Archive for the Uncategorized Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Brake Points

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on November 1, 2009 by telescoper

I thought it would be worth giving a short update on the Mark Brake affair I posted about a couple of weeks ago. If you don’t want to go back to the original post let me just say that Mark Brake is  Professor of Science Communication at the University of Glamorgan and it recently emerged that in 2006 he falsely claimed to have a PhD when applying for a research grant.

The biggest development since then is that the Times Higher – a magazine for professionals working in Higher Education – has now picked up the story and ran an article in last week’s issue. That piece also refers to the sacking of an (unnamed) employee who blew the whistle on Brake’s conduct and also to the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Dr Paul Roche from the University of Glamorgan in 2003. I don’t know the full story behind these wider allegations so won’t comment on them here, except to say that I hope that they will be investigated more thoroughly so that the true facts can emerge about what is clearly a very murky affair.

However, these wider issues do not alter the fact that Mark Brake misrepresented his qualifications. There is documentary proof that he did so, and the University of Glamorgan doesn’t deny it either. The UoG is keeping very quiet over the press coverage, simply repeating that it had investigated the matter and let Brake off because it was an “isolated incident”. Presumably this means that it is acceptable to misrepresent your qualifications as long as you only pretend to have one doctorate you haven’t got.

I’m staggered that Brake wasn’t immediately dismissed for this offence, which seems to me to amount to gross misconduct. Most of the people commenting on the news item in the Times Higher seem to agree with me on this, although there is one individual called “Skeptic” who appears determined to defend Brake with whatever  argument he/she could muster no matter how specious. The identity and motivation of this individual remain unclear.

Another commenter, however, raised a very interesting point. Here is Section 2 of  the 2006 Fraud Act:

2 Fraud by false representation

(1) A person is in breach of this section if he—

(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and

(b) intends, by making the representation—

(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or

(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.

(2) A representation is false if—

(a) it is untrue or misleading, and

(b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.

(3) “Representation” means any representation as to fact or law, including a representation as to the state of mind of—

(a) the person making the representation, or

(b) any other person.

(4) A representation may be express or implied.

(5) For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention).

I’m no kind of legal expert, but it certainly looks to me that this might apply in this case. The grant application wasn’t in fact successful, but the offence of fraud as defined by this act simply requires intent. The amount of the application was around £285,000, a sizeable sum by any standards. Maybe the Police should look into it.

If Brake didn’t think it would improve the chances of the application being successful, why did he put false information on it? Are we expected to believe that it was an oversight? That he somehow forgot he didn’t have a PhD? I simply can’t believe that to be the case. It is true that many of us are forced to do rapid cut-and-paste jobs when applying for grants and we can make errors that way. However, that would imply that there is a document somewhere from which the cut-and-paste was made that lists a non-existent PhD alongside a genuine MSc. Who would maintain such a document and why?

Even if this were an “isolated incident” it does seem to me to be an extremely serious case of misconduct. However, I note also that numerous references to “Dr” Mark Brake can be found on the internet, including the BBC website. Isn’t it a bit strange how so many people can have formed the opinion that Mr Mark Brake had a PhD?

It’s probably also worth drawing your attention to Mark Brake’s wikipedia page. If you have a quick look at the discussion page of this item you will that an individual by the name of “Rosit” made repeated attempts to block the insertion of a statement of the fact that  Brake had falsely claimed a PhD, arguing that this was libellous. Of course it isn’t. It’s true. Fortunately, the Wikipedia page  is now factual, at least in this specific respect. Most of the rest of it was written by Rosit also and the accuracy and impartiality of the  content is heavily disputed.

You might ask who is this “Rosit” who seems to be so anxious to prevent the truth coming out? Well, Mark Brake’s partner is called Rosi Thornton. Coincidence?

Just in case anyone accuses me of some sort of vendetta, let me make it clear that I have never met Mark Brake and didn’t know anything at all about the false PhD claim until I read it in the local newspaper. I only moved to Cardiff in 2007, after this affair took place. Apart from my incredulity at their behaviour over this matter, I have no axe to grind with the University of Glamorgan either. My persistence in this stems from concern that what appears to be grave  misconduct has gone unpunished. We academics are in the public eye and are at least partly funded by the taxpayer. We and our employers  have to set an appropriate standard. Without that our standing will continue to be eroded.

As I said, the University of Glamorgan appears to be keeping the lid on a matter they appear to have tried to bury once already. I think they would  be much better off getting it all out in the open. If they don’t people might form the opinion that Universities are willing to turn a blind eye to clear examples of gross misconduct when the individuals involved are good at bringing money in.

