Making Science Public

Tag: Science Communication

  • Communicating gene drive: The dangers of misleading headlines

    Communicating gene drive: The dangers of misleading headlines

    As some of you know, I am interested in how people communicate about ‘gene drive’, a new biotechnology that can potentially be used to eradicate disease transmitting animals. Wiping out the daughters Some days ago, I saw a tweet that mentioned an article published in The Guardian entitled “Wiping out the daughters: Burkina Faso’s controversial…

  • A road called ‘gene drive’ and the road to ‘gene drive’: Trials and tribulations of media analysis

    A road called ‘gene drive’ and the road to ‘gene drive’: Trials and tribulations of media analysis

    As people might know, I enjoy doing media analysis of emerging biotechnologies, from cloning to gene editing and beyond. I have lately become fascinated with something called ‘gene drive’, a new genetic engineering technology that was brought to public attention around 2014/2015 at the confluence of two ‘events’: the outbreak of Zika and advances in CRISPR-Cas9…

  • Promoting Socially Irresponsible Research and Innovation?: That National Academy of Sciences tweet on genome editing and human enhancement

    Promoting Socially Irresponsible Research and Innovation?: That National Academy of Sciences tweet on genome editing and human enhancement

    This is a guest post by Michael Morrison, PI on the ESRC BioModifying Technologies project at the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX), Faculty of Law, University of Oxford *** On the 30th September 2019 the Twitter account of the US National Academy of Sciences (@theNASciences) published the following tweet: “Dream of being…

  • The microbe/gene drive communication confusion

    The microbe/gene drive communication confusion

    Last week I wrote a post about how genetic modification and/or gene drive are used when managing disease transmitting insects. I want to come back to this topic today and talk about another difference, which, yet again, confused me. I hope that these efforts of disentangling stuff also help other people trying to understand and…

  • Encounters between life and language

    Encounters between life and language

    Philip Ball has just written a great article dissecting new research showing that there is no ‘gene for’ homosexuality. He notes the fallacies behind the facile way of pointing to individual genes and saying what they are ‘for’. This is dangerous, especially when talking about genes for behavioural traits. Single genes don’t determine such traits…

  • What is a climate change communicator to do?

    What is a climate change communicator to do?

    In a recent article, social scientists claim that a rhetoric of deadlines to urge action on climate change is ‘dangerous’. While I agree that it might be dangerous to get into a situation where you extend deadlines forever if you cannot achieve them, setting no deadlines at all may make it difficult to talk about…

  • Threads, worms and science communication

    Threads, worms and science communication

    I thought I had written my last post about epigenetics. But then came along some ‘worms’ and I had to write another one. I have written about worms once before on the Making Science Public blog, in the context of science communication. And this blog post too will reflect on worms in the context of…

  • Witness marks: On the trail of an epigenetic metaphor

    Witness marks: On the trail of an epigenetic metaphor

    This is a guest post by Aleksandra Stelmach, University of Nottingham, Institute for Science and Society In a previous post Brigitte Nerlich and I briefly discussed the emergence of a seemingly new metaphor used in popular discussion about epigenetic effects of nutrition on offspring and, potentially, future generations. In this post I try to track…