Published: 18-12-2024
In 2024 we briefly considered – but rejected – a cheeky suggestion to bring back the provocative term ‘Frankenfoods’. The days of that kind of polemic may have passed but, as we note in our year-end reflection, the story of the Modern Prometheus still has something to teach us about foresight and accountability.
Published: 17-06-2024
Who do the ‘techno-optimists’ and gene-editing boosters speak for? As Prof David Christian Rose argued at a recent conference it isn’t necessarily farmers or citizens.
Published: 14-11-2023
At its core, powerful institutions have exploited public confidence and trust that science is produced in a neutral and impartial manner. But when private industry information is not subject to robust debate and challenge, it’s propaganda. Call it what it is and we might be able to start changing things.
Published: 14-10-2022
A new public dialogue on gene edited farm animals, by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, BBSRC and Sciencewise, challenges the notion that members of the public are incapable of contributing to complex policy and regulatory discussions
Published: 02-06-2020
Reclaiming a baseline of accountability is the first step in building public confidence in regulatory systems that work for people as well as science that the public believes in.
Published: 31-01-2019
As universities rely more on industry for funds, researchers taking a stand on health or environment say they’re sidelined. The Guardian newspaper delves into the influence that corporate money can have on academics and scientists, and therefore the accepted framing and narratives around global problems – and proposed solutions.
How do we deal with the increasing polarisation in the GMO debate? Care ethics, a theme coming from ecofeminism, allows, according to the authors, to assess technologies “not simply as devices designed to create a certain end experience for a user, but as transformative systems that smuggle in numerous social and political interests”
Published: 25-01-2019
A new survey claims to show that GM food opponents are ignorant extremists. That’s how it’s being spun- with , arguably, too much enthusiasm – in the media but does the evidence for a dumb public with nothing to add to the GMO debate really stand up?
Published: 25-07-2018
In this struggle to ensure that science is not pushed out from its well-earned place in our polity by those with political or economic motivations to do so, is there a risk of coming on too strong?
