Year: 2015
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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…
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The bioeconomy in the news (or not)
At meetings of the BBSRC/EPSRC funded Synthetic Biology Research Centre here at Nottingham the word ‘bioeconomy‘ crops up now and again, which is not surprising, as synthetic biology is supposed to be part of this new economy. In a blog post written in December last year the BBSRC’s Chief Executive Jackie Hunter pointed out that:…
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STS Concepts
For many years I have been working alongside a number of eminent Science and Technology Studies researchers. During that time I have come across many concepts that at first baffled me, then intrigued me and then prompted me to dig into their conceptual history. This blog provided me with a good space to engage in…
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Imagining imaginaries
This is a post by Brigitte Nerlich and CAROL MORRIS. Carol works on spatial imaginaries in the context of food provisioning and food security as part of our Making Science Public programme. Brigitte works on metaphors, images and imagination and always asks what imaginaries are….. The word ‘imaginary’ as a noun is a jargon term…
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Call for papers: Democratising science and technology policy in times of austerity
Myself and Sarah Hartley are convening a panel entitled ‘Democratising science and technology policy in times of austerity’ at the Policy and Politics conference in Bristol on September 15-16th. We invite abstracts (300 words) before the deadline of May 1st, with a particular interest in papers which straddle the boundary between STS and public policy. Go…
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Advanced fermenters
I recently dipped my blogging toe into the microbiome, lured there by Jon Turney’s book I, Superorganism. A few days ago, while trying to find an old email on a completely unrelated topic, I came across a comment by Denis Noble that he had sent me when we were corresponding about the microbiome in around…
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What role for a scientist in political science communication?
This is a GUEST POST by ATHENE DONALD, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge and Master of Churchill College. A couple of months ago Brigitte Nerlich, who hosts this blog, asked me to contribute a post. As it happened, when she sent me the invitation I had just read, and possibly inwardly…
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The well-informed citizen
Last week Greg Hollin sent me an interesting article by Charles Taylor on Latour and metaphor which was an enjoyalbe read, as it sparkles with word play from the title onwards. However, this is not what I want to write about. When reading the article I happened to glance at a footnote mentioning an old…
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RRI at Nottingham: report from public lecture and workshop, January 2015
Joint post with Sarah Hartley and Eleanor Hadley Kershaw. On January 8th, Prof. Richard Owen delivered the MSP lecture “Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI): from nice words to meaningful action”, providing an engaging overview of the topic for over 60 attendees from across the University. Richard drew on classic literature from STS (for example, Collingridge’s…
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From recombinant DNA to genome editing: A history of responsible innovation?
In this post I shall report on a recent call for ethical and regulatory reflection by scientists engaged in a new genomic technology. I’ll then put this into a historical context of previous initiatives of that kind, and finally ask whether this can be called ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’. CRISPR Recently, a new controversy has…
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