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 […]
Involving patients – or abandoning them?
The Covid-19 pandemic seems to be subsiding into a low-level endemic respiratory infection – although the associated pandemics of fear and action […]
The UK Pandemic Inquiry – Missing the Point?
The post-mortems on national governments’ management of the COVID-19 pandemic are getting under way. Some European countries have completed theirs, with rapid […]
Oppenheimer: Science, Culture and Politics
The new film ‘Oppenheimer’ offers several interesting views of the scientific endeavor that resonate as much in the social sciences and the humanities as in the physical sciences.
Pandemic London – and the Future of Publishing?
Robert Dingwall discusses the book Breakable, which details the experiences of Sue Julians and her family in lockdown London
Can We Trust the World Health Organization with So Much Power?
Robert Dingwall argues that the World health Organization has become a top-down, command-and-control approach, based on a narrow scientific base and the preferences, or prejudices, of a few major donors, that has failed to deliver in times of crisis.
Face Mask Evangelism, Trust and Democracy
The Great Mask Debate is limping towards closure. While there is no single conclusive piece of evidence, the best research points towards […]
Face Masks and COVID – A Failed Technology
A model is only as good as its underlying simplifying assumptions and data, notes Robert Dingwall, and in the case of testing the effectiveness of face masks to combat the spread of COVID those data are, he argues, at best fragile.
Face Masks for COVID: An Obituary?
While the full story will probably have to await the attention of historians, writes Robert Dingwall, but anyone who criticized masking was labeled as a peddler of disinformation.
