my popular articles shed some light, scientific reasoning and tranquility in the midst of the confusion. 

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Manuel Peinado Lorca

But what I like, above all, is to use my blog so that the students of my subjects have access to informative texts. For example, I have dedicated the last three articles to the physiological basis of the change in color of the leaves in autumn, to jimsonweed and the peanut plant.

- What does it mean to receive this prize? What projects of scientific popularization are you preparing? Will you carry out any new project?

It supposes to receive a recognition to my daily and constant work of reading and writing. I am a very curious person, and my curiosity leads me to study certain topics related to society and science; when I have learned something about a topic, I try to spread it with the simplest possible language. For me, divulging is not a job, it is a pleasure, and I would even say a teaching obligation.

In the future, I will try to continue doing the same: writing about this and that. About topics that interest me and that end up interesting other people. In Spain, science is not very popular, among other things because it is not an activity that is recognized and valued in the promotion of academic or scientific careers, science professionals focus on research. Traditionally, scientists, and even more so those of us who work at the University, have been accused of living in an 'ivory tower'.

- Finally, please explain to us what does popularization of science mean to you? Pros and cons you find to make your scientific contents popular in the media nowadays?

I think we must open doors and windows of the 'tower' to publicize or disseminate, not the own and necessarily limited personal research, but the news that bring the research of others. Scientific research magazines are full of interesting topics that should be disseminated, so that the public knows what is being done and how scientists work.

As for media coverage, in recent years the most important newspapers have incorporated sections of scientific journalism, which do it very well. International academic blogs such as The Conversation are also the way open for many media outlets to replicate the articles we publish there. My articles in that blog have been republished in the main Spanish and American newspapers. If the articles are of interest, the media are grateful to reach the sources directly and the authors, naturally, are delighted with the repercussion of our writing.

Publicado en: Inglés