Think Like a Scientist
Catastrophes Small and Large: From Biscuit Dunking to our Global Future
I appeared on the front page of Wikipedia today (April 7th 2021). “Did you know?” asked the editors “that Len Fisher won the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize for physics for his research on the optimal way to dunk a biscuit?” You may or may not have known this. Certainly the story...
Equations in the media
I just came across a link to a segment of the BBC Radio 4 programme "More or Less", where I debated with Simon Singh the value of equations in the media. "Debated" is really not the right word, since we were on the same side when it came to the way that the media...
Rosetta and Bali: Coincidence or conspiracy?
Dateline: November 2nd, 2016. Staying on Bali, and idly glancing at the right-hand NASA topographic map of Bali from space, the similarity to the left-hand image of comet P67 taken from the Rosetta spacecraft suddenly struck me. Yes, I know that I have reflected...
The birth of something small
“Whatever happened to colloid science? Has it been totally supplanted by the young upstart known as nanoscience? Or is it still with us, lurking in the background, perhaps even preparing for a comeback?” In my Chemistry World article The Birth of Something Small...
102. How Robert Boyle and I became chemists.
Adapted from Chapter 5 of "Weighing the Soul" When I am introduced to strangers as a “chemist”, most of them conclude either that I dispense prescriptions or that I spend my time in a smelly laboratory mixing “chemicals” together to see what will happen. If I were an...
Galileo and Elsevier
Dutch Universities have announced a plan to boycott the Dutch publisher Elsevier. The firm now publishes a wide range of scientific books and journals, in which some of my own articles have even appeared. But how many people know of the role that they played in...
The awesome power of multicrastination
Stanford philosopher John Perry was awarded a spoof IgNobel Prize for his theory of “structured procrastination.” It took the organizers fifteen years to get round to awarding him the prize, but finally happened in 2011. Now I am getting around to writing about....
90. Millikan and Ehrenhaft: a lesson in scientific thinking
Today (June 2nd) is the 102nd anniversary of Robert Millikan’s publication of his measurements of the charge of the electron. But he had a competitor – the congenial Viennese physicist Felix Ehrenhaft, a frequent host to Einstein and others. So how come Millikan got a...
How much wine can you get into a bra?
Some years ago I presented a radio programme for BBC Radio 4 on the design of the perfect sports bra. One of our problems in preparing the programme was to work out the appropriate cup dimensions, which I was doing surreptitiously while talking to my producer by...
Scientists should be required to write lay summaries of their publications
Two scientists from the University of Washington in Seattle have come up with a simple, but revolutionary idea: that all scientific articles should be accompanied by lay summaries accessible to the interested non-scientist (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3585). I...
On my Mini Stories from Science
The most effective way of teaching and communicating science that I know is to take students, listeners and viewers behind the scenes to share WHY scientists ask the questions that they do and HOW they go about looking for answers. Unfortunately, many teachers and...
Fair enough?
Ockham's Razor, ABC Radio In Australia the topic of fairness is often discussed. For example we ask questions whether it's fair to raise the retirement age, we question whether our electoral system is fair, whether it's fair to allow racial abuse for the sake of...
Making Science Accessible
Interview on BBC Radio Wiltshire
Letter to “Nature”: “Shaping policy: Science and politics need more empathy”
Nature Vol. 481 (2012) 29 Some important pointers for improving communication between scientists and politicians (Nature 480, 153; 2011) emerged from a meeting last year between the two groups, organized by the International Risk Governance Council. Support for...
Wrong Turns and Dead Ends
A review of "Brilliant Blunders" by Mario Livy (published in Physics World, December 2013) Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein, Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio (2013 Simon &...
Letter to Radio Times re Uri Geller
Radio Times, July 27 – August 2 (2013) A one-hour homage to Uri Geller? With no sceptical comment, and no reference to the number of times that this fake has been exposed on television and elsewhere? Shame, BBC, for so tarnishing your image, and shame especially to...
Review of “Ona’s Flood”
(Bradford-on-Avon Tithe Barn, July 12-13, 2013) Bath Chronicle, July 17 (2013) A new suite of song texts performed in a Wiltshire tithe barn by an inexperienced community choir and a group of schoolchildren? Why should you be interested? Even when it is played as a...
Risk and Resilience
Opening address to IRGC Expert Workshop "Governance of Slow-Developing Catastrophic Risk", Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue, June 27-28 (2013)