Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
Where Does ‘Post-Naive’ Science Diplomacy Go From Here?
Doubravka Olšáková and Sam Robinson, argue that we are at the beginning of a new era of ‘post naïve’ science diplomacy.
Seeing Past the Naiveté of Science Diplomacy to Discern Its Benefits
Doubravka Olšáková and Sam Robinson discuss how the conflict in Ukraine highlights the limitations of conceptions of ‘science diplomacy’ since the turn of the 21st century.
Sheila Jasanoff on Science and Technology Studies
Sheila Jasanoff is a pioneer in the field of STS. That acronym can be unpacked as either ‘science and technology studies’ or ‘science, technology and society.’ Jasanoff — who describes herself as a sociologist of knowledge and a constructivist, trained in law, working in the tradition of the interpretive social sciences – is content with either use.
The Science Media Centre at 20
The UK’s Science Media Centre (SMC) is an internationally admired, and occasionally emulated, model for facilitating interactions between the science community and […]
Not Rewriting the History of the Pandemic
As we pass two years from the beginnings of the pandemic, many commentators are scrambling to distance themselves from their initial responses, […]
Lockdown is Another Triumph of Populism Over Science – Most People Have Behaved Rationally So Far
By popular request, I am posting this as a free-access version of one of the first commentary pieces that I wrote for […]
Does Gender Bias Influence What Gets Called ‘Soft Science’?
Across studies in research described here, participants were consistently more likely to describe a discipline as a “soft science” when they’d been led to believe that proportionally more women worked in the field.
(Belated) New Year Thoughts on the Barriers to Ending the Pandemic
A year ago, we in the UK were approaching Christmas and New Year with quiet optimism as the first COVID vaccines rolled […]
