Past Seminars Wednesday,13th September, 2006. Cloning Goes to the Movies: with Craig Cormick 6pm, Mayne Centre, UQ Flyer Public attitude research shows that the majority of people get most of the information about biotechnology from the mainstream media - but for human cloning the main source of reference is Hollywood films. This talk uses clips from well-known Hollywood films such as “Jurassic Park, ”The Sixth Day”,  “The Boys from Brazil”,  “Multiplicity”,  “Austin Powers” and “The Island” to examine the accuracy of movie representations of cloning and how those depictions align with public attitudes. Is it more fiction than science? How are scientists portrayed? Are there any ethical messages? Craig Cormick is the Manager of Public Awareness for Biotechnology Australia Brought to you by the Biohumanities Project and Science Communication/EMSAH, UQ Tuesday 22nd November 2005 Scientists’ Accounts of Adult and Embryonic Stem Cell Research; Defending the Field? Nicola Marks, MRC Human Genetics Unit and INNOGEN (ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics), Edinburgh 2pm Large Seminar Room (Rm 3.142), Institute for Molecular Biology Biohumanities/OPPE joint seminar Newspaper headlines regularly tell us that stem cell research (SCR), in particular embryonic SCR, is a new and exciting field that promises to cure a variety of diseases. SCR is also seen as controversial in countries such as the US, the UK or Australia. Here, I look at how scientists talk about SCR. I find that although public debates are often set up as adult vs. embryonic SCR, or as scientists supporting all forms of SCR vs. non-scientists denouncing embryonic SCR, much more subtle rhetorical tools are deployed by researchers in discussions around this field. They set up dichotomies but move seamlessly between them, selectively appealing to them. In this paper I will discuss some examples of these dichotomies and show how they enable my respondents to promote and maintain their authority. I will argue that analysing what scientists say about SCR not only gives us insights into how this field is constructed, but also helps us understand the political and social contexts in which scientific claims are made. I suggest that it is important to bear this in mind when trying to improve dialogues between science and members of the public. Friday, 18th November 2005 Conceptual Change in Science: The Case of the Gene Paul Griffiths, Federation Fellow, Biohumanities Project, UQ 3-4pm Goddard Building (8) Room 388, School of Integrative Biology Friday 7th October 2005 Biological Individuality: conceptual and philosophical aspects Dr. Samir Okasha, University of Bristol 3pm Room E348, Forgan Smith Building Philosophy Seminar, Sponsored by the Biohumanities Project Friday, 19 August 2005 Our Knowledge of the Past: Or how to prove that your students plagiarized? Avi Tucker, ANU 3pm, in Room E219, Forgan Smith Building. Philosophy seminar, sponsored by the Biohumanities Project How do historians, comparative linguists, biblical and textual critics and evolutionary biologists establish beliefs about the past? How do they know the past? I argue that they do so by following the same three stages inference of a common cause as you would if you'd wish to prove that a student plagiarized when more than one student submit an identical exam. Using the analytic tools of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science I explain the relation between evidence, theory, and methodology in the disciplines that offer scientific knowledge of the past.  These disciplines should be thought of as an effort to explain the evidence of past events. Friday, 29th July 2005 The Great Dying On the Vine: Scientific and social responses to the phylloxera grapevine disasters, France 1867-1900 Dr. George Gale, University of Missouri-Kansas City 3:00pm to 4:30pm, Room E302 - Forgen Smith Building Philosophy seminar, sponsored by the Biohumanities Project In the Summer of 1867, a few grapevines died in an unimportant vineyard in the southern Rhône Valley . Within two years, with vines dying at an ever-accelerating rate, regional growers realized that a terrible disaster loomed before them: complete destruction of ’s southern vineyards by a mysterious new vine disease, a killer of terrifying swiftness and power. What was this unknown disease? how did it kill? where had it come from? and, most importantly, how could it be stopped? Answers to these questions were neither easy nor quick in coming, especially as the social fabric of the nation was increasingly frayed by the consequences of the disease. In the end it took thirty years, and an army of disparate allies—growers, landowners, small holders, politicians, academic scientists in both and , private researchers and, finally, amateur practitioners—to bring the ravaging disease to a standstill. And even then the disease was not conquered: we had merely learned to live with it.  Most important among the various phases of warfare with the disease was the initial uncovering of its nature and origin. What is surprising today, and typically forgotten, is that it took the combatants, both professionals and amateurs, seven long years of vigorous, sometimes rancorous philosophical debate to settle the issue of the nature and etiology of the phylloxera, as the disease came to be called. My presentation examines this debate, attempting to explain how and why it happened. At bottom, I find the debate based in a fundamental disagreement about two competing theories of plant disease, theories which, themselves, originate in two long-opposed models of human disease Wednesday 28 April 2005 Instinct in the '50s: The British reception of Konrad Lorenz's theory of instinctive behaviour Prof. Paul Griffiths Biohumanities Project, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics 4.15-5.30 PM, Rm. 323 Michie Building Department of History Seminar, sponsored by the Biohumanities Project. At the beginning of the 1950s most students of animal behavior in Britain saw the instinct concept developed by Konrad Lorenz in the 1930s as the central theoretical construct of the new ethology. In the mid 1950s J.B.S Haldane made substantial efforts to undermine Lorenz. British attitudes to the instinct concept