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Public Engagement

Engaging the public on science? Surely you’re joking!

March 10, 2010

I was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago where engaging the public (or “publics” to be more accurate) in science came up. In the course of discussions, I mentioned an initiative by Research Councils UK to involve members of the public in developing a call for research proposals on the use of nanotechnology [...]

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New report on Science and Trust emphasizes acknowledging risk and uncertainty

March 8, 2010

A new report released today from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Expert Group on Science and Trust emphasizes the need to address risk and uncertainty in developing and using science and technology within society. “Acknowledging risk and uncertainty” is the second of eight broad aspirations from the independent group, established to [...]

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Poll: Does trust in science need restoring?

February 16, 2010

Prompted by a blog post by Stephen Hill this morning – and a flurry or Twitter responses to it – here’s a quick question on science and trust:

More on this in a later blog.

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Science Media Centre briefing on Climate Science in the Media – Don’t Panic!!

February 12, 2010

A guest blog by Gary Kass, Principal Specialist in Strategic Futures at Natural England
The London-based Science Media Centre (SMC) describes itself as “an independent venture working to promote the voices, stories and views of the scientific community to the national news media when science is in the headlines” and sets out its “ultimate goal” as [...]

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21st Century Tech Governance? What would Ned Ludd do?

December 18, 2009

By Jim Thomas, ETC Group
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
For a fresh perspective on how to do technology governance consider starting somewhere else. I suggest York Castle in Northern England – a stark stone tower from the thirteenth century.
It was here in 1812 that the English state first executed fifteen [...]

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Tim Jones’ Exquisite Corpse of Science – an update

November 15, 2009

Back in July I wrote a short blog about Tim Jones’ Exquisite Corpse of Science project – an innovative project to explore what people think about science and it’s place in their lives and society, through the medium of drawing and film. Four months on, I though it was worth a quick update.
One of the [...]

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Do scientists encourage misleading media coverage?

October 30, 2009

As scientists, how we love to rail against the incompetence of the media. As self-proclaimed keepers of the truth, we decry – usually rather vocally – the misinterpretation and misuse of our precious studies. And as we commiserate together on the injustices of the world, we inevitably get to thinking that if only journalists could [...]

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Is too much choice bad for the health?

October 11, 2009

Sunday morning breakfast – a croissant, a coffee, and a stress-free morning.
But wait a minute…
I wonder how healthy all that butter is? When did I last have my cholesterol levels checked? Were they high? Will my crisp, moist butter croissant push me into a French pastry-coronary?
And how about the coffee? Didn’t I hear that caffeine [...]

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Enough with the nano already!

September 18, 2009

Okay, so I’ve been letting work interfere with my blogging life over the past few weeks, which has led to an interminable series of impenetrable blogs on nanotechnology. I promise I’ll try and lighten up over the next few weeks (although I’m afraid there are still a couple of nano blogs to come over the [...]

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Geoengineering the climate: A clear perspective from The Royal Society

September 1, 2009

Initial reflections on the new Royal Society report “Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty”
After many months’ hard work, the Royal Society’s much-anticipated report on geoengineering was published today. Aimed at presenting “an independent scientific review of the range of methods proposed [for geoengineering the climate] with the aim of providing an objective view [...]

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Reflections of a “scientific illiterate”

August 11, 2009

Reviewing Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
My name is Andrew, and I am scientifically illiterate.
Just thought I’d get that off my chest!
And before you protest too much, I do have some pretty convincing evidence. Math makes my head ache. I cannot recite the Earth’s geological timeline from [...]

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Anything I can do, you can do better!

July 18, 2009

Art makes a mockery of experts and empowers the marginalized. At least that’s how I feel at the moment!
Having broadcast the news of Tim Jones’ fabulous Exquisite Corpse of Science project, I thought it only fitting that I do what I’ve been telling everyone else to do, and get out my Sharpie. And here’s the [...]

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The biggest science-art project in history?

July 15, 2009

Okay, so there may be a dash of hyperbole there, but following up on the success of his Exquisite Corpse of Science project (see my previous post), Tim Jones is hatching an ambitious plan to create the world’s largest interconnected montage of drawings representing peoples’ impressions of, aspirations for and concerns about science.
The plan is [...]

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Celebrity scientists – it takes more than stardust

June 27, 2009

It’s been a few weeks now since the men’s style magazine GQ launched the “Rock Stars of Science” campaign. I’m a staunch advocate of raising science’s profile, but the whole campaign has had me on edge, and I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why. Was it the exclusive use of white [...]

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A cautious thumbs up for synthetic biology from the UK public

June 18, 2009

According to a new public opinion survey from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, the great British public is cautiously enthusiastic about the emerging field of synthetic biology.
Last summer, the Washington DC-based Synthetic Biology Project published a survey of US awareness and attitudes towards synbio. The new study builds on that work by taking a [...]

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Science minister’s question time

June 9, 2009

This afternoon, a riveting and possibly ground-breaking conversation evolved in real time on the social media platform Twitter. Yesterday, writer and broadcaster Colin Stuart (@skyponderer on Twitter) raised concerns about the new dual-role of UK Science Minister Lord Drayson – Drayson has just been made Minister of Defense Procurement as part of Gordon Brown’s reshuffle, [...]

