̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - communication

Researchers demonstrate the UK’s first long-distance ultra-secure communication over a quantum network

sc604 — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 23:38:58 +0000

̽��ֱ��team, from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, created the network, which uses standard fibreoptic infrastructure, but relies on a variety of quantum phenomena to enable ultra-secure data transfer.

̽��ֱ��network uses two types of quantum key distribution (QKD) schemes: ‘unhackable’ encryption keys hidden inside particles of light; and distributed entanglement: a phenomenon that causes quantum particles to be intrinsically linked.

̽��ֱ��researchers demonstrated the capabilities of the network via a live, quantum-secure video conference link, the transfer of encrypted medical data, and secure remote access to a distributed data centre. ̽��ֱ��data was successfully transmitted between Bristol and Cambridge – a fibre distance of over 410 kilometres.

This is the first time that a long-distance network, encompassing different quantum-secure technologies such as entanglement distribution, has been successfully demonstrated. ̽��ֱ��researchers presented their results at the 2025 Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) in San Francisco.

Quantum communications offer unparalleled security advantages compared to classical telecommunications solutions. These technologies are immune against future cyber-attacks, even with quantum computers, which – once fully developed – will have the potential to break through even the strongest cryptographic methods currently in use.

In the past few years, researchers have been working to build and use quantum communication networks. China recently set up a massive network that covers 4,600 kilometres by connecting five cities using both fibreoptics and satellites. In Madrid, researchers created a smaller network with nine connection points that use different types of QKD to securely share information.

In 2019, researchers at Cambridge and Toshiba demonstrated a metro-scale quantum network operating at record key rates of millions of key bits per second. And in 2020, researchers in Bristol built a network that could share entanglement between multiple users. Similar quantum network trials have been demonstrated in Singapore, Italy and the USA.

Despite this progress, no one has built a large, long-distance network that can handle both types of QKD, entanglement distribution, and regular data transmission all at once, until now.

̽��ֱ��experiment demonstrates the potential of quantum networks to accommodate different quantum-secure approaches simultaneously with classical communications infrastructure. It was carried out using the UK’s Quantum Network (UKQN), established over the last decade by the same team, supported by funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and as part of the Quantum Communications Hub project.

“This is a crucial step toward building a quantum-secured future for our communities and society,” said co-author Dr Rui Wang, Lecturer for Future Optical Networks in the Smart Internet Lab's High Performance Network Research Group at the ̽��ֱ�� of Bristol. “More importantly, it lays the foundation for a large-scale quantum internet—connecting quantum nodes and devices through entanglement and teleportation on a global scale.”

“This marks the culmination of more than ten years of work to design and build the UK Quantum Network,” said co-author Adrian Wonfor from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “Not only does it demonstrate the use of multiple quantum communications technologies, but also the secure key management systems required to allow seamless end-to-end encryption between us.”

“This is a significant step in delivering quantum security for the communications we all rely upon in our daily lives at a national scale,” said co-author Professor Richard Penty, also from Cambridge and who headed the Quantum Networks work package in the Quantum Communications Hub. “It would not have been possible without the close collaboration of the two teams at Cambridge and Bristol, the support of our industrial partners Toshiba, BT, Adtran and Cisco, and our funders at UKRI.”

“This is an extraordinary achievement which highlights the UK’s world-class strengths in quantum networking technology,” said Gerald Buller, Director of the IQN Hub, based at Heriot-Watt ̽��ֱ��. “This exciting demonstration is precisely the kind of work the Integrated Quantum Networks Hub will support over the coming years, developing the technologies, protocols and standards which will establish a resilient, future-proof, national quantum communications infrastructure.”

̽��ֱ��current UKQN covers two metropolitan quantum networks around Bristol and Cambridge, which are connected via a ‘backbone’ of four long-distance optical fibre links spanning 410 kilometres with three intermediate nodes.

̽��ֱ��network uses single-mode fibre over the EPSRC National Dark Fibre Facility (which provides dedicated fibre for research purposes), and low-loss optical switches allowing network reconfiguration of both classical and quantum signal traffic.

̽��ֱ��team will pursue this work further through a newly funded EPSRC project, the Integrated Quantum Networks Hub, whose vision is to establish quantum networks at all distance scales, from local networking of quantum processors to national-scale entanglement networks for quantum-safe communication, distributed computing and sensing, all the way to intercontinental networking via low-earth orbit satellites.

