RRI and impact: An ‘impossiblist’ agenda for research?
November 22, 2014
Richard Jones has written a long, profound and thought-provoking blog post on (ir)responsible innovation (stagnation). I read his post alongside a recent post on the social impact of research, its challenges and opportunities. This made me think that we are witnessing a confluence of agendas which are generally only looked at separately but that should …
Kissing a comet
November 12, 2014
I began writing this post this morning and I have just read that Philae has reached its landing spot Agilkia (sort of)! Touchdown happened at 1605 GMT. Congratulations!! Rocks, robots and us When I switched on the ESA live feed about the comet landing this morning, I heard one of the lead scientists say that landing …
Agilkia and public participation in science
November 9, 2014
On 12 November 2014 the space craft Rosetta will deploy its lander Philae and Philae will try to land on the Comet 67P or Churyumov-Gerasimenko. As I have written about the Rosetta mission and Philae, I thought I had to at least try and write something very short about the landing site (formerly known as …
Making synthetic biology public: Challenges and responsibilities
November 7, 2014
Recently two reports have been published which made me think about the (non-existent?) public debate about synthetic biology. Jessica Mazerik and David Rejeski wrote a guide for the Wilson Center on how to communicate synthetic biology and Virgil Rerimassie and Dirk Stemerding wrote a report for the Rathenau Institute entitled ‘Synbio Politics: Bringing synthetic biology …
The enduring presence of the now parked ‘Go Home Vans’
October 31, 2014
Following our blog published on 10th February, which featured the ‘Go Home Van Campaign’ as ‘evidence’ of the deepening and expansion of the immigration enforcement regime, we have now conducted an empirical study with migrant support organizations, refused asylum seekers and those without legal leave to remain, generating their views on the impact of this …
A green chemist’s interest in responsible research and innovation
October 27, 2014
This post was first published on Alasdair Taylor‘s blog Attheinterface on October 22, 2014. It deals with responsible research and innovation, a topic that has been explored numerous times on the Making Science Public blog. So I am pleased that Alasdair let us cross-post his post and add it to the collection! *** In the …
Making science picturesque
October 24, 2014
I was idly browsing io9 the other day and read a fascinating article on comets in the history of art. This would be a nice topic for another blog post… but that’s not what this post is about. When looking at these delightful pictures, my eyes fell on “an engraving from Le Magasin Pittoresque, a …
Paddling in the shallow end of knowledge
October 10, 2014
This post was prompted by two things. I, a social scientist of sorts, recently tried to read two books, Smashing Physics by Jon Butterworth and Synthetic Biology: A Primer by Paul Freemont and Richard Kitney. I also listened in to some conversations where people spoke about how problematic they find it to understand social science …
Philae: Where space science meets language science
October 3, 2014
As those who care about that type of thing will know, Philae, the robotic lander on board the Rosetta spacecraft, will try to touch down on the surface of the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12. While we await the next episode in this space adventure, another episode in an adventure here on earth is unfolding …
The invisibles: Science, publics and surveys
September 26, 2014
This is a guest post by two science communication researchers, one working at the University of Otago, New Zealand, the other at the University of Queensland, Australia: Fabien Medvecky and Joan Leach. How much can large-scales surveys tell us about attitudes to science and what can we say about the categories of publics constructed around …
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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