Archive for March, 2010

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Reflections on Randi

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on March 22, 2010 by telescoper

Yesterday evening I chanced upon a blog post by James Randi. I guess quite a few of my readers won’t have heard of him, but he’s a really interesting character. His real name is Randall James Hamilton Zwinge and he was born in Toronto. He is a professional magician (i.e. a conjuror) who is now 81 years old, and who has spent most of the last three decades debunking psychics and exposing fraudulent claims of the paranormal. Those of you out there who remember the 1970s will remember the  “paranormalist”  Uri Geller being a household name for his numerous TV appearances bending spoons, stopping clocks and generally exhibiting supernatural powers. Randi exposed these as simple conjuring tricks, and got himself sued for his trouble.

Here’s a fairly lengthy clip in which James Randi talks about the Geller case and other examples of quackery:

There’s an interesting connection between the Uri Geller phenomenon and physics. In the 1970s, when Geller was at the height of his popularity, a physicist called John G. Taylor took great interest in him and the things that he appeared to be able to do. Professor of applied mathematics at King’s College, London, Taylor was (and remains) a very distinguished scientist and was the first to take the paranormal phenomena displayed by Geller seriously. When Uri Geller visited Britain in 1974, Taylor conducted scientific tests of Geller’s feats of metal bending using all the paraphernalia of modern science, including a Geiger counter. Taylor also experimented with some of the children and adults who claimed to manifest psychic abilities after seeing Uri Geller’s appearances on British television programs. Taylor’s interest in such phenomena was not only in its scientific validation, but also in investigation of the way in which such phenomena take place and the nature of the forces involved. He suggested the phenomena may be some low-frequency electromagnetic effect generated by human beings.

Through the 1970s Taylor was regarded as fully endorsing the paranormal metal bending of Uri Geller, but gradually has made more guarded statements; then in 1980 he largely retracted his support for Geller’s paranormal talents. In 1974 he wrote

The Geller effect—of metal-bending—is clearly not brought about by fraud. It is so exceptional it presents a crucial challenge to modern science and could even destroy the latter if no explanation became available.

Taylor then spent three years of careful investigation of such phenomena as psychokinesis, metal bending, and dowsing, but could not discover any reasonable scientific explanation or validation that satisfied him. He was particularly concerned to establish whether there is an electromagnetic basis for such phenomena. After failing to find this he did not believe that there was any other explanation that would suffice. Most of his experiments under laboratory conditions were negative; this left him in a skeptical position regarding the validity of claimed phenomena.

In contrast to the endorsement in his first book, Superminds, he published a paper expressing his doubts in a paper in Nature (November 2, 1978) titled “Can Electromagnetism Account for Extra-sensory Phenomena?” He followed this with his book Science and the Supernatural (1980) in which he expressed complete skepticism about every aspect of the paranormal. In his final chapter he stated:

We have searched for the supernatural and not found it. In the main, only poor experimentation [including his own], shoddy theory, and human gullibility have been encountered.

Taylor’s investigation of the Geller effect is interesting because it shows that physics doesn’t have all the answers all the time, particularly not when the phenomena in question involve people. Physics research proceeds by assuming that Nature is not playing tricks, and that what can be measured must represent some sort of truth. This faith can be easily exploited by a charlatan. James Randi always argued that scientists aren’t the right people to detect tricks performed by people. This is best left to tricksters. There’s no reason to believe that a theoretical physicist – no matter how brilliant – can spot the way a clever deception is carried out. The best person to see that is a magician, someone like James Randi. Set a thief to catch a thief, and all that.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what it was about James Randi’s blog post yesterday that caught my eye. Well, at the age of 81, James Randi has finally revealed to the public that he is gay. I feel a bit sad that it’s taken him so long to step out of the closet, but it is a very personal decision and no rebuke is intended. He’s lived long enough to remember times when being open was a much tougher option than it is now. Judging by the messages of support on his blog, I’m sure it’s a decision he won’t regret.

Good for you, James Randi!

PS. I noticed that the badastronomy blog has also covered this story, and generated over 100 comments in the process!

