Captain Eco and the World of Tomorrow

My set the inaugural Green Showoff last night was also a chunk of my talk at the Story today, so I thought I’d post it here. I did my PhD on kids science books. When I tell people this, they often get a sort of “aww bless” expression on their faces. Patronising f*ckers. Written by … Continue reading »

Why “scientific literacy” is silly, again.

The prize of smugness for anyone who can correctly guess which event caused a friend to text me this last year. I spent an evening earlier this month doing some public engagement about public engagement. Or, talking about scientific literacy in a pub in Bloomsbury as part of the regular “Big Ideas” debates. If you … Continue reading »

Science policy and social media

ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m part of a new blog network at the Guardian, “Political Science“. I’ll keep this for more personal/ niche content though. My first post there considers the way the public (or forms of publicity) are used to help reform science in the All Trails campaign. It’s based on a short talk I gave at … Continue reading »

The Production of Nonknowledge

UCL’s Science and Society reading group discussed an interesting paper on the production of non-knowledge, what science decides not to look at, why and how. It’s interesting because the growing literature on the sociology of ignorance – e.g. agnotology – often sees it as a problem, but as this paper points out, it’s a routine … Continue reading »

Big Pharma: Small Science?

I recently read a paper by some colleagues at SPRU on the publication patterns of the pharmaceutical industry. I thought I’d share a short write up of my notes. A version of the paper is here (pdf) or full citation: Rafols, Ismael, Hopkins, Michael M, Hoekman, Jarno, Siepel, Josh, O’Hare, Alice, Perianes-Rodríguez, Antonio and Nightingale, … Continue reading »

Animal testing, activism around science, and brown dogs

Stuffed fox in Oxford Museum of Natural History. I don’t know how it died.  My January column for Popular Science UK is now online. This one’s on the public debate about animals in research.  I was interested in some debate surrounding some slightly dodgy reporting of a poll on animal testing. Except, considering the paucity of the … Continue reading »

Energy and Climate Change: Some Good Reads

This post originally appeared on the New Left Project.  A friend recently asked me for book recommendations on energy and climate change. “I want books” they stressed, “not policy briefing papers or essays or scientific reports. Something to curl up on the sofa with, something that digests and explains the issues and spins a few good yarns … Continue reading »

The Science Museum is pants

Last night I gave a short talk at Museums Showoff. This is a slightly more coherent text version of my set. But first, here’s a picture of the world’s biggest tyre (ground floor of the Wellcome Wing). For several years in the mid-naughties, I was on the cover of the Science Museum guidebook. It was … Continue reading »

“Publishing” my PhD

I submitted my PhD thesis in Summer 2008 and am more than a little ashamed that it’s taken me this long to put it up here. There are lots of reasons for this. Mainly (a) Laziness. (b) A post-PhD feeling of  ”Oh this is crap. I have to hide it, and possibly myself, under the largest … Continue reading »