KABOOM: Exploding ‘impact’

Picture: social researcher number one. This is a drawing of a social researcher. I don’t mean a researcher who studies social relations. I mean this is a researcher who is social; one that’s connects to other people, very simply by citing other researchers. (Yes, sociology-spotters, it’s ‘inspired’ by Bruno Latour. It’s a poor reinterpretation of an early diagram … Continue reading »

The known unknowns

I’m blogging from Cambridge; at the “Challenging Models in the Face of Uncertainty” conference. The focus is unknowns: be they known, unknown, guessed, forecast, imagined or experienced. I’ve heard Donald Rumsfield quoted rather a lot. There has also been  the odd reference how stupid we all are, the problems of a God’s-eye-view and, least we … Continue reading »

The Myth of Scientific Literacy

EDIT: I recorded an updated and audio version of this for the BBC (July 2012). Every now and again, the term “scientific literacy” gets wheeled out and I roll my eyes. This post is an attempt to explain why. The argument for greater scientific literacy is that to meaningfully participate, appreciate and even survive our … Continue reading »

A quick note on jargon

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 »