Archive for the Science Politics Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Atlantes

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on September 10, 2009 by telescoper

I’ve just noticed a  post on another blog about the  meeting of the Herschel ATLAS consortium that’s  going on in Cardiff at the moment, so I thought I’d do a quickie here too. Actually I’ve only just been accepted into the Consortium so quite a lot of the goings-on are quite new to me.

The Herschel ATLAS (or H-ATLAS for short) is the largest open-time key project involving Herschel. It has been awarded 600 hours of observing time  to survey 550 square degrees of sky in 5 wavelenth bands: 110, 170, 250, 350, & 500 microns. It is hoped to detect approximately 250,000 galaxies,  most of them in the nearby Universe, but some will undoubtedly turn out to be very distant, with redshifts of 3 to 4; these are likely to be very interesting for  studies of galaxy evolution.

Herschel is currently in its performance verification (PV) phase, following which there will be a period of science validation (SV). During the latter the ATLAS team will have access to some observational data to have a quick look to see that it’s  behaving as anticipated. It is planned to publish a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics next year that will contain key results from the SV phase, although in the case of ATLAS many of these will probably be quite preliminary because only a small part of the survey area will be sampled during the SV time.

Herschel seems to be doing fine, with the possible exception of the HIFI instrument which is currently switched off owing to a fault in its power supply. There is a backup, but the ESA boffins don’t want to switch it back on and risk further complications until they know why it failed in the first place. The problem with HIFI has led to some rejigging of the schedule for calibrating and testing the other two instruments (SPIRE and PACS) but both of these are otherwise doing well.

The data for H-ATLAS proper hasn’t started arriving yet so the meeting here in Cardiff was intended to sort out the preparations, plan who’s going to do what, and sort out some organisational issues. With well over a hundred members, this project has to think seriously about quite a lot of administrative and logistical matters.

One of the things that struck me as particular difficult is the issue of authorship of science papers. In observational astronomy and cosmology we’re now getting used to the situation that has prevailed in experimental particle physics for some time, namely that even short papers have author lists running into the hundreds. Theorists like me usually work in teams too, but our author lists are, generally speaking, much shorter. In fact I don’t have any publications  yet with more than six or seven authors; mine are often just by me and a PhD student or postdoc.

In a big consortium, the big issue is not so much who to include, but how to give appropriate credit to the different levels of contribution. Those senior scientists who organized and managed the survey are clearly key to its success, but so also are those who work at the coalface and are probably much more junior. In between there are individuals who supply bits and pieces of specialist software or extra comparison data. Nobody can pretend that everyone in a list of 100 authors has made an identical contribution, but how can you measure the differences and how can you indicate them on a publication? Or  shouldn’t you try?

Some suggest that author lists should always be alphabetical, which is fine if you’re “Aarseth” but not if you’re “Zel’dovich”. This policy would, however, benefit “al”, a prolific collaborator who never seems to make it as first author..

When astronomers write grant applications for STFC one of the pieces of information they have to include is a table summarising their publication statistics. The total number of papers written has  to be given, as well as the number in which the applicant  is  the first author on the list,  the implicit assumption being that first authors did more work than the others or that first authors were “leading” the work in some sense.

Since I have a permanent job and  students and postdocs don’t, I always make junior collaborators  first author by default and only vary that policy if there is a specific reason not to. In most cases they have done the lion’s share of the actual work anyway, but even if this is not the case it is  important for them to have first author papers given the widespread presumption that this is a good thing to have on a CV.

With more than 100 authors, and a large number of  collaborators vying for position, the chances are that junior people will just get buried somewhere down the author list unless there is an active policy to protect their interests.

Of course everyone making a significant contribution to a discovery has to be credited, and the metric that has been used for many years to measure scientific productivity is the numbered of authored publications, but it does seem to me that this system must have reached breaking point when author lists run to several pages!

It was all a lot easier in the good old days when there was no data…

PS. Atlas was a titan who was forced to hold the sky  on his shoulders for all eternity. I hope this isn’t expected of members of the ATLAS consortium, none of who are titans anyway (as far as I can tell). The plural of Atlas is Atlantes, by the way.

10 Comments »

Much Ado About a Null Result

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on August 20, 2009 by telescoper

In today’s Nature there’s an article outlining the current upper limits on the existence of a stochastic cosmological background of gravitational waves. The basis of the analysis presented in the paper is a combination of data from two larger international collaborations, called VIRGO and LIGO. Cardiff University is a member of the latter, so I suppose I should be careful about what I say…

These experiments have achieved incredible sensitivity – they can measure distortions that are a tiny fraction of an atomic nucleus in scale – but because gravity is such a very weak force they still haven’t managed to find direct evidence of gravitational waves. The next generation of these laser interferometers – Advanced LIGO – should get within hailing distance of a detection but in the meantime we have to do with upper limits. Since the sensitivity of the instruments is so well calibrated, the lack of a signal can yield interesting information. The Nature paper is quite interesting in that it summarizes the constraints that can be placed in such a way on some models of the early Universe. Mostly, though, these are “exotic” models that have already been excluded by other means. If I’ve got my sums right the stochastic gravitational wave background expected to be produced within the standard “concordance” cosmology, in which gravitational wave modes are excited by cosmic inflation, is at least three orders of magnitude lower than current experimental sensitivity.