Reference:
R. Yang et al. ‘A UK Nationwide Heterogeneous Quantum Network.’ Paper presented at the 2025 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC): https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/schedule/

Researchers have successfully demonstrated the UK’s first long-distance ultra-secure transfer of data over a quantum communications network, including the UK’s first long-distance quantum-secured video call.

MR.Cole_Photographer via Getty Images

Abstract background

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

News article or big oil ad?

sc604 — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 16:43:33 +0000

In the battle against climate disinformation, native advertising is a fierce foe. A study published in the journal npj Climate Action by researchers from Boston ̽��ֱ�� (BU) and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, evaluates two promising tools to fight misleading native advertising campaigns put forth by big oil companies.

Many major news organisations now offer corporations the opportunity to pay for articles that mimic in tone and format the publication’s regular reported content. These ‘native advertisements’ are designed to camouflage seamlessly into their surroundings, containing only subtle disclosure messages often overlooked or misunderstood by readers. Fossil fuel companies are spending tens of millions of dollars to shape public perceptions of the climate crisis.

“Because these ads appear on reputable, trusted news platforms, and are formatted like reported pieces, they often come across to readers as genuine journalism,” said lead author Michelle Amazeen from BU’s College of Communication. “Research has shown native ads are really effective at swaying readers’ opinions.”

̽��ֱ��study is the first to investigate how two mitigation strategies — disclosures and inoculations — may reduce climate misperceptions caused by exposure to native advertising from the fossil fuel industry. ̽��ֱ��authors found that when participants were shown a real native ad from ExxonMobil, disclosure messages helped them recognise advertising, while inoculations helped reduce their susceptibility to misleading claims.

“As fossil fuel companies invest in disguising their advertisements, this study furthers our understanding of how to help readers recognise when commercial content is masquerading as news and spreading climate misperceptions,” said co-author Benjamin Sovacool, also from BU.

“Our study showed that communication-led climate action is possible and scalable by countering covert greenwashing campaigns, such as native advertising, at the source,” said co-author Dr Ramit Debnath from Cambridge’s Department of Architecture. “ ̽��ֱ��insights we’ve gained from this work will help us design better interventions for climate misinformation.”

̽��ֱ��research builds on a growing body of work assessing how people recognise and respond to covert misinformation campaigns. By better understanding these processes, the researchers hope that they can prevent misinformation from taking root and changing people’s beliefs and actions on important issues like climate change.

‘ ̽��ֱ��Future of Energy’ ad

Starting in 2018, readers of ̽��ֱ��New York Times website encountered what appeared to be an article, titled “ ̽��ֱ��Future of Energy,” describing efforts by oil and gas giant ExxonMobil to invest in algae-based biofuels. Because it appeared beneath the Times’ masthead, in the outlet’s typical formatting and font, many readers likely missed the small banner at the top of the page mentioning that it was an ad sponsored by ExxonMobil.

̽��ֱ��ad, part of a $5-million-dollar campaign, neglected to mention the company’s staggering carbon footprint. It also omitted key context, ̽��ֱ��Intercept reported, like that the stated goal for algae-based biofuel production would represent only 0.2% of the company’s overall refinery capacity. In a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Massachusetts cited the ad as evidence of the company’s “false and misleading” communications, with several states pursuing similar cases.

Putting two interventions to the test

̽��ֱ��researchers examined how more than a thousand participants responded to “ ̽��ֱ��Future of Energy” ad in a simulated social media feed.

Before viewing the ad, participants saw one, both, or neither of the following intervention messages:

An inoculation message designed to psychologically ‘inoculate’ readers from future influence by broadly warning them of potential exposures to misleading paid content. In this study, the inoculation message was a fictitious social media post from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminding people to be wary of online misinformation.

A disclosure message with a simple line of text appearing on a post. In this study, the text “Paid Post by ExxonMobil” accompanied the piece. Studies have shown that more often than not, when native ads are shared on social media, this disclosure disappears.

Bolstering psychological resilience to native ads

̽��ֱ��team found that the ad improved opinions of ExxonMobil’s sustainability across the study’s many participants, regardless of which messages they saw, but that the interventions helped to reduce this effect. Some of the key findings include:

̽��ֱ��presence of a disclosure more than doubled the likelihood that a participant recognised the content as an ad. However, the participants who had seen a disclosure and those who had not were equally likely to agree with the statement “companies like ExxonMobil are investing heavily in becoming more environmentally friendly.”