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Dark Horizons

Posted in Cosmic Anomalies, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on March 21, 2010 by telescoper

Last Tuesday night I gave a public lecture as part of  Cardiff University’s contribution to National Science and Engineering Week. I had an audience of about a hundred people, although more than half were students from the School of Physics & Astronomy rather than members of the public. I’d had a very full day already by the time it began (at 7pm) and I don’t mind admitting I was pretty exhausted even before I started the talk. I’m offering that as an excuse for struggling to get going, although I think I got better as I got into it. Anyway, I trotted out the usual stuff about the  Cosmic Web and it seemed to go down fairly well, although I don’t know about that because I wasn’t really paying attention.

At the end of the lecture, as usual, there was a bit of time for questions and no shortage of hands went up. One referred to something called Dark Flow which, I’ve just noticed, has actually got its own wikipedia page. It was also the subject of a recent Horizon documentary on BBC called Is Everything we Know about the Universe Wrong? I have to say I thought the programme was truly terrible, but that’s par for the course for Horizon these days I’m afraid. It used to be quite an interesting and informative series, but now it’s full of pointless special effects, portentous and sensationalising narration, and is repetitive to the point of torture. In this case also, it also portrayed a very distorted view of its subject matter.

The Dark Flow is indeed quite interesting, but of all the things that might threaten the foundations of the Big Bang theory this is definitely not it. I certainly have never lost any sleep worrying about it. If it’s real and not just the result of a systematic error in the data – and that’s a very big “if” – then the worst it would do would be to tell us that the Universe was a bit more complicated than our standard model. The same is true of the other cosmic anomalies I discuss from time to time on here.  

But we know our standard model leaves many questions unanswered and, as a matter of fact, many questions unasked. The fact that Nature may present us with a few surprises doesn’t mean the whole framework is wrong. It could be wrong, of course. In fact I’d be very surprised if our standard view of cosmology survives the next few decades without major revision. A healthy dose of skepticism is good for cosmology. To some extent, therefore, it’s good to have oddities like the Dark Flow out in the open.

However, that shouldn’t divert our attention from the fact that the Big Bang model isn’t just an arbitrary hypothesis with no justification. It’s the result of almost a century of  vigorous interplay between theory and observation, using an old-fashioned thing called the scientific method. That’s probably too dull for the producers of  Horizon, who would rather portray it as a kind of battle of wills between individuals competing for the title of next Einstein.

Anyway, just to emphasize the fact that I think questioning the Big Bang model is a good thing to do, here is a list of fundamental questions that should trouble modern cosmologists. Most of them are fundamental,  and we do not have answers to them. 

Is General Relativity right?

Virtually everything in the standard model depends on the validity of Einstein’s general theory of relativity (or theory of general relativity…). In a sense we already know that the answer to this question is “no”.

At sufficiently high energies (near the Planck scale) we expect classical relativity to be replaced by a quantum theory of gravity. For this reason, a great deal of interest is being directed at cosmological models inspired by superstring theory. These models require the existence of extra dimensions beyond the four we are used to dealing with. This is not in itself a new idea, as it dates back to the work of Kaluza and Klein in the 1920s, but in older versions of the idea the extra dimensions were assumed to be wrapped up so small as to be invisible. In “braneworld models”, the extra dimensions can be large but we are confined to a four-dimensional subset of them (a “brane”). In one version of this idea, dubbed the Ekpyrotic Universe, the origin of our observable universe lies in the collision between two branes in a higher-dimensional “bulk”. Other models are less dramatic, but do result in the modification of the Friedmann equations at early times.

 It is not just in the early Universe that departures from general relativity are possible. In fact there are many different alternative theories on the market. Some are based on modifications of Newton’s gravitational mechanics, such as MOND, modifications of Einstein’s theory, such as the Brans-Dicke theory, as well as those theories involving extra dimensions, such as braneworld theory, and so on

There remain very few independent tests of the validity of Einstein’s theory, particularly in the limit of strong gravitational fields. There is very little independent evidence that the curvature of space time on cosmological scales is related to the energy density of matter. The chain of reasoning leading to the cosmic concordance model depends entirely this assumption. Throw it away and we have very little to go on.