I can’t resist including the following excerpts from a press release, produced by the Media Relations Department at Caltech whose spin doctors have apparently been hard at work.

Pasadena, Calif.—An investigation by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration has significantly advanced our understanding the early evolution of the universe.

Analysis of data taken over a two-year period, from 2005 to 2007, has set the most stringent limits yet on the amount of gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang in the gravitational wave frequency band where LIGO can observe. In doing so, the gravitational-wave scientists have put new constraints on the details of how the universe looked in its earliest moments.

Much like it produced the cosmic microwave background, the Big Bang is believed to have created a flood of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time—that still fill the universe and carry information about the universe as it was immediately after the Big Bang. These waves would be observed as the “stochastic background,” analogous to a superposition of many waves of different sizes and directions on the surface of a pond. The amplitude of this background is directly related to the parameters that govern the behavior of the universe during the first minute after the Big Bang.

and

“Since we have not observed the stochastic background, some of these early-universe models that predict a relatively large stochastic background have been ruled out,” says Vuk Mandic, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.

“We now know a bit more about parameters that describe the evolution of the universe when it was less than one minute old,” Mandic adds. “We also know that if cosmic strings or superstrings exist, their properties must conform with the measurements we made—that is, their properties, such as string tension, are more constrained than before.”

This is interesting, he says, “because such strings could also be so-called fundamental strings, appearing in string-theory models. So our measurement also offers a way of probing string-theory models, which is very rare today.”

“This result was one of the long-lasting milestones that LIGO was designed to achieve,” Mandic says. Once it goes online in 2014, Advanced LIGO, which will utilize the infrastructure of the LIGO observatories and be 10 times more sensitive than the current instrument, will allow scientists to detect cataclysmic events such as black-hole and neutron-star collisions at 10-times-greater distances.

“Advanced LIGO will go a long way in probing early universe models, cosmic-string models, and other models of the stochastic background. We can think of the current result as a hint of what is to come,” he adds.

“With Advanced LIGO, a major upgrade to our instruments, we will be sensitive to sources of extragalactic gravitational waves in a volume of the universe 1,000 times larger than we can see at the present time. This will mean that our sensitivity to gravitational waves from the Big Bang will be improved by orders of magnitude,” says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, LIGO’s executive director.

“Gravitational waves are the only way to directly probe the universe at the moment of its birth; they’re absolutely unique in that regard. We simply can’t get this information from any other type of astronomy. This is what makes this result in particular, and gravitational-wave astronomy in general, so exciting,” says David Reitze, a professor of physics at the University of Florida and spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

If hyperbole is what you’re looking for, go no further. There’s nothing wrong with presenting even null results in a positive light but, I don’t think this paints a very balanced picture of the field. For examples, early Universe models involving cosmic strings were already severely constrained before these results, so we know that they don’t have a significant effect on the evolution of cosmic structure anyway.

Clearly the political intention was to flag the importance of Advanced LIGO, although even that will probably be unable to detect the cosmological gravitational-wave background.  Overstatements contained in press releases of this type usually prove counterproductive in the long run.

5 Comments »

Critical Theory

Posted in Art, Music, Science Politics with tags , , , , , on August 18, 2009 by telescoper

Critics say the stangest things.

How about this, from James William Davidson, music critic of The Times from 1846:

He has certainly written a few good songs, but what then? Has not every composer that ever composed written a few good songs? And out of the thousand and one with which he deluged the musical world, it would, indeed, be hard if some half-dozen were not tolerable. And when that is said, all is said that can justly be said of Schubert.

Or this, by Louis Spohr, written in 1860 about Beethoven’s Ninth (“Choral”) Symphony

The fourth movement is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless and, in it’s grasp of Schiller’s Ode, so trivial that I cannot understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it.

No less an authority than  Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Fifth Edition) had this to say about Rachmaninov

Technically he was highly gifted, but also severely limited. His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes…The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninov’s works had in his lifetime is not likely to last and musicians regarded it with much favour.

And finally, Lawrence Gillman wrote this in the New York Tribune of February 13 1924 concerning George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue:

How trite and feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive.

I think I’ve made my point. We all make errors of judgement and music critics are certainly no exception. The same no doubt goes for literary and art critics too. In fact,  I’m sure it would be quite easy to dig up laughably inappropriate comments made by reviewers across the entire spectrum of artistic endeavour. Who’s to say these comments are wrong anyway? They’re just opinions. I can’t understand anyone who thinks so little  of Schubert, but then an awful lot of people like to listen what sounds to me to be complete dross. There even appear to be some people who disagree with the opinions I expressed yesterday!