And I’m sure that never happens….

16 Comments »

It’s a PhD Jim, but not as we know it…

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on October 19, 2009 by telescoper

A story in today’s WalesOnline, originally published in the Western Mail, inspired me to add a short item to this blog.

Mark Brake is a writer and broadcaster and Professor of Science Communication at the University of Glamorgan. According to the Western Mail, in May 2006 he completed a detailed tender for the Swindon-based RCPO – a professional procurement unit that works with seven of Britain’s research councils. Allegedly, in the 26-page document, Professor Brake  claimed to hold a doctorate with the title Astrophysics: Chemical Evolution of the Galaxies, awarded by University College Cardiff, the name held by Cardiff University until 1988. He never wrote such a thesis and holds no such degree.

The article goes on to say that the application was successful, and the University of Glamorgan was awarded £285,264 for a six-month Researchers in Residence project. Surprisingly, although the University of Glamorgan has not disputed the facts in the article, it has failed to return the money.

You will find no mention of this episode on Professor Brake’s  Wikipedia page, the content of which appears nevertheless to be hotly disputed.

Professor Brake, a self-styled “astrobiologist”, declined to comment on the article, but a comment on the WalesOnline site says it all:

It’s a PhD Jim……..but not as we know it………..

POSTSCRIPT 20th October 2009

The WalesOnline story has now been amended to state that the application was not successful. I am therefore happy to retract my criticism of the University of Glamorgan for failing to return the money, and accept that they never received it.

The rest of the story remains in place.

Moreover, here is the relevant part of page 19 of the 26-page document that was submitted to the RCPO. Apologies for the slightly wonky result of the scanning. It’s not ambiguous, and I have no reason to believe that it is a forgery.  Had Mark Brake been awarded a PhD then a copy of the thesis would be in the Cardiff University library (which it isn’t) and the National Library of Wales (which it isn’t). Either this document is a forgery or Professor Brake did indeed falsely represent his qualifications in the application.brake

39 Comments »

The Mailstorm

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on October 17, 2009 by telescoper

Yesterday The Daily Mail – loathsome ragbag of hate-mongering lies masquerading as a newspaper – ran a piece by columnist Jan Moir on their website that sank below the level of the gutter and into the deepest depths of sheer evil.

The piece was about Stephen Gately, a singer and former member of the group Boyzone, who died suddenly over a week ago at the age of 33. Although the coroner declared his death to be of natural causes, the circumstances surrounding his death do remain a little unclear. However, anyone with any degree of sensitivity would have treated the matter as a private one and refrained from intruding in order allow his friends, family, and, especially, his partner to come to terms with what had happened. Anyone with any degree of sensitivity, that is. Not Jan Moir.

You see, Stephen Gately was gay. That’s no big deal for many people these days, but for the Daily Mail it made him a target for a post-mortem hatchet job. No need to worry about the laws of defamation as you can’t libel the dead. No need to check the facts, just sit down and let the vitriol pour out. Right up Jan Moir’s street.

This poisonous excuse for a human being composed a piece with the title. Why there was nothing `natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death. This wasn’t journalism of course. Jan Moir hadn’t uncovered any new facts about the case. Nothing she wrote was backed up by any evidence. It was simply an exercise of blind bigotry, achieved through insinuation and deliberately designed  to pander to the prejudices of the Daily Mail’s readership.

For example

… fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again

Well I’m sorry, Jan, but they do. Fit young people  drop dead while walking along the street too. A number of medical conditions can lead sudden unexpected death in apparently healthy people.

 Here’s another example, in which the monstrous Moir expands the horizons of her rant to encompass racism

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment.

Bulgarian? Must be dodgy. Must have been a kinky threesome. Shows that the civil partnership of Gately and his partner Andrew Cowles was meaningless. All gay men are at it like rabbits all the time. They’re all irretrievably sleazy. We all know that. We read about it in the Daily Mail.

As a matter of fact, the third man was  Georgi Dochev (yes, Bulgarians have names too) , an old friend of the couple. It seems quite a reasonable alternative hypothesis that the three of them came home after a night out and simply crashed out wherever they could. I don’t know whether that was the case or not. Neither does Jan Moir, but she obviously didn’t want the absence of relevant facts to get in the way of a story.

Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages.

 Sheesh. I won’t go on unpicking this odious item otherwise I’ll get angry again. I hope I’ve made the point. In any case Charlie Brooker in the Guardian has already done a much better job than I could.

