Archive for November, 2006
For a long time I’ve been an admirer of basic science. I like to remember that science isn’t all about expensive labs and particle accelerators. In fact, everyday people can embrace the scientific method and advance the field of human knowledge from their own homes. So I’m starting a new category: Science Punks.
Whilst punk science is often a derisory term, I’m claiming “science punk” as a positive one. Kinda what New Scientist might look like if it was put together with safety scissors, UHU glue and bad photocopying. And nothing is more punk than people doing it for themselves.
Our first Punk is Graeme Cole, an aspiring pedant and publisher of the excellent study, “Nailing Jelly to a Wall: Is It Possible?”.
We’ve all heard the old saying “it’s like nailing jelly to a wall” to describe a task that is very difficult or impossible. But is our view of the difficulty of this task justified? Has anybody actually tried nailing jelly to a wall? In this experiment I attempt to establish, one way or the other, the validity of the old proverb.
See the results…
November 30th, 2006
TOPEKA, KS—Any living being that undergoes genetic modification favoring survival could face jail time under the new law.
Sometimes I thank God for creationists and all the laughs they give us.
November 29th, 2006
Continuing the series of Christmas gifts for the science punks in your life, I thought I’d throw the spotlight on some awesome looking science-themed graphic novels. First up is the recently published Five Fists of Science by Matt Fraction, featuring Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla in a race to save mankind from an evil science cabal headed by Thomas Edison.
On a completely unrelated note, we have Two-Fisted Science by Jim Ottaviani. Promising something more of an Earthbound discussion of science, the novel contains a series of stories based on real life occurrences from the lives of the scientists such as Galileo, Feynman, Einstein, Newton, Bohr, and Heisenberg.
Finally, and perhaps my favourite of the bunch, is Dignifying Science, also by Jim Ottaviani and also featuring work by a collaboration of artists. Dignifying Science features true stories about women scientists including Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock, Birute Galdikas, and one of my favourite scientists of all time - burlesque queen, pin-up and mathematical genius Hedy Lamarr. If you’d like to impress upon your daughter/sister/neice that science isn’t just for boys, this is the one for you.
November 29th, 2006
Nick Cowan is currently in the news at the BBC, advocating the use of some insidious teaching materials handed out by creationist outfit Truth in Science. Here he is introduced as “Nick Cowan, chemistry teacher at Liverpool’s Blue Coat School”. Could this possibly be the same Nick Cowan, “head of the Christian Institute, a charity devoted to the promotion of Christian faith in the UK”? Umm… yes!
For the grand prize, is this the same Nick Cowan who is said to have funded a visit to Blue Coat by arch-creationist speaker John Mackay? Yes!
November 28th, 2006
From the vaults of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship comes the 1940s hit film “Experiments in the Revival of Organisms”, a sort of DIY manual for making zombie dogs. Whilst clearly a slice of Soviet propaganda meant to demonstrate their superior medical skillz, the film is widely accepted as a factual representation of experiments carried out at the time. Whilst there is no doubt that the techniques practised here went on to inform procedures such as open heart surgery, there’s something quite disconcerting about seeing a severed dog’s head being poked in the eye with a skewer, just to prove it’s still alive. Not one for the faint-hearted.
See the video!
November 27th, 2006
Sergeant James Shearer was an auxiliary nurse in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. Whilst stationed in France, Shearer designed and built a machine which he christened Shearer’s Delineator. The Delineator was a small box which could be pointed at a patient. Pressing a button produced a diagram of the patient peppered with small holes which denoted the presence of disease.
Continue Reading November 27th, 2006
Let me now direct you to BibliOdyssey, who’ve posted some wonderfully bizarre pictures of wildlife, engraved by a man called De Seve in the late 18th century, for natural history books by the likes of Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, a student of the great Carolus Linneaus.
The absurd rendering of many of the animals comes about because the engravers/artists working on the project did not actually see the animals. They had to rely on descriptions and their imagination and, as was the fashion of the time, the animals were placed in contrived settings and often given human facial qualities, which only serves to heighten the sense of bizarre.
Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing!
November 26th, 2006
Hats off to Professor David Colquhoun FRS, who’s been digging around dubious outfit Essential Health Products Limited. They are currently running adverts on TV throwing about all kinds of claims for their Stop Snoring remedy.
He discovered the “clinical trials”, authored by a one Dr Prichard, were rather sketchy (no surprises there), but the cherry on the cake was the following:
The paper did say openly that it was sponsored by the vendor.
