Category: Student Reports

In class yesterday, I talked about the Doctrine of Religious Restraint (DRR) and I mentioned some of the liberal critics’ responses to the DRR. Due to time constraints, I was unable to include a discussion on the conservative critics’ responses (and in particular the “New Traditionalist” responses) to the DRR. I feel that it might […]

I mentioned this article in class from Scientific American (Nov 2011) about genetically altered mosquitos as a means for fighting disease. Here is link to article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-wipeout-gene This is interesting/ raises questions on many levels: – Private versus public research (both are represented here) – Ethical testing – the private firm is testing unapproved “technologies” […]

This past Wednesday we attended a talk by Kim Stanley Robinson.  For those of you that couldn’t make it, the seminar was mostly about the future history of a post-capitalist world; this is not fantasy, it is in fact an exercise in futurology, because even the most ardent supporters of the Free Market and all […]

In his article, “Science, Expertise, and the Democratization of the Decision-Making Process,” Michael Carolan argues for a reconceptualization of the normal science/ post-normal science way of thinking about science and policy and argues, instead, for a shift toward considering expertise from many perspectives. I agree with this notion wholeheartedly. One of the challenges for me […]

We recently had a very theatrical and entertaining presentation about the possibility of a pill to prolong life, and what that alternative could do to future generations.  It was a hypothetical situation, but it is one that we have returned to in class and speakers of the Centers for Values have also alluded to.  The […]

It is not because I think that the public is stupid or dishonest in general. It is not because I don’t think that some bad scientists have done things to diminish the public trust in the scientific process. It is not because I participated in the biological sciences before changing the direction of my graduate […]

It should be quite obvious to most properly functioning, and somewhat sophisticated human beings (whatever that means) that we agree on our most basic values and/or moral ideas.  It becomes very easy to speak within value-laden and ethical cliches: we can all agree that exploitation of children is wrong, kicking puppy dogs is heinous, and […]

On page 153 of Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal, Heather Douglas claims that “with the values used by scientists to assess the sufficiency of the evidence made explicit, both policy-makers and the public could assess those judgments, helping to ensure that values acceptable to the public are utilized in the judgments.” My question is […]

Reading Mark Brown’s chapter on John Dewey in Science in Democracy helped me to understand some of my own problems with the idea that scientists are objective observers taking notes and discovering immutable truths about the world. Of course this paints a picture that is not quite accurate.  The immutable truths are immutable for awhile, […]

Towards the end of the class discussion on September 28 someone had touched on the idea that scientists do not tend to ask those suffering from an illness or disease to participate in the scientific discourse.  I believe the comment was, we don’t ask a diabetic about diabetes. What I would like to ask is: […]