David Allen Kirby (born 30 November 1968) is an American professor of science communication studies within University of Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He researches, writes about, and teaches science communication and the history of science. He is best known for his work showing how fictional narratives can be used in the process of design and for his studies on the use of scientists as consultants for Hollywood film productions.
Kirby received his PhD in Zoology from the University of Maryland-College Park in 1996. He was an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department of American University until 2001 where he taught molecular biology and evolution. He then received a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship that allowed him to re-train in the fields of science communication and science & technology studies (STS) in Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. In 2004 he took up his current position at the University of Manchester where he is now Professor of Science Communication Studies in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. [ citation needed ]
Kirby's scientific research was in the field of population genetics where he used techniques from molecular biology to explore the evolution of genetic diversity in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster . His work contributed to our understanding of the role that genetic interactions play in evolution, a phenomenon known as epistasis. [1] [2] [3]
Kirby's concept of the diegetic prototype refers to the ways that fictional depictions can stimulate public discussions about social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies. The concept of the diegetic prototype provided one of the foundations for the creative approach to technological development known as design fiction. [4] [5] According to Julian Bleecker, the creator of the term design fiction, the "diegetic prototype provides a principle for understanding the ways in which science fact and science fiction always need each other to survive. Kirby's primary impact on the field of science communication has been to bring the study of science in entertainment media into the mainstream of science communication studies. His work showed the importance of movies, television and other entertainment media for communicating science and it moved the field beyond its narrow focus on news media. He is director of the Science and Entertainment Lab. [6] His 2011 book Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists and Cinema was the first academic study of the interactions between the scientific community and the entertainment industry. The work focused on the contributions made by scientists who serve as consultants for Hollywood film productions and the subsequent impact these movies had on real world science and technology.
The book transcended traditional academic boundaries with reviews not only in key journals for the history of science, [7] science & technology studies, [8] [9] and science communication [10] [11] but also reviews in the prominent scientific journals Science and Nature [12] as well as journals in the fields of physics, [13] chemistry, [14] [15] psychiatry, literary studies, [16] film studies, [17] and science education. [18] The book was also named one of Physics World magazine's top 10 best popular-physics books of 2011. [19] Kirby's work also provided an academic foundation for the development of initiatives to enhance the use of science in entertainment products including the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange and the German program MINTEEE. [20] [21] [22]
In 2013 Kirby received an Investigator Award in the Medical Humanities from the Wellcome Trust for a project entitled "Playing God: Exploring the interactions among the biosciences, religion and entertainment media." [23] The goal of the project is to investigate the ways that entertainment professionals use science in entertainment medi, such as TV episodes, movies and computer games, and how religious communities respond to these entertainment texts. He is examining the period from 1930–1968 when religiously based movie censorship groups like the Hays Office and the Legion of Decency modified movie narratives in order to tell what they considered to be more appropriate stories about science in movies. [ citation needed ]
Kirby's early work after his transition into science communication and STS primarily addressed the relationship between cinema, genetics and biotechnology. He was the first scholar to analyse the 1997 film GATTACA . [24] He shows the ways in which the film serves as a bioethics text that warns society about embracing the notion that an individual's personality and capabilities are defined entirely by their genes, an ideology known as genetic determinism. [25] His other work on the topic of cinema, genetics and biotechnology shows how most movies simultaneously embrace genetic determinism while also strongly opposing any scientific attempts to change our genes. [26]
Kirby has given numerous public lectures on his research including co-headliner for the 2017 Geek Picnic in St. Petersburg, Russia, and co-headliner for the 2014 Imagine Film Festival. [27]
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. In recent years, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the usage of new technologies such as CRISPR and genetic screening, with a heated debate on whether these technologies should be called eugenics or not.
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
Gattaca is a 1997 American dystopian science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol in his filmmaking debut. It stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, with Jude Law, Loren Dean, Ernest Borgnine, Gore Vidal, and Alan Arkin appearing in supporting roles. The film presents a biopunk vision of a future society driven by eugenics where potential children are conceived through genetic selection to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. The film centers on Vincent Freeman, played by Hawke, who was conceived outside the eugenics program and struggles to overcome genetic discrimination to realize his dream of going into space.
Determinism is the philosophical view that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning. Genetic reductionism is a similar concept, but it is distinct from genetic determinism in that the former refers to the level of understanding, while the latter refers to the supposedly causal role of genes. Biological determinism has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, and the debates around the heritability of IQ, the basis of sexual orientation, and sociobiology.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology.
