Representing the people doesn't mean doing whatever they want

“The failure of the three Brexiteers to produce anything like a satisfactory solution makes you think that if the [parliamentary] vote were taken now, there would be a decision to remain or a decision to have another plebiscite,” said Mr Robertson. “MPs are bound to follow their conscience and to vote for what they understand to be the public good, irrespective of the views of their constituents.” 

“I would encourage MPs to vote with their conscience; it's their duty,” said the lawyer. “That's how we abolished the death penalty.”

And interestingly, there's been very little attempt to reinstate the death penalty. Under some conditions, people can be quite content living with things they disagree with. Even the most representative flavour of representative democracy cannot and should not treat MPs as mere vassals of the people's will.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-ken-clarke-theresa-may-geoffrey-robertson-mps-reject-vote-conscience-duty-a7338111.html

Your own holographic display for under $1000

Startup Looking Glass made a "personal volumetric display" called Volume that it says will let you see VR (really, 3D content) without a headset, so you can share such content with people around you. The display is also interactive so you can move things around either by swiping on the touch-sensitive screen, waving your hands in front of it or pairing up a gaming controller. But the idea that a $999 device is "affordable" is harder to repeat with a straight face.

Errm, not really :
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?keywords=TV&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3ATV&qid=1475222820&sort=price-desc-rank

I'd buy one. But it would have to be half the price and with much better specs.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/28/volume-is-a-1-000-holographic-display-for-your-home

Bigly ???

Synthehol is real !

Synthehol is here ! Or rather, alcohol that gets you drunk but won't harm your liver or give you a hangover...

Which likely means a lot more drunk people a lot more of the time.

A scientist has developed a new type of alcohol which he claims will not damage the liver or leave you with a hangover. 'Alcosynth' is made from synthesised chemicals, and been formulated by Professor David Nutt from Imperial College, London. He told BBC 5 live's Emma Barnett that his new product "avoids targeting the liver" which would erase your hangover.

http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/37476416

One year on, Corbyn has failed

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected, I said that the best course of action was to give him about a year to see how he did. Well, it's been about a year, so how's he done ?

Badly. Really, really badly. Here's a nice pleasant way to start the week.

These are the people he's supposed to lead in government, and they don't want to work with him. Having nice policies is only part of his job. If he can't persuade people to work with him in opposition, what hope is there he could form a credible government ? None, that's what.

The only sensible response to this is to leave. Doesn't even matter why his MPs hate him, the fact is that they do. No individual is supposed to be bigger than the party, so the only sane response is to accept that you can't lead this group of people and bugger off. But, astonishingly, he didn't. This is madness. There are some who claim that this is all due to "Blairite" opposition. Well, sorry, but that's bollocks.

If you won't even leave when 80% of your MPs tell you to step down, what does that say about building bridges, a kinder politics, or forming a consensus ? To ignore this most extreme and extremely clear method of ostracisation is tantamount to declaring a dictatorship. A vote this far against you is a no-win situation : you can either leave with honour and everyone accepts that it's unfortunate (but you've still gone), or you can stay and reveal your true colours : every bit as unprincipled as any other politician.

[I remain completely unable to understand how anyone can think that a leader who ignores a defeat this brazen can be regarded as anything other than extremely dangerous.]

http://astrorhysy.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-fall.html

What's next for Labour ?

Very bad things, probably.

One former frontbencher welcomed Jeremy Corbyn's pledge to "wipe the slate clean" following his re-election but said that if he continued to criticise the leadership then he fully expected them to "unleash the dogs of war". And he is not the only one expecting to be mauled.

He believes Momentum - the group set up by veteran leftwinger Jon Lansman - is likely to pursue a strategy of deselection of anti-Corbyn MPs. "Jeremy will stay above it all, of course, adopting his 'see no evil' approach. He will say it's just a matter of local Labour parties taking individual democratic decisions. The boundary changes will unlock the whole process."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37449631

Do feed the trolls ?

[The article below sounds nice and I'm preserving it as it's certainly well worthy of consideration. But I'm no longer convinced of its conclusions, for two reasons : 1) a lack of critical thinking to this degree almost certainly does correlate strongly with genuine stupidity and/or being wholly irrational, and thus debate will at best legitimise their position rather than detracting from it; 2) network effects are complicated - these people will only ever hear the occasional lone voice telling them they're wrong, as opposed to all their trusted friends telling them they're right.]