What is the Dark Energy?

In the standard cosmology, about 75% of the energy density of the Universe is in a form we do not understand. Because we’re in the dark about it, we call it Dark Energy. The question here is twofold. One part is whether the dark energy is of the form of an evolving scalar field, such as quintessence, or whether it really is constant as in Einstein’s original version. This may be answered by planned observational studies, but both of these are at the mercy of funding decisions. The second part is to whether dark energy can be understood in terms of fundamental theory, i.e. in understanding why “empty space” contains this vacuum energy.  I think it is safe to say we are still very far from knowing how vacuum energy on a cosmological scale arises from fundamental physics. It’s just a free parameter.

 

What is the Dark Matter?

Around 25% of the mass in the Universe is thought to be in the form of dark matter, but we don’t know what form it takes. We do have some information about this, because the nature of the dark matter determines how it tends to clump together under the action of gravity. Current understanding of how galaxies form, by condensing out of the primordial explosion, suggests the dark matter particles should be relatively massive. This means that they should move relatively slowly and can consequently be described as “cold”. As far as gravity is concerned, one cold particle is much the same as another so there is no prospect for learning about the nature of cold dark matter (CDM) particles through astronomical means unless they decay into radiation or some other identifiable particles. Experimental attempts to detect the dark matter directly are pushing back the limits of technology, but it would have to be a long shot for them to succeed when we have so little idea of what we are looking for.

Did Inflation really happen?

The success of concordance cosmology is largely founded on the appearance of “Doppler peaks” in the fluctuation spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These arise from acoustic oscillations in the primordial plasma that have particular statistical properties consistent owing to their origin as quantum fluctuations in the scalar field driving a short-lived period of rapid expansion called inflation. This is strong circumstantial evidence in favour of inflation, but perhaps not strong enough to obtain a conviction. The smoking gun for inflation is probably the existence of a stochastic gravitational wave background. The identification and extraction of this may be possible using future polarisation-sensitive CMB studies even before direct experimental probes of sufficient sensitivity become available. As far as I am concerned, the jury will be out for a considerable time.

Despite these gaps and uncertainties, the ability of the standard framework to account for such a diversity of challenging phenomena provides strong motivation for assigning it a higher probability than its competitors. Part of this  is that no other theory has been developed to the point where we know what predictions it can make. Some of the alternative  ideas  I discussed above are new, and consequently we do not really understand them well enough to know what they say about observable situations. Others have adjustable parameters so one tends to disfavour them on grounds of Ockham’s razor unless and until some observation is made that can’t be explained in the standard framework.

Alternative ideas should be always explored. The business of cosmology, however,  is not only in theory creation but also in theory testing. The great virtue of the standard model is that it allows us to make precise predictions about the behaviour of the Universe and plan observations that can test these predictions. One needs a working hypothesis to target the multi-million-pound investment that is needed to carry out such programmes. By assuming this model we can make rational decisions about how to proceed. Without it we would be wasting taxpayers’ money on futile experiments that have very little chance of improving our understanding. Reasoned belief  in a plausible working hypothesis is essential to the advancement of our knowledge.

 Cosmologists may appear a bit crazy (especially when they appear on TV), but there is method in their madness. Sometimes.

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Cantaloupe Island(s)

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , , , , , , on March 20, 2010 by telescoper

It’s been a pretty exhausting few weeks, but now we’ve reached the end of teaching term. Not that I’ve got nothing to do, but I should be able to concentrate on writing up a few papers that I’ve struggling with for many months.

Anyway by way of a celebration, and to correct for the fact that I haven’t posted much music recently, here are two totally different versions of a great tune by Herbie Hancock called Cantaloupe Island. The original recording of this came (made on June 17 1964) appeared on the album Empyrean Isles which came out on the Blue Note Records label. Its instantly catchy riff and fine solo playing turned it into a big hit, and it quickly became a standard.

