The colours of biotechnology
October 25, 2015
I have recently been musing about images used to make science public and wondered what images are out there for synthetic biology. I knew that in the past cloning was visually represented by ‘Dolly the sheep’ or ‘armies of little Hitlers’, nano found its visual incarnation in nanobots and fantastic voyage, but what images would …
Methodological clarity required when publishing social science in natural science journals
October 23, 2015
This is a joint post with Greg Hollin. The latest issue of Nature Climate Change features a Correspondence from Peter Jacobs and colleagues which concerns a recent Letter that appeared in the same journal; our Reply is also published. We do not wish to deny that there are real and significant differences between ourselves and …
Climate change and the tragedy of our shrinking horizons
October 8, 2015
A few days ago, on 29 September 2015, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, used the phrase ‘tragedy of the horizon’ in a speech on “climate risks for the global economy and global financial stability with a focus on the insurance sector”. This got me thinking about the various times the concept …
The pause
September 28, 2015
About three years ago, in 2013, I became aware of discussions around the ‘pause’ (a period of relatively little change in globally averaged surface temperatures) and since then I have been observing goings-on around this new talking point in the climate change debate. I was a bit surprised by how much trouble a wiggle in …
Natural/artificial
September 20, 2015
The Nuffield Foundation on Bioethics will soon report on a project that critically explores “how current public and political bioethics debates are affected by ideas about naturalness and how this correlates with academic discussions relating to the concept”. This made me think, especially as I am working now as a social scientist with a team …
Synthetic Biology; or the Modern Prometheus
September 12, 2015
When waiting for a plane, I was randomly musing about synthetic biology, responsible innovation and stories – this is the result. Once upon a time there were Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (first published in 1818; now available in twitter-form, as tweeted by Katie Reeves); …
The crucial role of culture in climate change
September 5, 2015
On Wednesday, I attended the US Ambassador’s ‘digital dialogue’ event on climate change at Winfield House, where policy wonks, journalists, NGO representatives and academics discussed their current hopes and frustrations. Beyond the usual grumbles about ‘bogus arguments’ against climate action, it was pleasing that some attendees outside of the social sciences chose to highlight the key role of cultural …
Climate wars
September 3, 2015
At the end of August Barry Woods asked on Twitter when the phrase ‘climate wars’ was first used and Warren Pearce ‘paged’ me. I was on holiday, so I didn’t have time to properly look into this. I still haven’t got a lot of time, but I have started to dig a bit. When you …
Snapshots of the unknown – some holiday souvenirs
August 27, 2015
On holiday at the English seaside I read two very different books: a popular science book on Aristotle’s biology by Armand Marie Leroi (The Lagoon, 2014) and a novel by Jules Verne about a sea voyage to the North pole (Les Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras, 1864). While reading these books, I also came across an …
Infectious futures
August 11, 2015
On Sunday (9 August) I did something for the first time. I went to a ‘con’ or convention: the Nine Worlds Geekfest 2015. How did this happen? A few months ago, Lydia Nicholas from Nesta approached me with a fascinating project. In collaboration with Joshua Ryan-Saha, the Assistant Manager of the Longitude Prize, she had …
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
Find, follow, join us
