Welcome to the Genomics Forum blog


Based at The University of Edinburgh, the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum is part of the ESRC Genomics Network and pioneers new ways to promote and communicate social research on the contemporary life sciences.

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Clear skies, cacti and collaborations

I’m back in blustery Edinburgh after a 3-week visit to the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) at Arizona State University -- and what an excellent sojourn it was. (Thanks everyone!) The idea for this trip first came about at the 4S conference dinner last year when Jane Calvert and I bumped into our old Edinburgh colleague Matt Harsh, who is now a researcher at CNS. In swapping news and research ideas, it seemed to us that there were several points of overlap between our respective centres. So we applied for a small ESRC–SSRC grant to support a visit to CNS, and fortunately received funding to cross the pond this October.

Monday 1 November 2010

The problem with "heritability"

by David Shenk - Genomics Forum Visiting Fellow August 2010

I want to extend my deep appreciation to the Genomics Forum for hosting me as a visiting fellow in August. In my all-too-brief stay, I interacted with some great minds, and was very much impressed with the Forum's mission to improve the understanding of genetics among the general public. My work in my recent book The Genius in All of Us nicely intersects with that mission.

At the Forum, I was very glad to spend some time with Dr. Wendy Johnson from the University of Edinburgh's Department of Psychology. Dr. Johnson has written some of the most articulate work I've come across about the meaning and limitations of so-called "heritability" studies on intelligence.