Year: 2013
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From making to shaking: The new world of ‘4D’ printing
I haven’t written a blog about a novel scientific development for a while, so when I read about 4D printing in New Scientist at the weekend, I thought the time had come to get to work again. I had heard about this new way of ‘making’ objects before but had not really looked into the ins…
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Mike Hulme: What Do Citizens and Scientists Expect of Each Other?
This is a guest post by Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate and Culture at King’s College, London: Over the last couple of weeks I have found myself in three very different settings in which challenging questions have been asked about the relationship between scientific knowledge and personal belief and social behaviour. Each time this has…
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The Subterranean War on Science? A comment.
Last week saw the publication of an article entitled “The Subterranean War on Science” in the Association of Psychological Science’s Observer magazine. The authors – scientists from a range of disciplines – reflect on their experiences of their work becoming noticed in public. In particular, they argue that the harassment, bullying and abuse of scientists constitute a ‘war…
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On the value of scholarship
Three anecdotes and an email: Many years ago when I moved from the humanities to the social sciences, somebody remarked that from now on I would no longer just be doing scholarship but engage in actual research. That puzzled me at the time, but I now see, sort of, what that person meant. At the…
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Science as public and consensible knowledge
I recently chatted with some natural scientists of a certain (my) age, that is, whose formative student years lay in the 1960s and 1970s, and they recommended some books to me. In the 1970s I had nothing to do with science, as I was deeply immersed in the humanities. I have, over the last decade…
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Global science, local perspectives – how does climate change fit into policy priorities?
I present here a synopsis of a lecture I gave yesterday for year 3 undergraduates on our Climate, Science and Society module at University of Nottingham. The session was two hours long, which is rather a long time to listen to one person. So to ensure an engaged audience, I gave around an hour and…
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Do online user comments provide a space for deliberative democracy?
This is a guest post by Luke Collins who is working with Brigitte Nerlich on an ESRC funded project dealing with climate change as a complex social issue. Yesterday, he gave talk about his research to an interdisciplinary audience attending the Institute for Science and Society/STS PG seminar series. The internet has enabled traditional newspaper…
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Public engagement: What to learn and not to learn from the Prussians
This blog post was inspired by three events: a talk given by Helen Pallett at the Institute for Science and Society last week; an article published in Public Understanding of Science; and a brief twitter exchange with Pat Thomson about ‘Bildung’ (ah, and the proposed closure of the Snibston Discovery Museum). Prussian forestry Last week…
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Is Asda right about mental health?
This is a guest post by Greg Hollin, doctoral researcher at the Institute for Science and Society, University of Nottingham. The obvious answer to the question above is ‘no’; a finer example of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines is not easily found. The decision by Asda – who sold a ‘mental patient fancy dress costume’ complete with…
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Just one number: has the IPCC changed its supply of evidence?
As I have researched online climate scepticism over the last year, its become clear that climate sensitivity has been one of the biggest topics for discussion. This is perhaps one of the easier parts of climate science to understand. Put simply, sensitivity measures the amount by which the Earth’s temperature increases when atmospheric carbon dioxide…
Making Science Public 