Category: Uncategorized
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Astrogenomics: Integration and inspiration
I should have blogged about embryo editing in Russia. I should have blogged about Netflix’s ‘Unnatural selection’ series on CRISPR and genome editing. I should have blogged about prime editing, but life is getting in the way at the moment. That doesn’t mean I don’t look at twitter once in a while (au contraire!). So,…
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A road called ‘gene drive’ and the road to ‘gene drive’: Trials and tribulations of media analysis
As people might know, I enjoy doing media analysis of emerging biotechnologies, from cloning to gene editing and beyond. I have lately become fascinated with something called ‘gene drive’, a new genetic engineering technology that was brought to public attention around 2014/2015 at the confluence of two ‘events’: the outbreak of Zika and advances in CRISPR-Cas9…
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Science communication online: The influence of YouTube and the youtubing of influencers
This is a guest post by Joachim Allgaier, senior researcher at the Human Technology Centre, RWTH Aachen, Germany. Joachim and Asheley Landrum (Texas Tech University) are curating a research topic for Frontiers on ‘Understanding the Role of Online Video-Sharing and Online Video-Sharing Platforms for Science and Research Communication’. If you want to contribute to this…
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Promoting Socially Irresponsible Research and Innovation?: That National Academy of Sciences tweet on genome editing and human enhancement
This is a guest post by Michael Morrison, PI on the ESRC BioModifying Technologies project at the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX), Faculty of Law, University of Oxford *** On the 30th September 2019 the Twitter account of the US National Academy of Sciences (@theNASciences) published the following tweet: “Dream of being…
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Grace de Laguna: A forgotten pioneer in the history of the language sciences
Recently I was asked to write something about Grace (Andrus) de Laguna. Grace de what… I wondered… until I googled myself and found that I had written a few pages about her work in my 1996 book on the history of pragmatics. That was a blast from the past! But this also made me think.…
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Metaphors, machines and the meaning of life
Machine metaphors are ubiquitous in biology, nowhere more so than in synthetic biology, a type of biology that is inspired by engineering and design. This has attracted the attention of metaphor analysts, but also of philosophers and ethicists. Various scholars, both from the humanities/social sciences and the life sciences have grappled with some of the…
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Threads, worms and science communication
I thought I had written my last post about epigenetics. But then came along some ‘worms’ and I had to write another one. I have written about worms once before on the Making Science Public blog, in the context of science communication. And this blog post too will reflect on worms in the context of…
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Epigenetics: A blogging retrospective
Looking back over my blog posts, I realised that I have written 15 posts on epigenetics between 2013 and now (some with Aleksandra Stelmach). It’s time to take stock. Epigenetics is the latest in a long line of developments in genetics and genomics that I have studied through the lens of metaphor analysis, from cloning…
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Comments on qualitative methods in the humanities and social sciences
I while ago Chris Toumey (Toumey@mailbox.sc.edu) wrote a guest post for this blog, announcing his new book on nanotech and the humanities. A reader had a question that Chris didn’t have time to answer at the time. This post is an answer to that question. *** Regarding my book on nanotechnology, Nanotech and the Humanities,…
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Looking on the bright side: Black holes
Here we go again. The world down here on earth is in dire straights, what with climate change and politics and all that. BUT there is something to be proud about. Scientists have managed to capture the first ever image of a black hole. This was achieved, not through people stamping their feet or ignoring…
Making Science Public 