What puzzles me most about the critics is not that they make “mistakes” like these – they’re only human after all – but why they exist in the first place. It seems extraordinary to me that there is a class of people who don’t do anything creative themselves  but devote their working lives to criticising what is done by others. Who should care what they think? Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course, but what is it about a critic that implies we should listen to their opinion more than anyone else?

(Actually, to be precise, Louis Spohr was also a composer but I defy you to recall any of his works…)

Part of the idea is that by reading the notices produced by a critic the paying public can decide whether to go to the performance, read the book or listen to the record. However, the correlation between what is critically acclaimed and what is actually good (or even popular) is tenuous at best. It seems to me that, especially nowadays with so much opinion available on the internet, word of mouth (or web) is a much better guide than what some geezer writes in The Times. Indeed, the   Opera reviews published in the papers are so frustratingly contrary to my own opinion that I don’t  bother to read them until after the performance, perhaps even after I’ve written my own little review on here.  Not that I would mind being a newspaper critic myself. The chance not only to get into the Opera for free but also to get paid for spouting on about afterwards sounds like a cushy number to me. Not that I’m likely to be asked.

In science,  we don’t have legions of professional critics, but reviews of various kinds are nevertheless essential to the way science moves forward. Applications for funding are usually reviewed by others working in the field and only those graded at the very highest level are awarded money.  The powers-that-be are increasingly trying to impose political criteria on this process, but it remains a fact that peer review is the crucial part of the process. It’s not just the input that is assessed either. Papers submitted to learned journals are reviewed by (usually anonymous)  referees, who often require substantial changes to be made the work can be accepted for publication.

We have no choice but to react to these critics if we want to function as scientists. Indeed, we probably pay much more attention to them than artists do of critics in their particular fields. That’s not to say that these referees don’t make mistakes either. I’ve certainly made bad decisions myself in that role,  although they were all made in good faith. I’ve also received comments that I thought were unfair or unjustifiable, but at least I knew they were coming from someone who was a working scientist.

I suspect that the use of peer review in assessing grant applications will remain in place for a some considerable time. I can’t think of an alternative, anyway. I’d much rather have a rich patron so I didn’t have to bother writing proposals all the time, but that’s not the way it works in either art or science these days.

However, it does seem to me that the role of referees in the publication process is bound to become redundant in the very near future. Technology now makes it easy to place electronic publications on an archive where they can be accessed freely. Good papers will attract attention anyway, just as they would if they were in refereed journals. Errors will be found. Results will be debated. Papers will be revised. The quality mark of a journal’s endorsement is no longer needed if the scientific community can form its own judgement, and neither are the monstrously expensive fees charged to institutes for journal subscriptions.

26 Comments »

A Degree of Value

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , on August 7, 2009 by telescoper

Many column-inches have been devoted in the newspapers this week to the issue of University education, after provocative remarks by Phil Willis to the effect that the uncertainty over the “value” of degrees meant the system was descending into farce. Willis is the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills, which has just produced a highly critical report about the (lack of) regulation of teaching standards in UK Universities.

The Times Higher responded yesterday with an editorial accusing Universities of complacency over the issue of standards, and also ran a piece in which the Chief of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) tried to answer some of the criticisms of his outfit contained in the report.

There’s been a great deal of discussion over on the e-astronomer about this issue, and much of what I would say has already been said over there ,so I won’t say it all  here as well. However, there are a few points that I’d like to note.

First, most of the press coverage of this story has focussed on the fact that Universities are now awarding more first-class degrees than they used to.  Actually, the number has almost doubled within a decade. Degrees must be getting easier in order for this to the case, the argument goes. The government strenuously denies charges of dumbing down when A-level results get better every year but has a go at Universities when the same thing happens. So there’s a charge of hypocrisy for a start. However, I think the real reason for grade creep at both A-level and degree stages is that the current education system places a ridiculously high emphasis on compartmentalised learning and assessment methods that allow the students to succeed by cramming and question-spotting without any real knowledge. This has happened at Maths and Physics A-level with a particularly negative effect, and is beginning to happen in Universities too through the enforced modularisation of the curriculum that happened in the 1990s. The way to maintain and improve standards, at least in science education, is to reduce the amount of examination and make the examinations less predictable. The answer is not to entangle Universities in the clutches of a beefed up QAA.

I don’t know if the “standard” of a degree in Physics is lower now than it was ten years ago, nor even what it means to say that is the case. I certainly do think, however, that some of the papers I’m involved with now as a setter or a marker are harder in some ways than the ones I sat when I was a student about 25 years ago. I’m also conscious that I didn’t have to work to support myself most of the time when I was studying. What has changed a lot – and I hope the current generation of students believe this, because I really believe it’s true – is that Universities now put a huge amount of extra effort into teaching than they did when I was a student.

I want to make it clear that I do certainly do not think that present-day students are not as clever or as industrious as previous generations and are  just playing the system. One piece of evidence refutes that view very easily. In the questionnaires we give to students, they very often give the strongest signals of appreciation to courses they consider hard than to those they consider easy. I don’t think students don’t like dumbing down any more than staff do. They just want things to be done fairly.

