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Controlling covid19: Where science meets policy
March 23, 2020
This is a GUEST POST by Abigail Woods, Professor in the History of Human and Animal Health, King’s College London. Since covid19 control shot up the agenda just over a week ago there has been an ongoing stream of commentary about how ‘the science’ connects up with ‘the policy.’ Many people seem to be struggling …
Flattening the curve to curb an epidemic
March 10, 2020
In my last blog post I noted the sudden appearance and wide spread of phrases like ‘flattening, stretching, extending, pushing down, drawing out the curve’ and/or the epidemic, meaning that if we can delay or slow down or ‘lower’ the peak of the epidemic for a while and make ‘it’ less steep, we can buy …
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, …
Engineering biology? Sure! But which kind?
February 7, 2020
This is a guest post by Massimiliano Simons who is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of philosophy and moral sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. *** Biology is a mess, not only the natural processes out there but also the science in the lab. Every biological rule seems to have exceptions and all biological laboratories …
Moral Dilemmas in Science Journalism about Genetics Research: The case of gene drives
January 31, 2020
Guest post by Rebecca Hardesty, Ph.D. Rebecca Hardesty is a postdoctoral scholar in science education and communication at UC San Diego in its Division of Biological Sciences and the Teaching + Learning Commons. *** The New York Times Magazine rang in the New Year with a featured piece by Jennifer Kahn recounting the promises and …
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 war metaphors…. (some of them now collected in a later blog post). This brings back memories of other outbreaks, both in animals and …