Tag: Politics
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The scientist as political tourist: the perils of pairing
On Wednesday last week (31 October 2012), BBC Radio Four’s ‘Today’ programme featured a scheme run by the Royal Society to promote interaction and engagement between civil servants, Parliamentarians and scientists. According to their website, the ‘Pairing Scheme’ seeks to match participating scientists ‘with either an MP or civil servant and the Royal Society supports…
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Debunking NIMBYs
Guest post by Beverley Gibbs (originally posted on her own blog). Photo courtesy of Lightsight. You’ve heard of NIMBY? Not In My Back Yard? It’s a term some people use to describe individuals – or more commonly groups – within local communities who resist new developments. The new developments can be anything including prisons, landfill sites,…
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Bovine TB: Some Science, More Politics, Very Public
Unless you have been diligently avoiding any news media you will be aware that a pilot cull of badgers is about to start in Gloucestershire and Somerset. The cull, long desired by groups such as the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and the British Veterinary Association (BVA) is needed, proponents argue, in order to tackle…
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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…
Making Science Public 