Can metaphors hinder scientific progress?
February 24, 2023
This is a guest post by Jack Morgan Jones. He is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Manchester’s Philosophy Department with an interest in truth and practical rationality, as well as agency and constructivism. *** It’s readily acknowledged that metaphors can help an educated public better understand a scientist’s technical work. But questioning the …
Gene drive communication: On bombs and bullets
January 20, 2023
In a recent article for Scientific American, the zoologist and author of a recent book on the history of genetic engineering, Matthew Cobb, lays out the pros and cons of ‘gene drive’. Gene drive is a new genetic technology that could be used to wipe out whole species of insects that transmit, for example, malaria. …
Science, communication, politics and power
September 2, 2022
I haven’t written about science communication for a while. It’s a thorny subject. But a few days ago, Ken Rice posted some musings on science communication which made me think. He argues that when ‘we’ (I suppose he means individuals or nations or indeed policy makers) don’t “deal with various societal problems as well as …
Marianne North: On the trail of a Victorian painter and adventurer
July 15, 2022
A while ago, my husband listened, rather by chance, to Thought for the Day, where Rev Marie-Elsa Bragg mentioned a book called ‘A Vision of Eden’ by Marianne North (as an aside, North was an atheist). My husband later told me about the book, as he knew I was ’into such things’. He also knew …
Gene drives and metaphors
January 21, 2022
I have been writing about developments in the biosciences for twenty years. In that time, I have covered a wide variety of topics, such as cloning, genomics, the human genome project, the microbiome project, faecal microbial transplants, synthetic biology, epigenetics, genome editing and now gene drive. I was lucky enough to get many reflections on …
Gnomes, ichthyosaurs and 19th-century science communication
January 14, 2022
Last weekend I had an interaction on Twitter that got me away from doomscrolling and transported me back to my safe place, namely the 19th century. In my past life, when I was very young, I wrote a Staatsexamensarbeit, a sort of MA for people on the teacher training track (I never went to the …
Francis Willughby and me
November 26, 2021
You have probably all heard of Newton or Halley or Hooke or Pepys … But have you heard of Willughby? I had, vaguely, but I did not look hard enough. They were all early members of the Royal Society (founded in 1660) and involved in a little scandal to which I’ll come later. But first …
IPCC reports, climate change and language work
September 6, 2021
This blog post is not about climate change communication. It is about what I call the ‘language work’ carried out by scientists when writing the various IPCC reports. Introduction On 9 August 2021 the first part of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely the Contribution of Working Group 1 …
Science Communication Research: Past Patterns and Future Perspectives
February 12, 2021
This post was first published by Alexander Gerber on the Public Understanding of Science Blog on 7 January 2021. It is cross-posted here with permission. This post provides an overview of a book Alex and his team recently published (open access) entitled Science Communication Research: An empirical field analysis. *** Just like other research fields …
Gene drives and societal narratives
August 21, 2020
Some days ago, I came across an interesting virtual conference (HT @Sarah_A_Hartley) about gene editing which includes a session on ‘societal narratives’. I have written quite a bit about societal narratives of gene editing, but more recently I became involved in the issue of ‘gene drive’, that is, “a system of biased inheritance in which …
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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