demos expertise pamphlet

To bring something out of the comments to the last post, there's a new pamphlet from Demos on expertise. Students might find it useful as further reading for some of the policy and PEST orientated topics we've been covering this half of the term, including the assignment (if you are choosing to design a dialogue-for-policy event).

To quote from the introductory blurb on their website:

Opening-up needs to mean more than showing people how expert advice works. Opening-up needs to mean open-mindedness, it needs to mean asking new questions and it needs to mean listening to a much wider range of perspectives.

Have a happy holidays - remember Humanities are all moving offices this week, so you can't expect to find us in the same place next term.

The Core and dodgy Hollywood science

You may have talked about this in your class on science in fiction last week.

But I was inspired to post after being unfortunate enough to catch the last hour or so of the film The Core last night: the plot of this involves a team of people having to drill/float/fly to the centre of the earth to start the earth's core turning again (very 21st century Jules Verne). This being a disaster movie, they save the world but get killed off one by one, leaving only - what a surprise - the two good-looking ones.

My physics isn't so hot, but even I found people wandering around 700km below the earth's surface (with only lines like 'These suits are holding up pretty well against the pressure!' to protect them) kind of unlikely. And indeed, Wikipedia's page on the film has a whole list of inaccuracies (ranging from the laughable to the subtle).

My question is: does this kind of thing matter? Normally I'm not too fussed about bad science in films - it's fiction, right? - but in this case I found it distracting. Do you think it's important that science in fiction is good science?

The Planet Earth Problem

There has been widespread media praise for the “scientific program Planet Earth”, so what’s wrong with the BBC spending license payers’ money funding the making of a science program, which utilizes cutting-edge technology to film the worlds wildlife?

The problem I feel is that the BBC have missed an opportunity to link cutting-edge film with thought-provoking science.

Due to time constraints of 50 minutes upon each habitat there’s nowhere near enough time to show the diverse range of adaptations to an environment, and what’s actually shown is a brief look at a few more recognizable creatures, with some rarities thrown in for the “wow-effect”. The BBC should be making scientific programs that encourage thought. Their own founding policy is that programs should “inform, educate and entertain”. And whilst I have no argument that Planet Earth doesn’t entertain, to say it informs and educates is debatable. I understand that there’s a balance between the amount of science and the accessibility to people, yet on modern television, with many animal programmes, people are more aware of the diversity of species, so programmes should be able to present more in-depth information, rather than acting as highlights shows of the Earths biodiversity. The BBC however compromises this and confines the science to 3 one hour slots upon BBC Four and radio4, which have significantly smaller audiences. A great chance to link environmental issues to natural beauty has been missed due to the BBC not wanting to risk audience numbers.

Submitted by Andrew Talyor

IMAX – ‘Deep Sea’

The IMAX at the science museum shows 3D films on a variety of science topics such as the moon landings, International Space Station and Wildlife.

‘Deep Sea’ is a documentary program about sea creatures, their environment and the interactions between them. The film focuses on the theme of symbiosis between fish and coral in the oceans whilst including interesting details about a diverse range of creatures, open sea and coral cleaning stations and the coral reefs themselves.

Overall I think that ‘Deep Sea’ focuses too much on the theme of symbiosis and is intellectually aimed at a young audience. I did not feel that it was necessary for every interesting point to be linked to this one idea and thought the film was long enough to have more than one main theme. However the film was very enjoyable. The 3D imagery was excellent making you feel you really were underwater in one of the world’s most beautiful environments, and the music was excellently integrated to create the peaceful atmosphere of the deep sea. I think that 3D cinema is an excellent media for this kind of film, allowing people to get really close to creatures and an environment that they would otherwise never experience.

‘Deep Sea’ includes a topical message: over fishing of the oceans is destroying the balance between ecosystems and causing the coral to die. I felt this was an excellent fact to include and was very effective within the media of the film. ‘Deep Sea’ also captures the wonder of science with facts such as how “all the coral in the ocean spawn precisely one hour after sunset eight days after the full moon in August.” This for me creates a fascination with science which I think is perhaps the best aspect of the film.

Submitted by Ceris Austyn-prys

The New ‘Scientist’

Who is the intended readership of the New Scientist magazine? Most of you have presumably at least flicked through a copy of the New Scientist; what did you think of it?

I personally think it has an identity crisis. On the one hand the public think of it as an up to date technical magazine where as those in research see it is dumbed down ‘popular’ science. It fits the later by trying to engage the public by being interactive like many other general science providers. Therefore it provides a website which includes podcasts, blogs and such like.

