Category: Uncategorized
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Ants and the art of science communication
Ants have been in the news this week. First there was Jim Al-Khalili’s interview with E. O. Wilson, a world authority on ants, for The Life Scientific. Then there was the announcement that scientists at the University of Cambridge (funded by the BBSRC) have discovered that ants use three types of hair to meticulously clean…
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Science, hype and fun
In one of my early posts for this blog I talked about hype and about how hype can be used honestly and fraudulently. In one of my later posts I talked about CRISPR and how scientists are trying to deal with this gene editing technology responsibly. So I should have known better! Following the fun…
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Pluto and pareidolia
As everybody knows by now, New Horizons has been flying past Pluto and has beamed down astonishing images. One of these shows a peach or bronze coloured planetary object with a lighter pattern on the side that I first saw as a ‘heart’. Many others did so too, including NASA (it will now name this…
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Joining the dots: Pluto, Kant and the nature of scientific knowledge
In his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) Immanuel Kant wrote these most beautiful words: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not need to search for them…
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Ta(l)king responsibility
In social science and policy circles there has been a lot of talk about Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). However, nobody quite knows yet what this means and how it works in the context of harsh economic realities. In the meantime, natural scientists have taken responsibility for their research and innovations in the context of…
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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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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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