Alien languages (Exo-Linguistics), i.e. languages of extraterrestrial beings, are a hypothetical subject since none have been encountered so far. The research in these hypothetical languages is variously called exolinguistics, xenolinguistics or astrolinguistics. The question of what form alien languages might take and the possibility for humans to recognize and translate them has been part of the linguistics and language studies courses, e.g., at the Bowling Green State University (2001).
Public awareness of science (PAwS), public understanding of science (PUS), or more recently, public engagement with science and technology (PEST) are terms relating to the awareness, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization. It is a comparatively new approach to the task of exploring the multitude of relations and linkages science, technology, and innovation have among the general public. While early work in the discipline focused on increasing or augmenting the public's knowledge of scientific topics, in line with the information deficit model of science communication, the deficit model has largely been abandoned by science communication researchers. Instead, there is an increasing emphasis on understanding how the public chooses to use scientific knowledge and on the development of interfaces to mediate between expert and lay understandings of an issue. Newer frameworks of communicating science include the dialogue and the participation models. The dialogue model aims to create spaces for conversations between scientists and non-scientists to occur while the participation model aims to include non-scientists in the process of science.
The supersoldier is a fictional concept soldier, often capable of operating beyond normal human limits or abilities either through genetic modification or cybernetic augmentation.
Hereditarianism is the doctrine or school of thought that heredity plays a significant role in determining human nature and character traits, such as intelligence and personality. Hereditarians believe in the power of genetics to explain human character traits and solve human social and political problems. Hereditarians adopt the view that an understanding of human evolution can extend the understanding of human nature. They typically reject the standard social science model.
Daniel J. Kevles is an American historian of science best known for his books on American physics and eugenics and for a wide-ranging body of scholarship on science and technology in modern societies. He is Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Emeritus at Yale University and J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology.
Solar Crisis is a 1990 Japanese-American co-production science fiction thriller film directed by Richard C. Sarafian. The screenplay was written by Joe Gannon and Tedi Sarafian, based on the 1990 novel Crisis 2050 by Takeshi Kawata, who co-produced the film. The film was first released in Japan in 1990, and in the United States in 1992.
Brett Leonard is an American film director, producer and music video director specializing in the science fiction and horror genres. A few of his films such as The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Virtuosity (1995) feature groundbreaking computer animation and visual effects. The Lawnmower Man is considered the first, seminal film to feature "virtual reality" as a cautionary tale becoming the number one commercially successful independent film of 1992, budgeted at just under $6 million and eventually earning over $150 million worldwide.
Lab lit is a loosely defined genre of fiction, distinct from science fiction, that centers on realistic portrayals of scientists and on science as a profession.
The Science & Entertainment Exchange is a program run and developed by the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to increase public awareness, knowledge, and understanding of science and advanced science technology through its representation in television, film, and other media. It serves as a pro-science movement with the main goal of re-cultivating how science and scientists truly are in order to rid the public of false perceptions on these topics. The Exchange provides entertainment industry professionals with access to credible and knowledgeable scientists and engineers who help to encourage and create effective representations of science and scientists in the media, whether it be on television, in films, plays, etc. The Exchange also helps the science community understand the needs and requirements of the entertainment industry, while making sure science is conveyed in a correct and positive manner to the target audience.
In studies of the public understanding of science, the information deficit model or science literacy/knowledge deficit model attributes public scepticism or hostility to science and technology to a lack of understanding, resulting from a lack of information. It is associated with a division between experts who have the information and non-experts who do not. The model implies that communication should focus on improving the transfer of information from experts to non-experts.
Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".
Aspects of genetics including mutation, hybridisation, cloning, genetic engineering, and eugenics have appeared in fiction since the 19th century.
Biology appears in fiction, especially but not only in science fiction, both in the shape of real aspects of the science, used as themes or plot devices, and in the form of fictional elements, whether fictional extensions or applications of biological theory, or through the invention of fictional organisms. Major aspects of biology found in fiction include evolution, disease, genetics, physiology, parasitism and symbiosis (mutualism), ethology, and ecology.
A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics and the American Dream is a 2016 documentary film about genetics, eugenics, and social inequality in the United States. The film was directed by Stephanie Welch and distributed exclusively by Bullfrog Films.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