The first  video clip features the original personnel of Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Tony Williams (drums) and Freddie Hubbard (trumpet) but with the addition of the great tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. It was recorded during a special concert in 1985 to celebrate the Blue Note label. It’s got a similar groove to the original version, but the live performance allows the players to stretch out a lot more than on the original, so it’s about twice as long.

The second rendition also features Herbie Hancock on piano (and other keyboards), but it’s totally different. Taken at a faster tempo, and firmly in the style of Jazz-rock Fusion that Hancock gravitated towards later in his career, it features Pat Metheney (on electric guitar), Dave Holland (bass) and Jack de Johnette on drums. They’re all great, but the drummer on this track is sensational! I saw Jack de Johnette playing years ago – at the Jazz Cafe, I think – and I couldn’t believe the speed of his hands and the immense drive he generated even while playing complicated patterns. Awesome. 

PS. I’ve used the spelling I believe to be correct, as that’s how it’s written on the original Blue Note record (of which I have a copy). I’ve seen many variants, though, including those on the youtube clips shown here.

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Science’s Dirtiest Secret?

Posted in Bad Statistics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on March 19, 2010 by telescoper

My attention was drawn yesterday to an article, in a journal I never read called American Scientist, about the role of statistics in science. Since this is a theme I’ve blogged about before I had a quick look at the piece and quickly came to the conclusion that the article was excruciating drivel. However, looking at it again today, my opinion of it has changed. I still don’t think it’s very good, but it didn’t make me as cross second time around. I don’t know whether this is because I was in a particularly bad mood yesterday, or whether the piece has been edited. But although it didn’t make me want to scream, I still think it’s a poor article.

Let me start with the opening couple of paragraphs

For better or for worse, science has long been married to mathematics. Generally it has been for the better. Especially since the days of Galileo and Newton, math has nurtured science. Rigorous mathematical methods have secured science’s fidelity to fact and conferred a timeless reliability to its findings.

During the past century, though, a mutant form of math has deflected science’s heart from the modes of calculation that had long served so faithfully. Science was seduced by statistics, the math rooted in the same principles that guarantee profits for Las Vegas casinos. Supposedly, the proper use of statistics makes relying on scientific results a safe bet. But in practice, widespread misuse of statistical methods makes science more like a crapshoot.

In terms of historical accuracy, the author, Tom Siegfried, gets off to a very bad start. Science didn’t get “seduced” by statistics.  As I’ve already blogged about, scientists of the calibre of Gauss and Laplace – and even Galileo – were instrumental in inventing statistics.

And what were the “modes of calculation that had served it so faithfully” anyway? Scientists have long  recognized the need to understand the behaviour of experimental errors, and to incorporate the corresponding uncertainty in their analysis. Statistics isn’t a “mutant form of math”, it’s an integral part of the scientific method. It’s a perfectly sound discipline, provided you know what you’re doing…

And that’s where, despite the sloppiness of his argument,  I do have some sympathy with some of what  Siegfried says. What has happened, in my view, is that too many people use statistical methods “off the shelf” without thinking about what they’re doing. The result is that the bad use of statistics is widespread. This is particularly true in disciplines that don’t have a well developed mathematical culture, such as some elements of biosciences and medicine, although the physical sciences have their own share of horrors too.

I’ve had a run-in myself with the authors of a paper in neurobiology who based extravagant claims on an inappropriate statistical analysis.

What is wrong is therefore not the use of statistics per se, but the fact that too few people understand – or probably even think about – what they’re trying to do (other than publish papers).

It’s science’s dirtiest secret: The “scientific method” of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation. Statistical tests are supposed to guide scientists in judging whether an experimental result reflects some real effect or is merely a random fluke, but the standard methods mix mutually inconsistent philosophies and offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions. Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.

Quite, but what does this mean for “science’s dirtiest secret”? Not that it involves statistical reasoning, but that large numbers of scientists haven’t a clue what they’re doing when they do a statistical test. And if this is the case with practising scientists, how can we possibly expect the general public to make sense of what is being said by the experts? No wonder people distrust scientists when so many results confidently announced on the basis of totally spurious arguments, turn out to be be wrong.

