Making Science Public: A blog on science, language and culture
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New report released on Responsible Research and Innovation
Today sees the launch of a new report on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The report provides an overview of this emerging agenda, lays out approaches from key funders, and summarises RRI work already being carried out within University of Nottingham. The report also presents recommendations for the University’s future engagement with RRI, based on documentary analysis and…
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Risk assessment policy as regulatory science
This blog is a joint posting by Sarah Hartley and Warren Pearce Following the University of Nottingham’s Circling the Square conference an interesting debate emerged around some of the fundamentals of science: objectivity, the confounding of science with regulatory science and what counts as science. Much of this took place under a post by our colleague,…
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Science, politics and epigenetics
This post by Shea Robison is reposted here with the permission of author. Shea originally posted it on his blog ‘The nexus of epigenetics‘ under the title “Epigenetics Minority Report Part I: Epigenetics, blame, precrime and politics“ *** If you picked up the movie reference in the title to this post, you are likely (hopefully) asking…
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Anticipation and prediction: A conceptual odyssey
A group of us at Making Science Public recently discussed Responsible Research and Innovation and Anticipatory Governance. During this conversation a colleague reminded us that anticipation is not the same as prediction (see also here). This made me think about the meanings of these words and in order to get to grips with them I…
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Dark matter: A mystery metaphor that turns genomic junk into gold
I have become intrigued by a new metaphor, most recently used in an interesting Aeon Magazine article. The authors state that the human genome can’t be, as was so long assumed, a blueprint for building a human being, as “science has served up the confounding paradox that the bulk of our genome appears to be…
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Fermenting thought: A new look at synthetic biology
I have become involved in a new project related to synthetic biology. The University of Nottingham has received funding for a big Synthetic Biology Research Centre. I am a social scientist within the new team and in charge of keeping an eye on ‘responsible research and innovation’. This is not what this post is about…
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Mind change: Some thoughts on the moral implications of metaphors
This quick post was prompted by Andrew Anthony’s article in The Observer on Susan Greenfield’s forthcoming book Mind Change and subsequent exchanges on twitter. Some background Metaphors are essential to the development of science and indispensable to science communication. I have been fascinated by metaphor for a long time, well before I became fascinated by…
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Rosetta and the rubber duck: How we got to know a comet
I can’t really let Rosetta pass by without a little blog post… This was brought home to me when Alasdair Taylor tweeted on 2:21 PM – 6 Aug 2014: “Sexiest, crazy bonkers, rubber duck, chaotic town, Disneyland, big roller coaster, scary ride: all terms used to describe #Rosetta”. This made me curious about how people…
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Black sky research
A few days ago I chatted with an industry-based innovations manager who, in passing, mentioned the word ‘black sky research’. We didn’t get a chance to explore this concept further but the phrase stuck in my mind. Then Philip Moriarty tweeted a link to an article on the threat of the impact agenda to blue…
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Climate fiction: The anticipation and exploration of plausible futures
A few days ago Paul Collins asked me whether an emerging fictional genre, namely climate fiction or cli-fi, could help engage people with climate change. I had to confess that I had come across this new genre but had not thought about it in depth. This type of ignorance and confusion has never prevented me…
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