Inoculation messages were much more effective than disclosures at protecting people’s existing beliefs on climate change, decreasing the likelihood that participants would agree with misleading claims presented in the ad.

“Disclosures helped people recognise advertising. However, they didn’t help them recognise that the material was biased and misleading,” said Amazeen. “Inoculation messaging provides general education that can be used to fill in that gap and help people resist its persuasive effects. Increasing general awareness about misinformation strategies used by self-interested actors, combined with clearer labels on sponsored content, will help people distinguish native ads from reported content.”

Reference

Michelle A Amazeen et al. ‘ ̽��ֱ��“Future of Energy”? Building resilience to ExxonMobil’s disinformation through disclosures and inoculation.’ npj climate action (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00209-6

Adapted from a Boston ̽��ֱ�� story.

A sneaky form of advertising favoured by oil giants influences public opinion with climate action misperceptions, but researchers are studying potential solutions.

rob dobi vai Getty Images

Fueling the Fire of Misinformation - stock photo

Yes

Why animals talk

lkm37 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:51:54 +0000

Dr Arik Kershenbaum listens to wolves, gibbons and dolphins to reveal the messages they send one another. His work challenges our assumptions about what animals are capable of, and affirms what makes humans truly unique.

Successful honey-hunters know how to communicate with wild birds

jg533 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 09:04:57 +0000

Wild honeyguide birds prefer to cooperate with people who have learned local cultural traditions to find and access honey-filled bees’ nests, a new study has found.

Existing infrastructure will be unable to support demand for high-speed internet

sc604 — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 15:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and BT, have established the maximum speed at which data can be transmitted through existing copper cables. This limit would allow for faster internet compared to the speeds currently achievable using standard infrastructure, however it will not be able to support high-speed internet in the longer term.

̽��ֱ��team found that the ‘twisted pair’ copper cables that reach every house and business in the UK are physically limited in their ability to support higher frequencies, which in turn support higher data rates.

While full-fibre internet is currently available to around one in four households, it is expected to take at least two decades before it reaches every home in the UK. In the meantime, however, existing infrastructure can be improved to temporarily support high-speed internet.

̽��ֱ��results, reported in the journal Nature Communications, both establish a physical limit on the UK’s ubiquitous copper cables, and emphasise the importance of immediate investment in future technologies.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge-led team used a combination of computer modelling and experiments to determine whether it was possible to get higher speeds out of existing copper infrastructure and found that it can carry a maximum frequency of about 5 GHz, above the currently used spectrum, which is lower than 1 GHz. Above 5 GHz however, the copper cables start to behave like antennas.

Using this extra bandwidth can push data rates on the copper cables above several Gigabits per second on short ranges, while fibre cables can carry hundreds of Terabits per second or more.

“Any investment in existing copper infrastructure would only be an interim solution,” said co-author Dr Anas Al Rawi from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “Our findings show that eventual migration to optical fibre is inevitable.”

̽��ֱ��twisted pair– where two conductors are twisted together to improve immunity against noise and to reduce electromagnetic radiation and interference – was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Twisted pair cables replaced grounded lines by the end of the 19th century and have been highly reliable ever since. Today, twisted pair cables are standardised to carry 424 MHz bandwidth over shorter cable lengths owing to deeper fibre penetration and advancement in digital signal processing.

These cables are now reaching the end of their life as they cannot compete with the speed of fibre-optic cables, but it’s not possible to get rid of all the copper cables due to fibre’s high cost. ̽��ֱ��fibre network is continuously getting closer to users, but the connection between the fibre network and houses will continue to rely on the existing copper infrastructure. Therefore, it is vital to invest in technologies that can support the fibre networks on the last mile to make the best use of them.

“High-speed internet is a necessity of 21st century life,” said first author Dr Ergin Dinc, who carried out the research while he was based at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “Internet service providers have been switching existing copper wires to high-speed fibre-optic cables, but it will take between 15 and 20 years for these to reach every house in the UK and will cost billions of pounds. While this change is happening, we’ve shown that existing copper infrastructure can support higher speeds as an intermediate solution.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers, working with industry collaborators, have been investigating whether it’s possible to squeeze faster internet speeds out of existing infrastructure as a potential stopgap measure, particularly for rural and remote areas.

“No one had really looked into the physical limitations driving the maximum internet speed for twisted pair cables before,” said Dinc. “If we used these cables in a different way, would it be possible to get them to carry data at higher speeds?”

