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Rob Smith

@rdjs.bsky.social
1.1K followers 779 following 86 posts

Lecturer in Science & Technology Studies @ Edinburgh Biology, Politics, Funding, Governance, Morethanhuman etc. Our group is engineeringlife.bsky.social

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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
John Healey: "New general guidance will be circulated by officials and more detailed guidance on approaches to public participation will follow in due course." Would be fascinated to know who or what counts as the public in this planned guidance... assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a9e6e...
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
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UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Amazing turn out from students and staff at the University of Edinburgh, in protest at senior management's greed and manufactured cuts. This is what solidarity looks like - as our campaign of industrial action begins this coming week in protest at the cuts. www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/student...
ucuedinburgh.org.uk
900+ at inaugural Student & Staff Assembly! — UCU Edinburgh
More than 900 students and staff gathered for the inaugural Student-Staff Assembly on Thursday 24 September.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
#STS canon in Trump's Science Policy
The screenshot says:

This process knowledge, embodied in an experienced workforce, is the true
keystone of technological capability.
The same applies to the practice of science. When the sociologist Harry
Collins studied laboratories attempting to replicate a new type of laser in the
1970s, he found that no scientist succeeded using published sources alone. Those
who built working devices had all spent time in a laboratory with someone who
had already done it. The knowledge to build the laser flowed through personal
contact, often so subtle that scientists themselves could not fully articulate what
they had learned.123
Likewise, a synthetic biologist improves through countless failed experi-
ments while coaxing cells into expressing a novel protein. An immunologist, after
years of experience and guidance from senior mentors, develops intuitions for
which protocols will work with finicky cell lines, knowledge no methods section
can capture. This is why many forms of scientific expertise require years of on-
the-job training in working research organizations, and why academic publica-
tions alone remain insufficient to transmit the craft of science.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
This is a very fascinating document, but I mostly want to know what font it uses. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
whitehouse.gov
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
I prefer to think of inherent recursiveness and repetition in policy, which creates opportunities to talk, but admittedly does get a bit boring.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Yes, and I'd be fascinated to know the backstage story for those two things coexisting...
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Some of the other stuff makes a lot of sense but this is just a really odd tell about the logics underpinning all science policy in the U.K. www.ukri.org/wp-content/u...
ukri.org
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Great to see that UKRI's new strategy for organisational reform includes returning science communication to 90s....¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #scipol #scicomm
A screenshot explaining that UKRI thinks telling people how what science does for them will lead them to trust UKRI
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Tech democratisation narratives in action...(obv. 'nimbyism' is such a stupid hook for this) www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
AI-powered nimbyism could grind UK planning system to a halt, experts warn
Tools that help people scan applications and find grounds for objection have potential to hit government’s housebuilding plans
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Wowowow 🔪 🦴 juliecupples.wordpress.com/2025/11/02/f...
juliecupples.wordpress.com
From the University of Woeville: Alternative FAQs for British academics facing redundancy
Given that the Senior Management Team (SMT) of the University of Woeville (UoW) is now planning large scale academic redundancies, we’ve updated our FAQs for all those staff facing imminent career …
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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
DISCARD - The aim is to combine gene segments to create a new genome, but recombination events will cause localised or system-wide death.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Also, perhaps 'an' approach is a typo for 'any'. Or perhaps it's an STS approach that we're peddling...
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Also our new book came out! It's technically a textbook, but should be a good primer for anyone trying to work out how to understand synbio in society using an approach global.oup.com/ukhe/product... #synbio #engbio #sts #governance
Book cover at the link below
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
So happy this is finally out. The first paper in our attempt to begin to think about spaces for responsible innovation beyond the tired tropes of ELSI panels etc. #sts #rri #soba
doi.org
The Soba Restaurant and the Oyster Bar: Peripheral Spaces for Responsible Research and Innovation
As STS researchers working closely with scientists and engineers, we have been invited into, created, reluctantly entered, and stumbled upon many kinds of spaces, some of which might be considered ...
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Oooh, thanks!
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
In Boston public gardens there is a statue to ether. Is this strange? Or are there actually loads of monuments celebrating chemicals and medical technologies?
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
a collaborative researcher's packing list.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Sigh. This is such a terrible take on synthetic human genomes that just repeats tropes of the past. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Synthetic Human Genome Project gets go ahead
Scientists start a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life, in what is thought to be a world first.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
100% my motto
A photo with textures in the foreground and a sign saying eat crab in the background
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
I'm still not sure what to make of a meeting that in many ways replayed the meeting it was thinking with (and all the tired tropes we've learnt since then), but I am VERY into it accommodating our weird events on the beach. #asilomar #sts #synbio www.science.org/content/arti...
A photo of Blue from Pigeonwing dance company digging a hole on a beach
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
The Edinburgh Joint Unions finance working group continues to do amazing work dissecting Edinburgh Executives' financial claims....and doing #sts in the process www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/3fzpaa5...
ucuedinburgh.org.uk
No Compulsory Redundancies at The University Of Edinburgh! — UCU Edinburgh