Originally shared by Brian Koberlein

Ignorance Peddling In The Age Of YouTube

Devil’s tower, a laccolithic butte in Wyoming, is the stump of an ancient silicon tree. This amazing fact was sent to me by a reader complete with YouTube link for proof. If only I would watch the video with an open mind, I would learn the error of my scientific ways.

The video itself follows a common pattern, where an amazing claim is made, and the evidence presented is simply that two things look similar. Since an intrusion of magma through Earth’s crust looks somewhat similar to a tree stump, it must be a giant tree stump. It is the same method used by those who claim the Earth is flat, deny global warming and evolution, or espouse young Earth creationism, the electric universe, the doomsday planet Nibiru, that vaccines cause autism, and even that our solar system moves in a helical vortex. Their arguments are buttressed by claims that science is closed-minded, arrogant and dogmatic, or simply covering up the truth to protect their jobs.

It’s tempting to laugh these ideas off. After all, fringe ideas have always been proposed throughout history. But the difference is that with the rise of YouTube and social media this ideas spread faster and can become more ingrained in the minds of followers. The “Devil’s tower is a tree stump” video has more than half a million views, and is posted by someone with nearly three quarter of a million subscribers. That’s more than subscribe to the Sixty Symbols video series, for example. I can almost guarantee that in response to this post supporters of some of the pseudoscience I listed above will send me long diatribes about how their model shouldn’t be lumped in with the others. As wrong as these ideas are, they have staunch supporters willing to defend them. Not only do supporters of pseudoscience defend their ideas, but they vote and drive political conversations. Our society is shaped in part by these ideas, whether we like it or not. So it’s important to push back against these claims.

That might sound like I’m saying people are stupid, and that they need to be told what to think by intelligent and knowledgeable scientists like me. I’m not. Being wrong about a particular concept doesn’t make you stupid, and being open to new ideas even when they sound crazy at first is part of the curiosity science tries to foster. The problem isn’t stupidity or ignorance, it’s a failure of critical thought. And it’s not just a problem with pseudoscience advocates. Most modern scientific discoveries are promoted through press releases and media packets, many of which don’t even link to the actual research. They use exactly the same approach as the video above, where a few pretty pictures are used to support a wild scientific claim without linking to any actual evidence. A press release made without citing research is just as pseudoscientific as a YouTube video making unsubstantiated claims. We’re all capable of being intellectually lazy.

The good news is that critical analysis and intellectual discourse can be encouraged and promoted. The same tools that are used to promote pseudoscientific ideas can be used to raise the bar on scientific discussion. But making that change depends upon those of us who want to see a richer and more thoughtful exploration of knowledge. It’s easy to point fingers at the fringe and declare how poorly they behave. It’s more difficult to look at ourselves with a critical eye. That means calling out press releases and popular news stories that don’t cite actual research. It means taking the time to present ideas clearly as well as the evidence behind them. And it means having the patience to engage in discussions with those of opposing ideas, even though sometimes it will feel like feeding the trolls. If we want to promote knowledge and critical thought, as lovers and promoters of scientific ideals we have to encourage it ourselves.

If we don’t do this, then we are simply peddling ignorance in the name of knowledge.
https://briankoberlein.com/2016/09/22/ignorance-peddling-age-youtube/

Labour's next leader : the next crisis ?

This is quite likely to result in the next major crisis in British politics. Oh, yippee.

Voting has closed in Labour's leadership contest after Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith made their final pitches for support. A total of 640,000 people were eligible to vote, an increase of more than 80,000 from the 2015 contest. The result will be announced in Liverpool on Saturday.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37422696

The Idiot Brain

Longer review, picking out the three areas most interesting to me : why the brain isn't a computer, why people believe silly things, and why people aren't very nice.

By the end of the book I emerged feeling astonished not that people believe in crazy things, but that they believe anything at all. That online conversations often degenerate into insulting some stranger's questionable parentage is nowhere near as impressive as the fact that we're even able to hold self-consistent conversations without constantly collapsing into a dribbling wreck and pooping everywhere.

Really, if you're interested in rational thinking, you should probably buy this quite soon.

Review : The Idiot Brain

Too long didn't read version : " So that's the brain. Impressive, isn't it ? But, also, a bit stupid." That's the afterword and essentially the short version of Dr Dean Burnett's hugely impressive book, The Idiot Brain.

The art of science communication

The first level of communication is the routine communication with his teammates, people working on the same topic and who aim at solving the same scientific problems. It is a highly specialized discussion where use of jargon is recommended to keep a high level of accuracy and avoid misunderstandings. The communication is in this case a mixture of equation writing, drawing, exchange of code and rational discussion.

