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COVID-19, Face Masks and Research Integrity
One of the things I do in the day job is think about research ethics and research integrity. I have just finished working with a team to support policy development in these areas by the European...
View Article(Belated) New Year Thoughts on the Barriers to Ending the Pandemic
A year ago, we in the UK were approaching Christmas and New Year with quiet optimism as the first COVID vaccines rolled out into the NHS. Light was appearing at the end of a long dark tunnel. Sadly,...
View ArticleLockdown is Another Triumph of Populism Over Science – Most People Have...
By popular request, I am posting this as a free-access version of one of the first commentary pieces that I wrote for the UK press – Daily Telegraph March 24, 2020 All infectious disease outbreaks...
View ArticleNot Rewriting the History of the Pandemic
As we pass two years from the beginnings of the pandemic, many commentators are scrambling to distance themselves from their initial responses, especially where these promoted approaches like...
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The Science Media Centre at 20
The UK’s Science Media Centre (SMC) is an internationally admired, and occasionally emulated, model for facilitating interactions between the science community and the cadre of specialist journalists...
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Pandemic Management – The Path Not Taken
Signs outside the Sahlgrenska hospital emergency reception area in February 2020 order virus patients to stay outside and summon hospital staff by pressing a button. (Photo: BIL,/CC BY-SA 4.0/...
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Pandemic London – and the Future of Publishing?
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...
View ArticleLong Covid – A Contested Disorder
All pandemics of novel infectious diseases are accompanied by social pandemics of fear and action. Unless the social pandemics are artificially prolonged, they eventually subside as people come to a...
View ArticlePandemic Nemesis: Illich reconsidered
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...
View ArticleThe Decameron Revisited – Pandemic as Farce
One of the sleeper hits for Netflix UK this summer has been a reimagining of Bocaccio’s Decameron as a commentary on pandemic behavior. In one sense, it is an obvious thing to do. The original was...
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