Category: Uncategorized
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Making people happy: Science, technology and engineering in the summer of 2012
Over the summer I have been watching, sometimes reluctantly, bits of the Jubilee celebrations, bits of the Olympics and, yesterday evening, bits of the Last Night of the Proms (8 August, 2012), where the Proms choir did a mass Mobot, a new gesture popularised during the Olympics. This evening many people will be watching the…
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Why it matters that Mitt Romney is a Mormon
After being postponed for 24 hours by Hurricane Isaac, the Republican National Convention held this week in Tampa, Florida, recovered from its shaky start and formally nominated Mitt Romney as this year’s Republican presidential candidate. He will now face Barack Obama in the general election scheduled for 6 November. As the first Mormon ever to…
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Open access – what’s out there?
Open access is a hot topic. It is almost impossible to keep up with what is being written about it. In this ‘Making Science Public’ blog post we attempt to collate some of the many issues surrounding ‘Open Access’ to publicly-funded research. We have grouped the resources into five sections: Policy Positions, Publishers and Publication,…
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On Kansas, candidates and Creationism: the struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party in America’s Heartland
With a US general election due in November, media attention will be largely focused on whether Barack Obama will succeed in his bid to defeat the Republican Mitt Romney and win a second term in the White House. However, the Presidential vote is only one piece in a complicated electoral jigsaw puzzle, which will also…
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Religion, science and public education: a cautionary tale
I arrived last Monday (9 July) in Kansas City to begin a month of fieldwork in support of my Leverhulme research on religion and science debates in the USA. In particular, I am interested in whether these debates are having an impact on the Kansas Republican Party primary races for the state legislature and State…
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Battle looms over European funding for embryonic stem cell research
This blog was written for the ‘Making Science Public’ blog by Dr Alex Smith, University of Warwick, Senior Leverhulme Research Fellow. He is Project Leader responsible for ‘Science, religion and the making of publics in the UK and the USA’. According to an interesting story in this week’s Times Higher, a strong challenge is being…
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Science communication: Some anecdotes, some stats and some questions
This is a guest blog by Ash Choudry which was previously published on the Nottingham Science Blog The blog reports on a public lecture by Rick Borchelt held on Friday, 15 June at the University of Nottingham. Rick is Special Assistant for Public Affairs to the Director of the National Cancer Institute at the US…
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Making science (in) public: What we can learn from museums
I recently received an email from Philipp Schorch who was moving to Australia to take up a fellowship at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute and the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific. The Institute carries out research across the humanities and social sciences in order to inform public debate and public policy; the…
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Hype, honesty and trust
This week I am participating in a workshop on ‘Sociologies of Moderation: Problems of democracy, expertise and the media’* organised by Dr Alexander Smith at the University of Huddersfield. The workshop will scrutinise the meaning of ‘moderation’, mainly from a political perspective. My contribution strays somewhat away from that core political meaning, as it deals with…
Making Science Public 