In this fascinating talk at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, Professor Londa Schiebinger, a historian of science at Stanford University, draws on the history of the 'Peacock flower' - an abortifacient (a plant used to induce abortion) - to explore the gendered nature of scientific knowledge. This plant was used by women in the Caribbean for thousands of years, before the knowledge of its properties became subject to the forces of colonial and medical control, resulting in the suppression of information about them when the plant was recorded and catalogued for scientific purposes.

Schiebinger's talk is a perfect demonstration of what she refers to as agnotology - the study of ignorance, and of knowledge lost, suppressed or ignored.

Adelaide Festival of Ideas, July 2009