Understated, not overlooked by Anthony Stavrianakis
A Simpler Life: Synthetic Biological Experiments Talia Dan-Cohen Cornell University Press, 2021. 174 pages. First, take a self-consciously self-aggrandizing area of bioengineering,…
Tag: Scientific Research
On the Search for the Origins of COVID-19: A Forum by Andrew Lakoff
More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus causing the disease remains uncertain. The predominant theory is that its emergence in human populations…
The scientific entrepreneur as hero: from Arrowsmith to the covid-19 vaccines by Ilana Löwy
Cover Arrowsmith, Pocket Books, 1944 Edition Sinclair Lewis’s novel Arrowsmith, published in 1925 to critical and public acclaim (the book was awarded the Pulitzer prize, although Lewis refus…
(Dis)continuities in cancer care: An ethnographic approximation to practices of disease stratification by Ignacia Arteaga
Background: Disease stratification practices have long been used as a means to produce and make sense of cancer, distinguishing ‘types’, tumour development stages, and even patients’ sociode…
Web Roundup: Beyond Using More Female Rats: Gender Disparities in Biomedicine by Anika Jugovic-Spajic
Recently, physicians, public health experts, and anthropologists (among others) have pointed to a prevalence of gender, class, race, age, and ethnic bias in biomedical research and the specific…
Web Roundup: CRISPR Babies and Bioethics by Whitney Arey
In late November, He Jiankui, a scientist in China, announced that he had created the first “CRISPR babies,” meaning that he performed germ-line genome edits on human embryos, which…
After and Beyond the Genome: Taking Postgenomics Seriously by Maurizio Meloni
The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome Jenny Reardon University of Chicago Press, 2017, 304 pages. Genetics: A Situated View How enduring is the…
Laboratory capacity building and the open hardware movement by Louise Bezuidenhout
Through my work in African laboratories I am regularly made aware of the challenging equipment shortages faced by research laboratories in many low/middle-income countries (LMICs). This extends far…
Web Roundup: In the clouds by Lily Shapiro
As I’m sure many of you saw, this month started with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, giving a boost (sorry) to privatized space travel, and providing…
Web Roundup: Grand Not-So-Unified Theory of Birth Control Side-Effects by Anika Jugovic-Spajic
Recently, a number of news outlets reported the results of a new research study on the correlation between hormonal contraceptives and breast cancer. The study analyzed data from…
Web Roundup: Gender and Health by Cinzia Greco
Nothing seems to be more self-evident than gender differences, and yet when we have to establish what these differences are, things seem to become complicated. Is it the…
Web Roundup: Marching for Science, which is what, exactly? by Lily Shapiro
Many of you may have marched (or chosen not to march) at last week’s March for Science. I marched with my partner and young son here in Coimbatore,…
Web Roundup: Public Health by Lily Shapiro
I assume everyone is, like me, tired of (and stressed out about) the US election, so let’s take a break from that to take a quick look around…
Web Roundup: The Electronic Over-Soul and our Worst Selves (and Other Mishaps) by Sara M Bergstresser
The web roundup for this month is a sequel to last month’s roundup on Mind, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence. I will address another interface between machines and minds,…
Book Forum––Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps by Todd Meyers
Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (University of California Press, 2015) is a story of the influenza pandemic that never…
Mind, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence by Maria Cecilia Dedios
This month’s web roundup comes through a bit late – paradoxically- due to technical difficulties (my computer died!). Although I will be able to recover most of my…
Web Roundup: 2015 by Lily Shapiro
As the year winds up, many publications around the web are doing “highlights of 2015”-type lists, so I thought I’d compile some of these to give a bit…
Web Roundup: A busy month for Pharma… by Jane Roberts
This month it was hard not to pay attention to what was happening in the world of Pharma, where several cases came to light illustrating just how murky…
Web Roundup: Empathy in the news by Jane Roberts
The capacity of individuals to imagine another’s perspective or personal agenda, and our own ability to feel anger, despondency or frustration in response to their pain and distress,…