Category: Science

I’ve complained about the falling standards of Horizon before. It appears that what was once the Beeb’s proud flagship of its science reporting has in recent years been dumbed down to a level more suited to the audience of the Teletubbies, if that wasn’t an insult to babies everywhere. I did entertain some faint hopes that the programme seemed to have improved somewhat in the latest series. The programme fronted by physicist Dr. Brian Cox was interesting and thought-provoking. Probably because it let him do the talking.

 

So I admit I had been lulled into a false sense of security when I started watching last night’s Horizon: How To Make Better Decisions. It began with the voiceover smugly stating: "You thought that deciding to watch this programme was a rational, logical decision made with free will" … "Congratulations about watching this programme, it might be the best decision you’ve ever made." On hearing this, my heart sank. This sounded like an ominous warning that the programme would prove to be a clunker. And so it came to pass; we were introduced to some irritating twit called Garth Sundem who fills pages with abstruse mathematical formulae in an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes about the decision-making process. I lasted about five minutes before I took a rational, logical decision of my own free will to turn the channel to something else. From Thomas Sutcliffe’s review of the programme in today’s Independent, I’d say that was the best decision I made last night. Tellingly, Sutcliffe ends his review with the damning observation that:

Quite. Oh, and what did I end up watching in place of Horizon? Well it was the first episode of Phoo Action. Totally bizarre, but at least it didn’t take itself seriously, and had nice caricatures of the royal princes. It reminded me of an update for the Noughties of the old Sixties Batman TV series, and was none the worse for that.

I haven’t come across Rabbi Boteach before, but on this evidence he is not the sharpest pencil in the box.

This is the winning video in a competition run by Discover Magazine to explain String Theory in two minutes or less. I give you: String Ducky

 

http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/716696176 

I see the Pope’s doing the old bait and switch again. He tells a bunch of academics that science cannot understand the mystery of man, thereby implying that his religion can. And, I note, displays breathtaking ignorance while he’s doing it:

Ah, the old canard that evolution is simply "mere chance" again. Really, the Pope ought to understand a subject a little better before he pontificates on it. Ophelia has more. 

Here’s another short clip of Dr. Brian Cox. Here, he’s trying to explain, desperately, what a wave is to someone else (who I take it is the film director) who simply doesn’t understand what Cox is trying to say. At one point this person seems to think that when he surfs, it’s the water that moves forward to the shore, and that’s the wave. I blame Meeja-studies for churning out people like this who haven’t a fucking clue about even the simplest of science. We’re all doomed.

 

 

Philip Ball, over at the Homunculus blog, has a nice post on the value of diversity in human groups. Well worth reading. 

 

Having a team composed of people who have a track record of all taking the same approach to getting the job done can be a less successful strategy than having a team composed of more diverse individuals. Basically, diversity trumps ability; and research exists to show this. As I mentioned the last time I wrote about this:

As Ball says:

Or as we put it to our employers: you shouldn’t support diversity in the workplace because it’s about being liberal or tolerant, but because it makes good business sense…

This video of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider conveys something of the excitement and wonder I feel about science and our exploration of the universe around us.

 

 

 

(hat tip to the Bad Astronomer)

Ben Goldacre, over at the Bad Science blog, makes a book recommendation. It’s Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic: How to Lie with Statistics. He is prompted to do so by some sloppy journalism in The Daily Telegraph. Goldacre uses the techniques outlined in Huff’s book to show that the conclusions reached in the Telegraph story bear absolutely zero correspondance with truth. There’s a surprise.

 

I’ve already got another of Huff’s books (How to take a chance: The laws of Probability); I’ll definitely be adding How to Lie with Statistics to the library. It will sit between my other Huff book and Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps as the perfect bridge. 

We talk quite blithely about computer viruses and hackers. Here’s an absolutely fascinating presentation given by a biologist (Drew Endy) at the recent Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. Here’s a biologist talking to an audience of computer folks (geeks, scientists and hackers) about hacking DNA. The analogy of moving from machine code to higher level abstractions such as programming languages, parts and devices is mind-blowing. It’s also quite scary. As one of the comments says, the idea of script kiddies being able to construct their own ebola virus may not be so very far away…

Richard Dawkins has a terrific essay on why good scientists will change their minds if the evidence is strong enough to persuade them. Worth reading.

I see that VS Ramachandran is giving a talk at the Royal Society tonight. Even better, it will be webcast. I’ll be watching.

I’m pleased to report that Kees Moeliker has succeeded in his quest… Five old crabs and a fresh one…

Ben Goldacre has an excellent piece over at Bad Science that flenses homeopathy in a magisterial manner. Do go and read it. If there is any evidence to show that homeopathy is distinguishable from the placebo effect, then it appears to be doing a damn good job to hide itself.

Never underestimate the desire for wishful thinking. Ben Goldacre reports on yet another "energy for free" non-story. The video of the "news interview" made me want to slap all concerned around the cheeks with a wet fish.

I see Mark Vernon has been cranking out tosh again. Not content with this, he’s now come out with another column that leaves me pounding my head on the table. He seems to be saying that awe arising from ignorance is better than awe arising from knowledge. Bizarre. And he quotes with approval Stephen Jay Gould’s hoary old NOMA – Non-Overlapping MAgisteria; a particularly pernicious way of allowing religion to erect "Keep Out" signs around questions of meaning and purpose. 

 

I see that Jean Kazez has also raised her eyebrows at his column, and Vernon replies in the comments with more waffle. Sometimes I wonder if Vernon secretly hankers for the days when he was a priest. 

I’ve mentioned VS Ramachandran’s terrific book on the architecture of the mind: Phantoms in the Brain a number of times before. He’s also a very good presenter and communicator. Here he is talking about Phantom Limbs, Synesthesia and the Capgras delusion with his customary lucidity and humour. Highly, highly recommended.

 

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf 

 

Robert Hooke‘s notebook is now online. You can leaf through it as though it is an actual book.

 

(hat tip to PZ Myers)

Here’s George Bernard Shaw proposing a toast to Albert Einstein…

 

 

 

Wonderful to see this rare footage from 27 October 1930, and to hear GBS speak. Hat tip to Nicholas Whyte