The Gmelin family: From chemistry to phlogiston and permafrost
May 12, 2023
I had Covid. I was lying in bed. I saw a tweet by Mark Carnal saying: “Historians of Biology. How on earth is Gmelin pronounced? I’ve not had to say it out loud before.” I am not a historian of biology but, as a German speaker, I was intrigued. So, I looked up the name …
Bridge or Barrier – Does generative AI contribute to more culturally inclusive higher education and research?
May 8, 2023
This post by Dr Dimitrinka Atanasova was initially posted on the LSE Impact Blog on 4 May, 2023. It is cross-posted here with permission. Dr Dimitrinka Atanasova is a Lecturer in Intercultural Communication at Lancaster University. Her research focuses on health & science communication (particularly the topics of obesity, mental health, climate change, sustainability, nitrogen …
LLaMas, Alpacas and Dolly 2.0: Exploring an emerging AI menagerie
April 21, 2023
There was a time when llamas were llamas and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Now we have LLaMas, Alpacas and AI programmes that impersonate cloned sheep. I’ll first say something about ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that launched a hundred fury creatures, then something about another chatbot that …
Gene editing, gene shears and other titbits from the history of genetic engineering
April 7, 2023
I was wondering what to write about. In past blogs, I have done quite a bit of ‘conceptual history’ about metaphors or phrases like ‘imaginaries’, ‘tipping points’, ‘deficit model’, ‘trickle down economics’ and even ‘gene surgery‘ and ‘gene drive’. I have also written a few posts about gene editing or genome editing. But, come to …
Chatting with a chatbot about metaphor
March 31, 2023
A week ago my son sent me a link to a tweet in which Ethan Mollick did a little experiment with one of the currently fashionable AI chatbots, a common pastime nowadays. He asked “Bing to look up Tamarian, a made-up Star Trek language that works entirely by metaphors to Tamarian history and myth. Then …
Human genome editing summit, London, 2023
March 10, 2023
Ceci n’est pas un blog post. As I have no time to write anything proper for a few weeks, these are just some notes and pointers. This non-post is ‘about’ the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing which took place at The Francis Crick Institute in London from 6 to 8 March. I couldn’t …
Cancer, metaphors and Bond villains
March 3, 2023
There are metaphors that utterly change how we see the world and there are metaphors that change how we see microscopic bits of it. There are metaphors that are constitutive of theories in philosophy and science and there are more ephemeral ones that provide glimpses of new phenomena. I am just reading a book by …
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 …
Bird flu – then and now
February 17, 2023
Current news about a world-wide bird flu outbreak brought back memories of 2005, dubbed then “The year of bird flu”. In an article I co-authored that year with Christopher Halliday, we noted that “[l]ately, fear of disease has been fuelled yet again by the emergence of a new highly pathogenic virus strain of avian influenza …
Climate change and health: Early and late warnings
February 10, 2023
Last week I saw various tweets from the Wellcome Trust announcing a new funding scheme that will support research on the impacts of #ClimateChange on human health, centring on communities most at risk (an announcement that by the way, was illustrated with a tryptic of photos of lone individuals dealing with a flood, a fire …
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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