The problem is that the “standard” statistical methods shouldn’t be “standard”. It’s true that there are many methods that work in a wide range of situations, but simply assuming they will work in any particular one without thinking about it very carefully is a very dangerous strategy. Siegfried discusses examples where the use of “p-values” leads to incorrect results. It doesn’t surprise me that such examples can be found, as the misinterpretation of p-values is rife even in numerate disciplines, and matters get worse for those practitioners who combine p-values from different studies using meta-analysis, a method which has no mathematical motivation whatsoever and which should be banned. So indeed should a whole host of other frequentist methods which offer limitless opportunities for to make a complete botch of the data arising from a research project.

Siegfried goes on

Nobody contends that all of science is wrong, or that it hasn’t compiled an impressive array of truths about the natural world. Still, any single scientific study alone is quite likely to be incorrect, thanks largely to the fact that the standard statistical system for drawing conclusions is, in essence, illogical.

Any single scientific study done along is quite likely to be incorrect. Really? Well, yes, if it is done incorrectly. But the point is not that they are incorrect because they use statistics, but that they are incorrect because they are done incorrectly. Many scientists don’t even understand the statistics well enough to realise that what they’re doing is wrong.

If I had my way, scientific publications – especially in disciplines that impact directly on everyday life, such as medicine – should adopt a much more rigorous policy on statistical analysis and on the way statistical significance is reported. I favour the setting up of independent panels whose responsibility is to do the statistical data analysis on behalf of those scientists who can’t be trusted to do it correctly themselves.

Having started badly, and lost its way in the middle, the article ends disappointingly too. Having led us through a wilderness of failed frequentists analyses, he finally arrives at a discussion of the superior Bayesian methodology, in irritatingly half-hearted fashion.

But Bayesian methods introduce a confusion into the actual meaning of the mathematical concept of “probability” in the real world. Standard or “frequentist” statistics treat probabilities as objective realities; Bayesians treat probabilities as “degrees of belief” based in part on a personal assessment or subjective decision about what to include in the calculation. That’s a tough placebo to swallow for scientists wedded to the “objective” ideal of standard statistics….

Conflict between frequentists and Bayesians has been ongoing for two centuries. So science’s marriage to mathematics seems to entail some irreconcilable differences. Whether the future holds a fruitful reconciliation or an ugly separation may depend on forging a shared understanding of probability.

The difficulty with this piece as a whole is that it reads as an anti-science polemic: “Some science results are based on bad statistics, therefore statistics is bad and science that uses statistics is bogus.” I don’t know whether that’s what the author intended, or whether it was just badly written.

I’d say the true state of affairs is different. A lot of bad science is published, and a lot of that science is bad because it uses statistical reasoning badly. You wouldn’t however argue that a screwdriver is no use because some idiot tries to hammer a nail in with one.

Only a bad craftsman blames his tools.

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Various Portents

Posted in Poetry with tags , on March 18, 2010 by telescoper

I recently stumbled across a book of poetry by Alice Oswald, a name that was then quite new to me. Since then she’s quickly established herself as one of my absolute favourites, and I’ve acquired as many of her collections as I’ve been able to get my hands on.

Her verse is full of energy and vitality and she has an uncanny ability to make her words pull you along with them. Her favourite themes include many relating to the natural world, but she handles such material in a way that manages to be inspirational without being sentimental (or just plain vacuous). I recommend her brilliant third collection Woods etc particularly strongly.

I’ve taken this one, Various Portents, as an example. I first saw it on Jeanette Winterson’s blog. It’s a Christmas poem, so a bit out of season, but I love the playful way she mixes the lexicon of modern astronomy with the familiar language of the nativity scene. Superb.

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.

Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North star, more than one South star.
Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems.
Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thickness of Dark,
Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.

Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,
All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:
Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,
Works of wonder and or water, snowflakes, stars of frost …

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes,
Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness,
Various 5,000-year-old moon maps,
Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in Braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze,
Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains,
Various crucifixes, all sorts of nightsky necklaces.
Many Wise Men remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,
Watchers of whisps of various glowing spindles,
Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac,
Seafarers tossing, tied to a star…

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars towards them, bringing snow.

