Lorraine Daston

Nov 6, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Lorraine Daston |Thomas Jones

When Gregor Mendel published the results of his experiments on pea plants in 1866 he initiated a fierce debate about the nature of heredity and genetic determinism that continues today. The battle lines were drawn in England in the late 19th century by William Bateson, who believed in fixed genetic inheritance, and W.F.R. Weldon, who argued that Mendel’s experiments revealed far more variation than Bateson and his supporters acknowledged.

Jan 5, 2024 | qoshe.com | Lorraine Daston |Peter Harrison

Would boycotting Russian scientists be an effective protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Where do terms like ‘altruism’ come from, and what assumptions come with them? How long should research groups be allowed to embargo their data, and why? Why is the normal curve assumed to be normal for so many disparate phenomena, from the distribution of heights to the distribution of observational errors? Who should count as an author of a scientific publication?

Oct 28, 2023 | nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Lorraine Daston

As historians have shown and political theorists have acknowledged: no viable collective is ever just the result of cool cost-benefit calculations. Rather, it is a shared vision of what it would mean to be part of a collective that surmounts hesitation and commands allegiance. What that collective vision should be for science already has a 350-odd-year history, and the work of the imagination is still ongoing.

Jul 28, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Lorraine Daston

CommentThis month, the Euclid space telescope began its journey into space to map the universe to a distance of 10 billion light-years in search of dark matter and dark energy, which are as mysterious as they sound.

May 24, 2023 | lrb.co.uk | Lorraine Daston |Colin Burrow

I’m​ a neurotic rule-follower. Whenever I fly I anguish about possible minor transgressions. Is my hand baggage less than the maximum permitted depth of 23 cm? Is my tube of toothpaste under the regulation 100 ml? Is the transparent bag in which I’ve put it transparent enough? Do I have to take my shoes off now? Then there’s the horror of the automated passport reader with its plastic sheep-dip gates. Is my passport the right way up?