Gene drive communication: On bombs and bullets

In a recent article for Scientific American, the zoologist and author of a recent book on the history of genetic engineering, Matthew Cobb, lays out the pros and cons of ‘gene drive’. Gene drive is a new genetic technology that could be used to wipe out whole species of insects that transmit, for example, malaria. …

Artificial intelligence, dark matter and common sense

In my last post I wrote about a new type of deep learning network, the chatbot ChatGPT, which has stirred up a lot of debate, including between me and my sister. We were skyping and I mentioned the blog post and she said: “Oh, I have just read something in the New York Times that …

Scientists do metaphor

I was idly browsing my Twitter timeline recently (probably for the last time), when my eyes fell on some tweets by Buzz Baum, a cell biologist, saying that he had spoken about metaphor on a BBC radio programme (oh, I thought!) which unfortunately had now been deleted from BBC Sounds (oh no, I thought). He …

Invasion as a metaphor

On 31 of October Suella Braverman, Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, said, according to Hansard, the official report of all Parliamentary debates: “The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast, and which party is not.” ‘Invasion’ is generally defined as the “action of invading …

Resisting metaphors: The case of trickle-down economics

I have recently been corresponding with Ahmed Abdel-Raheem, a metaphor researcher who is developing a theory of metaphor resistance. Ahmed is looking at how producers of metaphors deal with metaphor failure in various ways (denying it was a metaphor, reinterpreting it etc.) and how metaphor audiences or viewers can resist metaphors, be they verbal or …

Understanding metaphors in the life sciences – a book review

I recently wrote a review of a fascinating little book, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences, by Andrew Reynolds. It appeared as part of the rather excellent series Understanding Life, published by Cambridge University Press and should be read in conjunction with another book in the series by Kostas Kampourakis entitled Understanding Genes, which came …

Covid metaphors: Around the world in eight articles

When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, Martin Döring (Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg) and I (Institute for Science and Society, University of Nottingham) began to assemble and then edit articles dealing with its metaphorical framing around the world (not the whole world, of course!). Covid-19 killed millions of people and caused huge distress …

Omicron: From Frankenstein to Hurricane

When threatened by anything from AIDs to zoonoses, we unconsciously use war metaphors and natural force metaphors (storms, tsunamis, fires, avalanches, volcanoes etc.). We can also use more consciously created metaphors, such as Frankenstein (created in the 1990s). Such old and new metaphors help us understand and mitigate old and new risks and threats. War …

Seeing the world as Ukraine

Humans have a profound ability to see something as something else. This enables us to create metaphors, mind and, in my view, consciousness. As the psychologist and philosopher of science Rom Harré once said: “You need an ‘as if’ to look at the world; you need an ‘as if’ to explain the world.” (p.c.) When …

Making Science Public 2021: End of year round-up of blog posts

We are coming to the end of a another pandemic year, and time seems to expand endlessness towards an uncertain horizon. That means quite a few of my blog posts this year were still devoted to covid and the pandemic, but I also wrote about genetics, climate change and some other incidental topics. As usual, …