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Planck and the Cold Galaxy

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on March 17, 2010 by telescoper

Just a quick post to show a cool result from Planck which has just been released by the European Space Agency (ESA). It will be a while before any real cosmological results are available, but in the meantime here are a couple of glimpses into the stuff we cosmologists think of as foreground contamination but which are of course of great interest in themselves to other kinds of astronomers.

The beautiful image above (courtesy of ESA and the HFI Consortium) covers a portion of the sky about 55 degrees across. It is a three-colour combination constructed from Planck’s two shortest wavelength channels (540 and 350 micrometres, corresponding to frequencies of 545 and 857 GHz respectively), and an image at 100 micrometres obtained with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). This combination effectively traces the dust temperature: reddish tones correspond to temperatures as cold as 12 degrees above absolute zero, and whitish tones to significantly warmer ones (a few tens of degrees above absolute zero) in regions where massive stars are currently forming. Overall, the image shows local dust structures within 500 light years of the Sun.

Our top man in the HFI Consortium,  Professor Peter Ade, is quoted as saying

..the HFI is living up to our most optimistic pre-flight expectations.  The wealth of the data is seen in these beautiful multicolour images exposing previously unseen detail in the cold dust components of our galaxy.  There is much to be learned from detailed interpretation of the data which will significantly enhance our understanding of the star formation processes and galactic morphology.“

This Planck image was obtained during the first Planck all-sky survey which began in mid-August 2009. By mid-March 2010 more than 98% of the sky has been observed by Planck. Because of the way Planck scans the sky 100% sky coverage for the first survey will take until late-May 2010.

Other new results and a more detailed discussion of this one can be found here and here.

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Education and Careers

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , , on March 16, 2010 by telescoper

The piece I posted a few days ago about the effect of recent cuts in Astronomy funding by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has generated quite a lot of comment so I thought I’d try to open up the debate by adding a few comments of my own. I’ve made some of them before and I know many of my colleagues disagree entirely with them, but I think they might prove useful in stimulating some further dialogue.

Of course the backdrop to this discussion is the decision by STFC to impose heavy cuts on the funding it sets aside for the “exploitation” of astronomical facilities. This funding, primarily in the form of research grants awarded to University groups, is used among other things to support early career researchers as postdoctoral research assistants on short-term contracts. Although its own advisory panels were unanimous in placing such funding the highest priority in the recent consultation exercise, STFC Executive  nevertheless decided to impose additional cuts this year. This decision, made very late in the cycle of grant awards, has led to many groups having their budgets slashed from 1st April 2010. Many young researchers facing a very uncertain future, with many of them facing redundancy in a few months.

The fallout from STFC’s financial collapse  has brought to a head a crisis that has been brewing for several years, but in my view it is symptomatic of wider problems within UK science as a whole. There are many problems, but I think the biggest problem with astronomy in particular is that we drastically overproduce PhDs. Even in times of plenty there were too many people competing for too few postdoctoral positions. Now that STFC has decided it wants to cut the number of working astronomers by more than 25% this looming problem has become a full-scale disaster. Many of the most talented scientists in the UK are certain to leave for greener pastures and few will ever return.

The argument I’ve heard over and over again is that training so many people to the level of a PhD in astronomy is good because the skills acquired will benefit the wider economy as those that fail to find a job as a postdoctoral researcher move into other areas, such as finance or industry.

I am not convinced by this argument. I think what we’re doing is producing large number of highly intelligent yet extremely disgruntled scientists who feel – quite rightly – that they’ve been duped into taking on a PhD when they are unlikely to be able to make use of it in their future careers unless they go abroad.

What we’re also doing is deluding ourselves about the quality of a PhD. The UK system produces too many PhDs who are not sufficiently experienced or skilled to take the next step onto a postdoctoral position. Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking we produce too many PhDs too few of whom have any realistic chance of making a career in science research. The reason for this is that despite the introduction of 4-year degrees in subjects like physics, the UK undergraduate degree is not fit for the purpose of training a scientific researcher.

