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From all of us to all of you — we’re taking a few days off to enjoy a research-, exhibition-, acquisition- and blog-free zone. As an icon of the Xmas season, we couldn’t resist bringing this pic: Taken from Moist Production’s poster “Immaculate Confection”: (thanks to Vanessa, Street Anatomy, for the tip)

I’m fascinated by how often scholars of science studies reinvent the wheel — because they are ignorant of other approaches to science than their own myopic perspective. For example, I just stumbled over an otherwise excellent article — “Counting Corncrakes: The Affective Science of the UK Corncrake Census”, Social Studies of Science, vol 38, 377-405, 2008 — […]

This week our museum staff is closing down the temporary exhibition ‘Oldetopia‘, which opened back in October 2007 (14 month is a long time for a temporary show). All the artifacts will be handed back — either to our own storage facilities or to our generous lenders. For example, a set of delicate surgical knives and other equipment that we used to […]

Two quotes from yesterday’s online media caught my interest as a historian of contemporary biomedicine: First from an interview in yesterday’s Nature online with former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Elias Zerhouni: The economic stimulus package is $500 billion, with $1 billion for science. It’s outrageous. This is the future of our country. […]

A History of Genetics Day will take place at the John Innes Centre, Norwich (UK) on 9 September 2009. An international line-up of historians of science will speak, including Robert Olby: William Bateson and the establishment of the John Innes Horticultural Institution Marsha Richmond: Institutionalizing Mendelism: Women in the John Innes Workforce Donald Forsdyke: William Bateson’s contributions to evolutionary theory […]

In his most recent exhibition, French artist Christian Boltanski has set up a small recording studio where visitors can donate their heartbeats to the vast archive of the heart that the artist is currently building. Ultimately, the collection of heartbeats is to be stored on the uninhabited island of Ejima in Japan, which belongs to […]

Like so many others, I’m intrigued by a YouTube movie that shows Thai artist Kittiwat Unarrom’s body bakery shop (see the movie below). Mr. Unarrom uses ordinary baking dough (plus cashew nuts, chocolate and raisins) to make bread in the shape of body parts. It’s all perfectly edible (well, I guess cannibals would find real body-parts perfectly edible too 🙂 Mr. Unarrom is […]

In continuation of our former post on the auditory space of contemporary medicine —  listen here to sound artist John Wynne‘s recordings of the medical soundscape at Harefield heart hospital, aired in BBC3’s Between the Ears slot in June. I guess the idea of the programme was to use the medical sounds as background illustrations to the interviews with the patients in […]

When writing about museum objects in English, I have always used the word ‘artefact’. But now I’ve discovered that this is ‘Commonwealth English’ (online dictionary); it is also much less common on Google than ‘artifact’. I guess I will have to bow to blog visibility and spell it ‘artifact’ from now on. Don’t tell me we aren’t slaves under visibility 🙂 

“I love behind-the-scenes stuff and assume you do too”, writes Kathleen Stocker at the National Museum of Health and Medicine as she posts some pictures of the work on their new exhibition ‘Facial Reconstruction’ (with plaster models of faces undergoing reconstructive surgery). More pictures here. I do indeed love behind-the-scenes images and descriptions. Unfortunately, museums rarely publish […]

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London (UCL) have just announced a number of 3 year scholarships for their M.Phil./Ph.D. programme, beginning in September 2009. The scholarships are open to students both from within and outside EU. You can get more info from the centre’s graduate tutor, Helga Satzinger, h.satzinger@ucl.ac.uk, or from Adam Wilkinson, a.wilkinson@ucl.ac.uk. And […]

Last week, Martin Fenner at Nature Network Bloggers Forum asked his fellow science bloggers nine inquisitive questions about their experiences with the genre. Several people — e.g., Eva Amsen; Henry Gee; Clare Dudman; Steffi Suhr; Stephen Curry; Massimo Pinto; Larry Moran; Kristi Vogel; Maxine Clarke; T. Ryan Gregory; Mike Haubrich; John Wilkins; Paulo Nuin; Heather Etchevers; Lee Turnpenny; Ricardo Vidal; Bob O’Hara; Pedro […]