Coronavirus: Risk, rumour and resilience
February 11, 2020
I was just starting to write this post, when I saw a tweet from Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, quoting Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, Director-General of the World Health Organisation, who said, as widely reported: “This is the time for facts, not fear. This is the time for science, not rumours. This is the time for solidarity, …
Warnings, war metaphors and infectious diseases: A little lit review
January 30, 2020
We are living through another global outbreak of an infectious disease: this time it’s a new version of the coronavirus. This outbreak of disease is, as usual, accompanied by an outbreak of metaphors….As Robert Dingwall has pointed out in a great Wired article: “As countless media outlets have characterized it, governments around the world have …
The GM/gene drive communication confusion
September 20, 2019
The other day, I was at the airport waiting for a plane back to the UK, when I noticed on twitter that there was some kerfuffle going on about a field trial in Brazil intended to eliminate disease carrying mosquitoes, which had had, it seems, some unintended consequences (see study). Here is a short summary: …
Making Science Public: End of year blog round-up, 2018
December 20, 2018
2018 is the year that the Leverhulme Trust funded programme ‘Making Science Public’ really ended (today our director Sujatha Raman is submitting the final report to the Leverhulme Trust). My last post on the programme, entitled ‘Making Science public: six years on’, mentioned one of the most important milestones of our work, namely the publication with Manchester …
Social, cultural and ethical aspects of synthetic biology: A scientist’s perspective
January 12, 2018
When you go to the website of the Dymond Research Group at the University of Brighton, you see article titles like this “Lipid Spontaneous Curvatures Estimated from Temperature-Dependent Changes in Inverse Hexagonal Phase Lattice Parameters: Effects of Metal Cations”. That probably means something to experts in the field. It doesn’t mean a lot to me. …
Risk assessment policy as regulatory science
September 15, 2014
This blog is a joint posting by Sarah Hartley and Warren Pearce Following the University of Nottingham’s Circling the Square conference an interesting debate emerged around some of the fundamentals of science: objectivity, the confounding of science with regulatory science and what counts as science. Much of this took place under a post by our colleague, …
What on earth do you mean? An outsider’s view on Public Understanding of Science
January 17, 2014
This is a guest post by Hilary Sutcliffe provoked by a twitter exchange: Yesterday Patrick Sturgis tweeted a link to an article he has just published in the journal Public Understanding of Science. Hilary asked for a copy, as the articles are behind a paywall; I sent her the article and asked at the same …
Competitive risk promotion: A historical assessment
March 27, 2013
This is a guest blog post by Adam Burgess, who specialises in the sociology of risk (University of Kent, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research) I’d like to take up where Brigitte left off in her blog post about the antibiotic apocalypse and very schematically draw attention to what I would describe as …
The Threat of Fracking: Real or Constructed?
December 14, 2012
Guest post by Dr. Rusi Jaspal, Research Fellow on the ESRC’s Climate Change as a Complex Social Issue programme in the School of Sociology & Social Policy. (This post can be read in conjunction with Rusi’s 2014 article in The Conversation) Global energy consumption is likely to rise significantly over the next two decades with …
Science in Public 2013 – Call for Panel Proposals
UPDATE: You can see the full Call For Papers including details of all the proposed panels at http://scienceinpublic.org/conference/ 8th Annual Science in Public Conference, 22-23 July 2013 on ‘Critical Perspectives on Making Science Public’ Call for Panel Proposals The University of Nottingham is proud to host the 8th Annual Science in Public Conference, 22-23 July 2013. …
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
Find, follow, join us
