The lack of information from institutions and organisations regarding the use of animals in scientific research produces a specialised communication niche which non-scientific groups have exploited to make public opinion sympathetic to them.

During a period dominated by positivist thinking, metaphors seemed incompatible with science, at least for the most common manifestations of scientific discourse.

Biotechnological research has made significant progress; however, some of its results are controversial because of their health and environmental risks, and these limit their application because of the precautionary measures applied to them.

The latest biotechnology applications allow for faster and cheaper gene editing than ever before. Many people are calling for a public debate on these issues, including the social, cultural and ethical implications of these applications.

Communication is essential in all areas of society, but communication in science is inescapable. Communicating means sharing, showing, teaching, and transferring knowledge both to colleagues and to society in general.

The communication of biotechnology has played a key role in recent years. The great advances made and the speed with which new genetic editing techniques are implemented raise enormous expectations but also concerns.

Discourse about pseudoscience usually accompanies dialogue about science. Despite attempts to separate the two domains, people still rely on pseudoscientific remedies.

Rarely does pseudoscience address the formation of aircraft trails in the sky. These trails are usually discussed by conspiracy theorists, rather than by pseudoscience.

This article reviews the basics of EU regulations on organic food production and concludes that, for the most part, they mislead the consumer and are not science based.

As a set of pseudoscientific ideas, clinical pseudopsychology has a peculiar characteristic: it has established an entire tradition parallel to psychology, with numerous branches and interrelated theoretical and practical developments.

Pseudoscience (false science) and science based on faulty and biased studies (bad science) produce false or uncertain knowledge, with poor or no evidence.

Alternative medicine has a high social prevalence, being promoted by well organized groups that have developed an intricate rhetoric in order to self-justify in the absence of evidence. This article will analyse some of these arguments, some of their fallacies, other styles of reasoning, and other misconceptions of scientific concepts.

Both the scientific and philosophical problems with classic pseudosciences such as astrology and creationism are well known. Most fields of inquiry have controversial areas that inspire suspicions of systematic intellectual malpractice.

This paper develops an epidemiological approach to account for the typical features and popularity of pseudoscience and discuss several factors that promote the dissemination of pseudoscientific beliefs.

Science is a fact-finding practice, but there are many other fact-finding practices that apply largely the same patterns of reasoning in order to achieve as reliable information as possible in empirical issues.

Pseudosciences are by-products of the prestige of science as a social enterprise and as a means of obtaining knowledge. Their character is inherently negative, given that, by definition, a pseudoscience

Literature constitutes an important educational element that can improve the doctor-patient relationship because it facilitates better understanding of illnesses.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal was also the author of some very important scientific and biographical work as well as his Vacation stories. Five science fiction tales, a collection of five short stories with an educational purpose.

Long before the first successful transplants were performed on humans, some writers had already written about them in fiction. Literature can contribute to the ethical and social debate surrounding transplants.

We can identify two periods in the history of AIDS patient narratives: before and after the discovery of triple therapies. We analyse the changes this paradigm shift produced on literature.

Literature and medicine are closely connected. Many works that portray experiences of disease have been set in health care facilities, including sanatoriums. Anti-tuberculosis sanatoriums, seen as spaces of isolation and as «death row» have inspired many authors. Twentieth-century novels devoted significant attention to these institutions which, kept far from the rest of society, conditioned both the life and the identity of the sick.

Literature has had a range of ways to approach the concept of death, from expressions of personal grief, through to the ways they are represented in a culture.

A critical review of Woolf's literary legacy allows us to get closer to what might be one of the most intense literary portrayals of illness and its metaphors and, at the same time, to the representations, euphemisms, silences, and monsters depicted in the chapters of her life and in the unique voice of this essential author.

La literatura ha estat, és i serà un element nuclear en l’estudi de les distintes formes de representació semiòtica de la salut i de la malaltia. Hi ha dos elements essencials perquè això siga així; en primer lloc, el fet que l’activitat relacionada amb la salut i la malaltia, també en entorns professionals, està travessada contínuament per narracions (a vegades, en forma d’informes o apunts presos en escoltar el relat del pacient); el segon és que, certament, el fet d’emmalaltir i el de curar va associat a circumstàncies de vegades excepcionals i suggeridores per a la creació.