Using a mix of theoretical modelling and experimentation, the researchers found that twisted pair cables are limited in the frequency they can carry, a limit that’s defined by the geometry of the cable. Above this limit, around 5 GHz, the twisted pair cables start to radiate and behave like an antenna.

“ ̽��ֱ��way that the cables are twisted together defines how high a frequency they can carry,” said Dr Eloy de Lera Acedo, also from the Cavendish, who led the research. “To enable higher data rates, we’d need the cables to carry a higher frequency, but this can’t happen indefinitely because of physical limitations. We can improve speeds a little bit, but not nearly enough to be future-proof.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say their results underline just how important it is that government and industry work together to build the UK’s future digital infrastructure, since existing infrastructure can handle higher data rates in the near future, while the move to a future-proof full-fibre network continues.

̽��ֱ��work is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Cavendish, the Department of Engineering, BT and Huawei in a project led by Professor Mike Payne, also of the Cavendish Laboratory. ̽��ֱ��research was also supported by the Royal Society, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Reference:
Ergin Dinc et al. ‘High-Frequency Electromagnetic Waves on Unshielded Twisted Pairs: Upper Bound on Carrier Frequency.’ Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29631-8

Researchers have shown that the UK’s existing copper network cables can support faster internet speeds, but only to a limit. They say additional investment is urgently needed if the government is serious about its commitment to making high-speed internet available to all.

We can improve speeds a little bit, but not nearly enough to be future-proof

Eloy de Lera Acedo

Miroslaw Nozka/EyeEm via Getty Images

Copper wires

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

AI reduces ‘communication gap’ for nonverbal people by as much as half

sc604 — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 16:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��team, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of Dundee, developed a new context-aware method that reduces this communication gap by eliminating between 50% and 96% of the keystrokes the person has to type to communicate.

̽��ֱ��system is specifically tailed for nonverbal people and uses a range of context ‘clues’ – such as the user’s location, the time of day or the identity of the user’s speaking partner – to assist in suggesting sentences that are the most relevant for the user.

Nonverbal people with motor disabilities often use a computer with speech output to communicate with others. However, even without a physical disability that affects the typing process, these communication aids are too slow and error-prone for meaningful conversation: typical typing rates are between five and 20 words per minute, while a typical speaking rate is in the range of 100 to 140 words per minute.

“This difference in communication rates is referred to as the communication gap,” said Professor Per Ola Kristensson from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, the study’s lead author. “ ̽��ֱ��gap is typically between 80 and 135 words per minute and affects the quality of everyday interactions for people who rely on computers to communicate.”

̽��ֱ��method developed by Kristensson and his colleagues uses artificial intelligence to allow a user to quickly retrieve sentences they have typed in the past. Prior research has shown that people who rely on speech synthesis, just like everyone else, tend to reuse many of the same phrases and sentences in everyday conversation. However, retrieving these phrases and sentences is a time-consuming process for users of existing speech synthesis technologies, further slowing down the flow of conversation.

In the new system, as the person is typing, the system uses information retrieval algorithms to automatically retrieve the most relevant previous sentences based on the text typed and the context the conversation the person is involved in. Context includes information about the conversation such as the location, time of day, and automatic identification of the speaking partner’s face. ̽��ֱ��other speaker is identified using a computer vision algorithm trained to recognise human faces from a front-mounted camera.

̽��ֱ��system was developed using design engineering methods typically used for jet engines or medical devices. ̽��ֱ��researchers first identified the critical functions of the system, such as the word auto-complete function and the sentence retrieval function. After these functions had been identified, the researchers simulated a nonverbal person typing a large set of sentences from a sentence set representative of the type of text a nonverbal person would like to communicate.

This analysis allowed the researchers to understand the best method for retrieving sentences and the impact of a range of parameters on performance, such as the accuracy of word-auto complete and the impact of using many context tags. For example, this analysis revealed that only two reasonably accurate context tags are required to provide the majority of the gain. Word-auto complete provides a positive contribution but is not essential for realising the majority of the gain. ̽��ֱ��sentences are retrieved using information retrieval algorithms, similar to web search. Context tags are added to the words the user types to form a query.

̽��ֱ��study is the first to integrate context-aware information retrieval with speech-generating devices for people with motor disabilities, demonstrating how context-sensitive artificial intelligence can improve the lives of people with motor disabilities.

