Echoes of Climategate: focusing on uncertainty?
November 13, 2012
The ever-lively climate blogosphere was given an extra jolt recently by a new BBC Radio 4 documentary – Climategate Revisited. The programme assessed the fallout from the infamous publication of emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) server, rather than attempting to adjudicate on scientific claims or the contents of the emails. The programme …
The scientist as political tourist: the perils of pairing
November 7, 2012
On Wednesday last week (31 October 2012), BBC Radio Four’s ‘Today’ programme featured a scheme run by the Royal Society to promote interaction and engagement between civil servants, Parliamentarians and scientists. According to their website, the ‘Pairing Scheme’ seeks to match participating scientists ‘with either an MP or civil servant and the Royal Society supports …
Debunking NIMBYs
November 4, 2012
Guest post by Beverley Gibbs (originally posted on her own blog). Photo courtesy of Lightsight. You’ve heard of NIMBY? Not In My Back Yard? It’s a term some people use to describe individuals – or more commonly groups – within local communities who resist new developments. The new developments can be anything including prisons, landfill sites, …
Decision making under uncertainty: Proposal for a new typology
October 29, 2012
This is a guest blog by our newly appointed Chair in Science and Technology Studies, Professor Reiner Grundmann. It guides readers to a paper which presents thoughts on science, politics and decision making, linked to my recent blog on the impact of earthquakes, but going beyond it by exploring various theoretical and policy angles that …
The impact of earthquakes on making science public
October 25, 2012
Many articles have been written about the case of three seismologists, two engineers, a volcanologist and a public official who have been sentenced to be jailed for six years on 22 October in L’Aquila, Italy (although this sentence may be reduced on appeal). These members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of …
Metaphor, image and now visualisation: Darwin’s tree of life
October 22, 2012
Yesterday (October 22, 2012) I came across this tweet: “Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins Zooming into the Tree of Life. Magnificent piece of software, brilliantly intuitive visualisation of the tree of life http://bit.ly/PJyox3 Retweeted by Eric Sawyer” This led me to a fascinating interactive and fractal representation of the tree of life (or phylogenetic tree or evolutionary …
Bovine TB: Some Science, More Politics, Very Public
October 16, 2012
Unless you have been diligently avoiding any news media you will be aware that a pilot cull of badgers is about to start in Gloucestershire and Somerset. The cull, long desired by groups such as the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and the British Veterinary Association (BVA) is needed, proponents argue, in order to tackle …
Science, politics and the new scepticism
October 14, 2012
While I blogged on MSP a couple of times while finishing up my thesis on local and regional climate policy, I have now started on the programme full time as a Research Fellow. My project has a working title of Science, politics and scepticism in the age of new media, and aims to “map the …
Making the invisible visible: On the meanings of transparency
October 12, 2012
One of the key themes of our ‘Making science public’ research programme is ‘Transparency, expertise and evidence in policymaking’. Recent encounters with various uses of the word ‘transparency’ made me put on my linguistic hat and ask: What does ‘transparency’ actually mean? In the sense of, how was it used in the past and how …
Images and visualisations: Technology, Truth and Trust
October 6, 2012
This is a GUEST blog by Andrew Balmer (University of Manchester): I recently co-chaired (with Brigitte Nerlich and Annamaria Carusi) an ESF conference on visualisation, hosted by the University of Linköping but actually held in Norrköping, Sweden. It went swimmingly, with a variety of interesting and instructive presentations and posters, from philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, nanoscientists, …
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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