I should add that I also think, within Physics, that academic standards are roughly comparable at the present time from University to University in the UK. I mean, in Physics at any rate, I honestly do believe that a First from Cardiff is worth the same as a First from Cambridge. I’ve been an external (or internal) examiner at several institutes over the last decade (including Cambridge) and, although their curricula vary a bit, I’m convinced that the academics try very hard to maintain the level of difficulty while at the same time being fair to the students by providing much more help than they used to. Many physicists, however, accept that forcing their syllabus into little modular boxes has made this circle very difficult to square.

I can’t speak for other subjects, of course. Is a first class degree in Media Studies from Nottingham Trent University worth as much (or indeed as little) as one from the University of Glamorgan? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Who knows?

However, it’s not really the issue of grades in itself that worried me most. Contained in the report is a scary section that claims that the link between “teaching quality” and research is “weak at best”. If, it says, it is essential for undergraduate teaching to be delivered within a strong research environment then research funding should be spread around. If not, then it should be concentrated.

The argument contained in the report is a masterpiece of non sequitur. Where is the evidence that research benefits from being carried out in a smaller number of departments? And if you deny a connection between teaching and research, whyshould the higher education funding agencies be involved in funding research anyway? And the evidence is always going to be “weak” when you talk about such ill-defined concepts. What does “teaching quality” mean? How do you measure it? The QAA doesn’t know and neither do I.

 The problem underpinning this issue is that, in 1992, the (Conservative) government allowed the polytechnics to become universities. The various research assessment exercises were introduced because, prior to 1992, all Universities received research funding in proportion to their undergraduate numbers. It was assumed, you see, that a University did teaching and research. However, the new Universities (or old Polytechnics) didn’t always have research activities in the areas they were teaching, and there wasn’t enough money to fund all 120+ new Universities on the pre-1992 basis. Thus the idea was conceived to concentrate this element of research funding (called QR) in those departments that were actually doing research. That’s not unreasonable, but as bureaucracies always do, the system of research assessment has become self-serving. Sufficient  concentration was actually achieved a decade ago, but we still have to endure pointless reshuffling exercises every few years.

The big changes of 1992  left Physics in a special position. The number of Physics (or Physics & Astronomy) departments in the UK entered into the last Research Assessment Exercise was only 42. About two-thirds of UK universities do not have research activity in this area. Very few Polytechnics either taught Physics to undergraduates or did research in Physics and very few started such programmes when they became Universities.  Why? Because there is absolutely no way you can teach a modern Physics degree outside a research department. It would be impossible to keep up to date, impossible to provide appropriate projects, and impossible to retain quality  staff to do the teaching because they would clearly want to be doing physics as well as teaching it. In Physics the link between teaching and research is not “weak”. The pre-1992 situation demonstrates how crucial it really is.

I can’t speak for other subjects, but I suspect much of this applies across all disciplines. That’s why I think a University in which students are taught by people who are not doing research in the field they are teaching just shouldn’t be called a University. By definition.

The Polytechnics had much to offer this country, but their contribution was largely lost when they became second-rate Universities. But of course you’ll never find a politician who will admit that it was a mistake.

18 Comments »

Singh Along

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , on August 4, 2009 by telescoper

One of the nice things about the blog interface at  WordPress  is the way it flags up posts from other blogs that might be related to those on your own site. A good example is an item at a site which is quite new to me called Cubik’s Rube. This particular one alerted me to an update about the Simon Singh libel action which I’ve blogged about before, in a post that generated a great deal of debate and discussion.

If you recall, Singh is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA)  for damages after he labelled some of their treatments bogus in an article written in The Guardian. The newspaper settled and withdrew the piece from its website but Singh decided to fight the action. At a pre-trial hearing the judge ruled that his use of the word bogus would be interpreted as meaning that the therapies being offered by the BCA were not only worthless, but that the BCA  knew they were worthless. To win his case Singh would have to prove both these claims were true. Simon Singh claimed he never intended that meaning and vowed to appeal. That was the situation in June 2009, at the time of my previous post.

Things moved on a bit while I was away last week. In an order sealed on 30 July 2009 the Court of Appeal has refused Singh leave to appeal, thus piling the pressure even further on him to settle the action and restricting his options even further. For a clearer explanation of the legal issues involved than I could ever manage, see the article by famous legal blogger Jack of Kent.

One side issue is worth mentioning, however, which is that it is apparently unclear from a legal point of view whether the BCA has standing to sue for defamation at all since it is a corporation without shareholders. It seems strange that such a basic issue would be unresolved. Surely there must be relevant precedents?

Meanwhile the BCA has issued a conciliatory statement, implying that it would prefer for the case to be settled out of court. This seems a bit surprising given that they would appear to hold all the cards, but the answer probably lies in the appalling public relations gaffe it has made over its presentation of alleged evidence for its therapies.