“This method gives us hope for more innovative AI-infused systems to help people with motor disabilities to communicate in the future,” said Kristensson. “We’ve shown it’s possible to reduce the opportunity cost of not doing innovative research with AI-infused user interfaces that challenge traditional user interface design mantra and processes.”

̽��ֱ��research paper was published at CHI 2020.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
Kristensson, P.O., Lilley, J., Black, R. and Waller, A. ‘A design engineering approach for quantitatively exploring context-aware sentence retrieval for nonspeaking individuals with motor disabilities.’ In Proceedings of the 38th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020). DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376525

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to reduce the ‘communication gap’ for nonverbal people with motor disabilities who rely on computers to converse with others.

This method gives us hope for more innovative AI-infused systems to help people with motor disabilities to communicate in the future

Per Ola Kristensson

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Speech bubble

Yes

Study identifies key challenges when communicating potential policies

fpjl2 — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Researchers have trawled through what little evidence currently exists on effectively communicating policy options, and point out four communication challenges that are problematic and often overlooked – yet should be required information for those making decisions that affect the lives of millions.

These include the need to highlight both the “winners and losers” of any policy decision, and to find ways of representing trade-offs between, say, financial and ecological or health outcomes. ̽��ֱ��findings are published today in the Springer Nature journal Palgrave Communications.

Recent decades have seen significant progress in producing information summaries that allow people to better understand how personal health choices affect their lives, say researchers.

However, they argue that similarly clear and concise materials are rarely available for legislators – and all of us citizens – on the potential outcomes of policies with stakes far beyond the individual.

Aiming to create a new science for communicating policy options, a team based at Cambridge’s Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication point out the difficulty of finding the optimal balance between “comprehensibility and coverage” of policy options when informing decision-makers.

“Too much complexity risks a lack of understanding or simply being ignored. However, a brief and easy-to-digest communication may well lack the depth and detail necessary for making an informed decision,” said the Winton Centre’s Dr Cameron Brick, lead author of the new study.

He describes this as the “core tension” at the heart of communicating any policy option. “We certainly see this with Brexit, for example: oversimplifications that don’t provide the full story competing with dense explanations that people struggle to understand.”

“ ̽��ֱ��ideal communication would provide appropriate detail in a quickly and easily understood format to help citizens and policymakers apply their own values to decisions. We want to find out if there is a template that can help achieve this balance.”

In this first analysis from the recently established Winton Centre, Brick and colleagues reviewed policy communications across a wide variety of areas – from taxes to health, climate change and international trade – as well as guidance and evidence for communication effectiveness.

̽��ֱ��spectrum of material ranged from a fairly impenetrable seventy-page report on the possibilities for the Heathrow third runway to colourful postcards emblazoned with a single statistic. All were trying to be balanced sources of information to support decision-making, yet none appear to have checked what effect their presentation had on their readers.

Policy decisions have enormous impacts, and citizens and voters need trusted and balanced sources of evidence. However, the team found surprisingly little evidence on effectively communicating policy options.

By comparing materials designed to inform personal choices with those covering policy choices, they identified four main characteristics that make communicating potential policies particularly difficult and are often neglected.

Policies almost inevitably create winners and losers, because some groups – whether demographic or regional – become better off than others. It is difficult to summarise the effects on different groups so that audiences can weigh those outcomes.
Policies are full of trade-offs – e.g. as financial costs go up pollution goes down – yet each is measured differently. Presenting multiple outcomes with different metrics that allow for easy comparison is a tricky communications problem.
Individual choices rarely go beyond our own lifespans. Yet some policy choices can affect generations, and even have different effects as time goes on – another challenge for a quick summary to capture.
Expected policy outcomes come with particularly large uncertainties from complex shifts of future social and political events and therefore generally cannot be predicted confidently.

Brick and colleagues point out that including more detail in policy options exacerbates the tension between in-depth coverage of the issues on the one hand, and the ability of audiences to get the gist of the communications on the other – and yet nobody appears to have worked on finding the sweet spot between amount of detail and ease of understanding.

“There is no standard model yet for how to tackle these four challenges, but we hope communicators devise effective strategies as the research progresses,” said Brick.

“We want to try and define that Goldilocks zone between too much information and not enough so that policymakers can see when key information is missing, and people can make choices that fit their values.”

As part of the current study, they used three pieces of policy communication from major organisations such as the UK’s Education Endowment Foundation and the International Panel on Climate Change to illustrate attempts to provide nonpartisan and detailed policy option summaries.