The second level of communication is the publication: it can be a report, an article, a digital notebook. The purpose here is to communicate in detail the method, the results, the analysis and the conclusions of the work so that your peers can try to reproduce, to falsify, to confirm or to improve your work. Therefore, it has to be clear, accurate and complete. This level is typically what is expected from a scientist.

The third level of communication is the oral presentation. The purpose here is to attract the attention of the scientific community on your work, either to get collaboration, help, contradiction, funding.  An oral presentation is, by definition, limited in time and thus can focus only on a limited number of points. Therefore it cannot address technicalities. The communication has to highlight some key ideas, it has to activate some triggers in the audience to motivate them to look at your work in more detail (through communication of the second and first level). Honestly, given what I see during conferences this is an exercise which is, most of the time, poorly done. 

The last level of communication is the communication with the public. Void. Blank. This is the ultimate difficult exercise. The hell on earth. And it has become worse in the last years. Before, the main contact with the public was through the media and the journalists and only some chosen distinguished scientists were allowed to talk to the journalists. So the difficult exercise of explaining science to a broad audience was to the charge of the journalist. Difficult because you have to find the compromise between the accuracy of the facts and the interest of the public. We touch here the heart of the problem: the scientific method (but not the results!) is fundamentally not attracting. By definition, it is rational and not emotional. Most people expect emotion. There can only be a conflict when we want to communicate about science.


https://thezproject.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/the-art-of-science-communication/

You can prove a negative

Of course you can prove a negative. In one sense this can be the easiest thing in the world : your theory predicts something which doesn't happen ? You've just proved that theory doesn't work.

Let us say you have 1000 boxes, and your hypothesis is that there is a valuable diamond in one of the boxes. You can open a box, look into it, and reliably determine whether there is a diamond in that box or not. Let us say you have opened two boxes, and found no diamond. The probability of this result if there is no diamond at all (the null hypothesis) is 1. The probability of this result if there is one diamond is 0.998, so the likelihood ratio is 0.998 - the 2 trials are very weak evidence that there is no diamond...

SETI researchers argue (persuasively, I think), that they haven't opened very many of the boxes yet. Perhaps one day, after a much more exhaustive tour of the search space, it will be less than 1, and we can start meaningfully wondering about the eerie silence. Until then, the search continues and no one should be too discouraged.

I agree regarding civilisations comparable or less technologically advanced than our own, but the Fermi paradox remains.

When is absence of evidence = evidence of absence?

You often hear the old mantra "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," but I think that this is an oversimplification. The truth is, sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. It depends on the experiment, and also how well you understand the implication of the results.

Pigeons can tell real words from fake words

In the experiment, pigeons were trained to peck four-letter English words as they came up on a screen, or to instead peck a symbol when a four-letter non-word, such as "URSP" was displayed. The researchers added words one by one with the four pigeons in the study eventually building vocabularies ranging from 26 to 58 words and over 8000 non-words.

To check whether the pigeons were learning to distinguish words from non-words rather than merely memorising them, the researchers introduced words the birds had never seen before. The pigeons correctly identified the new words as words at a rate significantly above chance. The researchers found that pigeons' performance was on a par with that previously reported in baboons for this type of complex task.

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-pigeons-distinguish-real-words-non-words.html

Hilary Clinton is NOT like Trump, you twit

I'm just an interested non-American, but I've unfollowed several people because the "Hilary = Trump" thing is blatantly absurd. They aren't even remotely comparable. No, she's not a very nice person. But what did you expect ? She's a politician ! OK, your favourite candidate's no longer in the running. Tough. Your only alternative is someone who literally wants to watch the world burn. Voting for a third candidate or not voting at all is an act of utter, shameful madness.

The article is best read in full and contains a long of what Hilary has done. But if you want a quote :

Well, enough out of YOU, you moron. This isn’t the lesser of two evils. This is a choice between one great and qualified candidate for the nation’s highest office who you really should be excited about and a dolt with a bad toupee who if you were honest with yourself you wouldn’t trust to manage a Dairy Queen much less the Oval Office.

https://thecontrarianblogger.com/2016/08/24/the-morons-case-for-hillary-clinton-because-some-of-you-really-are-that-stupid/

Pigeons prefer to be kept informed even if that delays their food

If the pigeon tapped the disk on the left, it lit up either red or green. Red (good news) meant food would be presented after 10 seconds, while green (bad news) meant no food was forthcoming. However, if the pigeon tapped the disk on the right, it lit up yellow or blue. This did not tell the pigeon anything: the food was given at random, regardless of the colour.

