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 …
Expertise: A tale of two meanings
June 19, 2020
I have recently become confused by how people use the word ‘expertise’. I’ll first tell you a story about the meaning I am used to and then a story about the meaning I am not so used to and conclude by asking what to do about this concept. ‘Expertise’ in ordinary language use Staff at …
A road called ‘gene drive’ and the road to ‘gene drive’: Trials and tribulations of media analysis
October 25, 2019
As people might know, I enjoy doing media analysis of emerging biotechnologies, from cloning to gene editing and beyond. I have lately become fascinated with something called ‘gene drive’, a new genetic engineering technology that was brought to public attention around 2014/2015 at the confluence of two ‘events’: the outbreak of Zika and advances in CRISPR-Cas9 …
The microbe/gene drive communication confusion
September 27, 2019
Last week I wrote a post about how genetic modification and/or gene drive are used when managing disease transmitting insects. I want to come back to this topic today and talk about another difference, which, yet again, confused me. I hope that these efforts of disentangling stuff also help other people trying to understand and …