Brick and colleagues will be building on this initial work by conducting rigorous research on policy communications material, including one-on-one surveying with various demographics, and large-scale data collection through online surveys.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, Chairman of the Winton Centre, added: “At the Winton Centre, we are interested in helping people judge the benefits and harms of alternative policies or regulations that are being suggested.”

“ ̽��ֱ��idea of our Centre is to help communicate evidence in a way that is balanced, transparent and doesn’t try to coerce people into thinking or acting in a particular way.”

Read a blogpost on this study by lead author Dr Cameron Brick here.

Reference:
Cameron Brick et al. 'Winners and losers: communicating the potential impacts of policies.' Palgrave Communications (2018). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0121-9

Cambridge researchers set out to define a new science for policy communications, with ambitions of finding the “Goldilocks zone” between too much and not enough information when informing both legislators and the public on complex issues.

Too much complexity risks a lack of understanding or simply being ignored. However, a brief and easy-to-digest communication may well lack the depth and detail necessary for making an informed decision.

Cameron Brick

Priscilla Du Preez

Unsplash

Yes

Brains or beauty? People perceive attractive scientists as more interesting but less able, studies show

cjb250 — Mon, 22 May 2017 19:00:06 +0000

A new study published today in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex suggests that when it comes to judging scientists, we are more likely to find an attractive scientist interesting, but more likely to consider their less attractive colleagues to be better scientists.

“Given the importance of science to issues that could have a major impact on society, such as climate change, food sustainability and vaccinations, scientists are increasingly required to engage with the public,” says Dr Will Skylark from the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who led the study. “We know from studies showing that political success can be predicted from facial appearance, that people can be influenced by how someone looks rather than, necessarily, what they say. We wanted to see if this was true for scientists.”

Dr Skylark and colleagues randomly sampled the faces of scientists from the Physics and Genetics departments at US universities (108 scientists for each field), and then from the Physics and Biological Sciences departments at UK universities (200 scientists for each field) for replication studies.

In the first set of studies, the team asked one group to rate the faces on a variety of traits, such as how intelligent the individual looked, how attractive they were, and their perceived age. Then, two other groups of participants indicated how interested they would be in finding out more about each scientist’s research or how much the person looked like someone who conducts accurate and important research.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that people were more interested in learning about the work of scientists who were physically attractive and who appeared competent and moral. Interest was also slightly stronger for older scientists, and slightly lower for females. There was no difference in interest between white and non-white scientists.

However, when it came to judging whether a scientist does high-quality work, people tended to associate this with an individual’s apparent competence and morality – and the more attractive and sociable they were perceived to be, the less people considered them to look like a scientist who conducts good research.

̽��ֱ��researchers next investigated whether facial appearance affects people’s choices about which science to engage with by pairing the titles of real science-news stories with faces that had received low or high interest judgments in the first part of the study.

Participants were more likely to choose research that was paired with a photo of an interesting-looking scientist. This bias was present both for male and female scientists, physics and biology news stories, and both video and text formats.

Next, the participants were told that they would read articles from a new magazine section comprising profiles of people discussing their interests and work. ̽��ֱ��articles were adapted from news websites to make them appear like the scientist was describing his or her own work to a general audience. Participants read two articles, each presented with a photo of its putative author – one with a high ‘good scientist’ rating in the first study and one with a low rating.

Research that was paired with the photo of a ‘good scientist’ was judged to be higher quality, irrespective of the scientist’s gender and discipline – although the effect was small. In addition, quality judgments were higher for physics articles than for biology articles. A similar study found that the attractiveness of the scientist had only a small effect on the perceived quality of their research.

“It seems that people use facial appearance as a source of information when selecting and evaluating science news,” says Dr Skylark. “It’s not yet clear how much this shapes the spread and acceptance of scientific ideas among the public, but the rapid growth in visual media means it may be an increasingly important issue.”

Reference
Gheorghiu, AI, Callan, M and Skylark, WJ. Facial appearance affects science communication. PNAS; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620542114

If you think of good science communicators, it’s likely that the names Brian Cox, Alice Roberts or Neil deGrasse Tyson may come to mind. But do you consider them good science communicators because they look competent or because they are attractive?

We know from studies showing that political success can be predicted from facial appearance, that people can be influenced by how someone looks rather than, necessarily, what they say. We wanted to see if this was true for scientists

Will Skylark

Bob Lee

Professor Brian Cox

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

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