The problem in engaging the public seems to be that the content is too specific for those who not have none or little scientific background and hence understanding more than just the title becomes difficult. From my experiences the majority of the articles I can only get the gist of because there is a lot of presumed knowledge by the writer. Also a lot of stories covered do not necessarily have practical implications yet and therefore may not be of interest to the general public.

To gauge scientists points of view Alice recommended to me this discussion list (see point 12) which discusses the New Scientist usefulness to the scientific community. There are a range of views with some very interesting points. The majority seem to think that New Scientist is not an accurate report on research in their field and therefore are not trusting of the rest of the text.

To summarise I think the New Scientist is perfect for those scientists who wish to keep tabs on what is going on outside their field as the text is not up to date as a journal but also not so detailed. Though the last page of the New Scientist would certainly suggest that it does have a readership which extends outside the scientific community since ‘The Last Word’ has even been published in book form.

submitted by Sarah Clayton

new layout

Yes, we have a new layout - I'm taking advantage of Blogger Beta. This means we have "labels" to help navigate the blog (useful as it gets bigger) - so you can press the "class summary" label to only get the overviews of lectures, or the one to show only posts from other students, etc...

I've gone back to old posts and given key labels, but it might take a while to link everything up. New posts are and will be fully labelled.

Those blogging next term, if you want to specify labels to your post, do so. If not I'll allocate them.

class 10: Science in Fiction

We started the class talking about this episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We then discussed some of the symbols of science and technology suggested by the piece, before going through some more general issues of science and fiction. I also touched on narrative, although we'll talk about that issue more next term.

I mentioned David Kirby's work on "scientists on set", and I've put a link to his paper up on WebCT which is well worth reading if you are thinking about writing an essay on the topic.

Some other links to things I referenced in class:

• Jon Turney's book Frankenstein's Footsteps. It's also worth looking up this book, although I forgot to mention it in class.
• A definition of slash fiction (warning, may offend) - I don't think I made the link between fan fiction and internet communities as clearly as I should have. Fan fiction (including slash) existed before the web, but much of it is now published there. Wikipedia cites 1993 as when the first slash mailing list started.
• Harold Rheingold's book (electronic version) on early internet based communication.
• The "Buffy Studies" online journal.

The hands in the photo above are Willow's, from when she goes evil (Buffy nerds can try to work out which episode).

Thinking ahead - work experience

You should bear in mind that you will be competing with MSc students who have a summer work experience requirement as part of their course.

If you want to find out about working in a newspaper or magazine, you can try contacting the newsdesks. But to be honest the best journalistic work experience you can get would be on Felix and/or publish yourself by keeping a blog. A woman at the Guardian was saying on their media podcast a few weeks ago that she won't look at applications from non-bloggers.

If you want office-based work, have a look at some of the organisations listed in the sidebar (such as NESTA). Find something or someone you are interested in, and email them.

The BA have a festival of science every year, and tend to ask for volunteers to work as runners for the week (working in the press office, events or with schoolchildren, you can tell them your interest). It's a great chance to network, lots of fun and they (at least used to) pay all your expenses. It's also only a week of your time at the end of the holidays - I'll pass round any information about that when it comes up.

If you are serious about working in the field, it's worth signing up to the psci-com elist. If you want to discuss any of this with me or Sarah (or get a reference) - just ask.

Thinking ahead - masters courses

There is an Imperial PG open day on Wednesday. Remember you need to book today or tomorrow.

I know there will be people talking about the three MSc's the Science Communication Group offer. I imagine the two MSc's offered by the History of Science Centre will also be represented. One of their courses includes science communication issues. They are both run in conjunction with UCL.

You can find links to other courses in the sidebar of this blog.

Play event at Dana

Last night a few of us went to the Dana Centre for a "PEST" type event (on play and learning).

The event eschewed the traditional set up of speakers giving presentations followed by questions. Instead, four speakers gave short (3 min) introductions of themselves. We were then sorted into groups, so you'd not necessarily be with people you know.

Each group was timetabled 10 mins with each speaker. The speakers sat in a circle of chairs and when we joined them we were just expected to talk. Some speakers gave a lead in, some just said "so, what you want to talk about". At the end of the night the groups joined together again and the speakers made a sum up comment. There was the opportunity to for the debate to continue, although no one took it up.

There was a whiff of speed-dating about the process.

Personally, I thought it worked better than I imagined it was going to. Conversation was quite stilted at the start, but by the end people had relaxed into it. A little at least, there was never a huge amount of energy in the room. Moreover, I worry the set-up of letting the audience talk as much as possible favours those who come with previously formed views on a topic. One problem might just be that audiences aren't used to acting like that - several people had come along armed with notebooks.

Horizon - Human 2.0 (24/10/2006)

I tuned in late to this program and found it so ridiculous that I really had trouble watching it through.

