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 …
Responsible Research and Innovation InfoHub
September 24, 2014
In parallel with the launch of the new report Responsible Research and Innovation: Responding to a New Research Agenda, this page acts as a focus and reference point for RRI activities across the University of Nottingham. The effective implementation of RRI into research programmes requires scientists and social science practitioners in RRI to be able to …
New report released on Responsible Research and Innovation
Today sees the launch of a new report on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The report provides an overview of this emerging agenda, lays out approaches from key funders, and summarises RRI work already being carried out within University of Nottingham. The report also presents recommendations for the University’s future engagement with RRI, based on documentary analysis and …
Risk assessment policy as regulatory science
September 15, 2014
This blog is a joint posting by Sarah Hartley and Warren Pearce Following the University of Nottingham’s Circling the Square conference an interesting debate emerged around some of the fundamentals of science: objectivity, the confounding of science with regulatory science and what counts as science. Much of this took place under a post by our colleague, …
Science, politics and epigenetics
September 12, 2014
This post by Shea Robison is reposted here with the permission of author. Shea originally posted it on his blog ‘The nexus of epigenetics‘ under the title “Epigenetics Minority Report Part I: Epigenetics, blame, precrime and politics“ *** If you picked up the movie reference in the title to this post, you are likely (hopefully) asking …
Anticipation and prediction: A conceptual odyssey
September 7, 2014
A group of us at Making Science Public recently discussed Responsible Research and Innovation and Anticipatory Governance. During this conversation a colleague reminded us that anticipation is not the same as prediction (see also here). This made me think about the meanings of these words and in order to get to grips with them I …
Dark matter: A mystery metaphor that turns genomic junk into gold
August 28, 2014
I have become intrigued by a new metaphor, most recently used in an interesting Aeon Magazine article. The authors state that the human genome can’t be, as was so long assumed, a blueprint for building a human being, as “science has served up the confounding paradox that the bulk of our genome appears to be …
Fermenting thought: A new look at synthetic biology
August 20, 2014
I have become involved in a new project related to synthetic biology. The University of Nottingham has received funding for a big Synthetic Biology Research Centre. I am a social scientist within the new team and in charge of keeping an eye on ‘responsible research and innovation’. This is not what this post is about …
Mind change: Some thoughts on the moral implications of metaphors
August 10, 2014
This quick post was prompted by Andrew Anthony’s article in The Observer on Susan Greenfield’s forthcoming book Mind Change and subsequent exchanges on twitter. Some background Metaphors are essential to the development of science and indispensable to science communication. I have been fascinated by metaphor for a long time, well before I became fascinated by …
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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