I have long been intrigued by the idea of “going back to nature”. Why “nature”? Why “go back”? It’s not that I don’t see the appeal of the simple life, but for a cultural historian the ideas of “nature” and “return” are so rich with significance. I was therefore really pleased to see a recent post […]
It looks like a row waiting to happen so I am a little anxious that writing about it will kick the whole thing off. However, the mix of science, media, history and the public coincides so closely with my own interests that I feel almost obliged to comment. On Sunday May 5 the Observer Magazine […]
Thirty years ago I called it the “zero option”. Today I think of it as “more than the echo”. In the early days of my PhD research I settled upon a particular modus operandi: to look for science in what was popular, not popularity in what was science. It seemed like a useful guiding principle, […]
It was an odd way to say hello. A member of senior management was giving a talk to greet new members of staff. His chosen topic: the need to close down degrees. Some courses, he said, were “not in the national interest”. To make matters worse the leader of this staff induction day then singled […]
As far as I know there has never been another degree quite like it. From lab work and maths to science communication and cultural studies with plenty of history of science in between; a true interdisciplinary mix of science and humanities – at the height of the science wars. In 1990 I took up a […]
The Shout Louder approach to be found in the Bodmer report was an easy target but we should not be surprised by its persistence. It is, after all, based on a common-sense idea of communication which in turn favours the interests of the scientists who adopt it. The common-sense idea of communication is that it […]
It is now thirty years since I started to study popular science so it seems a good time for a personal retrospective. Over those years I can see that thinking about science communication has changed: 1983 shout louder, 2013 shout louder and listen for the echo. Looking back I can see that my own work […]
