“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 »

Talking about climate change

Future it be now, Vancouver.  My column for the December edition of Popular Science UK magazine is online (you have to subscribe to read January’s one, on animal testing). The column first went live just before the Doha climate talks, and focuses on what I see as a lack of government support on communicating climate change. I remembered Mike Shanahan’s blogpost … Continue reading »

Science: a team sport, but not a national one

A sign outside the Natural History Museum. They’re right, we did totally invent dinosaurs. One of the many interesting things about the badger cull is the way a sense of Britishness has been utilised so much in the campaign against it. When Brian May played the closing ceremony of Olympics with pictures of a fox … Continue reading »

Pondering PUS

The Public Understanding of Science journal, volume 1. The main journal in my field, Public Understanding of Science, is twenty next year. I recently had to look up an old paper in the first edition, and it was slightly depressing to see how little has changed. Still, the fact that I find much of it still … Continue reading »

A brief history of awesome

ACE! FAB! OMG! EXCELLENT! FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC! AWESOME & AM-A-ZING!! Some might argue such a preponderance of superlatives has something to with the hyper-mediated nature of postmodernity. Others might more breezily blame the internet. Whatever the reason, there seems to be an awful lot of awesome around. Indeed, science writer and film-maker John Pavlus recently argued that … Continue reading »

Science Communication 101 bibliography

A couple of months ago, a colleague asked me to post an introductory bibliography for science communication studies. I was slightly wary, because the literature in the field is rather scattered and can be a bit dense in places. Moreover, I don’t like the idea that you need to have read any particular source to … Continue reading »

The beauty of a grazed knee

You might have heard the poem Lamia by John Keats, which includes the lines: “Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine. Unweave a rainbow…”. Richard Dawkins takes this to task in a book, Unweaving the Rainbow. In the introduction, he argues Newton’s … Continue reading »

Science and its spam filter

Yesterday, I was part of a panel entitled ‘Blogs, Bloggers and Boundaries?’ at the Science Online conference. You can see an abstract for the panel over on Marie-Claire’s Shanahan’s blog (scroll down to second half of post). My talk spoke in quite general terms about science and social boundaries. I did this using an analogy … Continue reading »

The brain: the new weather?

What’s with the brain these days? This was the question Steve Woolgar started off a conference on Neurosociety, held at the Saïd Business School late last term (see also my post on STS and the Bernalian nightmare). Why do we increasingly seem to feel the need to explain, plan and sell with reference to research … Continue reading »

A bit of Victoriana

Everyone loves a bit of Victoriana at Christmas, so I thought I’d dig out some of my notes on children’s science books in the 19th century. (preface of John Henry Pepper’s Playbook, 1860, via googlebooks clip) The 19th century was the age of professionalisation of science. The word “scientist” wasn’t coined until 1833 [EDIT: or … Continue reading »