Hard facts and erratic people
Are risks culturally constructed or objectively measurable? John Adams suggests a model that can accommodate both views. The last time the Royal Society tried to write a report about risk management...
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Solutions that can become inflexible friends
Lucy Neville-Rolfe argues that business should not be over-regulated. The Government often comes under pressure to introduce further regulation in response to crises or disasters. However, regulation...
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The organiser's view
In a democracy government is inevitably a joint venture between experts including civil servants, lay persons and politicians. Good government entails mutually supportive relations between them. Lord...
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Types of risk
The significance of making a distinction between three types of risk: directly perceived risk, risk perceived through science and virtual risk, can be explained with the help of a model which...
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Why talk of risk is full of hazards
The Royal Society's last conference on risk in 1992 was notable for the squabble between pure and social scientists. Julia Hinde looks at why those involved failed to agree and asks if the prospects...
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Immoral maize?
How should government and the scientific community respond to public fears over genetically modified foods? Derek Burke says the establishment has learnt to listen to the consumer, but Robin Grove-...
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Judging experts by the company they keep
Tim O'Riordan discovers why the public trusts some experts but not others. I and two research colleagues recently asked a cross section of Norwich residents whom would they trust to tell them the...
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Overcoming the fear of flying with Joe Public as co-pilot
John Durant argues that any assessment of risk that hopes to command public confidence must mix scientific expertise with unqualified lay opinions. Living in what the German sociologist Ulrich Beck...
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The view from industry
Increased precision, good science and technical rigour are essential to risk-based decision-making. But by themselves they are not enough. People's values can dominate their feelings about a level of...
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Chairs
Lancaster University. Honorary professors: David Ashton, chief executive of Cable and Wireless College; Michael Brearley, psychoanalyst and former captain of cricket for Middlesex and England; George...
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Beckett loads
(Photograph) - Beckett loads: Trinity College Dublin Library has acquired an important collection of letters written by Samuel Beckett, together with other material never previously available. It...
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Fellowships
University of Wales, Swansea. Honorary fellowships for 1997: Neil Kinnock, European Union Commissioner for Transport; Ewart Alexander, dramatist; John Bridgeman, director-general of Fair Trading;...
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Grants
Queen's University, Belfast (continued) European funds. Dr D. Todd, Pounds 287,783 from the EU (fish pancreas disease); Dr F. Menzies, Pounds 59,420 from the EU: Aquafact (salmon farm epidemiology);...
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Honorary degrees
University of St Andrews. DLitt: Iain Banks, author; Hamish Brown, pioneer of outdoor education, freelance writer, guide and expedition organiser, founder member of the Scottish Mountain Leadership...
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King's London in biotechnology deal
A NEW biotechnology company with strong research links to King's College, London has raised an investment of Pounds 4 million. Called CeNeS, the firm specialises in diseases of the central nervous...