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warrenpearce.bsky.social
Warren Pearce
@warrenpearce.bsky.social
570 followers 230 following 110 posts
Academic.
Digital methods.
Climate change.
Expertise.
Imagery.
Occasional music posts.
#AcademicSky #STS
https://sheffield.ac.uk/spir/people/academic/warren-pearce
Posts Replies Media Videos
warrenpearce.bsky.social
Good rally today with @sheffielducu.bsky.social and Sheffield Hallam
A UCU placard that reads “too burnt out to think of a slogan” in front of a tower block and another placard reading “trade unionists for trans rights”
November 17, 2025 at 7:23 PM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
Monday night's elite-level Clipse gig in Manchester. Almost all the new album and a back cat of certified bangers.
A large stage with two large screens showing the words "I'm back by popular demand" in large red capital letters on a light blue background. Pusha T and Malice from Clipse are standing in front, with a large crowd in the foreground. A large stage with two large screens showing a young black woman wearing a cap sleeved red and white top, with her right arm held out in front of her. Pusha T and Malice from Clipse are standing in front, with a large crowd in the foreground. Pusha T is holding a microphone to his mouth.
November 12, 2025 at 12:56 PM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
On way home from superb Cultural Climate Models meeting in Graz with @davidhiggins.bsky.social @caroschwegler.bsky.social et al. Looking forward to seeing in print the new approach to modelling from this truly interdisciplinary international collab

gewi.uni-graz.at/en/unsere-fo...
Entrance of Graz train station with Graz Hauptbahnhof written in capital letters on a light coloured stone building against clear blue sky
October 8, 2025 at 10:34 AM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
A third of survey respondents *had not heard* the argument that the richest 1% emit twice as much as carbon as the world's poorest 50% 😳

Communicating climate change as apolitical is good for some....

Data -> climatebarometer.org/climate-baro...

#climatechange
A chart showing public awareness of media narratives about climate change, specifically that the richest 1% of the world emit more than twice as much carbon as the world's poorest 50%. Approximately one-third have heard and agreed with the claim, approximately one-third have not heard the claim
September 4, 2025 at 5:19 PM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
How has computer vision changed Google's knowledge infrastructure? 🤔

*Extremely* happy that our pre-print now up at SocArXiv. Our amazing team dig into Google Images, the #AI technology driving it, and the impacts for users.

osf.io/preprints/so...

#STS #digitalmethods @digitalmethods.net
Screen shot of web page reading: From authority to similarity: how Google transformed its knowledge infrastructure using computer vision Authors Warren Pearce, Maud Borie, Laura Bruschi, Daniele Dell'Orto, Matthew Hanchard, Elena Pilipets, Alessandro Quets, and Zijing Xu Data visualisation showing the ranking of Google Images results for climate change in Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico, Netherlands and Nigeria. Some images such as 'earht in hand' and 'landscape' appear multiple times across different countries Data visualisation showing Google Images search results for biodiversity loss in Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico, Netherlands and Nigeria. As with climate change, some images appear multiple times across different countries, such as scientific charts and 'lonely animal', but there is slightly more diversity than for climate change Data visualisation showing that most search results from Google Images are different than those from Google Search. This applies for both climate change and biodiversity loss, and across all six countries.
July 11, 2025 at 7:30 AM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
Great read and good context for our all-star, international panel this morning "Are metascientists reinventing the wheel?" 🪄🛞⁉️ #metascience2025
nomadit.co.uk/conference/m...

