I posted a note on science communication jargon on posterous last week (mainly a four page jargon buster I came across…). I still think posterous is the best place for it, but I’ll link to it here, and also re-post a bit of my commentary. There are a lot of advantages in the professionalisation of … Continue reading »
Posted in June 2010 …
UK Science Blogging "Talkfest"
Beck Smith of the Biochemistry Society and I would like to invite you to our Science Blogging Talkfest, Charles Darwin House, WC1N, 15th July. Registration is free, and online. We’ll start at 6pm with drinks, chat and cake over registration. From 7-8:30pm, we’ll move into the lecture theatre for the debate. Then I thought we … Continue reading »
Storm the Royal Society?
This weekend, I had a piece on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site about open data and public engagement. I wanted to emphasise that a simple opening up of scientific data doesn’t work as a public engagement strategy. The people who can such data sets aren’t necessarily “the public”. Not that an entity called “the … Continue reading »
Open data and public engagement (Comment is Free)
I have a piece on Comment is Free about open data and public engagement. Their title “Citizen science still needs specialism”, with the sub-heading “The public can be involved in constructing knowledge. But some data sets are more easily offered for external use than others”. Both of which I do kind of say, but my … Continue reading »
CSI: the children’s toy
I attended a conference on Forensics in Culture last week. The very first slide in the very first paper was of some children’s edu-tainment toys inspired by CSI. E.g.: this facial reconstruction kit. The speaker implied a sense of surprise that children would be playing with forensics in such a way. I thought it was … Continue reading »
Should science engage?
Gregory and Miller start their 1998 introduction to Science Communication, Science in Public, with the “new commandment from on high: Thou shalt communicate”. Twelve years on, we might re-articulate this as “Thou shalt engage” but Gregory and Miller’s tongue in cheek questioning of an enterprise we generally assume is A Good Thing is worth retaining. … Continue reading »
