Making science (in) public: What we can learn from museums
April 30, 2012
I recently received an email from Philipp Schorch who was moving to Australia to take up a fellowship at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute and the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific. The Institute carries out research across the humanities and social sciences in order to inform public debate and public policy; the …
Hype, honesty and trust
April 25, 2012
This week I am participating in a workshop on ‘Sociologies of Moderation: Problems of democracy, expertise and the media’* organised by Dr Alexander Smith at the University of Huddersfield. The workshop will scrutinise the meaning of ‘moderation’, mainly from a political perspective. My contribution strays somewhat away from that core political meaning, as it deals with …
Knowledge, language and society
April 16, 2012
Twenty years ago, at the beginning of my academic career, I became interested in pragmatics, the linguistic study of the use of language in society. Twenty years on I have become involved in the study of science in society (or Science and Technology Studies, STS for short), where the topics of knowledge and society have …
Languages of uncertainty
April 4, 2012
Communicating scientific uncertainty There has recently been a lot of discussion about communicating uncertainty in science in general and climate change/climate science in particular. Many scientists, including Sir Robert May and Sir John Beddington have talked about how uncertainty is intrinsic to science and have advocated being more open about uncertainty, with the latter stressing …
Putting Science in its Place
March 30, 2012
Guest post by Beverley Gibbs (Beverley.Gibbs@nottingham.ac.uk), PhD student at the Institute for Science and Society I was at a seminar a few weeks ago at Nottingham University on The Political Economy of Food Security by Gerardo Otero who is visiting us from Canada. Gerardo has published empirical studies analysing the impact of biotechnology on small …
The magic of science
March 23, 2012
Guest post by Dr Kate Roach, former member of the Institute for Science and Society, now writer and public engagement researcher (kr@kateroach.net) Defining science A recent invitation on twitter to define science, #scidef, has brought forth quite a number of mysterious or magically inclined interpretations. For @TripOnEgo science is an: “intrigue-inspired investigation, commanded by moral …
Climate communication conundrums
March 14, 2012
After climategate in 2009 I was reflecting on what this episode (which sort of opened the ‘door’ for the current climate ‘wars’) may mean for climate change communication. One thing struck me at the time: that climategate can be used to rhetorically flip previous (contrarian) discourses around climate change and climate science on their heads. …
The story of ‘of’
March 6, 2012
Since moving away from linguistics and into Science and Technology Studies (STS), I have often been asked what I am (a question I dread) and what I do (a question that is slightly more easy to answer). These questions came back to me recently when reading a very interesting article in New Scientist about the …
Climategate, media volume and public concerns – what’s the relation?
March 2, 2012
In my last blog I promised some further discussion of the link between media volume and public concern about climate change. This is what today’s blog is about, based on some work I carried out with a former MA student, Alan Valdez. Discussions about the agenda-setting power of the media, particularly in the context of …
Weather or Climate? Enjoy or worry?
February 27, 2012
Gardening One afternoon last week I was watering some newly planted shrubs in the garden. The sun was warming my back and I was trying to enjoy that experience. However, there was this nagging voice in my head saying ‘drought, drought, drought’. In the evening I did the washing up, which I usually also enjoy, …
MSP bookmarks
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- 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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