11.30am in Logan Hall ⏰
Critics argue that metascience merely reinvents the wheel of other academic fields. Through a range of disciplinary, historical and geographical perspectives, this panel asks what is new about metascience, and why it may have captured greater attention than previous research and reform initiatives. Long Abstract Critics argue that metascience is merely reinventing the wheel, as fields such as History and Philosophy of Science, Science and Technology Studies, and Science of Science have long examined issues like scientific error and alternative research structures. In response, this panel asks what, if anything, is new about metascience, and why it may have captured greater attention than previous research and reform initiatives. These questions are addressed through a range of disciplinary, historical and geographical perspectives, featuring scholars with extensive cross-disciplinary experience. Nicole Nelson & Fiona Fidler discuss how a focus on how deteriorating labor conditions of academic work have both incentivized suboptimal scientific practices, and prompted greater openness to reform, providing metascience with a greater opportunity for change than the previous statistical reform movement. Hui Li discusses the rise, decline and resurgence of metascience in China, since the 1980s, using the case of the historical development of Science of Science in Shanghai. Qi Wu will present the VirSci project—an AI-based simulation of scientific collaboration—as an example of how policy-driven Science of Science research in Shanghai is evolving toward new process-based inquiries. Felipe Romero argues that more engagement between metascience and philosophy of science can avoid reinventing the wheel. He will share insights from co-founding the Perspectives on Scientific Error Workshop, uniting philosophers and metascientists over seven editions. Bart Penders reflects on his experiences of STS-metascience encounters in which ‘good science’ and ‘quality’ are contested o…
July 1, 2025 at 8:57 AM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
Makes sense for various reasons, but striking to see this front page of the Daily Mail.
Front page of the Daily Mail, which is a campaign to protect UK talent from AI giants stealing work for free. The campaign is supported by Elton John and Simon Cowell
February 22, 2025 at 11:53 AM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
This is the key bit from the first article
Sarah Cowan, head of higher education and research policy at the British Academy, told Research Professional News: “We have called and continue to call on the government to trigger an urgent review of higher education funding to deliver a sustainable model that delivers a wide breadth of subjects and is resilient to regional inequalities in provision. “It is crucial that we secure the health of the UK’s higher education sector and fully benefit from our world-class universities.” Cowan added that the severe financial pressure is “a systemic issue affecting all disciplines, but disproportionately those within…the arts, humanities and social sciences”. ‘Precarious financial situation’ Beth Thompson, executive director of policy and partnerships at the health research funder Wellcome, also said on Wednesday said that the government should move quickly to “work with the university sector to find strategic and ambitious solutions that can put them on a stable financial footing”.  “The news of job losses is a stark reminder of the precarious financial situation facing the university sector,” she said
February 2, 2025 at 11:51 AM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
💯 on geoengineering taking in RFK, conspiracy & para-environmentalism.

The ‘science first’ defence against constructivism #STS dates to Climategate. Response to worries re ‘war on expertise’ should be (re)learning the lessons (which is *not* the same as ceding to Trump-ism) #AcademicSky
Title page of journal article entitled Learning the lessons of Climategate: A cosmopolitan moment in the public life of climate science written by Sujatha Raman and Warren Pearce Article Abstract reads: A decade after Climategate, climate change may be established as a social fact, yet the after-effects live on. This Advanced Review assesses the impact of Climategate on public talk about climate change in the last decade. Reviewing academic articles, blogs, reports, books, and media articles, we identify three norms that set the foundations for Climategate to be seen as a scandal: (a) using scientific consensus to justify climate policy; (b) that openness is fundamental to validating scientific knowledge; (c) that the public was conceived as passive recipients of scientific knowledge rather than participants in dialogue. We then review developments since Climategate, that have seen some groups attempting to shore up these norms, while others have seen an opportunity to change the boundaries of public engagement around climate science. We describe this as a cosmopolitan moment in the public life of science: an opportunity to forge a public culture comfortable with the epistemic diversity and ambiguity inherent to climate change, and yet a culture that can also reason together in the public good. Finally, we assess the implications of Climategate's mixed legacy on contemporary climate change debates, emphasizing that cosmopolitan knowledge provides a means to craft effective, open, and fruitful approaches to public engagement around climate change.
November 22, 2024 at 11:12 PM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
Nas Illmatic tour at Wolverhampton Civic Hall. Incredible gig, amped crowd, great venue. One for the ages 🙏
Nas on stage with a huge visual behind showing the Quincy Jones star from Hollywood Boulevard
November 14, 2024 at 11:33 PM
warrenpearce.bsky.social
Today’s testimony will be catnip to the Boris is stupid/public are stupid/we need more scientists in government nexus.

But how was “the science” being communicated within science advice? Far from straightforward, but failure to understand is not always the fault of the message receiver. #sts
Screenshot reads “Vallance is pushed now on information detailed in his diary which Andrew O'Connor KC says shows a “repeated failure” by Boris Johnson to understand things like graphs and scientific concepts, and regularly forgetting things he has recently been told. Patrick Vallance says that the prime minister acknowledges himself that he gave up science when he was 15. He notes this was not an issue unique to Boris Johnson, and recalls a meeting of science advisers from across Europe, where an adviser from one country said "the leader of that country had enormous problems with exponential curves” - something which raised a laugh in the meeting, as all the leaders had that issue.”
November 20, 2023 at 1:11 PM