Challenged (largely by bloggers) to present evidence for the effectiveness of its therapies for certain paediatric conditions (such as asthma, infantile colic and even bed-wetting), the BCA produced a report containing a “plethora” of evidence, dated 17th June 2009. This dossier – cobbled together from 19 research papers, most of which don’t really support their case at all – turns out to have been the epitome of dodginess and over the last few weeks it has been comprehensively dissected, discredited, debunked and demolished all over the blogosphere. A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal described its own refutation of the BCA’s claims to be “complete”.

I doubt if the BCA wants to see its credibility further undermined by having its so-called evidence savaged again in open court, which probably explains why they might prefer to settle than carry on the case. Nothing said in court can be subject to the libel laws.

But it’s an amazing blunder by the BCA to have presented such a shaky collection of evidence in the first place. All it has achieved is to make them look like fools.

Anyway, it’s now a peculiar situation. It still looks like Singh can’t win the case unless he can prove the BCA are dishonest rather than merely inept. And the BCA stands to fall even lower in public esteem if it goes to trial. If Singh can afford it he could fight on regardless and hope that if he loses the damages will be bearable. Morally, though, he will have won.

But the really impressive thing to me is the way that expert bloggers have forced the BCA into a corner. I think this is probably a sign of the way science is changing through use of the internet’s ability to communicate complex things so rapidly.

29 Comments »

Advanced Fellowships

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , on July 11, 2009 by telescoper

This is just a quick Newsflash that UK Astronomers will be  interested in (and depressed by). My attention was drawn to it yesterday by Frazer Pearce of Nottingham.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has decided in its finite wisdom to cut in half the number of Advanced Fellowships (AFs) it awards each year, that is from 12 to 6, that number to cover all of Astronomy and Particle Physics.

These fellowships are awarded to researchers who do not have a permanent position but wish to pursue research, and are designed to further the careers of individuals with outstanding potential. They last 5 years – longer than the usual 2-3 year postdoctoral positions and have been for many a scientist an important stepping-stone to an academic career. A very large fraction of my colleagues who have permanent positions were awarded one of these fellowships when they were run by PPARC (including Frazer), as was I myself but, being an Oldie, mine was even pre-PPARC so was in fact given by SERC. Of course the fact that they gave me one doesn’t itself serve as much of a recommendation for continuing them, but it is worth drawing attention to the huge amount of  high quality research done in the UK by holders of these Fellowships.

A number of people have expressed to me their shock at this decision but it doesn’t surprise me at all. For one thing, it’s an open secret that STFC considers the academic community in these areas to be too large so the last thing it wants is more people getting permanent jobs through the AF route.  In any case, STFC’s prime concern is with facilities, not with scientific research.

Who needs half a dozen top class scientists when you can have Moonlite instead?

18 Comments »

Slippage and Slideage

Posted in Science Politics with tags , on July 3, 2009 by telescoper

Back from the week’s exertions I’ve just realised that I missed the announcement from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the changes to their programme as a result of the 2009 budget settlement.

You can find the full statement here, but of immediate concern to astronomers is the plan to cut funding for the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) and the Wide-Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) at Edinburgh. I’m not sure how much their support is to be reduced and what the long-term implications of the cuts will be.

Expenditure on the outrageously useless space gizmo Moonlite will be delayed until next year, thus saving another bit of money. In my opinion, it would have been better simply to have cancelled this one altogether and diverted the funding into research grants which are instead to be held at the levels they were cut to last year.

Other savings will be made by “rephasing” (i.e. delaying) other projects in particle and nuclear physics and some others have started late anyway for other reasons.

Any optimism there might have been about a better settlement at the next Comprehensive Spending Review has now totally evaporated, however, and I wouldn’t bet against STFC having to cope with further large cuts  (in cash terms) a few years down the line. There are several ongoing consultation exercises (see Andy’s discussion and my earlier post for details) which will no doubt be used to draw up hit lists that will be used to make further cuts if and when needed.

The immediate impact of this review exercise on the astronomy programme seems considerably less brutal than I feared, but what may be going on is simply a holding operation and that the really drastic decisions will happen later, after money has already been spent on projects that are really already doomed. Still, a stay of execution is better than immediate termination.

6 Comments »

Hot in Town

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 2, 2009 by telescoper

After a fun but frantic few days in the big city I’ve now escaped back to the relative cool of Cardiff. The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition appears to be going very well, but my part in it has come to an end. The rest of the team will have the joy of continuing for the rest of the week and then dismantling the exhibit and returning with it at the weekend.

The exhibition proper started on Tuesday and our stand was drawing a lot of visitors right from the word go. That’s partly because we had a very good spot, right near the entrance, but we also had a bit of  coverage on the BBC News which might have helped. Inside the building we attracted quite a lot of people to our stand because we were showing infrared images on a large flatscreen monitor of people as they walked past. That seemed to draw people in large numbers to the other parts of the exhibit which was, after all, the purpose of it.

People look quite strange in the infra-red. Here’s an example:

photo_2

That’s me. The calibration scale to the right is in Celsius: hot is white (37) or yellow and cold is blue or black (26). Red is in the middle, around 30 Celsius. Different people seem to have different hot spots and cold spots: most  appear to have cooler ears and lips compared to the rest of their faces, but noses vary considerably in temperature.

