A worm’s eye-view of science (communication)
May 11, 2014
I know this is a quirky one…. but bear with me…. Some recent tweets set me thinking about worms! This led me back to my childhood, to Charles Darwin, to regenerative medicine, to gardening, to children’s literature and education and, of course, science communication (I also remembered Alison Wollard’s 2013 Royal Institution Christmas lectures which …
Designer babies: Are we reaching the end of the slippery slope?
May 5, 2014
A decade and a half ago Ruth Deech, then Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said: “The public do not like, and we do not like the idea of designer babies” (quoted in The Independent, 18 October, 2000). That same year, John Harris, Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at the University of …
Doing science: Some reflections on methods
April 30, 2014
Over the last few months some members of our Institute, especially Bev Gibbs, Greg Hollin and I have had discussions about ‘methods’ in the (natural and) social sciences. In this post I want to dig a bit deeper into methods and perhaps clear up some confusions (or create more!). I’ll focus on four methodological concepts: …
The impact of impact
April 25, 2014
This article by Ernesto Priego first appeared in Research Information and is reposted here with the author’s permission. It is based on a presentation at the UKSG conference (Connecting the Knowledge Community) earlier this month. Ernesto also maintains a blog on Digital Scholarship. The article complements an old blog post of mine on impact, but …
On being a Science Public
April 24, 2014
POST BY STEVIENNA DE SAILLE I’m currently engaged in researching Responsible Research and Innovation, in particular its mandate for ‘inclusive engagement’. And so, a couple of weeks ago, I took advantage of an opportunity to do some ad-hoc ethnographic field research and went to attend two public engagement events which were part of my local …
Tracking fluctuations in climate change debates
April 22, 2014
Our ESRC funded project on climate change is coming to an end soon and we are just starting to prepare our end of award conference in Amsterdam. As part of our project we intended to monitor and describe fluctuations in debates about climate change. This aim overlaps with that of a project within the Leverhulme …
Climate realism: What does it mean?
April 13, 2014
During the publications of the various IPCC reports between September last year and today, I have increasingly come across the words ‘realism’ and ‘climate realism’. Here are just some examples: In a BBC report Roger Harrabin says about a draft of the IPCC WG3 report that it “adopts a new tone of realism”. This echoes …
Climate change on Twitter 2013: who tweeted what about the IPCC?
April 9, 2014
Climate change is a fiercely debated public issue, with much of that debate taking place in various online fora. In a new paper for PLOS ONE with Kim Holmberg, Iina Hellsten and Brigitte Nerlich – Climate change on Twitter: topics, communities and conversations about the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 report – I explore the …
Adaptation
April 7, 2014
There has recently been a lot of talk about adaptation in the context of climate change. The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5), published last week, certainly referred to adaptation quite often. This is not surprising, as WG2 deals with “pervasive risks” posed by climate change and opportunities for …
Moving Responsible Innovation Upstream: GM insects and the exclusion of alternatives
April 4, 2014
‘Responsible innovation’ was the focus of an earlier post by a colleague of mine, Sujatha Raman, who argued that the concept needs to be linked to a range of policy mechanisms to become more ‘policy relevant’. I’d like to explore this idea further. While framed as a concept that has the potential to shape the …
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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