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Culture clash – Probing CP Snow’s Two Cultures, part 2

May 5, 2009

Last week I asked a rather trivial (did someone say trite?) question (the 2-second Two-Cultures poll) about perpetual motion machines – as a gentle lead-up to this week’s 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s Two Cultures lecture. So what were the results and what can be learned, if anything, from them?
First, here are the data in [...]

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Science, society and the Second Enlightenment

February 23, 2009

It’s barely a month since Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” and already there has been widespread discussion over what this rightful place might be—spurred on in no small part by science and technology provisions in the recently passed stimulus bill. Not surprisingly, the role science should play in 21st century society [...]

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Thank goodness for Sir Robert

February 5, 2009

I’ve been sitting here for over half an hour, trying to work out how to start this blog in an engaging and witty way, but have failed miserably—it’s been a long day! Instead, let me come straight to the point, because it’s quite a simple one—please read Sir Robert Winston’s article “Why turning out brilliant [...]

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Revisiting the Civic Scientist

February 1, 2009

Reading through the various science and technology offerings on the web this morning, I was struck by a conversation between Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Berger and Neal Lane, former National Science Foundation director and science advisor to President Clinton. Not surprisingly, towards the top of the conversation is President Obama’s commitment to “restore science to [...]

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Nanotechnology, science and public engagement—lessons from the UK

January 13, 2009

Public engagement was a key feature in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and has been front and foremost in the transition between the old administration and the new. You only have to check out change.gov to see how ideas are evolving on soliciting and evaluating opinions from a broad swath of the population. The latest is [...]

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Scientific knowledge, and the “pay to play” culture

January 7, 2009

Here’s a bit of trivia to brighten your day: Between 2000 and 2007, Chinese scientists published roughly one nanotoxicology paper for every ten million people in the country. In contrast, US scientists published twenty-five nanotoxicology papers for every ten million citizens.
I know this because I have just read a fascinating assessment of nanotoxicology publications by [...]

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A "manifesto" for socially-relevant science and technology

December 24, 2008

In 2003, Harvard University’s Sheila Jasanoff wrote about what she termed “Technologies of Humility.” Recognizing the growing disconnect between technological progress and its effective governance, Jasanoff explored new approaches to decision-making that “seek to integrate the ‘can-do’ orientation of science and engineering with the ‘should-do’ questions of ethical and political analysis.” Five years on, her [...]

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Is nanotechnology suffering from “silent rave” syndrome?

October 5, 2008

The silent rave might seem a rather bizarre social phenomenon; a group of strangers converging in a public place and dancing to their own individual iPod soundtracks. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the emerging technology community has been indulging in the new tech-equivalent of silent raves for some time now.
These suspicions are probably [...]

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Synthetic biology, ethics and the hacker culture

June 13, 2008

Read Thomas L. Friedman’s “The World is Flat” or Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”, and you get a glimpse into how the hacker culture that emerged at the tail end of the twentieth century revolutionized the digital world. Will a confluence of emerging technologies—including information tech, biotech, and nanotech—lead to a similar revolution in the biological world?

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US town faces nanotechnology crisis

March 28, 2008

The small American town of Sunnyville is a town in crisis. Against a backdrop of job losses that have decimated the local community, citizens are struggling to decide whether to welcome two major nanotech-enabled industries into the town, or whether to reject them because the new technology might create more problems than it solves.
As if [...]

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Smart science for the 21st century

March 6, 2008

Can current approaches to doing science sustain us over the next one hundred years? An increasing reliance on technological fixes to global challenges — including nanotechnology — demands a radical rethink of how we use science in the service of society.
Over the next century we will perhaps be facing the greatest challenge in the history [...]

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2020 Science is…

A personal blog about science and technology in the 21st century. Written by scientist and emerging technologies advisor Andrew Maynard it tackles some of the knottier questions raised by science and technology, such as “where is technology innovation taking us?”, “what is the role of science in society society?” and “how can science and technology be developed responsibly?” More…
Andrew Maynard…

Is a scientist gone over to the dark side – policy, communication and all that. When not writing and talking about science and technology, he advises on nanotechnology and synthetic biology (amongst other things) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.
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- Really enjoying @stevenhill's 7 steps to restore trust in science: http://tinyurl.com/yeruh7j - worth following 10 hours ago
- @2020science ...in this respect, Frankel and Whitesides' book is excellent: http://tinyurl.com/y87ubf6 10 hours ago
- @SciencePunk ...real challenge is dispersing the fog of hype and misconception surrounding nanotech, and getting to the science & its use... 10 hours ago
- @SciencePunk RC piece was good - v good in places. Recent House of Lords report also contained a lot of sense... 10 hours ago
- @imascientist Thought so too Re: food. Just keep thinking of the trad Brit breakfast, inc. fried bread, tho! 10 hours ago
- @SciencePunk That's a tough one. Richard Jones would be top of my list. I haven't done this, but have covered this ground a lot in talks 10 hours ago
- RT @imascientist: How food is designed to make us overeat. http://bit.ly/cEnTN5 <- interesting, but sweet, salty fatty foods not new... 10 hours ago
- @SciencePunk Re: nanotech - what's the context, or is this just a cry of frustration (which would be completely understandable)? 10 hours ago
- @lorddrayson #scientists4labour Support for open access publishing - essential for breaking the "monopoly on knowledge" 12 hours ago
- Why iPad Is the 'Children's Toy of the Year' http://tinyurl.com/ycsz2vn <- alternative but persuasive perspective on iPad 12 hours ago
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