Making Science Public

Tag: responsible innovation

  • Is STS trivial? Chris Toumey reflects on writing a book about nanotech and the humanities

    Is STS trivial? Chris Toumey reflects on writing a book about nanotech and the humanities

    This is a guest post by Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist who has observed and studied developments in nanotechnology for many years. Chris and I have known each other for a long time, and his work and words have always inspired me. He has just published a book entitled Nanotech and the Humanities: An Anthropologist…

  • Mice, dice and copycats: Metaphors for gene drives in mammals

    Mice, dice and copycats: Metaphors for gene drives in mammals

    When you hear the word ‘gene drive’, you will either be baffled or you will think about mosquitoes, engineered to eradicate insect-born disease like malaria, Dengue fever, or Zika for example. But gene drive research has now moved from insects to mammals. Mammals On the 23rd of January, researchers at University of California, San Diego,…

  • Gene drive communication: Obstacles and opportunities

    Gene drive communication: Obstacles and opportunities

    The other day I was talking to two people about various developments in science. Both are interested in science, but they are not natural scientists. I mentioned ‘gene drives’. Their faces went blank. I then said: “it’s something like the gene editing of a whole population of creatures, such as insects, for example. This can…

  • Making Science Public: End of year blog round-up, 2018

    Making Science Public: End of year blog round-up, 2018

    2018 is the year that the Leverhulme Trust funded programme ‘Making Science Public’ really ended (today our director Sujatha Raman is submitting the final report to the Leverhulme Trust). My last post on the programme, entitled ‘Making Science public: six years on’, mentioned one of the most important milestones of our work, namely the publication with Manchester…

  • Why we should care about the language we use in science

    Why we should care about the language we use in science

    This post first appeared in the ‘On Society’ blog at BioMed Central and is reposted here with permission. *** Brigitte Nerlich and Carmen McLeod at the Synthetic Biology Research Centre at the University of Nottingham have given ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ a new twist, by focusing on responsible language use. As everybody knows by now, words matter in politics as…

  • Making science by publicity stunt: The case of the CRISPR babies

    Making science by publicity stunt: The case of the CRISPR babies

    Science is supposed to be a public, systematic, consensible, evidence-based and collaborative enterprise. It’s also supposed to be carried out responsibly, not recklessly. Making science in public and making science public are complex processes. Making public science normally doesn’t consist in presenting fellow-scientists and members of the public with a ‘fait accompli’. This is however…

  • Minimal biology

    Minimal biology

    This morning (3rd November) I saw a tweet by @BrisSynBio announcing “Max Planck-Bristol Centre for Minimal Biology announced @BristolUni & @maxplanckpress partner to pursue game-changing research in the emerging field of #minimalbiology to address some of the most complex challenges in fundamental science”. I became curious and read the whole announcement, balking a bit at the pressreleasish…