Tag: Hype
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Microbiomics: Heading the bandwagon off at the pass
Epigenetics once was a new and emerging field. Although there is no scientific consensus about the correct meaning of ‘epigenetics’ and scientists are increasingly sceptical of some claims being made, one can say, following Kat Arney, that epigenetics tries to “explain how the things that happen to us during a lifetime somehow imprint on our…
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Framing cloning: Dolly and the monkeys
In 1999, three years after Dolly the sheep was born, we published an article on the way that cloning was then framed in the public sphere (see also Holliman, 2004). The cloning of two macaque monkeys by Chinese researchers (Cell, 2018), more than two decades after the cloning of Dolly might be a good opportunity…
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Our microbiome: Separating hype from health
This is a blog post by Nicholas Staropoli, originally posted at the Epigenetics Literacy Project on April 18, 2017. It’s reposted here with permission. The post deals with the issue of hype, which we have discussed a lot on this blog; in this post the focus is on the microbiome. *** The details of science — how to…
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Epigenetics, hype and woo
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a new twitter account: @EpigeneticsBs (short for ‘epigenetics bullshit’). Its mission is to make epigenetic ‘bullshit’ public, or as it says: “There’s a lot of #epigenetics pseudoscience & quackery out there. We RT some of it for your edification and entertainment.” These (re)tweets are produced by people working…
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Making sense of plasticity
I recently got an invitation to a workshop on ‘Plasticity and its Limits’ (which will bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities and life sciences and focuses mainly on epigenetics). When I accepted the invitation I had, I have to confess, not given much thought to the concept of plasticity – I had, however,…
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Epigenetics, hype and harm
I first became interested in epigenetics in around 2010/2011. I know this because I trawled my emails and found a link that I had sent myself on 11 February 2011 to an article in Mother Jones entitled “The illustrated guide to epigenetics”. The first paragraph of this guide is rather prophetic: “This month marks the…
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Assembling a synthetic human genome: Science and the politics of openness
There has recently been some commotion in the field of synthetic biology about a meeting held at Harvard on 10 May 2016 at which scientists discussed the creation of a synthetic human genome. The meeting was a closed, invitation-only meeting. In a field of science that takes pride in its openness and transparency, this created…
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Precision metaphors in a messy biological world
The promises of nanoscience and nanotechnology have been framed by a variety of future oriented metaphors, such as the those of the fantastic voyage or the master builder. The former metaphor has been especially prominent in early reports on the promises of nanomedicine, but it is still in use today. What happens when real breakthroughs…
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The book of life: Reading, writing and editing
I have been observing the use of the ‘book of life’ metaphor in genetics and genomics since the year 2000, when it was used to announce that the human genome, our entire DNA, had been roughly sequenced. The Human Genome Project had begun in 1990 and was completed in 2003. Its achievement consisted in finding…
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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…
Making Science Public 