Inspecting Pandora’s box: Promises and perils of gene drives
July 20, 2019
This is a guest post by Aleksandra Stelmach, University of Nottingham, Institute for Science and Society. *** Some years ago the sociologist Alan Petersen noted that metaphors of new biotechnologies not only express hopes and fears about their use and misuse, but that they also set the agenda for debate and action. Thus, metaphors not …
Science and poetry: Effing the ineffable
April 30, 2019
A couple of weeks ago, Phil Moriarty sent me a poem and a piece of music about (un)certainty ahead of an afternoon of science and poetry on 29 April here at the University of Nottingham. Travelling through cultures This made me think about science and literature, a topic of endless fascination about which countless people …
Science and Metaphors
April 1, 2019
Today I gave a lecture on responsible innovation and responsible language use (via Skype) to biochem and synbio students at the University of Oxford. After the lecture, one student asked whether there was a good go-to book on science and metaphor. I hummed and hawed…. There is of course some stuff, but not a really …
Scientists call for a moratorium on heritable genome editing. What do they want?
March 29, 2019
This is a guest post by Jim Dratwa and Barbara Prainsack. Jim Dratwa, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., and Free University of Brussels’ Centre on Law, Science, Technology & Society. e: jim.dratwa@vub.ac.be Barbara Prainsack, Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, AT and Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, King’s College London, UK. e: …
Talking organelles: A riot of metaphors
March 22, 2019
A few days ago, somebody tweeted an article on organelles and somebody else tweeted an article on how worms regenerate their bodies. I was just in a slump of Brexit malaise when I saw this and thought, “oh, there is life outside Brexit at least in worms and cells”. So, I started to read an …
The exposome – the what?
February 22, 2019
I recently came across the term ‘exposome’ (roughly, the sum total of everything we are exposed to) and started to read up on it. But I just don’t know what to make of it… is it merely humbug or is there more to it? In this post I want to summarise a few milestones in …
Is STS trivial? Chris Toumey reflects on writing a book about nanotech and the humanities
February 15, 2019
This is a guest post by Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist who has observed and studied developments in nanotechnology for many years. Chris and I have known each other for a long time, and his work and words have always inspired me. He has just published a book entitled Nanotech and the Humanities: An Anthropologist …
Public Understanding of Science – the 1960s
January 26, 2019
At the end of last year I wrote a blog post about a book in which Sheila Jasanoff asks ‘Can science makes sense of life’. She answers this question in a rather bleak and negative way. However, questions about the nature of science and the nature of life have stayed with me ever since, which …
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 …
Making science by publicity stunt: The case of the CRISPR babies
November 29, 2018
Science is supposed to be a public, systematic, consensible, evidence-based and collaborative enterprise. It’s also supposed to be carried out responsibly, not recklessly. Making science in public and making science public are complex processes. Making public science normally doesn’t consist in presenting fellow-scientists and members of the public with a ‘fait accompli’. This is however …
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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