Category: Uncategorized
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Thinking with animals: The microbe
This is a GUEST POST by Richard Helliwell, a PhD student at the Institute for Science and Society, who participated in a workshop on Thinking with Animals at the University of Nottingham on 20th June 2014. What does it mean to think with animals, in particular to think with microbes, my ‘animal’ companion of thought?…
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You say regulatory science, I say mandated science; let’s call the whole thing off?
One issue of contention after the Circling the Square conference was the apparent confounding of science with regulatory science. I finally took a bit of time to dig into the history and use of the concept of ‘regulatory science’ and a related concept, ‘mandated science’. I should stress that there are whole courses on ‘regulatory…
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Science, sensationalism and the dangers of over-selling research
This is a GUEST POST by FREYA HARRISON. Freya works in Steve Diggle’s group in the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Nottingham, where she researches the ecology and evolution of cooperation. She spends most of her time exploring how communication and cooperation help bacteria to cause chronic infections, but she is also…
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Autism, sociality and human nature
This is a post by Gregory Hollin originally written for Somatosphere (where it made a bit of splash!) and reposted here with the permission of the author. There are, I believe, a few reasons to suppose that autism is a particularly fascinating area to be studying at the moment. What are those reasons? Firstly, prevalence…
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Kandinsky, New Objectivity, and ripping apart the furniture
This is a post by GREGORY HOLLIN who helped organise the Circling the Square conference and these are his reflections on some of the online discussions that followed on blogs and in comments. Circles, Squares, and nonrepresentational forms in Munich Recently I visited Munich and, at the behest of a friend who knows far more…
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Making sense in science and in public
Over the last few weeks some of my colleagues within the Institute for Science and Society and the Making Science Public programme (and beyond) have probably got pretty annoyed with me, as I have become a bit argumentative in a debate about science and politics and the line between sense and nonsense. In the following…
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Re-imagining the public / re-imagining the political
Last month (15-16 May) I attended a conference organised by Michel Ledda, Robert Cowley, and David Chandler from the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster entitled: ‘New perspectives on the problem of the public’. Together with Sujatha Raman I work on the Leverhulme funded project ‘Models of Managing…
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Describing research in plain language is challenging – but worth it
This is a POST by DAVE FARMER first published on Physicsfocus and which I am reposting here with the permission of the author. Dave is a physics student here at the University of Nottingham. He also participated in our Circling the Square conference and made perceptive contributions from the floor. Dave is an aspiring science…
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Responsible research and innovation: challenges and opportunities for governance
We are delighted to announce a new project, funded by the University of Nottingham’s Bridging the Gaps programme, which will investigate the institution’s approach to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI has emerged in recent years as a potential bridge between science and society that aims to increase the public value of science. The project…
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Science wars and science peace: Some personal reflections
The dust is beginning to settle over the 330 or so comments stimulated by two blog posts written after the Circling the Square conference here at the University of Nottingham, one by Philip Moriarty one by And then there’s physics. So it’s perhaps time to stand back and assess what happened. When one reads the…
Making Science Public 