You may find that harsh, and maybe it is, but I think it’s true.

What I think the UK economy does require is more science graduates (including more physicists) rather than more science post-graduates. I believe we need a radical overhaul in the entire system of science education from undergraduate  through to postdoctoral level.

I have said it before and I’ll no doubt say again that I think we need something similar to what the Bologna process is designed to achieve. This essentially means a 3-year Bachelors degree, followed (for some) by a two-year Masters, then for a subset of them a 3 year PhD.

I think the structure of funding for university courses needs to change in order that we produce more graduates with BSc degrees. Passage from that qualification to a MSc should be highly selective, so fewer such degrees would be awarded. The final selection to a PhD should be more selective still. I’m sure the influx of MSc graduates this system would generate into the wider economy would produce a greater benefit to society as large than the current system, and at a lesser cost.

I’d suggest that in the particular case of astronomy we should be producing about half the PhDs nationally that we do at present.

What about the next step, the postdoctoral research assistantship or fellowship? I hope that STFC can be persuaded to reverse its recent savage cuts in the budget that supports such positions but the government and STFC Executive are showing no inclination to change their position. The current situation for PDRAs is grim. The number of positions available is small and funding for these is insecure.

My first suggestion will probably lead in time to a reduction in the number of  people competing for postdoctoral positions but will not in itself make a career in science seem more attractive.

I think the government also needs to guarantee the stability of  research grant funding over a longer timescale than the current 3-year cycle. Rolling grants used to do this, to some extent anyway, but these have for all practical purposes been abandoned by STFC. I think we need ring-fenced protection for grant funding to be installed at a high level of the Research Council structure to prevent individual research councils playing God with the careers of junior scientists.

I don’t in fact have a problem with the principle that scientists should serve apprenticeships in the form of fixed-term contracts as postdoctoral researchers. What is wrong is that the instability of current funding makes survival in the current system a lottery.

And finally, though it doesn’t really fit with my other comments, I have some advice for young scientists. Your best chance of securing a permanent job in the long run is by being good, not by being shy. Put yourself about. Get involved in teaching – you’ll almost certainly need to do it in a future career, so embrace it. Do outreach work. Work hard at your research. Believe in yourself.

If you don’t, nobody else will.

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Idus Martiae

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on March 15, 2010 by telescoper

Today is the Ides of March and we’re entering the final straight before crossing the finishing line of term and collapsing in a sweaty mess into the arms of the Easter holiday. I’ve been ridiculously busy today so, being too knackered to think of anything else to post, I thought I’d tap into a priceless bit of British cultural history relevant to this auspicious day.

This is from the First Folio Edition of Carry On Cleo, and stars the sublime Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar delivering one of the funniest lines in the whole Carry On series. The joke may be nearly as old as me, but it’s still a cracker…

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Professor Denzil Dexter

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on March 14, 2010 by telescoper

I’ve often complained about how the United Kingdom’s  Science & Technology Facilities Council is failing to reap adequate scientific rewards from  its investment in experimental facilities, astronomical observatories and space missions by refusing to provide funds necessary to support the exploitation and analysis of the data they provide.

In the interests of balance, however, I feel I should point out that this problem is also affecting research elsewhere in the world, even in the United States of America. In this short video presentation, my close friend and scientific collaborator Professor Denzil Dexter of the University of Southern California describes how a brilliantly conceived scientific project failed owing to lack of proper investment in “science exploitation” (i.e. data analysis).

(I’m obliged to point out that “Dave” is not the real name of the research student depicted in this clip.)

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Life Cycles

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics with tags , , , , , on March 13, 2010 by telescoper

This was a strange Saturday. Usually I don’t do very much on the weekend, except for a bit of shopping, tidying up, and of course the crosswords. Today, however, was one of our undergraduate Open Days wherein prospective students visit the department (usually with their adoring parents) in order to have a look around, learn about our research, and meet some of the staff that will be teaching them if and when they come here.  Our usual Open Days are Thursdays, but some people find it very difficult to get here on a weekday – parents working, school commitments, etc – so we have a few Saturdays too. Since I live within walking distance of the department I don’t mind taking part.

