Maldita Ciencia, awarded by the CSIC Institute of Optics

This is the second prize in the Emitted Photon category, which rewards informative projects in these areas. The jury of the award has appreciated the content on optics that we have published in Maldita Ciencia as an initiative «that consists in identifying hoaxes, ‘fake news’, myths or simply common questions about natural phenomena, and clarifying them by resorting to scientific knowledge, referring to specialized researchers in each of the areas they address» and «all this with the immediacy and dissemination capacity of the Internet».

In Maldita Ciencia we have dealt with topics related to optics on several occasions. For example, here we explain why an optical illusion is not useful for diagnosing health problems, and here where the colors seen in space photos come from.

The first prize in this category went to Xavier Rovira Algans, from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia, and Xavier Gómez Santacana, from the Institut de Génomique Fonctionelle of the University of Montpellier (France), for «The emergence of photopharmacology», an article published in Investigación y Ciencia that «very well conveys the social and universal value of multidisciplinary research in pharmacology and optics».

In the Emitted Photon category, which rewards educational initiatives related to this branch of science, the first prize was awarded to «We have no green stars, but we have a television with quantum dots», by IES Manuel de Falla de Coslada (Madrid), and the second prize to the project «Discover the light», by CPR Alborada de Vigo (Pontevedra).