Metaphors in science and society
July 29, 2012
I recently had an interesting twitter conversation with Alex Brown (@alex_brovvn), Peter Broks (@peterbroks), Bev Gibbs (@bevgibbs), Angela Cassidy (@ange_cass) and Sophia Collins (@sophiacol) about metaphors for the spread of knowledge and for science communication. I also read two interesting blog posts related to that conversation, one by Peter Broks and one by Alex Brown. …
When the limits of our knowledge collide with the limits of our language: Mixing metaphors around the Higgs Boson
July 22, 2012
I was sitting in the garden today (in the sunshine!) (Sunday, 22 July), reading the feedback page of New Scientist which featured some amusing metaphors and analogies for the Higgs Boson, which has recently been discovered at CERN. This made me think. Science and metaphors Metaphors and analogies are used extensively in science, both in …
Religion, science and public education: a cautionary tale
July 20, 2012
I arrived last Monday (9 July) in Kansas City to begin a month of fieldwork in support of my Leverhulme research on religion and science debates in the USA. In particular, I am interested in whether these debates are having an impact on the Kansas Republican Party primary races for the state legislature and State …
Unseasonable weather; unseasonable climate? Facts, fictions and fantasies
July 15, 2012
I have just come back from a place in Dorset that my husband’s family has visited every summer for the last forty years or so and that I have visited for the last twenty. I sometimes needed to take and wear an anorak. This has changed and I have been wearing it more often over …
Not God but Goldilocks? The Higgs Boson and science communication
July 7, 2012
Being on a rain-washed holiday in the depth of Dorset, what else is there to do but watch some news, read some newspapers and getting a long lecture on the Higg’s from one’s offspring. I still don’t understand exactly what’s going on with the Higgs, but the whole thing ties in nicely with various topics …
Battle looms over European funding for embryonic stem cell research
June 29, 2012
This blog was written for the ‘Making Science Public’ blog by Dr Alex Smith, University of Warwick, Senior Leverhulme Research Fellow. He is Project Leader responsible for ‘Science, religion and the making of publics in the UK and the USA’. According to an interesting story in this week’s Times Higher, a strong challenge is being …
Rio plus 20 minus hope
June 26, 2012
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development has recently been held in Rio de Janeiro (20-22 June, 2012). This summit has come to be known as Rio+20, as it was organised to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which, it should be pointed out, was organised 20 years after the …
Open data, trust and data/visual literacy
June 21, 2012
Two reports When I opened my twitter timeline on 21 June, a stream of tweets announced the publication of two reports relating to open access and open data: The Royal Society’s report on Science as a Public Enterprise (plus an article about it in the THE and a Nature news blog) and the RCUK’s Open …
Science communication: Some anecdotes, some stats and some questions
This is a guest blog by Ash Choudry which was previously published on the Nottingham Science Blog The blog reports on a public lecture by Rick Borchelt held on Friday, 15 June at the University of Nottingham. Rick is Special Assistant for Public Affairs to the Director of the National Cancer Institute at the US …
Scepticism: Process, not position
June 16, 2012
Scepticism activism Scepticism is as old as human thinking, as old as philosophy and as old as science. Most recently scepticism has, on the one hand, become embroiled in a major controversy about climate change, and on the other hand scepticism has also become a form of activism, with Skeptics in the Pub being a …
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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