If a pigeon consistently tapped left, it would only get food about once every 13 minutes.... but once every 23 seconds if they tapped right.

The birds were choosing what the researchers called the "informative choice" – one where they would know the outcome. In a sense, the pigeons were ignoring the fact that, 80% of the time, tapping left would not get them any food. They even did so when the wait for food from a red light increased from ten seconds to three minutes.

I dunno what all this means, but it's damn interesting.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160919-pigeons-choose-to-hear-bad-news-even-if-it-costs-them-food

DRM for ink cartridges is an idea that should be spat on in disgust

Large numbers of HP printer owners found their printers stopped recognising unofficial printer ink cartridges on 13 September. Dutch printer ink vendor 123inkt said it had received more than 1,000 complaints in one day. HP said that during its last firmware update, settings had been changed so HP printers would communicate with only HP-chipped cartridges.

123inkt said it did not believe that a firmware update had been issued since March 2016, suggesting the change had been pre-programmed to roll out this month. HP said such updates were rolled out "periodically" but did not comment on the timing of the last instalment. "The purpose of this update is to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property," it said in a statement.

Right, sure, that's what it's about, protecting intellectual property. Not selling people ink cartridges that are many times more expensive than they should be. Bastards.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37408173

Behold the Kung-Fu nuns

These are the Kung-Fu nuns: Nepal’s only female order to practice the deadly martial art made famous by Bruce Lee. In the inherently patriarchal Buddhist monastic system, women are considered inferior to men. Monks usually occupy all positions of leadership, leaving nuns to the household duties and other tedious chores. But in 2008, the leader of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa lineage, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa, changed all that.

After a visit to Vietnam where he saw nuns receiving combat training, he decided to bring the idea back to Nepal by encouraging his nuns to learn self-defence. His simple motive: to promote gender equality and empower the young women, who mostly come from poor backgrounds in India and Tibet.

Those with exceptional physical and mental strength are taught the brick-breaking technique, made famous in countless martial arts movies, which is only performed on special occasions like His Holiness’ birthday.

The nuns, most of them with black belts, agree that Kung Fu helps them feel safe, develops self-confidence, gets them strong and keeps them fit. But an added bonus is the benefit of concentration, which allows them to sit and meditate for longer periods of time.
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160916-the-kung-fu-nuns-of-nepal

Animals that can withstand literally astronomically high accelerations

It's not about cheetahs. In terms of accelerations, cheetahs are pathetic. There are animals out there designed to cope with astronomically (I do not use that word lightly) high accelerations.

A tiny reptile called the rosette-nosed chameleon holds the current record among the animals that give birth on land, meaning reptiles, birds and mammals. It can flick out its tongue so rapidly that it briefly accelerates at 2,590m/s/s - about 170 times faster than the 15m/s/s maximum acceleration of the cheetah or the peregrine falcon.

25 g ? YAAAAAAWN.

Muscle simply cannot accelerate at these astonishing rates. No matter how finely-tuned or powerful a muscle is, it can never contract quickly enough. However, a contracting muscle can instead stretch an elastic structure and hold it in a stretched state – or, better still, keep it stretched with some sort of latch. When the latch is released, the elastic structure snaps back into its normal length. This releases energy so explosively that a small and lightweight structure, like the chameleon's tongue, can be accelerated at a tremendous rate.

Paradoxically, it might be precisely because reptiles and amphibians are sometimes slow and sluggish that they have become kings of acceleration. If the ambient temperature is cold, their muscles are generally cold, stiff and slow to respond. Elastic structures offer these animals a way to catch a meal even when their muscles are cold. These elastic structures show less of a drop in performance with temperature than muscles do.

...Those first measurements, taken at 5,000 frames per second, showed that peacock mantis shrimps could accelerate their clubs at an eye-popping 104,000m/s/s; comfortably 20 times as fast as any amphibian or reptile.

10,000 g ? I suppose that's more respectable.

Like the mantis shrimp, the trap-jaw ant hauls open its jaws using muscle power, stretching elastic structures in its head in the process. When that elastic energy is released the jaws shut. Perhaps partly because those jaws are operating in air rather than water, and so meet less resistance, they accelerate faster than mantis shrimp clubs. They reach a peak acceleration in the order of 1,000,000m/s2: ten times greater than the shrimp.

OK, 100,000 g, now we're into truly scary acceleration levels.