What it forgot to mention is that 2000 shares in the company that makes the stuff are owned by a Helen Prichard, who happens to share the same address as Dr Prichard (amazing what you can find with Companies House and the phone book).
Discovering that not only is a product dodgy, but is dripping with undeclared financial interests? That’s some kickass debunking.
Visit Prof Colquhoun’s Improbable Science page
November 25th, 2006
If you’re wondering what to get the science punk in your life for Christmas, how about these adorable plush toys modelled after the great and the grisly of the microbial world? Nothing says “Season’s Greetings!” like a 7-inch flesh-eating Streptococcus pyogenes bacterium.
Giant Microbes Homepage
November 24th, 2006
It must be hard for Greenpeace. Once tackling the world’s great environmental threats meant throwing yourself in front of a harpoon gun, or having your ship blown up by French spies. Today’s concerns are far more pedestrian, and it’s not easy to get people worked up about litter in the ocean. That must be why Greenpeace decided to issue a press release warning of the PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX. According to them, this swirling whirlpool of doom is collecting our garbage and concentrating it into “an area the size of Texas”, poisoning marine life and killing baby seals. They’ve got a lovely animation of the PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX which can be seen here.
Let’s have a look at a couple of the statements made in the Greenpeace press release, as reported by Reuters.
The Greenpeace report, “Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans” said at least 267 species — including seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales and fish — are known to have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.
Plastic pollution is a problem in all the world’s oceans, the Greenpeace report said, but underlined the issue in the Pacific by sailing through the floating garbage dump and capturing images of wildlife interacting with plastic.
Okay, firstly, I don’t believe that Greenpeace single-handedly counted 267 different species in trouble. And more to the point, sea lions are coastal, so I don’t think they’ll be hanging out in the middle of the largest ocean on Earth. Something is amiss. Secondly, I can’t find any pictures of this PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX, despite their claims. If there really is a carpet of filth coating the North Pacific, I want to see it.
The next step is to find the source of all these statements. That would be Greenpeace’s report “Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans“, written by Michelle Allsopp, Adam Walters, David Santillo, and Paul Johnston. The first thing we notice is: this is a literature review. There’s no evidence that any of these authors have ever been to the PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX. In fact, the words “PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX” do not appear anywhere in this paper. What’s going on?
This isn’t a bad paper - something your average undergraduate would be proud of. For the most part it details various published papers that have reported the negative effects of marine pollution, and says very little about a giant swirling vortex of garbage. Then I found the following table:
Now, Wikipedia tells me that the North Pacific Gyre lies roughly between the equator and 50 degrees north. So, according to Greenpeace’s own report, the average amount of debris found here is less than one piece per square kilometer. That makes the PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX cleaner than the Arctic, North Atlantic, English Channel, Mediterranean, Southern Atlantic, Ambon Bay and the Southern Ocean. In fact, there isn’t a single area on the table with less trash than the North Pacific Gyre. So where the heck did Greenpeace get their PACIFIC TRASH VORTEX idea from? Page 28 reveals:
The North Pacific central gyre is an area of convergence where clockwise ocean currents act as a retention mechanism and prevent plastic debris from moving towards mainland coasts. A study in this region reported exceptionally high densities of plastic debris (Moore et al. 2001). Using nets to collect debris, the abundance of floating plastic averaged 334,271 pieces/km2, (range 31,982 to 969,777 pieces/km2). The results of floating plastic debris from this study cannot be directly compared with most other studies on floating debris in which debris is quantified by a different method, namely visual inspection of the ocean surface.
Now, let’s remember that phrase “cannot be directly compared with most other studies“, while we look to page 7:
Floating marine debris: studies on different areas of the marine environment reported quantities of floating marine debris that were generally in the range of 0-10 items of debris per km2. Higher values were reported in the English Channel (10-100+ items/km2) and Indonesia (more than 4 items in every m2). Floating micro debris has been measured at much higher levels: the North Pacific Gyre, a debris convergence zone, was found to contain maximum levels, that when extrapolated represent, near to a million items per square kilometre.