Financial mismanagement at the University of Edinburgh continues. On 11 February 2025, Peter Mathieson wrote to all staff threatening “restructuring, possible closures of programmes or even Schools, m...
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Then on Tuesday at 3pm UK time, Sarah Hartley and I will be talking about our squirrels work (↓↓↓). That's online as part of the Biological Engineering Collaboratory and very much open to all. (Send me a note if you want to come)
a grey squirrel
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Some promo! On Monday I'll be talking about Asilomar, why old visions of governance repeat, why it's so tiring and whether there's any way out of that loop. That's in Exeter at the wonderful Egenis Centre.
a castle in tuscany, surrounded by clouds. The text on it says 'Conferences as sites of governance, or haunted by dreams of a tuscan castle'
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
What a line: "Big Potato controls 97% of the frozen potato market" pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/p...
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: It’s not a crime if we do it with an app (25 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Nadine Smith @nadinesmith.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Watching grownups pretend not to recognize a Nazi salute flashed three times is...expected in an authoritarian takeover. Next, they'll do it en masse to "own the libs." Refuse to normalize or be gaslit. We know what they meant all along. #ElonNaziSalute
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Of all of those, the cybertruck safari felt the sketchiest by far
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
I just drank a GMO enhancement to prevent my hangover, went on cybertruck safari and caught a robot to the airport.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
now we're queuing for the human to check our passports
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
These two points -- tech *is* the solution vs tech as part of solutions, and full amnesia about how that went before -- are really important, and I think part of my and my friends beef with all the chat in the U.K. about engineering biology atm.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
Concluding paragraph of the page I linked to above
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
Long but useful Christmas reading on the Tony Blair Institute's slightly weird infatuation with tech williamcullernebown.substack.com/p/big-tech-i...
williamcullernebown.substack.com
Big Tech in the UK
Dorothy Bishop’s attempt to get The Royal Society to oust Elon Musk has crystallised political dilemmas of sweeping consequence
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Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
In my latest piece for @science.org, I ask how we should think about experiments that take place outside the lab. It begins here, in St Ives, Cornwall. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
media.tenor.com
a large body of water with waves coming in and out of it
ALT: a large body of water with waves coming in and out of it
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
yes, and actually lots of big journals look like (and sometimes say) they want qualitative work, but the qualitative reviewers want widely relevant, transferable, pre-registered experimental studies, ie they're all still positivists.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
....because they want thee impact factorrrrrrrr? 🦖
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
This is really rare! Synthetic biologists saying the path forward is 'don't do it'.... obvious parallel is rDNA in the 60s/70s, but that's probably a red herring... www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
screenshot of the final section of a science paper available at the link in the post
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Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
ASU president Michael Crow talks to Cynthia Selin about the original motivation for the Centre for Science, Policy and Outcomes. Giant US inequalities, and innovation appeared to be implicated
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
thanks to all the #synbio folks for joining. now i can stop reading all your scientific papers again.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
is he doing a severance cameo?
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Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Meanwhile, on Twitter
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Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
If you submit your grants last minute, you're in good company. For the 2005 NIH Pioneer grant, half of the applications were submitted in the last two days. The red bars indicate the awardees. One awardee submitted 8 minutes before the deadline. bsky.app/profile/jere... @jeremymberg.bsky.social
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
👀
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
how could i forget that seminal work?
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
(the friend is my science administrator alter-ego)
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
#sts / #medsoc sky. Does anyone know any really good critical engagements with clinical trials, the knowledge they make and their governance? asking for a friend
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
A reminder to join your union... www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/2eppzf7...
ucuedinburgh.org.uk
Dire Financial Straits at UoE? NO! — UCU Edinburgh
Are things really as bad as they say? Find out the truth behind the numbers!
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STIS Edinburgh @stis-uoe.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Hello #STS #metascience #openscience at #bluesky. We have a starter pack with staff, students (past and present) that are part of the STIS community in Edinburgh. It's of course incomplete and boundaries will be porous. Leave a note below if you like to be added. go.bsky.app/N1RREbY
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I love that the BBC's angle on this is that Peter is a hypocrite.
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
The film we made with the amazing Tom Law has more vim… www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dyu...
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Rob Smith @rdjs.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
What do conservation managers, animal welfare experts, red squirrel advocates, foresters and land managers think about the idea of gene drive squirrels? I think this is the most evocative piece of work I’ve ever done 🐿️…made anti-charismatic by science policy. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
a cute grey squirrel asking for food
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Alex Taylor @alex-taylor.bsky.social · 14/10/2024
📣 Call now open for fully funded PhDs in 🔥Responsible NLP at University of Edinburgh! 📣 An awesome opportunity to look at AI through a critical lens. I'm especially keen to talk w/ applicants coming to this from #sts #sociology #digitalhumanities #feministtechnoscience www.responsiblenlp.org
responsiblenlp.org
The UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world NLP is based at the University of Edinburgh. Applications are now open for funded PhD studentships starting as part of the September 2025 cohort. Our deadline is 9th January 2025.
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