Paradoxically, super-fast weapons are very slow. Spearing mantis shrimp such as the zebra mantis shrimp have mouthparts shaped like tiny, hydrodynamic javelins... They use these sharp javelins to pierce the flesh of passing fish. Fish can clearly outpace snails, so logic would suggest that spearing mantis shrimp accelerate their streamlined weapons at rates that far outpace anything seen in smashing mantis shrimp. But they do not. In a 2012 study, Patek and her colleagues discovered that spearing mantis shrimps achieve peak acceleration rates about 100 times lower than their smashing shrimp cousins.

A spearing shrimp must react quickly when a fish swims near enough to become a target. It needs a weapon that can be primed and fired quickly. So spearing shrimps have sacrificed one kind of speed for another, ditching speed of weapon acceleration for speed of weapon priming. . "It takes a lot of time to be ultrafast," Patek has written. But when circumstances allow an animal to become super-fast, the rewards can be enormous.

However, it is not clear whether or not this "you have to be slow to be fast" idea plays out in all circumstance. Impressive though they are, the 1,000,000m/s/s accelerations achieved by trap-jaw ants are no longer world-beating. Their record has been blown out of the water by the humble jellyfish.

When the cell is triggered and that elastic energy is released, a microscopic harpoon-like structure shoots out of the [jellyfish's] nematocyst. The harpoon can reach peak accelerations of about 50,000,000m/s/s: 50 times the peak trap-jaw ant acceleration.

OK, 5 million g. If sustained that would be the speed of light in about 6 seconds, ignoring relativistic effects. There's surely a good plot device in there somewhere.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160916-how-some-animals-accelerate-faster-than-all-others

Albanian hospitality

Rather a lot, apparently.

“There were refugee camps set up for the Kosovars all over the country. Albanian families would go to a camp, find a family and then take them home. These weren’t relatives or friends, they were strangers, but the Albanians would take them in, feed them, clothe them, treat them as if they were part of the family.”

"There’s an old proverb written in the Kanun,” he said. “‘Shpija para se me qenë e Shqiptarit, asht e Zotit dhe e mikut’, which means ‘Before the house belongs to the owner, it first belongs to God and the guest.’ It’s a strong tradition, and in the older times, if you were a traveller or seeking refuge, you could knock on the door of the first house you found and ask ‘Head of the house, do you want guests?’ and the owner would have to take you in. The Kanun says that the master of the house should always have a spare bed ready at any time of day or night, in case a guest arrives unexpectedly.”

More recently, Albania has again found itself offering besa, this time to those travelling from the Middle East. Hundreds of Iranian exiles are currently residing within the country after having been relocated from Camp Liberty in Iraq. Albanian prime minister Edi Rama has also expressed an intent to aid Syrian refugees, provided a collaborative agreement is reached with other European nations, saying that Albania will not ignore its duty.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160909-what-can-albania-teach-us-about-trust

Get ready for Gaia

Gaia is definitely one of the more interesting missions of recent years. Expect to see numerous "mystery solved" and "scientists baffled" headlines coming out of this. :)

Hmm.... has anyone tried using, "no. clickbait articles generated ?" as a measure of mission performance ?

The European Space Agency will unveil on Wednesday a three-dimensional map of a billion stars in our galaxy that is 1,000 times more complete than anything existing today. 

A space-based probe called Gaia, launched in December 2013, has been circling the Sun 1.5 million kilometres (nearly a million miles) beyond Earth's orbit and has been discreetly snapping pictures of the Milky Way. The satellite's billion-pixel camera, the largest ever in space, is so powerful it would be able to gauge the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1,000 kilometres, meaning nearby stars have been located with unprecedented accuracy.  

Just over half-way through its five-year mission, Gaia's two telescopes have located a billion stars.  That's still only one percent of the Milky Way's estimated stellar population, scattered over an area 100,000 light years in diameter.

http://ow.ly/6SAG504t217

Testing the presidential candidates for SCIENCE !

Resharing to read when I have time.

Originally shared by Vladimir Pecha

Clinton, Trump and Stein answer 20 top questions about science, engineering, technology, health and environmental issues.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-the-presidential-candidates-know-about-science

Drone versus eagle gets real

Not just trials any more - they're actually doing this, for reals.

Dutch police are employing eagles to take down illegal drones following successful trials. The force has become the first in the world to recruit birds to tackle the increasing number of drones invading the Dutch skies. "It's a low-tech solution to a hi-tech problem," police spokesman Dennis Janus said.

Despite concerns raised by animal rights group, the police say the birds are not in any danger. A number of tests have been conducted since January and police seem confident about the programme. The eagles will now be deployed whenever drones are believed to be posing a threat to the public or flying close to airports or sensitive areas.