There was only one potentially embarrassing moment, when a group of teenage lads wandered in front of the camera. Apparently, a certain type of mens’ underwear has very high emissivity around 10 microns. I just happened to glance up at the monitor and noticed a prominent hotspot just in time to tilt the camera up before anyone else noticed. Thereafter we kept it focussed above waist level just in case…

After my shift on Tuesday I had to nip back on the tube to my temporary lodgings, shower, change into my dinner jacket and black tie, and then return to the Royal Society for the much-anticipated Soirée. Taking the tube turned out to be a mistake. The heatwave currently gripping London has turned the underground system into something resembling the inside of an oven, so I decided to walk back rather than melt again when I’d got changed. I drew a few strange looks walking through Soho in my glad rags, but at least it was cooler at street level than on the Underground.

The evening occasion  turned out to be very busy too. To my surprise, it wasn’t just champagne and posh nibbles: a substantial meal was on offer in a marquee at the back of the Royal Society building. However, there were large crowds moving through the exhibition and we only had six people on the exhibit. We therefore staggered our trips to the grub tent making sure there was always someone at the exhibit to deal with the invited guests. By the time my turn came round it was 9.30 and the whole thing closed at 10.00. I still had time for a good nosh-up and a couple of glasses of wine, though, so all was well.

At the exhibit there was a steady supply of champagne and VIP guests. Lots of Lords and Ladies and other bigwigs,  but I hadn’t the faintest idea who most of them were. These are all the kind of people who assume that everyone on the planet (a) knows who they are and (b) is impressed to have the opportunity to meet them. Being surrounded by such a sea of effortless superiority is quite intimidating but, fortunately, there were also some familiar faces who stopped by and appeared interested. The noted biologist Steve Jones dropped by, and had his picture taken in the infrared, as did John Polkinghorne. I had met Polkinghorne before not long ago, but he clearly didn’t remember me at all.

“Medals may be worn” was one of the instructions, but I had neglected to bring  my cycling proficiency badge.

8 Comments »

Simon Singh and the “Bogus” Issue

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , , , on June 25, 2009 by telescoper

This is an issue that I’ve been meaning to comment about for some time, but hadn’t done so because I really didn’t have a clear view on what opinion to express! I’ve now decided to chip in precisely for that reason, i.e. because I don’t think the matter is as clear as others appear to think.

The story will be familiar to many readers of the blog, so I’ll only give a quick recap of the salient points. Simon Singh is a popular science writer – a very good one, in fact – who recently  co-authored a book on alternative medicine called Trick or Treatment? with Professor Edzard Ernst of Exeter University. In that book they produced evidence showing that many “alternative” medical therapies including homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractice  were, in fact, useless for the control of many conditions for which they are prescribed by the relevant specialists. Subsequent to the publication of this book, Singh wrote a piece in the Comment pages of the Guardian newspaper in which he specifically criticised the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for claiming that its members could use spinal manipulation to treat children with colic, ear infections, asthma, sleeping and feeding conditions, and prolonged crying. Singh described these treatments as “bogus” and criticised the  BCA for “happily promoting” them.

The BCA decided to sue Simon Singh for libel. The Guardian removed the article from its web pages and encouraged Singh to settle out of court, offering to pay his legal expenses if he agreed to do so. He refused and decided to defend the libel action in court. At a preliminary hearing in May, the Judge, Mr Justice Eady,  ruled that the wording used by Singh implied that the BCA was being consciously dishonest. Singh has denied that he intended any such meaning.

This ruling – which is currently under appeal – effectively means that Singh has to prove that the BCA are consciously dishonest in order to win the libel case. That looks like a very tall order. He also has to pay the costs of the preliminary hearing, which amount to £23,000. If the matter goes to a full trial then he will be out of pocket to a much greater extent than this: a conservative estimate is that his legal costs alone will exceed £100,000, and there will be damages to pay on top of that.

This has become something of a cause célèbre owing, it is alleged, to the intrusion of the courts into matters of scientific debate. The organization Sense About Science has organized a petition (“to keep libel laws out of science”) which has attracted over 10,000 signatures. The issue that signatories are worried about is that the open cut-and-thrust of rational scientific debate will be stifled if a precedent is set that involves one party taking another to court. As they put it

Freedom to criticise and question in strong terms and without malice is the cornerstone of scientific argument and debate, whether in peer-reviewed journals, on websites or in newspapers, which have a right of reply for complainants. However, the libel laws and cases such as BCA v Singh have a chilling effect, which deters scientists, journalists and science writers from engaging in important disputes about the evidential base supporting products and practices. The libel laws discourage argument and debate and merely encourage the use of the courts to silence critics.

The case has also revived calls to reform Britain’s  laws on defamation, which make the defence of a libel action in the UK very difficult from a legal perspective compared to other jurisdictions because, roughly speaking, they place the burden of proof on the defendant not the plaintiff. It is also so expensive to pursue such an action through the courts that the system clearly favours the rich and powerful versus ordinary citizens.

