Last night I got a question and comment about science. In short, it was, "how do non-scientist people know the content of recent science? The Government does not seem to be doing good job to let people know the result, does it?"
To track the latest of contemporary science, you got to know where to look at. I'll write a little bit about how the results are disseminated to researchers and to the public.
I don't know how the rocket science people do it, though. I'll answer his question with an example of cancer and food relationship in my study field; Carcinogenesis and Cancer Chemoprevention.
In cancer chemoprevention research field, there are a few major questions.
One question is, "what diet compound or drug is good to prevent a (specific) cancer". Be it colon, lung, liver, pancreas....the research field is sectioned by organ.
We cannot use people for medical experiments for obvious reasons. Only solid preclinical results with strong rationale may allow testing in human clinical trials.
So, scientists have a set of model systems for each organ, that are supposed to reflect human's. The model may be a transgenic mouse model that develop a particular type of cancer. The model may be rats treated with a set of chemicals that challenge and cause specific condition, like colitis or cancer in liver or colon or other organs....you get the picture?
Then scientists test a diet, dietary compound/chemical, or a drug (experimental or established) on the model, and see whether the cancer or the condition is improved. In case of cancer, incidence, size and multiplicity are main things to monitor.
Another major question is somewhat more academic; How does cancer come into being? Research on the mechanistic aspect of carcinogenesis is critical to come up with a new hypothesis that may lead to a new cancer prevention, diagnosis and/or therapy.
Anyways, researchers do the research, and get the results. Let's say it's time to publish the results.
The results are disseminated in three tiers. Tier 1; Primary publications that appear in specialized scientific journals after peer review, and tier 2 and 3; secondary and the downstream publications, as in public relations document or an article in newspaper or health magazine.
Tier 1 publications can be viewed or searched through Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed). It's the government-maintained database for publications in medical science. If you want to know a latest publication for, say, colon cancer, go there, type in the key words, and you get 107896 hits as of today. I consider academic/medical textbooks as tier 1, too.
Tier 2 and 3 publications play a major role in communicating the scientific "results" to non-scientists and lay people.
In terms of colon cancer chemoprevention, there is a curatorial site maintained by French scientists. http://www7.inra.fr/internet/Projets/reseau-nacre/sci-memb/corpet/indexan.html
For more general result, some cancer centers are including diet advice based on research publications.
An example is this one at the Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center.
http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/about-herbs
And of course the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
An example page. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/diet
Some organizations have a focus on investigating relationship between cancer and nutrition and/or lifestyle (e.g. exercise).
American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) is an example. http://www.aicr.org/
American Cancer Society (ACS) (http://www.cancer.org/) provides good amount of educational information about cancer.
There are many more. Once you hit the right place, there are many links you can follow.
Looking at the contents of the tier 1 and/or 2 publications, science writers, magazine columnists and bloggers write their articles (tier 3). It's something like,
Livestrong foundation http://www.livestrong.com/
Health magazine http://www.health.com/health/service/magazine
I say wikipedia is tier 3 source, because the writers accountable for the articles are unidentifiable.
The lower the tier, the message is more generalized and easier to understand, but perhaps less accurate.
"Miracle cure" diet supplements and all are, in many cases, baseless and unsupported by solid science. Don't fall for that.
If you want to know the contents of near-future science, you can track and have a glimpse of the contents of currently funded research (meaning, the results may not be published, yet). Abstracts of Government-funded grants are searchable.
Hope this answers the question and helps to look for more solid information we scientists rely on.
Science does make progress, and today's tier 1 information may be revised in the future. But it will always help to know how to distinguish tier 1, 2 and 3.
PS
In addition, there is tier 0, personal communication among the researchers in the field. But it doesn't have to be publicized, does it?
