Stathis Psillos’ talk now online
Dr. Stathis Psillos' talk, 'Revisiting 'the Bankruptcy of Science' Debate' is now available on our youtube page. Click here for the video
Interview with Robert Foley
Check out the recent interview with Rotman Institute post-doc Robert Foley on CHRW. The interview with Robert begins about fifteen minutes in.Click here for the audio
Assisted Dying Post on Impact Ethics
Check out the post by Reuven Brandt about assisted dying on the Impact Ethics blog: http://impactethics.ca/2014/02/19/the-logical-slippery-slope-is-neither-slippery-nor-logical/
Talking about GMOs at AAAS
This past weekend, I [Rotman Postdoc Dan Hicks] attended the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS] in Chicago. I presented a poster discussing my current work, on the controversy over genetically modified foods, and was interviewed with a writer at ScienceNOW, the news blog at Science/AAAS. Check out the [...]
Is the Primary Visual Cortex a Center Stage for the Visual Phenomenology of Object Size?
In our paper, we discuss a recent fMRI study from Professor Maria Concetta Morrone’s lab in Pisa, Italy (Pooresmaeili et al., 2013) which examined the role of the primary visual cortex (V1) in size perception. Consistent with previous fMRI studies that examined V1 activation during size perception in the context of optical illusion displays (Murray [...]
The Public Interest and Government Funding of Science
By Melissa JacquartThis post concludes our recent string on science and the public interest. The idea for this series was sparked by the Rotman Institute’s Science, Policy, and Philosophy Working Group reading Grischa Metlay’s 2006 paper, "Reconsidering Renormalization: Stability and Change in 20th-Century Views on University Patents”. The previous four blog posts in the series [...]
Patents and the Public Interest
by Reuven Brandt Science is neither cheap nor easy. One tool used to incentivise investment of both money and effort into scientific research is patent law, which offers temporary monopolies as a reward for new marketable scientific developments. In theory, the profits to be made from patent protection drive innovation by rewarding individuals for turning [...]
What is in “the public interest”?
By Jessey Wright The notion of public interest, while murky and hard to define, can be a useful tool for isolating the core issues at play in a policy debate. Appreciating what is meant by ‘the public interest’ requires identifying which ‘public’ is being served. The clearest approach is to identify what they mean by [...]
“The public” in university patent policy
By Amy Wuest Grischa Metlay, in her 2006 paper "Reconsidering Renormalization: Stability and Change in 20th-Century Views on University Patents," traces conceptual shifts in the debates surrounding public policy from the 1940’s through the 1980’s. As the title implies, some things changed while others didn’t. She argues that the concept of “intellectual property” underwent [...]
Thinking about Values and Science
By Dan Hicks [This is the first of a series of posts on science and the public interest, written by members of the Rotman Institute’s Science, Policy, and Philosophy Working Group.] In the wake of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, contemporary philosophers of science generally recognize that values play a role in [...]