The ruling by Sir David Eady has been singled out for disapproval in the print media and across the blogosphere as an example of how  British law stifles free speech.

So why am I unclear about this? Shouldn’t we keep libel laws out of science? Doesn’t the British law of libel need changing?

Of course I say “yes” to both of those. But it seems to me that the Simon Singh case isn’t really about those questions.

For a start, there is no way that you can regard a Comment article in a national newspaper as the proper place for scientific debate between qualified specialists. Such arguments can and do take place at scientific conferences, seminars and through the pages of learned journals. Simon Singh was not participating in this process when he wrote his article. He was doing something quite different: publicising his book.

Secondly, it is true that Simon Singh is a qualified scientist. He has a PhD in particle physics, in fact. But that does not in itself qualify him as competent to pronounce on issues relating to medical practice. I wouldn’t want to stop anyone stating their opinion about things that they’re interested in. It’s just that he doesn’t get a special ticket because he happened to get a science PhD. My point is that his article was not part of the cut-and-thrust of informed scientific debate between experts, merely an individual commenting on something. The fact that he’s a scientist should not give him a blanket exemption from having to obey the laws that apply to others, especially when he is talking about things outside his speciality. It’s also worth stating here that if what he’d said had clearly just been an opinion it would not have been subject to a libel case. The problem is that it appears to be a statement of fact from an authority on the matter.

Third, note that the original book – which is a proper scientific work in which arguments are presented with accompanying evidence – is not the subject of the libel action, just the newspaper article. The BCA is not using the libel laws to suppress or contest scientific evidence.

Now we come to the crux. Does Mr Justice Eady’s ruling really “defy logic” as many commentators have alleged? What does the word “bogus” actually mean? It seems sensible to turn to an authoritative source, the Oxford English Dictionary. Doing so, I find that the word “bogus” is actually of American origin. The first usage found in the OED is from 1827 where it appears as a noun, meaning “an apparatus used for making counterfeit coins”. Later on it is found as an adjective, with current meanings

Counterfeit, spurious, fictitious, sham: ‘originally applied to counterfeit coin’ (Webster).

It seems to me that since the preliminary hearing was specifically intended to give a ruling on the meaning of the words that had been used in the allegedly libellous document, Mr Justic Eady actually had no choice at all in deciding that the word meant what it did. Clearly “counterfeit” implies a deliberate misrepresentation. Effectively the ruling means that Singh’s words mean that the BCA are no better than Snake Oil salesmen, a defamatory statement if ever I heard one.

Singh has claimed that this was not what he meant by “bogus” and what he intended was something more like “unproved” but I don’t see how it can be an acceptable defence to claim that one’s words mean what you think and not what everyone else thinks. It didn’t work for Humpty Dumpty and it won’t work for Simon Singh. If I write that “Jones the Dentist is incompetent” then that will be libelous (if untrue) even if I later claim I thought that the word incompetent meant something different to what it everyone else thinks.

Truth is of course an acceptable defence against libel, but the “truth” at issue has now become not whether chiropractice is effective or ineffective (a scientific issue) but whether chiropractioners are consciously fraudulent. I’d be wholeheartedly against trying to settle the first question in the courts, but nobody is trying to suggest that. The second question seems to me one that has to be settled that way.

Now let me say that I don’t know anything at all about chiropractice. I don’t know whether it works or doesn’t work, but it does seem to me that Simon Singh was very unwise to use the word “bogus” and even unwiser still to defend the action after he did.

For me, the only really significant issue in this saga is a general one: the overall matter of freedom of speech. In general, I believe strongly in freedom of speech but because we don’t have a written constitution the right to it is not stated as clearly here in the United Kingdom as it is, for example, in the United States. However, don’t forget that there are defamation laws (including libel) in America too. Among those statements considered defamatory per se under US law are statements “injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession”, which certainly would cover chiropractors. The US system is much less plaintiff-friendly than ours, in that it provides for a wider range of potential defences, and it also largely reverses the burden of proof unless there is an affirmative defence. It does not seem obvious to me, though, that Singh would have any more success in defending his case in America rather than here. But, then, I’m not a lawyer.

Even in countries like the United States where Freedom of Speech is enshrined as a constitutional right, it is necessary that it should tempered by wider considerations. It should not be legal for someone to damage another person’s reputation and livelihood by making intentionally false and defamatory assertions. Neither should it be possible to abuse and/or threaten another in such a way as to cause harassment or intimidation. There have to be laws covering such things. The real question is how to make them work in a more impartial way than they do now. To argue that one should be exempted simply by declaring oneself to be a scientist seems to me to be dangerously simplistic. The best way to keep the libel laws out of science is to for scientists not to make potentially libelous statements if they don’t possess the evidence to back them up.