"The eagles see the drones as prey and intercept them as they are flying, before landing where they feel safe with the drone still in their claws," Mr Janus told AFP. About 100 officers will be trained to work with the eagles.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37342695

Wealth is not goodness

Found on the internet.

The latest "developments" from Flat Earthers

Too glorious to summarise, just read it.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

There is a new theory making the rounds in Flat Earth circles. (Squares?) The forests you see are not real forests; the true forests are long dead, and the things which we think are mountains are actually their ruins.

There's a marvelous article here about how such a theory spreads, and its curious and somewhat mad beauty. (OK, strike "somewhat") It's a fascinating way to start your day.

h/t Steven Flaeck
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/flat-earth-truthers/499322/

Citations often report things incorrectly

Of the literature Sanz-Martín surveyed, she found that just under half of publications cited papers incorrectly. Some papers misinterpreted their sources, while others cited irrelevant papers or referred to papers selectively in order to fit the author's argument. Sanz-Martín had to sift through hundreds of papers in minute detail. It was also a challenge on a personal level, she says, because "criticising the others' work is very difficult". For completeness, she and her colleagues also analysed papers that they themselves had written on jellyfish. They found exactly the same citation mistakes.

Oddly enough a reluctance to criticise is not something I've witnessed much.

Mills's paper was a review, in which she questioned whether there was a global trend in jellification. Her answer was not a definitive "yes" or "no", so she framed her title as a question: "Are populations increasing globally in response to changing ocean conditions?" Many of the scientists who went on to cite her work seem to have assumed that her answer to that question was a firm "yes". "It didn't occur to me that by posing it as a question, and inviting people to make their own conclusions, that they wouldn't read it carefully," says Mills.

The sheer scale of the literature that scientists have to get to grips with could be one cause, Sanz-Martín says. "It is very difficult to handle all this information and also to be balanced," she says.

Furthermore, scientists need to compete for research funding, and this puts pressure on them to be bolder in their claims than they might otherwise be. "You need to have a very good reason to do research and to gain funding," Sanz-Martín says. "You need to get funding and you need to publish a certain amount of papers every year."
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160905-are-swarms-of-jellyfish-taking-over-the-ocean

Cuddles for a baby pangolin

And to counter the cringe, we have a near-lethal level of cute and weird.

http://laughingsquid.com/tiny-newborn-pangolin-gets-fed-bathed-and-cuddled-at-the-taipei-zoo-in-taiwan

A letter to Private Eye about Brexit

https://twitter.com/MattBluefoot/status/773241881450967040

The weirdly disgusting hagfish

Like us they are vertebrates, but unlike us they do not actually have bony vertebrae in their backs: they are literally spineless. They have several hearts, and at least twice as much blood in their bodies as other fish. On top of that, they have only half a jaw, yet they can still tear through tough flesh. They lack scales, they can absorb some of their food straight through their skin – bypassing their half-jawed mouths altogether – and they have an almost unrivalled ability to turn seawater into thick gloopy slime.

"They're wandering around the ocean with only a set of upper teeth," says Uyeno. "They don't have an opposable lower set. So how do they create a forceful bite?"

Hagfish, they say, bite through tough flesh by tying themselves in knots. The hagfish begins to tie the knot at its tail, says William "Austin" Haney, Uyeno's graduate student. When complete, the knot lies slightly more than halfway along the body towards the head. "Once it tightens, the knot is basically at the head," he says. "It's this poor hotdog-shaped animal's very best attempt to create an ad hoc lower jaw," says Uyeno. The "lower jaw" might not have any teeth, but it gets the job done.

The idea suggests that body knotting is no mere hagfish party trick. Instead, the ability to tie itself in knots is a vital component of the hagfish's feeding behaviour. "When you really think about it, all these other features could be seen as adaptations to improve the hagfish's ability to knot their bodies," he says. "I thought: why has nobody looked into this idea before?"

Tying a knot in an animal involves stretching some parts of the body to form the knot's tight loops. In the same way that tight-fitting jeans might split at the seat when their wearer sits down, a tight-fitting skin might tear during knotting. "The hagfish skin fits like a pair of slacks," says Clark. It has just the right degree of bagginess to allow for tear-free knotting.

What's more, if the hagfish has a loose skin, it needs some sort of fluid to fill the cavity between this skin and the body. Blood is as good a fluid as any for this job, even though having so much blood requires a bit of extra power to pump it around. This could explain why hagfish have extra hearts.

