Tag: Science Communication
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Kissing a comet
I began writing this post this morning and I have just read that Philae has reached its landing spot Agilkia (sort of)! Touchdown happened at 1605 GMT. Congratulations!! Rocks, robots and us When I switched on the ESA live feed about the comet landing this morning, I heard one of the lead scientists say that landing…
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Making science picturesque
I was idly browsing io9 the other day and read a fascinating article on comets in the history of art. This would be a nice topic for another blog post… but that’s not what this post is about. When looking at these delightful pictures, my eyes fell on “an engraving from Le Magasin Pittoresque, a…
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Paddling in the shallow end of knowledge
This post was prompted by two things. I, a social scientist of sorts, recently tried to read two books, Smashing Physics by Jon Butterworth and Synthetic Biology: A Primer by Paul Freemont and Richard Kitney. I also listened in to some conversations where people spoke about how problematic they find it to understand social science…
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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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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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Describing research in plain language is challenging – but worth it
This is a POST by DAVE FARMER first published on Physicsfocus and which I am reposting here with the permission of the author. Dave is a physics student here at the University of Nottingham. He also participated in our Circling the Square conference and made perceptive contributions from the floor. Dave is an aspiring science…
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Going round in circles?
As some readers of this blog will know, there has been a conference last week here at the University of Nottingham, which brought together social scientists and natural scientists to discuss issues related to science, politics and the media. The conference was entitled: ‘Circling the square: Research, politics, media and impact’. [Just after I posted…
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Blogging the Circling of the Square
Members from the Making Science Public programme co-organised a very successful interdisciplinary conference (20-22 May) with the University of Nottingham’s Science, Technology and Society research Priority Group, led by Reiner Grundmann. Sarah Hartley, Philip Moriarty and Brigitte Nerlich were part of the conference committee and Warren Pearce contributed to a panel session. Almost all of…
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Academic jargon in the social sciences: self-indulgence or necessary evil?
The highly ambitious Circling the Square conference has just finished here at the Institute for Science and Society. It successfully brought together people from a wide range of disciplines around what we often describe as the science-policy interface. To get a flavour, why not check out the very active Twitter hashtag. My main impression from…
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A worm’s eye-view of science (communication)
I know this is a quirky one…. but bear with me…. Some recent tweets set me thinking about worms! This led me back to my childhood, to Charles Darwin, to regenerative medicine, to gardening, to children’s literature and education and, of course, science communication (I also remembered Alison Wollard’s 2013 Royal Institution Christmas lectures which…
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