Practicing engaged research through pandemic times: do not feed the animals?

From 'Feed the Birds' to 'Do Not Feed the Animals' takes an engaged approach in which science communication is both process and outcome of the research. The project started in the UK in March 2020, coinciding with government-imposed lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; since the project's engagement had been designed around in-person interactions, a rapid and creative rethink was needed. This paper outlines the redesign of the project and describes a hybrid model of on-line and in-person engagement, integrating new skills and technologies which the pandemic catalysed, with well-established in-person practice in science communication. Our research develops good practice for online, participatory science communication, and supports the advancement of engaged research more widely.

Animal roles and traces in the history of medicine, c.1880-1980.

This paper argues for the need to create a more animal-centred history of medicine, in which animals are considered not simply as the backdrop for human history, but as medical subjects important in and of themselves. Drawing on the tools and approaches of animal and human-animal studies, it seeks to demonstrate, via four short historical vignettes, how investigations into the ways that animals shaped and were shaped by medicine enables us to reach new historical understandings of both animals and medicine, and of the relationships between them. This is achieved by turning away from the much-studied fields of experimental medicine and public health, to address four historically neglected contexts in which diseased animals played important roles: zoology/pathology, parasitology/epidemiology, ethology/psychiatry, and wildlife/veterinary medicine. Focusing, in turn, on species that rarely feature in the history of medicine - big cats, tapeworms, marsupials and mustelids - which were studied, respectively, within the zoo, the psychiatric hospital, human-animal communities and the countryside, we reconstruct the histories of these animals using the traces that they left on the medical-historical record.

'Big science' in the field: experimenting with badgers and bovine TB, 1995-2015.

Since wild badgers were first connected with outbreaks of bovine TB (bTB) in UK cattle herds in the early 1970s, the question of whether to cull them to control infections in cattle has been the subject of a protracted public and policy controversy. Following the recommendation of Prof. John Krebs that a "scientifically based experimental trial" be carried out to test the effectiveness of badger culling, the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) was commissioned by Government in 1998. One of the largest field experiments ever conducted in the UK, the RBCT sought to recreate the conditions of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) across approximately 3000 km(2) of the South West of England. Despite widespread expectations that the RBCT would provide the necessary evidence to resolve the controversy, its findings have instead been widely contested and reinterpreted, while arguments over badger culling have become increasingly polarised. This paper will investigate the complexities of field experimental knowledge by following the story of the RBCT from this initial proposal, through processes of research design, implementation, analysis, interpretation and reinterpretation of the findings by multiple actors. It asks what kind of experiment the RBCT actually was, and examines how it has contributed to the protracted controversy over whether to cull badgers in order to control bTB in cattle. Finally, it will explore the wider implications of this case for contemporary debates over the contribution that RCTs can make to formulating public policy.

The effects of isometric resistance training on stretch reflex induced tremor in the knee extensor muscles.

This study examines the effect of 4 wk of high-intensity isometric resistance training on induced tremor in knee extensor muscles. Fourteen healthy volunteers were assigned to either the training group (n = 7) or the nontraining control group (n = 7). Induced tremor was assessed by measuring force fluctuations during anisometric contractions against spring loading, whose compliance was varied to allow for preferential activation of the short or long latency stretch reflex components. Effects of high-intensity isometric resistance training on induced tremor was assessed under two contraction conditions: relative force matching, where the relative level of activity was equal for both pre- and post-training sessions, set at 30% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), and absolute force matching, where the level of activity was set to 30% pretrained MVC. The training group experienced a 26.5% increase in MVC in contrast to the 0.8% for the control group. For relative force-matching contractions, induced tremor amplitude and frequency did not change in either the training or control group. During absolute force-matching contractions, induced tremor amplitude was decreased by 37.5% and 31.6% for the short and long components, respectively, with no accompanying change in frequency, for the training group. No change in either measure was observed in the control group for absolute force-matching contractions. The results are consistent with high-intensity isometric resistance training induced neural changes leading to increased strength, coupled with realignment of stretch reflex automatic gain compensation to the new maximal force output. Also, previous reported reductions in anisometric tremor following strength training may partly be due to changed stretch reflex behavior.

The (sexual) politics of evolution: popular controversy in the late 20th-century United Kingdom.

This article outlines the major threads of controversy around the emerging subject of evolutionary psychology in the U.K. mass media during the 1990s. Much of this controversy centered on the role of evolution in shaping human gender roles and sexualities, contributing to the subject's mass appeal. This case is used to illustrate the argument that in theorizing about evolution and humans, "human nature" and "human origins" both provide a flexible resource for making arguments about how people do and should relate to one another and that such theorizing is therefore reflective of how power is held (and contested) in society. In the case of popular evolutionary psychology, shifts in the U.K. political landscape during the 1990s combined with changes in gender and sexual politics to create a situation where evolutionary theorizing about humans became more acceptable than it had been in the past. This was particularly true in left-liberal media, where a newfound compatibility between certain aspects of Darwinism and feminism created a very different space for debating gender, sexuality, and the role of human nature in today's society.

Popular evolutionary psychology in the UK: an unusual case of science in the media?

This paper presents findings from quantitative analyses of UK press and print media coverage of evolutionary psychology during the 1990s. It argues that evolutionary psychology presents an interesting case for studies of science in the media in several different ways. First, press coverage of evolutionary psychology was found to be closely linked with the publications of popular books on the subject. Secondly, when compared to coverage of other subjects, a higher proportion of academics and authors wrote about evolutionary psychology in the press, contributing to the development of a scientific controversy in the public domain. Finally, it was found that evolutionary psychology coverage appeared in different areas of the daily press, and was rarely written about by specialist science journalists. The possible reason for these features are then explored, including the boom in popular science publishing during the 1990s, evolutionary psychology's status as a new subject of study and discussion, and the nature of the subject its as theoretically based and with a human, "everyday" subject matter.