Philip Ball
British science writer and former editor at Nature, author of books on chemistry, physics and biology including How Life Works.
Philip Ball did not write this page.
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Their wordsIn particular, they have often been given lazy, outdated and misleading narratives about genes that are now causing problems for public understanding of genomic technologies, medicines, and genealogies.
↗Genes, in more context: a reply to a review of How Life Worksphilipball.blogspot.com 1st of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsI want rather to examine exactly what that role is. I suggest that it is not a “blueprint” role, nor an “instruction book” role.
↗Genes, in more context: a reply to a review of How Life Worksphilipball.blogspot.com 2nd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsAgency is not about that! It is not some mysterious property that goes where mechanism cannot.
↗Genes, in more context: a reply to a review of How Life Worksphilipball.blogspot.com 3rd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsmany biologists struggle even to recognize what agency – the central property of all living things – can mean. As I say in the book, this is an extraordinary lacuna in biology.
↗Genes, in more context: a reply to a review of How Life Worksphilipball.blogspot.com 4th of 4 in this piece
- 7 months earlier
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Their wordsDoes the publication of the paper show that indeed there is a bias in the literature whereby papers that present an unmitigatedly bleak picture of extreme climate change get accepted but those that are more nuanced get rejected? Evidently it shows nothing of the sort.
↗The new Climategate that wasn'tphilipball.blogspot.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThis is one of the reasons why I value work being done on nuclear fusion, which could ultimately provide a significant, clean source of power, albeit not soon enough to rescue us from the current climate crisis.
↗The new Climategate that wasn'tphilipball.blogspot.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
The claim that climate scientists play up global warming to protect their jobs is risible.
Their wordsThis idea that climate scientists have to play up global warming to protect their jobs is on the one hand risible and on the other hand a standard trope of conspiracy theorists
↗The new Climategate that wasn'tphilipball.blogspot.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 11 days earlier
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Their wordsspecifically about the popular idea that an off-world colony would be a back-up for civilization on Earth going off the rails. The threats we currently face can’t credibly be extrapolated to the point where a human settlement on Mars (say) might plausibly be entirely self-sufficient. And in any event, the argument seems incoherent.
↗Should we colonise space? How not to debate that question.philipball.blogspot.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Governance of space settlements founded by billionaires such as Musk or Bezos is a concern.
Their wordsI’d not want to be living on Mars under the aegis and whim of a Musk or a Bezos. I just feel governance is an issue some might like to think about.
↗Should we colonise space? How not to debate that question.philipball.blogspot.com 2nd of 2 in this piece