When I joined, the program seemed to be just finishing ‘explaining’ Moore’s Law and impressing upon the viewer that this ‘law’ made it obvious that very soon in the future the average computer would be ‘more powerful than the human brain’.

What does this even mean? Will a computer in 2 years time be able to hold believable verbal conversations with me or is it suggesting that a computer of now is not quite powerful enough to find the first million primes faster than I can? Clearly the statement means nothing unless it is followed up by a discussion of how ‘power’ is defined in this context.

The program then proceeded to introduce us to a line up of supposed ‘scientists’ that where there to share their crackpot visions of the future. By crackpot, I mean absolutely on the very fringe of current scientific thought, my favourite example being Ray Kurzweil, a man who sells pills designed to extend ones life long enough so that future science can help you live forever (see this link for a good laugh).

Ray was there to tell us about a future where we were ‘upgraded’ to the point where we had superhuman powers, ranging from the obvious super-strength (from the implanted nano-wires) to the memory and vision enhancements provided by brain implants.

Keeping with the outlandish theme of technology gone crazy, Horizon decided to bring in another doubtful personality to tell us about how things might happen differently – we might all be wiped out by a marauding artificial intelligence at any moment, despite presenting zero evidence suggesting that current science can deliver anything like a genuinely independent A.I.

At no point did Horizon see fit to introduce a scientist that put forward the much more plausible claim that neither of the above scenarios might play out.

Fundamentally, there was little in the way of real science presented to the viewer and what science that did appear was distorted, unbalanced, massively over-dramatised and generally misinterpreted. If a viewer were to take the program seriously they would have no choice but to start saving for the implants or begin digging a nuclear bunker immediately. Somehow I don’t think many people did either, they simply left this miserable ‘science’ program with no better understanding of technological progress than they had before.

submitted by Dan Rogers

Energy?

Energy is a very difficult topic to convey to the lay person or children, we can’t see it so how do we know it’s there? The Energy display at the Science Museum aims to do this. It is able to do this by showing how energy is harnessed, how we use it now and how we will have to use it in the future.

As with the usual Science Museum displays it is very hands on, with many different computer games and scenarios. The problem with this is the lack of substance in these games. For instance in one game all you have to do is get the engineer to the fuse to fix the blackout. No information how he would do this or why there was a blackout in the first place.

Where the exhibit does succeed is in the future of energy. To What lengths would people go for renewable energy, would you save your poo to heat your house?

Although some of the displays are very biased to non-fossil or Nuclear power it does present the topic well and give an idea of wanting to change the public’s view of renewable power. One display, aimed at the older group, informs you of the most environmentally friendly ways of cooking, cleaning and transportation.

submitted by Jonathan Watkins

Climate Change - comment & win

In class this week, I gave a print out of this piece on "Climate Porn". The idea was going to be to get you to summarise the reasons why emphasising risks of climate change is a bad thing, as well as considering reasons for sensationalism. We didn't have time for this, but I thought we could discuss it here.

So, press on the yellow "comments" link at the end of the post and give your reasons for and against sensationalism in risk reporting. You might like to read the article linked to above (and the comments - it's a blog entry) but you don't have to.

As incentive, before next week's class I'll write down the name of all the students who comment, and draw one at random to get a (chocolate based) prize. If there are lots of comments, I might draw out a few names (I'll see if the holiday spirit catches me). If you put more than one comment, you will be entered twice, so it's worth checking back to debate your points further.

The picture is meant to be a "baked" person (from climate change. Sorry, bad link...).

Session 9: risk (and intro to science policy)

We started with a debate, asking whether scientists are the best people to make decisions about science policy. If anyone wants to continue/ join this (with ideas on why scientists should or should not be the people to make policy decisions over science) we can start a thread in the comments to this post.

In terms of lecture content, we went through some key ideas in science policy and gave a brief overview of the topic of risk, especially issues of risk reporting in the media. All of this is covered in the handout (see WebCT). If anyone missed the class, read the chapter on "The ABC of Risk" in Gregory & Miller.

If anyone was particularly inspired by the topic of risk, Les Levidow is talking about GM issues at UCL this evening, details here.

I'm sorry if today was a bit rushed, I stupidly planned for a double session. I'm going to turn the activity we didn't get a chance to do (on sensationalism) into a blog entry - watch this space.

playing to learn...

...is the Dana event some of us will be attending next Thursday (the 7th). Check out this web-page for further details of the topic and the speakers.

A couple of things that struck me from the info given: the event is supported (i.e. paid for) by Nintendo, and the panellists are all 'experts' of one kind or another (academics, policy types). It will be interesting to hear the voices of the 'public' from the audience. Is there anyone else that you think should be given a voice in the debate?