Tag: Science
-
Making science public: The science and silence conundrum
The issue of science and advocacy is a complex topic and has led to heated discussions amongst scientists, science communicators and commentators of different persuasions, especially this year it seems. There was first a flurry of debate provoked, in July this year, by an article written by Tamsin Edwards who argued that climate scientists should…
-
Tools for thinking about an increasingly complex world
A few weeks ago I had to write a seminar talk about epigenetics in the media. In the course of investigating the historical background to that emerging discipline, I looked at Conrad Hal Waddington’s work on embryology and development and his creation of the metaphor ‘epigenetic landscape’. But this is not what this blog post…
-
Lists
Alasdair Taylor first wrote this blog post on 11 December for his own blog attheinterface. He has allowed us to repost it on our Making Science Public blog, as it addresses issues we are grappling with! Here is what he wrote: It’s the end of the year, or nearly, and time to start reflecting. It…
-
Dark energy in Westminster
This is a guest blog by Dr Clare Burrage who works at the Particle Theory Group within the School of Physics and Astronomy. It complements the post by Professor Philip Moriarty that I cross-posted recently. Here is Clare’s story about her experience of Westminster: When I told friends and colleagues that I was going to…
-
From making to shaking: The new world of ‘4D’ printing
I haven’t written a blog about a novel scientific development for a while, so when I read about 4D printing in New Scientist at the weekend, I thought the time had come to get to work again. I had heard about this new way of ‘making’ objects before but had not really looked into the ins…
-
Mike Hulme: What Do Citizens and Scientists Expect of Each Other?
This is a guest post by Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate and Culture at King’s College, London: Over the last couple of weeks I have found myself in three very different settings in which challenging questions have been asked about the relationship between scientific knowledge and personal belief and social behaviour. Each time this has…
-
The Subterranean War on Science? A comment.
Last week saw the publication of an article entitled “The Subterranean War on Science” in the Association of Psychological Science’s Observer magazine. The authors – scientists from a range of disciplines – reflect on their experiences of their work becoming noticed in public. In particular, they argue that the harassment, bullying and abuse of scientists constitute a ‘war…
-
Science as public and consensible knowledge
I recently chatted with some natural scientists of a certain (my) age, that is, whose formative student years lay in the 1960s and 1970s, and they recommended some books to me. In the 1970s I had nothing to do with science, as I was deeply immersed in the humanities. I have, over the last decade…
-
Do online user comments provide a space for deliberative democracy?
This is a guest post by Luke Collins who is working with Brigitte Nerlich on an ESRC funded project dealing with climate change as a complex social issue. Yesterday, he gave talk about his research to an interdisciplinary audience attending the Institute for Science and Society/STS PG seminar series. The internet has enabled traditional newspaper…
-
Just one number: has the IPCC changed its supply of evidence?
As I have researched online climate scepticism over the last year, its become clear that climate sensitivity has been one of the biggest topics for discussion. This is perhaps one of the easier parts of climate science to understand. Put simply, sensitivity measures the amount by which the Earth’s temperature increases when atmospheric carbon dioxide…
Making Science Public 