Tag: public engagement with science
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Antibiotic resistance, citizen science and Daleks
This morning I was having my first cup of coffee while listening to the Radio 4 Today programme. At 6.55 an item came on that made me laugh – and guess what: it was about antibiotic resistant bacteria! For a while now I have been worried that in order to raise public awareness about the…
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AMR, alarm and awareness
On 19 May the much awaited report on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), chaired by Jim O’Neill, was published under the title “Tackling drug-resistant infections globally: Final report and recommendations”. Headlines In the UK this report was announced by the newspapers under (not very snappy) headlines, such as “Warning: Rise of SUPERBUGS resistant to antibiotics poses ‘bigger…
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The ghost in the machine: Of automation, algorithms and AI
Despite working at the fringes of a field called Science and Technology Studies, I am a bit of a technophobe. I was introduced to computers in the early 1980s and I am still not totally in tune with some of the things they do. To misquote Arthur C. Clarke, most technology, and in particular advanced…
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Science, politics and magic
A couple of years ago, prompted by an article by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, I wrote a blog post about ‘responsible innovation’ as a buzzword. About a year ago, I tried to understand the appeal of another buzzword, namely ‘co-production’. Yesterday, I cleared out some files and happened to come across some thirty-year-old notes on the magical…
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Reviewing the evidence on transparency in science: a response to Lewandowsky & Bishop.
Co-authors: Warren Pearce, Sarah Hartley & Brigitte Nerlich. In January, Nature published a Comment piece by Lewandowsky and Bishop entitled “Don’t let transparency damage science“. The authors argued that some of the “measures that can improve science — shared data, post-publication peer review and public engagement on social media — can be turned against scientists”.…
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Ash dieback (Chalara), science, and plant biosecurity
Much has changed since the trade-related arrival of ash dieback (Chalara) at a nursery in Buckinghamshire, England, in February 2012. On the negative side, 652 sites across England, Scotland and Wales are now known to contain trees infected with the potentially fatal disease. Also, it is now accepted that the spread of the disease cannot…
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Making Science Public blog posts 2015: An overview
This year the Making Science Public blog has been dominated by two topics: climate change and synthetic biology. One topic is on the way out, so to speak, as the climate change focused project within our research programme is coming to an end. It will continue though in a new guise, in the shape of…
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Ants and the art of science communication
Ants have been in the news this week. First there was Jim Al-Khalili’s interview with E. O. Wilson, a world authority on ants, for The Life Scientific. Then there was the announcement that scientists at the University of Cambridge (funded by the BBSRC) have discovered that ants use three types of hair to meticulously clean…
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Nanoscience, images and technologies of visualisation: A space odyssey
This blog post is a story about an intellectual and collaborative adventure that should be all too familiar to academics. However, opportunities for such adventures may sadly be disappearing in an era of impact driven research. It is a story of how enthusiasm, curiosity, serendipity and collaboration can lead to unexpected and joyous outcomes. At…
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Citizen science
I recently wrote a post about ‘scientific citizenship’. Today I want to home in on a related concept: ‘citizen science’. First I’ll show you how the Oxford English Dictionary has defined the phrase; then I’ll examine how the concept was used in the news and who employed the concept first; and finally I’ll briefly reflect…
Making Science Public 