Year: 2015
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Synthetic biology comes to Nottingham (ESRC Festival of Social Science)
On Monday we are convening a public debate about synthetic biology and responsible research and innovation as part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science. You are all welcome to join us! Us means: Adam Rutherford as chair, Hilary Sutcliffe, Andrew Balmer, Klaus Winzer and Peter Licence on the panel (see brochure) and myself as…
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‘Serendipity carried through to perfection’ – thoughts on the Cassini mission
I am, as some of you might have noticed, an avid follower of …. not fashion but space exploration. I have ‘flown with’ Hubble, Voyager, Rosetta, Philae and New Horizons; I ‘follow’ Curiosity’s progress on Mars; and now I am entranced by some of the images that Cassini is sending back from Saturn and its…
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Anchoring doubt
For five years now I have been interested in how doubts about climate change are expressed by whom and how. To be honest, I very much doubt I have found out anything new. However, when reading some blogs recently, something struck me. But before I come to that, lets start at the beginning. Science and…
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The colours of biotechnology
I have recently been musing about images used to make science public and wondered what images are out there for synthetic biology. I knew that in the past cloning was visually represented by ‘Dolly the sheep’ or ‘armies of little Hitlers’, nano found its visual incarnation in nanobots and fantastic voyage, but what images would…
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Methodological clarity required when publishing social science in natural science journals
This is a joint post with Greg Hollin. The latest issue of Nature Climate Change features a Correspondence from Peter Jacobs and colleagues which concerns a recent Letter that appeared in the same journal; our Reply is also published. We do not wish to deny that there are real and significant differences between ourselves and…
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Climate change and the tragedy of our shrinking horizons
A few days ago, on 29 September 2015, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, used the phrase ‘tragedy of the horizon’ in a speech on “climate risks for the global economy and global financial stability with a focus on the insurance sector”. This got me thinking about the various times the concept…
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The pause
About three years ago, in 2013, I became aware of discussions around the ‘pause’ (a period of relatively little change in globally averaged surface temperatures) and since then I have been observing goings-on around this new talking point in the climate change debate. I was a bit surprised by how much trouble a wiggle in…
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Natural/artificial
The Nuffield Foundation on Bioethics will soon report on a project that critically explores “how current public and political bioethics debates are affected by ideas about naturalness and how this correlates with academic discussions relating to the concept”. This made me think, especially as I am working now as a social scientist with a team…
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Synthetic Biology; or the Modern Prometheus
When waiting for a plane, I was randomly musing about synthetic biology, responsible innovation and stories – this is the result. Once upon a time there were Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (first published in 1818; now available in twitter-form, as tweeted by Katie Reeves);…
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The crucial role of culture in climate change
On Wednesday, I attended the US Ambassador’s ‘digital dialogue’ event on climate change at Winfield House, where policy wonks, journalists, NGO representatives and academics discussed their current hopes and frustrations. Beyond the usual grumbles about ‘bogus arguments’ against climate action, it was pleasing that some attendees outside of the social sciences chose to highlight the key role of cultural…
Making Science Public 