Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Suffragette – More than a Feminist Movie
With most works of art looking at the past, the real focus is the present. The new movie ‘Suffragette,’ writes Robert Dingwall, invites us to think about the consequences of political systems that are supposedly democratic but systematically exclude many voices.
Malaria Vaccine – Great Science But What’s the Point?
Bully for the researchers who have developed a vaccine can build resistance against some instances of malaria, says Robert Dingwall. But before the WHO recommends for its adoption, he suggests a harder look at user-centered design and cost-benefit analysis may be in order.
Ebola: WHO and the Consequences of Ignoring Social Science
A new report from the World Health Organization on the response to the African Ebola outbreak backs up what our Robert Dingwall has been writing all along — by downplaying social science lives have been lost. The question now is whether a new WHO can improve.
Close Encounters of the Dental Kind
After an unplanned visit to an American dentist, Robert Dingwall reflects on the power and the role of the case study
Antibiotic Resistance – Missing the Point?
There is no point in improving the innovation pipeline for antibiotics, argues Robert Dingwall, if the drugs that come out at the end all fall into the same chaotic patterns of use as today.
Campaigning for Social Science: Public Sociology and ‘Public Sociologists’
The arrival of a report calling for the British government to better support social science has raised questions about the role, responses and responsibilities of a ‘public sociology.’
Ebola – WHO (Still) Don’t Get It: Social Science Saves Lives
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa reminds us of a key lesson in public health, notes Robert Dingwall: Biomedical solutions will always come late, while social science-based interventions can break the cycle much sooner.
Debating the Legacy of Ulrich Beck
Amid the encomiums and eulogies surrounding the late German sociologist Ulrich Beck, Robert Dingwall asks how far Beck’s body of published work represents a model that other sociologists should seek to follow
