Some streetart on a bridge in Dublin I have an essay in James Wilsdon and Rob Doubleday’s collection: “Future directions for scientific advice in Whitehall” (downloadable for free). It’s an invitation for the various greats and goods of science policy to not only use social media to promote their ideas but to “go below the … Continue reading »
Tagged with scientists …
John Hayes MP and the bourgeois
Gove-themed streetart, Brighton. Our energy minister John Hayes seems to enjoy the word “bourgeois”. I don’t blame him, it’s a fun word to say. Back in October, he described the idea of onshore wind farms as “a bourgeois left article of faith based on some academic perspective”, arguing that “We need to understand communities’ genuine … 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 »
JD Bernal: the communist crystallographer
A small sign of political protest at the University of Sussex this morning. I was supposed to go to the JD Bernal Lecture at Birkbeck College a few weeks back; given this year by David Willetts. Except it was cancelled after a perceived threat of “disruptive” political protests. So I found myself with a free evening. I had … 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 »
Happy birthday Frank Oppenheimer!
The conservation of angular momentum being demonstrated at the Deutsches Museum, 1926. I’ve written about Frank Oppenheimer before, but as today marks the 100th anniversary of his birth, I thought he was worth mentioning again. Frank Oppenheimer had a fascinating life. I highly recommend KC Cole’s biography of him. The short version is that he was born into a reasonably wealthy American … Continue reading »
William Crookes
A picture of some shop fronts on the Caledonian Road, a little to the north of Kings Cross station. At the forefront is a slightly grubby blue sign: the Sir William Crookes charity shop. A lot of London charity shops are big brands like Oxfam or the British Heart Foundation, but there are a few independents like this … Continue reading »
Book Review: Free Radicals
With his new book, Free Radicals, Michael Brooks has done something which surprised me: he’s produced a popular science version of Against Method. Against Method, if you don’t know it, is a philosophy of science book by Paul Feyerabend, published in 1975. It argued against the idea that science progressed through the application of a strict universal method, and … Continue reading »
David Kirby’s ‘Lab Coats in Hollywood’
Dinosaur model from the 19thC, still on display in a South London park. Verisimilitude. Good word, isn’t it? It’s one of my favourites. It means ‘the appearance of being true or real’. It’s not just a term for people who study semiotics: philosophers of science use it too (or at least Popper does), as a … Continue reading »
Imagining the communities of online science
As a researcher of science writing and science writers, I’m interested in the ideas science bloggers have about the communities they are part of. Bloggers being a reflexive lot, I have a growing collection of posts which discuss some of the issues involved here. Still, I want to go beyond the limited perspective provided by … Continue reading »