I realise that many of you may think that, in not fully supporting Simon Singh, I am being overtly pro-BCA. I certainly don’t intend to be so. I think there’s blame on both sides. I think that the BCA was unnecessarily aggressive in suing him for libel. Given that they did so, though, Singh seems to me to have made an error of judgement in continuing an action he is very unlikely to win. If he continues with the case now his only hope is that he can produce enough evidence in court that damages the BCA that they drop the action. In the long run, what will probably happen is that he loses the case and the BCA wins damages, but suffers a big dent in its reputation for rather heavy-handed tactics. Along the way it might even happen that there is intense scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of chiropractics, and that might do the BCA more harm than good. Bear in mind that anything said in court under oath is privileged can’t be subject to libel actions…

61 Comments »

Telescope Wars

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 13, 2009 by telescoper

Over the last few months the Science and Technology Facilities Council has been setting up a review of its ground-based astronomy programme. The panel conducting the review has produced a consultation document, and is asking for input via an online questionnaire. There will also be a (rather short) public meeting in London on July 9th. The consultation period closes on July 31st.

Reviews of this kind would be necessary in the best of times in order to establish long-term scientific priorities and try to align the provision of facilities with those strategic objectives. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the best of times so the backdrop to the current review is a shrinking pot of money available for “traditional” ground-based astronomy and the consequent need to target planned programmes for the chop.

Andy and Sarah have already blogged about this -and they both know a lot more than me about ground-based astronomy – so I won’t try to cover the same ground as them. I would however, like to make a  couple of points.

The review has to help STFC strike a balance between current facilities and projects for the future. The largest elements of the current ground-based programme include the subscription to ESO (including associated costs for ALMA, which amounts to over £200 Million), the twin 8m telescopes known as Gemini (North and South, about £60 Million), E-Merlin (about £24 Million), UKIRT and JCMT (about £34 Million); figures represent costs over the next 10 years or so. The two biggest projects that the UK would like to get involved in are a European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), an optical telescope currently aimed to be about 42m in diameter, and the Square Kilometre Array, a futuristic radio telescope. Each of these would cost the UK over £100 Million over the next decade.

The consultation document puts it quite succintly:

It would be unrealistic to imagine that in 2020 the UK would have a large stake in large facilities like E-ELT and SKA, and would also retain all its current ground-based facilities. It is always hard to forego a workhorse facility that has supported an active and successful science programme, in order to start construction of some future facility many years hence. But our bid for the capital costs for E-ELT and/or SKA would not be credible if we do not show that we are willing to do this.

 

I agree that it maintaining the current programme as well as acquiring an interest in both E-ELT and SKA is completely implausible. The more relevant question though is how deep we have to cut the ongoing astronomy programme in order to afford either of these, or whether we can do that at all. It seems quite likely to me that future funding of the ground-based programme is likely to suffer drastically, both because of cuts to the overall STFC grant that appear inevitable in the next comprehensive spending review and also the current STFC leadership’s bias in favour of space technology at the expense of science. On the latter point, it is worth noting that it is specifically the ground-based astronomy programme that is being lined up against the wall here; space-based projects of negligible scientific value, such as Moonlite and BEPI-Columbo are not to going be weighed in the same balance. At the very least, future involvement in a next-generation X-ray telescope  should certainly have been in the mixer with other observatory-type facilities on the ground. I fear that the STFC Executive sees the current UK ground-based programme as significantly too large, and would like to squeeze it all into the box marked ESO. I would like to be able to sound more optimisitic, but I think that the most likely outcome of this review is therefore that the only current facilities that will survive into the medium term will be those provided through ESO  membership. JCMT and UKIRT are nearing the end of their useful life anyway, but the writing is definitely on the wall for both Gemini and E-Merlin. Not that it hasn’t been before now…

If this the way things go, then the remaining issue is whether we can afford to be involved in both E-ELT and  SKA, which seems to me to be most unlikely. If we have to pick one, which should it be? That is clearly going to be the topic of much debate. In the spirit of the drive for rationalisation I touched on above, it may well be that we don’t do anything at all outside the ESO umbrella. In that case the United Kingdom ends up with a ground-based astronomy programme consisting of the ESO facilities plus a share in the E-ELT (itself an ESO proposal). I think this would be a tragedy because  I find the scientific case for SKA much stronger than that for E-ELT; it would have been a closer call if the ELT were still the 100m optical telescope as originally proposed many years ago (and which I used to call the FLT). I’m sure many will disagree for legitimate scientific reasons (rather than the desire to play “mine’s bigger than yours” with the Americans, who are currently developing a 30m telescope).

I’m sure there will also be many astronomers who would rather have neither SKA nor E-ELT if it means losing access to the suite of smaller telescopes that continue to produce many interesting scientific results. If it came to a vote I’m not sure what the result would be, which is why I want to encourage anyone who has any input to fill in the questionnaire!

A final little wrinkle on this question is the following. Suppose STFC decides  not to support future involvement in SKA – I hope this isn’t the way things turn out, but in our dire financial circumstances it might be – does this make continued funding for E-Merlin more likely or less likely? Answers on a postcard (or even via the comments box)..

9 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »