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 »

Information, advertising and the fracking debate

For a while this autumn, one of the first things I’d see from my train as it approached London was a giant advertising billboard celebrating British reliance on Norwegian gas, perhaps placed for commuters en route to Westminister via Victoria. This was balanced by a rather less slick “Frack Off” banner which greeted us on … Continue reading »

Should scientists be bolder in public?

I spoke at the London Climate Forum this weekend. This is a rough sketch of what I said. Jeremy Grantham is the investor behind the “Grantham Institute” centres for climate change research at Imperial and the LSE. He recently wrote a provocative opinion piece for Nature, arguing: Overstatement may generally be dangerous in science (it certainly is for … Continue reading »

Science and the greens

I’ve written a piece with Adam Corner about science and the green movement. It’s a complex issue with many components, characters, ideas and histories to weave through. Although I have a lot of sympathy when people, like Fred Pearce, worry the green movement is too often “turning up on the wrong side of the scientific … Continue reading »