Science and Truth

What I've been looking for recently are places to discuss the big issues in science and get them out to the world at large. In my post on CERN I challenged scientists to get their message across in simple and effective terms so as to avoid malicious rumours. David Weinkove is very experienced in these events and brings us a new and interesting format with his brother:

A Talkaoke at the Science Museum this Tuesday at 7 pm

In a recent Essay at LabLit.com he challenges scientists and non-scientists alike to

get off your pedestal and get round the table

It certainly sounds an interesting format, a type of interactive round table talkshow. I'm going to try and grab a ticket as there still seems to be places available.

It's free, at London's Dana centre in the Science Museum, you can find out more here and see the facebook page too.

JET set for an open evening

The UKAEA team, who were at the science event in Didcot emailed me with some dates for public open evenings at my local fusion experiment.

Sounds interesting! Looking back over the power plants I've visited since I was a kid, my CV reads like this:

• Nuclear
• Coal
• Hydro-Electric
• Tidal Barrage
• Wind
• Pumped Storage

I've also been to the centre for alternative energy in Wales and seen solar water heating and geothermal energy in use in France.

Fusion can be my next, hopefully ITER, the next big experiment will viably produce power!

Greenpeace on fusion: Whatever it is, we're against it

Last weekend was the hugely over-hyped Didcot First Science Event. There I got to see some fun science demonstrations and took away a CD-ROM about Fusion Power. There was also a board for everone to write their opinions on which I thought was good fun.

There was no community interaction on the internet though, this got me thinking about how all the academics need to get their message out better online as was the case for CERN.

Anyway, luckily my CD-ROM drive hadn't packed up from lack of use and I watched the animated slide-show from the guys over at the JET laboratory in Culham. It was reasonably interesting, for me, a trained scientist... I hope the other people who picked it up felt the same. I'd love to share it but I wouldn't want to get a rep for copyright infringement.

Later, I heard from Richard Kemp a fusion scientist, via my brother Stephen. They passed on this great link from theregister.co.uk in which Andrew Orlowski systematically castigates Greenpeace for their suspicion of Fusion Power. It's a powerful and amusing piece, with a great soundbite at the end.

Ranting is fun, and great names like Patrick Moore wouldn't have abandonned Greenpeace unless Orlowski had a point.

But how do we get the good news flowing about science?

The BBC turns Presidential Science Advisor

The interesting question asked by this programme was

"Will the next US president embrace science and solve the world's problems like Kenedy did to an extent... Or will we continue down the same track of mistrusting the scientific community and destoying ourselves with our creations."

I didn't manage to catch this programme in the first place, but somehow it is still available... Hopefully the BBC have realised that it's important that this show gets to a wide audience and will remain laissez faire about claiming copyright. Correction: video no longer available, wondered how long it would take.

"The monkeys' performance improved markedly with practice"

Hope of a cure for motor neurone problems today. You can read about the story on the Nature News site where I got the title from (with it's nice technorati backlinks widget) and also the BBC.

Moritz, C. T. , Perlmutter, S. I. & Fetz, E. E. have proved the concept of using signals from a monkey's brain to make it's own paralysed limb move.

I think that the discussion so far has managed expectations really well. Even Luboš Motl's cheeky mock-up of Stephen Hawking as Superman has provoked nothing but measured commentary.

Now let me see, how do I bet on future Nobel Prize winners...

What a great name!

...nice headline too!


You can check out the press release here and get the latest news from Henri Boffin's peers here at the Eurekalert service.

The World Wide Web Foundation (can anyone get excited about web standards?)

Tim Bernhards-Lee, inventor of the internet at CERN in 1989 has been sharing his vision of how it could help the world in the future. He hopes to do this through the launch of http://www.webfoundation.org/. Reading the website, I am a bit bemused as to what the aim of the organisation is, as are a number of commenters on Molly E. Holzschlag's blog.

The hot air about the LHC at CERN gave Tim the perfect example to tell us that "The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science" as described in a BBC article by Pallab Gosh. From Steven Clark's post I think I'm right in saying that Bernhards-Lee proposes making the web searchable by correctness rather than relevance. The plan might work, unfortunately the Web Foundation site doesn't get the message across effectively.

I think that Bernhard Lee's mistake is to think of those talking about science as being different to those talking about any other product or event. Bit of a mouthful I know, but I would prefer if he said:

"Science is fun, and it's great when people talk about it. It is the responsibility of the scientist to make their work so easy to understand and remarkable that the space of malicious rumours is reduced. When rumours do occur the scientist can reach out and educate the community, speaking a language they understand"

Would it not be great if the creators of this viral video got a guided tour of the CERN facility for their troubles?

No doubt there is some room for an internet policeman, but if NASA can win the marketing war, there is no reason why MMR vaccines, particle accelerators or NGOs can't. Some of the large funds for this project could be diverted into philanthropic marketing projects perhaps.

You can follow the Web Foundation on twitter @webfoundation

Hot air about the LHC at CERN - the hot circular lack of air

As the dust (that would be there if the CERN place wasn't really clean) settles on the bing bang story I would like to ask: Will they be able to generate this level of conversation when the high energy experiments kick off next year?

In the case of space missions, launches have become commonplace and no longer remarkable. From that moment on though, we have a definite time of arrival to look forward to. NASA also uses analogy well and underplays expectations. For example: even though previous missions had "found good evidence" of water on Mars, the lastest probe "touched" it. Most of the probes "last longer than expected"as well. I particularly enjoyed a workshop I went to at last year Piers Sellers (Britain's current Astronaut). Those guys are certainly half decent science communicators.

In the case of the LHC at CERN, the beauty of the engineering is now old news. Next spring there will probably be some new strangeness numbers for bosons. It will be interesting to see how the CERN marketing guys spread the word. As we tire of being told that the world might end, maybe they'll have to resort to calling particles mythical.