Do metaphors really matter?
June 16, 2017
I, like many others, from Leibniz to Lakoff, think that metaphors are important for human thinking and acting. They make us see the world in different ways – for good or evil. So, one should keep an eye on them. Recently I have read two articles which seem to imply that metaphors matter less than …
Science, art and pints
May 20, 2017
For the first time in my life I participated in ‘Pint of Science’ this year. This festival of science engagement takes place on three days in May in pubs all around the globe, including 26 cities in the UK, such as Nottingham. Over a drink, scientists present and discuss their latest research and findings and …
Making science public: The science march
March 10, 2017
The other day over coffee I was reading a blog post and an article. They made me think. The blog post on …and Then There’s Physics rattled once again the rotten foundations of the ivory tower stereotype of academia, while the article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic was about the March for Science that’ll …
Digging for the roots of the deficit model
February 25, 2017
According to my twitter feed, the deficit model (also known as the knowledge or information deficit model of science communication or of public understanding of science) has been discussed yet again, this time during the 2017 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in the midst of current soul searching about facts, …
Nano does Nottingham Does Comics
December 15, 2016
This is a post by Phil Moriarty cross-posted from his blog Symptoms of the Universe. It continues the story of the graphic novel being created as part of a project trying to achieve 3D printing with atoms, which I have started to document here and here. *** Yesterday evening I spent a fun few hours …
Antibiotic resistance, citizen science and Daleks
June 9, 2016
This morning I was having my first cup of coffee while listening to the Radio 4 Today programme. At 6.55 an item came on that made me laugh – and guess what: it was about antibiotic resistant bacteria! For a while now I have been worried that in order to raise public awareness about the …
AMR, alarm and awareness
May 23, 2016
On 19 May the much awaited report on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), chaired by Jim O’Neill, was published under the title “Tackling drug-resistant infections globally: Final report and recommendations”. Headlines In the UK this report was announced by the newspapers under (not very snappy) headlines, such as “Warning: Rise of SUPERBUGS resistant to antibiotics poses ‘bigger …
The ghost in the machine: Of automation, algorithms and AI
May 15, 2016
Despite working at the fringes of a field called Science and Technology Studies, I am a bit of a technophobe. I was introduced to computers in the early 1980s and I am still not totally in tune with some of the things they do. To misquote Arthur C. Clarke, most technology, and in particular advanced …
Science, politics and magic
April 10, 2016
A couple of years ago, prompted by an article by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, I wrote a blog post about ‘responsible innovation’ as a buzzword. About a year ago, I tried to understand the appeal of another buzzword, namely ‘co-production’. Yesterday, I cleared out some files and happened to come across some thirty-year-old notes on the magical …
Reviewing the evidence on transparency in science: a response to Lewandowsky & Bishop.
March 30, 2016
Co-authors: Warren Pearce, Sarah Hartley & Brigitte Nerlich. In January, Nature published a Comment piece by Lewandowsky and Bishop entitled “Don’t let transparency damage science“. The authors argued that some of the “measures that can improve science — shared data, post-publication peer review and public engagement on social media — can be turned against scientists”. …
MSP bookmarks
- Twitter May 8, 2017
- Social innovations in Europe #RRI November 3, 2015
- Harvey Graff, the undisciplinarian September 20, 2015
- Replacing Pesticides With Genetics August 31, 2015
- Addressing hazardous chemicals in the circular economy August 25, 2015
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