changed dramatically in the wake of Daniel S. Lehrman's 1953 critique of Lorenz, and by the 1960s Lorenz drew a clear distinction between his own views and those of the ‘English-speaking ethologists'. The inconsistencies between Lorenz's ideas and the trends in contemporary evolutionary genetics that are reflected in Haldane's critiques may help to explain why the Lorenzian instinct concept was unable to maintain itself in Britain. Thursday 21 April 2005 The Conceptual Impact of the Genomic Revolution Prof. Paul Griffiths Biohumanities Project, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics 5.30-6.30pm –The Innes Room – UQ Union Centre Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies Public Lecture In the ‘postgenomic' era, molecular biology faces every few months what in many disciplines would be regarded as a ‘scientific revolution'. This constitutes a fascinating and challenging case study of the role of conceptual change in science. I focus on an online survey conducted in 2003-4 in which biologists were asked to annotate conceptually challenging cases of genome transcription with the aim of revealing the range of conceptions of the gene operative in contemporary bioscience.Download summary and references.  Thursday 14 April 2005 Before the gene: the idea of heredity in science and medicine before Darwin Dr John Waller Centre for the Study of Health and Society and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne. 4.15-5.30 PM, Rm. 326 Parnell Building Department of History Seminar, sponsored by the Biohumanities Project. The Victorians were obsessed with the idea of heredity, and especially with the notion of hereditary malady. Charles Darwin thought his children's copious ailments were due to inherited taints; Queen Victoria feared the expression of a strain of hereditary insanity that was said to run in her family; and a long series of novelists – from Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to Geraldine Jewsbury and Mary Elizabeth Braddon – wrote stories or novels centred on the issue of hereditary madness and the moral duties of the tainted. This paper charts the emergence of the concept of heredity and hereditary malady in the century before The Origin of Species and considers why, long before the birth of genetics and pedigree analysis, the idea had such overwhelming appeal. Friday 18 March 2005 Planning for Biodiversity: Conservation and Restoration Sahotra Sarkar Dept. of Philosophy and Section of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin 10.00 Ecology Center Systematic conservation planning has become central to contemporary conservation biology. It is an interdisciplinary field drawing on methods from computer science, economics, and operations research, besides ecology and other areas of biology. In this paper, these methods are extended to planning for ecological restoration with recovery of biodiversity as a goal. Restoration areas are identified to establish connectivity between units of a biodiversity conservation area network. The protocol is applied to the Transvolcanic Belt of Mexico using modeled distributions of non-volant mammals. Friday 11 March 2005 Inventing the Antidepressant: Amphetamine, industry, and American medicine in the 1930s and 1940s. Dr Nicolas Rasmussen History and Philosophy of Science, University of New South Wales. 12.00 Queensland Bioscience Precinct Auditorium IMB Friday Seminar Series, sponsored by the Biohumanities Project The economic and health impact of new drugs is drawing ever greater attention, partly because the introduction of new drugs often accompanies major changes in the definition and prevalence of medical conditions. Nowhere is this effect more dramatic than in psychiatric medicine, where new conditions seem to arise overnight, and previously obscure disorders may increase thousands of percent on the heels of new drug marketing campaigns. In this essay I describe the invention of amphetamine around 1930 and its passage over the next two decades from physiological laboratory to clinical practice, as the first commonplace 'anti-depressant'. I also describe the way in which psychiatric concepts of depression shifted in conjunction with amphetamine's introduction in this period, and reflect on the implications for medicine today. "Genes: Philosophical analyses put to the test" Dr Karola Stotz Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Tuesday February 1st  2005 12.30 Large Seminar Room 3.142, Level 2 Queensland Bioscience Precinct This paper describes one complete and one ongoing empirical study in which philosophical analyses of the concept of the gene were operationalized and tested using questionnaire data obtained from working biologists. These studies throw light on how different gene concepts contribute to biological research. Their aim is not to arrive at one or more correct ‘definitions' of the gene, but rather to map out the variation in the gene concept and to explore its causes and its effects. "Whole Genome Patenting" Mr Adam Bostanci ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, University of Exeter Tuesday January 25th 2005 12.30 Rm 7.104 South Queensland Bioscience Precinct Most people are familiar with the patenting of genes, but few are aware that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a number of patents which claim ownership of the complete genome sequence of a prokaryote or virus. In this seminar, I will analyse these patents by considering how similar patent applications are treated by examiners at the European Patent Office and by further comparing genome patents to gene and microorganism patents. We find that genome patents, while in some ways an extension of conventional gene patents, seek to exploit the informational nature of the genome and are part of a shift toward intangible intellectual property in genomics. At the same time, genome patents raise important conceptual issues for contemporary genomics, such as whether the utility of a whole genome can be specified, whether whole genome patents are merely an attempt to unite disparate gene sequences into a single patent application, and what the relationship is between the genome, organism, and classification (either phenetic or phylogenetic). Back to Events