Even features like the absence of scales and the ability to make mucus can be seen through the prism of knotting behaviour. A knot must be able to slide up the body easily, and if the hagfish body is smooth and slimy, knots find it that little bit easier to slip along.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160905-the-strangest-fish-in-the-sea

Without curiosity, intelligence is no defence against bias

Research shows that people with the most education, highest mathematical abilities, and the strongest tendencies to be reflective about their beliefs are the most likely to resist information which should contradict their prejudices. This undermines the simplistic assumption that prejudices are the result of too much gut instinct and not enough deep thought. Rather, people who have the facility for deeper thought about an issue can use those cognitive powers to justify what they already believe and find reasons to dismiss apparently contrary evidence.

As I've said before, very intelligent people are able to come up with extremely complicated, elaborate reasons to justify their ideologies, i.e. anyone can be a fool, but only a really clever person can be monumentally stupid.

With the scientific knowledge scale the results were depressingly predictable. The left-wing participants – liberal Democrats – tended to judge issues such as global warming or fracking as significant risks to human health, safety or prosperity. The right-wing participants – conservative Republicans – were less likely to judge the issues as significant risks. What’s more, the liberals with more scientific background were most concerned about the risks, while the conservatives with more scientific background were least concerned. That’s right – higher levels of scientific education results in a greater polarisation between the groups, not less.

With the caveat that "scientific education" here means only "current scientific findings", not methodology or goals. It's clear in context though.

Scientific curiosity showed a different pattern. Differences between liberals and conservatives still remained – on average there was still a noticeable gap in their estimates of the risks – but their opinions were at least heading in the same direction. For fracking for example, more scientific curiosity was associated with more concern, for both liberals and conservatives.

The team confirmed this using an experiment which gave participants a choice of science stories, either in line with their existing beliefs, or surprising to them. Those participants who were high in scientific curiosity defied the predictions and selected stories which contradicted their existing beliefs – this held true whether they were liberal or conservative.

Dunno if I'd say that last point "confirms" anything - I'd have said that choosing to read things that contradict your existing beliefs is a good definition of curiosity.

So, curiosity might just save us from using science to confirm our identity as members of a political tribe. It also shows that to promote a greater understanding of public issues, it is as important for educators to try and convey their excitement about science and the pleasures of finding out stuff, as it is to teach people some basic curriculum of facts.

Yup.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160907-how-curiosity-can-protect-the-mind-from-bias

Egypt doesn't get it

An Egyptian MP has stirred controversy after rejecting tougher penalties for those who force women into genital mutilation (FGM), saying half of the country's men "are impotent". Parliament last week approved longer jail terms for those carrying out FGM, following the death of a teenage girl. MP Ilhami Agina responded by saying FGM was needed in order to reduce women's sexual appetite, to match Egypt's men.

"This is a scientific fact based on research. Fifty per cent of Egyptian men are sexually impotent. This is a disease," Mr Agina said in a TV interview. "One proof is the spread of imported and local sexual stimulants in the market. Egypt is one of the largest importing countries." He was quoted by other Egyptian media as saying the procedure was needed so women would "reduce their sexual desires" to match that of Egypt's "sexually weak" men."If we stop FGM, we will need strong men and we don't have men of that sort."

Never underestimate the power of stupidity. It has no lower limit.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37294030

People don't trust science because the press releases are crap

Why People Don't Trust Science : These Reasons Will Shock You !

On the poor quality of press releases, the utter lack of quality of clickbaiting, the depiction (both explicit and implicit) of scientific over-confidence (especially by science activists), why so many science activists think philosophy is useless when most real scientists think that's stupid, whether anti-science is a real thing or not, why if we insist on keeping popular scientific outreach figures we need to keep them on a much tighter leash, and all that stuff.

Which leads me on to the ugly and deformed cousin of press releases : clickbaiting. Or rather, secondary journalism where the journalist doesn't bother to check the details of the original source. "Mystery solved", "we finally know", "scientists baffled" are all common staple headlines of this so-called reporting. These are all the more damaging when you realise that most people don't even read the article, all they see is the headline.

"Scientists baffled" is not all that bad by itself. It's good to emphasise that science is about uncertainty and not knowing how the universe works, of finding things out. "Baffled", though, is a rather strong word to use so often. If we were baffled half as much as the clickbait suggests, we'd have no friggin' clue about how things work at all. And that's not right, because while science indeed doesn't know everything, it most assuredly does know some things. To claim that we're baffled by the tiniest anomaly is almost to say we've just given up. Nope, can't solve any more problems, let's let the pseudoscientists have a go instead. We're all just a bunch of incompetents.