So, which is it? Does the North Pacific contain one piece of garbage per square km? Or one million? You’d think with Steve Smith “finding a lot of stuff out here, floating by” and with “inflatable boats dispatched from the ship to collect samples”, Greenpeace might be able to narrow down the garbage density to ooh, say, a power of 10 or so. Of course, that might meaning telling the truth: there is a lot of garbage out there, but it’s spread over 34 million square kilometers. The environmental problems that Greenpeace highlighted are happening, but for the most part, not in the North Pacific (well, it beats living in Ambon Bay, put it that way). This is because Greenpeace, though good at getting headlines, aren’t very good at science. Until they find another harpoon gun to jump in front of, expect more sensationalistic press like this from our errant eco warriors.
November 24th, 2006
Archer fish, including Toxotes jaculatrix (stop giggling at the back), have an unusual talent for catching prey. Rather than sit around all day waiting for the odd insect to drop by, the Archer fish shoots a jet of water from its mouth with surprising accuracy, knocking the insect off their perch. Their eyes, though well-developed, cannot overcome refraction, and the fish must learn to shoot from directly underneath its prey in order to be successful. Also displaying a clear lack of patience, the Archer fish will often jump out of the water to grab the falling insect, and isn’t adverse to stealing food from another, more accurate competitor.
See the video!
November 23rd, 2006
Now, Ecover is a brand close to my heart. No one is making them use recycled cardboard in their packaging, or avoid the use of persistent chemicals like chlorine, they just do. It’s what they’re all about. But science, my friends, has made me a stony man, and all bad science is fair game. There’s no favouritism to be found here.
Continue Reading November 22nd, 2006
Imagine, if you will, a machine that gave out more than you put in. A car that did 1000 miles on a gallon of fuel - or better yet, on no fuel at all. In fact, imagine a car that made fuel, the more you drove it. Imagine no more, for I give you… The Joe Cell.
Hamish Robertson claims to have developed an “over-unity machine” - something that gives out more energy than is put in. In doing so, he joins a lengthy list of people that have claimed to have created a perpetual motion machine, all of whom, to date, were liars. Hamish’s design is a group of nested cylinders filled with water, through which a charge is put. Other than shorting out your power supply, I can’t really see what this will achieve. On the other hand:
A static charge is induced, establishing opposing electric fields at the cathode and anode. …When a relatively small charge feedback loop begins and progressively more and more electrons are pulled through the water and off surrounding molecules toward the electric field of the anode.
Ah yes, that well-known property of negative ions, that they are attracted to other negative ions. That must be why… um… oh, god, that’s just so utterly fucking stupid I can’t even joke.
Well anyway, Hamish was passed the plans for the Joe Cell from a friend who got them from a friend, whose grandad saw them in use on tanks in the Second World War (no, really, that’s what the site says). By the way, there’s also this stunning piece of evidence, an image by rogue physicist and New Age father Walter Russell:
See how it resembles the Joe Cell? Is that not proof enough?
Originally, I was going to write to our friend Hamish. But honestly, a child could tell you that filling buckets with water and putting electricity through them isn’t a good idea. I’m not even sure how you’re supposed to connect the Joe Cell to you car, or even what it produces. Electricity? Gas? Coffee?
Buried at the bottom of the page, we have a small disclaimer from Hamish. He says:
They are prone to dying for no apparant reason
Ah. Hmm. Yes. That will explain why his machine will never work when the cameras are rolling. I think it’s safe to say that we’ll still be queueing at the pumps for a few decades yet. And when we stop, it certainly won’t be for the Joe Cell.
November 21st, 2006
Last Saturday, Ben Goldacre over at Bad Science central wrote about the abundance of nonsense equations that regularly crop up in the news, usually as a thinly veiled promotion for the sponsors. He was also good enough to link to my article on Nathan Efron and his ridiculous formula for the Beer Goggle Effect (as “reported” by BBC News Online).
This morning I woke up to discover that the original Beer Goggle Effect article has leaped into the number one Most Emailed slot on BBC News Online. How did this happen? Is it coincidence? Has someone else been promoting this story? I fear I’ve given fresh legs to this Beer Goggles article Bausch & Lomb advertisement.
November 21st, 2006
And now, let me direct you to Odontomachus bauri, otherwise known as the Trap-jaw Ant. Boasting the fastest bite in the world, O. bauri can snap its jaws together in a mere 0.13 milliseconds - their mandibles closing as fast as 145 miles per hour! This is so fast that if their jaws strike a solid surface, the little nippers are propelled backwards through the air in a none-too-graceful leap. Researchers at Berkeley, California, captured these acrobatics on film, and plan to take their ants on tour with a troupe of dancing fleas in the new year.
See the video!
November 19th, 2006
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