Bizarrely, my job today was to act as a tour guide around the experimental physics labs. I must be one of the least qualified people in the School to do that, as I’m a theoretical astrophysicist. As it happens, we had two groups to show around today and the other guide was Ant Whitworth, also a theoretical astrophysicist (though one who works on star formation, not cosmology like I do). Ours not to reason why. I got a free lunch out of it anyway, and also managed to find most of the places I was supposed to take the visitors to, most of which I’ve never seen before!

Anyway, it was nice to meet and chat with so many young people interested in physics. I hope to see at least some of them in October. Funding will be very tight this year for new undergraduates and although we’ve asked the University to increase our quota to take more students in, we haven’t so far been allowed to do so. I think that is the situation around much of England too, so I think some might not find a place at their chosen institution. I hope there aren’t too many disappointments when the A-level results come out.

The recruitment of undergraduates for next year is part of the cycle of academic life. We’re currently doing the same thing with postgraduates, although fewer people are involved in that case. The end of term comes up next week, then it’s the Easter break. Soon after that we’ll be back into examinations. Some will be graduating this year and we’ll have to say goodbye to them as they make their way into the big wide world. Others will leave for the summer and return to continue their studies next year.

The cycle of academic life is embedded within that of the seasons too. Today was a beautiful spring day in Cardiff. We’ve had sunny weather for a week or so already, but yesterday and today were the first days mild enough in temperature to be called spring. Yesterday evening as I walked home I noticed it wasn’t dark at 6pm, a sign that the days are getting longer. Soon I’ll be able to walk home through Bute Park,  which I can’t do at present because the gate on the east side is closed at sunset. I did, however, go back that way this afternoon after the Open Day activities were over.

There’s a lot of construction work going on, associated with Cardiff City Council’s plan to turn Bute Park into Bute Lorry Park, and one has to complete an obstacle course to get into it on foot these days. Still, once away from the affected areas the rest of the Park is shaping up again for spring and summer and there was quite a crowd there today, just quietly enjoying it for it’s own sake. You know, like a Park should be. I’m not looking forward to having to dodge juggernauts on the way, which is what is what the future seems to have in store.

Apart from the seasons and the cycle of academic life, I also thought on the way home about another cycle that is about to unfold. A General Election is due to be held this year. It seems like yesterday that I cast my vote in the last one, while I was living in Nottingham. Now the politicians are gearing up for the interminable months of electioneering that inevitably presage such events. I’m not at all sure at this point who I’m going to vote for. I’m disillusioned with the main parties and skeptical of the alternatives.

I heard last night on Twitter of a story that Lord Mandelson has promised that “The Science Budget will be spared from cuts”. That’s interesting because we’ve already suffered plenty. Perhaps the word “further” was accidentally omitted. Not that I believe him anyway. Why should I? It’s obviously just electioneering. Science Minister Lord Drayson also recently announced on Twitter that under the next Labour government, the UK will be the best place in the world to do science. I don’t believe that either, although I do have a little more faith in Drayson than I do in Mandelson.

I think the deep cuts already made to fundamental physics have in any case guaranteed the exodus of a huge number of talented scientists. And that’s emphatically not the result of the recession. It’s the result of deliberate government policy, sustained since 2007. I won’t believe New Labour’s claims about science until they own up and reverse the damage they have done, which I don’t think they’re going to do.

I have to admit that I am very fearful not just for the future of astronomy in the UK, but for the UK as a whole. Although people talk about the country being out of recession, the fact remains that we’re teetering on the brink of insolvency. I have a deep-seated feeling  that this election is critical. Very difficult decisions will have to be made over the next two to three years, and if we get them wrong, we could be propelled into a catastrophic decline. The trouble is, I don’t trust any political party to deliver a coherent plan for the recovery. The more I think about it, the more my optimism ebbs away. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Now after all that I haven’t done the Guardian crossword yet! Where’s my pen?

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