But far, far worse than this is, "mystery solved" and lately, "we finally know". No, the mystery bloody well has not been solved, no, there's nothing "final" about the latest piece of evidence whatsoever. This is a hideous thing to say, because 99% of the time a new piece of evidence will come along and disprove the apparently solved solution. Keep doing this - keep telling people we definitely know the answer then five minutes later tell them that answer was bunk - and it inevitably leads to mistrust. I know I wouldn't trust anyone who kept insisting that they were definitely, definitely right this time even though they said that fifteen times already.

The "experts were wrong" card becomes extremely, legitimately powerful if people are told that the mystery is decisively solved when it was really nothing of the sort - and that allows them to justify any ridiculous idea they want. The danger of this should be obvious : expert opinion loses the proper weight it should be given.


Worse than this, perhaps, is the combination of "scientists baffled" and "mystery solved". It gives such a starkly black and white picture of research - either something is baffling, or it's solved and therefore interesting for five minutes until we can find something else to be baffled about

Not stressing the uncertainties is hugely damaging for public confidence in science. The, "we're really very sure about this" card is one that should be played only very rarely. What you want is to emphasise the uncertainties, not brush them under the carpet. That gives the, "everyone agrees about this" card much, much more strength when you really need to play it. There's nothing wrong with an individual scientist saying, "I think this because..." but there are a hell of a lot of problems with them saying, "I know this is true because blah blah and all of my other colleagues are just wrong". They don't even have to say that directly, they can just imply it - as they do so, all too often in press releases - by failing to acknowledge other possible interpretations.

That's the real power of a scientific consensus, that's why it's trustworthy - precisely because most of the time scientists disagree with each other, those rare occasions when there's near-unanimous agreement should not be ignored. Yet that's precisely what's happening as "journalists" (i.e. clickbait writers) and some scientists abuse the idea of certainty for quick, attention-grabbing headlines.

Would I Lie To You ?

Michael Gove's most famous quote is undeniably, "The British people have had enough of experts". But before we get carried away with this, let's remember that this is the moron who also said, "I set my personal ambition aside in my bid to become Prime Minister".

Crocodile farming is booming, probably because they're yummy

"Each crocodile... can fetch you about 5,000 to 7,000 Kenyan shillings for the meat (£30 to £53; $50 to $69)," says Mr Mueke. The meat is white in colour, and said to taste similar to chicken.

I ate a crocodile burger once at a food festival in - of all places - Brecon. I don't know if it was a Nile crocodile but it wasn't white, it was distinctly pink. It didn't taste anything remotely like chicken, it tasted like crocodile. Quite sweet, with a texture sort of somewhere between fish and red meat. I would rate it as "delicious" and would happily eat it again.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37218790

I'm worth $2000 and poop a lot, says the BBC

Fascinating interactive infographic. I'm worth ~$2,000, I'll produce 2.6 trillion sperm (I'm not giving them all names though), I've already produced nearly two tonnes of poo and 11 litres of tears.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/the-making-of-me-and-you

Elsevier are trying to patent a method of peer review

This does seem like such an incredibly corporate thing to do.

The description of the invention is lengthy, but is essentially a description of the process of peer review, but on a computer. For example, it includes a detailed discussion of setting up user accounts, requiring new users to pass a CAPTCHA test, checking to see if the new user’s email address is already associated with an account, receiving submissions, reviewing submissions, sending submissions back for corrections, etc, etc, etc.

Patenting a method of scientific review is just flat-out immoral. Don't do that. Just don't.

The patent departs slightly from typical peer review in its discussion of what it calls a “waterfall process.” This is “the transfer of submitted articles from one journal to another journal.” In other words, authors who are rejected by one journal are given an opportunity to immediately submit somewhere else. The text of the patent suggests that Elsevier believed that this waterfall process was its novel contribution. But the waterfall idea was not new in 2012. The process had been written about since at least 2009 and is often referred to as “cascading review.”

That's not even a great practise anyway. First, it's hardly difficult to submit to another journal, it's not something you need a special method for. Second this is not necessarily a terrible practise, but it's not a great one either. It shouldn't be seen as normal to resubmit if a paper is rejected. A better approach would be to have a system for choosing the appropriate journal at the submission stage. And it probably would be a good thing to have more distinction between the journals and their subdivisions, in my opinion.
https://plus.google.com/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/LfJxdkdhcz2


https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/stupid-patent-month-elsevier-patents-online-peer-review