Science communication: Mary Somerville
December 30, 2016
Every so often, and yet again just before Christmas this year, little skirmishes erupt on the history of science scene when somebody says that the word ‘scientist’ was first coined for Mary Somerville. The claim is then rebuffed by pointing out that the term was first used in print in 1834 in a review of …
Ernst Haeckel, Christmas Cards, and Fake News
December 24, 2016
This is a brief post inspired by a tweet which led me down a rabbit-hole…. I was looking idly through my tweets this morning when my eye landed on one by Mo Costandi saying “Before his ‘Artforms in Nature’ (http://bit.ly/1GIlTwE), Ernst Haeckel designed greeting cards”. This led me to a flickr page where John Holbo …
Making Science Public: 2016 blog round-up
December 19, 2016
This has been a weird and momentous year. For me personally and, even more so, for the world. In June this year we celebrated the almost end of the Making Science Public programme, which I directed between 2012 and 2016. At the end of September I retired, after working for more than 25 years at the University …
Climate Change on the Bathroom Wall: How Vice, BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post report on environmental issues
December 16, 2016
This is guest post by Mike S. Schäfer, Professor of Science Communication at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ) and Director of the Center for Higher Education and Science Studies at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. This article was first published in the European Journalism Observatory, Dec 14, 2016. *** Shouting protesters …
Nano does Nottingham Does Comics
December 15, 2016
This is a guest post by Phil Moriarty. It continues the story of the graphic novel being created as part of a project trying to achieve 3D printing with atoms, which I have started to document here and here. *** Yesterday evening I spent a fun few hours at the Nottingham Writers’ Studio with my colleagues …
Origins of life; origins of synthetic biology
December 9, 2016
I was sitting on a train to London the other day reading a fascinating article on the early history of synthetic biology. In this post I just want to share some interesting insights I gleaned from that paper, as it’s always a good thing to know a bit more about the history of a field …
Making sense of plasticity
December 2, 2016
I recently got an invitation to a workshop on ‘Plasticity and its Limits’ (which will bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities and life sciences and focuses mainly on epigenetics). When I accepted the invitation I had, I have to confess, not given much thought to the concept of plasticity – I had, however, …
Meanings of RRI: The missing link between theory and practice
November 21, 2016
This is a guest post by Alasdair Taylor, Industry Programme Manager at The Royal Society, formerly a research chemist at the University of Nottingham. This blog post is based on the author’s article (co-authored with Sarah Hartley and Warren Pearce), ‘Against the tide of depoliticisation: The politics of research governance’, published open access in Policy & Politics. …
Science communication in a hyper-real world
I recently asked myself the question: Is there still a point in doing or thinking about ‘science communication‘ in a world where facts have become indistinguishable from fiction and where experts and scientists are regarded with suspicion. This question struck me again quite forcefully when listening to the Now Show on Saturday 19 November, a …
Responsible research and innovation in the UK university: the politics of research governance
November 17, 2016
This article by Sarah Hartley and Warren Pearce was first published on the LSE Impact Blog on 14 November, 2016 and is republished here under a CC BY 3.0 licence. *** What is science for? One answer to this might be “to answer questions about how the world works”. Sounds simple, but packed into these eight words are …
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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