One of the sleeper hits for Netflix UK this summer has been a reimagining of Bocaccio’s Decameron as a commentary on pandemic behaviour. ….The narrative arc is fundamentally an investigation of class and character in times of peril…The experience of lockdown has changed lives, and eliminated some, but there is little hope amid the chaos.… Read More »
An unexpected element of post-pandemic reflections has been the revival of interest in the work of Ivan Illich, a significant public intellectual of the 1960s and 1970s, whose star has waned somewhat in recent decades… What does it do to a society when the very definition of health and illness comes to be monopolized by… Read More »
Substandard and falsified (SF) medicines are a global health problem. Their high prevalence is a threat to public health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, there are few street-level investigations of how this market works. This case study examines the supply and demand for SF medicines in Southern Ethiopia. Efforts to address the problem… Read More »
We consider the UK Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours’ (SPI-B) support for fear messaging during the global COVID-19 pandemic, evaluate the consequences and make recommendations for the future. Using evidence from published documents, we show that SPI-B supported the use of fear messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is inconsistent with the extant… Read More »
Written with the estimable Colin Axon and Jackie Cassell to correct some egregious misunderstandings of what pragmatist philosophy has to say about science and scientific method. “While we would not defend every detail of Covid-19 pandemic management, particularly its exclusion of important bodies of social scientific research, pragmatism’s caution, respect for standards of evidence, and… Read More »
Dingwall Enterprises have been appointed to provide independent ethics advice to the EU HORIZON Coordination and Support Action SEADE (Strengthening the Europe-Africa Digital Ecosystem Through Increased R&I Cooperation) The SEADE project provides fundamental and tangible support services to the Research and Innovation (R&I) ecosystems of Europe (EU) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), undertaking human-centred research, programme… Read More »
A discussion with Iain Martin and Alastair Benn about the UK response to the pandemic and the inquiry’s approach. Find it at https://reaction.life/reaction-podcast-robert-dingwall-covid/
Today’s moral panic is about AI and machine learning. Governments around the world are hastening to adopt positions and regulate what they are told is a potentially existential threat to humanity – and certainly to a lot of middle class voters in service occupations. However, it is notable that most of the hype is coming… Read More »
Christopher Nolan’s film about J Robert Oppenheimer makes for a long evening and requires serious concentration. Cillian Murphy’s performance in the central role is an extraordinary representation of a man tormented by many demons even before his role in the atomic bomb programme… Such a richly textured film also has footnotes that are worth a… Read More »
Last week, I spent a very pleasant evening at one of the surviving medieval churches in the City of London – the foundations of St Giles Cripplegate go back at least one thousand years, although most of the present building dates to 1304, via several restorations. The occasion was the launch of Breakable by Sue… Read More »