The Carbon Neutral Lab: Science, culture, values

This week we held our yearly Synthetic Biology Research Centre (SBRC) Strategic Advisory Board Meeting. The meeting took place in the Carbon Neutral Laboratory which houses the Centre for Sustainable Chemistry. This building has become quite famous because it burned down last year, was rebuilt and opened this year. I should say from the outset …

Responsible Research and Innovation: Experts, values and judgements

Expertise, judgement and values are huge topics in philosophy, psychology and the social sciences in general. I am no expert on these issues. However, I believe that the new Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) agenda imposes a duty to reflect on these notions on those who, like me, are supposed to ‘implement’ RRI within large …

The values of science as a cultural institution

In the context of discussions about a controversial essay by Steven Pinker, entitled ‘Science is not your enemy‘, I came across a blog post by Jon Brock which mentioned two blooklets that were new to me. They were written by the famous scientist and science communicator Jacob Bronowski. One was The Common Sense of Science …