Anyway, as soon as I found out about this piece (via Facebook) I fired off a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission as it was clearly in violation of Sections 1, 5 and 12 of their Code of Practice. Meanwhile a storm brewed up on Twitter (of which I am not a member) and so many people filed complaints to the PCC that their website crashed.  The Daily Mail’s own readership – not known for their liberal attitudes – roundly condemned the piece through the comments facility. Finally, and perhaps most importantly from the point of view of having an impact on the Mail itself, several advertisers (including Marks & Spencer and Nestlé) pulled their adverts off the website because they wanted to disassociate themselves from the opinions expressed there. The loss of advertising revenue probably means a lot more to bosses at the Daily Mail than any appeal to decency or respect.

The piece is still there, but has been heavily edited and has a new title. It’s still offensive, though. I’ll be following subsequent events with interest and have already made plans to burn Jan Moir in effigy at the forthcoming bonfire night celebrations on November 5th. I hope the Daily Mail shows her the door too.

Looking back on this affair a day later, I have to say that in a way I’m actually glad Jan Moir wrote the piece. Thoroughly disgusted as I am by what she wrote I feel bound to defend her right to say what she thinks. Gagging such people is not the answer. That piece tells us exactly the kind of creature she is. She can’t squirm out of this by offering a half-baked apology and saying it was just a joke. The Daily Mail published, and Jan Moir is damned. May she rot in hell.

Another thing this episode demonstrates the immense power of Twitter to do real good. I had previously thought of it as a trivial bit of net gimmickry. Now I’m seriously thinking of joining Twitter in the hope of adding one more voice to the campaign to save pure science from the oblivion it seems to be headed for.

The problem is that Twitter works through messages limited to 140 characters in length. Since I can’t seem to write a blog post in less than a thousand words I don’t think my tweets will be very effective..

16 Comments »

Cardiff University Christmas Lunch Special

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on October 7, 2009 by telescoper

The publication of Cardiff University’s new Alcohol and Drugs Policy recently circulated to staff as reported in last week’s Times Higher will require some changes to be made to forthcoming Christmas parties. In particular, we note that the new policy does not allow staff to

consume alcohol or illegal drugs while at work, except at approved functions where such consumption has been formally authorised by the Head of School / Directorate or nominee

so we regret that alcohol will no longer be served at staff Christmas lunches. However, thanks to special authorisation,  we can announce various enhancements to the menu, which will now be as follows:

Christmas Menu

—•—

Starters

—•—

Foie Grass

Garlic Magic Mushrooms

Quaalude Eggs

Thai Sticks

—•—

Main Courses

—•—

Coke au Vin

Pot au Foil

A Selection of Joints

(served with Greens, Beans and Herbs)

followed by

Cold Turkey

—•—

Desserts

—•—

Hash Brownies

Crystalmeth Pudding

—•—

Extras

—•—

Christmas Crackers (containing real Crack)

Dollies, Jellies, Candy and Ices

(with Munchies to follow)

Party Poppers

—•—

I hope the above menu proves satisfactory but if not please send your suggestions for additions through the comments box.

9 Comments »

The Word Game

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on September 24, 2009 by telescoper

I don’t know why, but something just reminded me of a silly game I invented to make lectures more interesting. Probably it’s because the students have started coming back after the summer break. I started playing this game at one of the Erice schools run by Norma Sanchez, but it’s a long time since then and I can’t remember which one in particular it was. I never told Professor Sanchez this was going on in case she thought it was too flippant. I’ve always been scared of her since she loomed towards me and scribbled all over my transparencies at the end of one of my lectures because she disagreed with my use of the word “theory” (instead of model).

The thing about this and other schools of its ilk is that there are a bunch of invited experts giving short courses of lectures (maybe 4-6) to an audience of graduate students and young postdoctoral researchers. It’s quite intensive and I felt that it needed something to take away some of the strain.

The Word Game is played by one lecturer at a time. The other lecturers give the nominated individual a word which he/she must weave into his/her next lecture. There is no restriction on the word, and generally the more obscure it is the better. In the advanced version of the game the word is given to the lecturer immediately before the lecture (in a sealed envelope). However, for beginners I recommend giving the word at least a few hours beforehand to let them think a bit how to get the target word into their talk.

The audience have been told that the lecturer is going to include a target word and their job is to spot which word it is. If they succeed then the lecturer loses and has to pay a forfeit (perhaps a round of drinks for the successful spotters). If the students don’t get the right word then the lecturer wins and he gets a reward (probably also of alcoholic form). If the lecturer fails to include the word at all they to buy drinks for the lecturers as well as living out the rest of their days in shame. A league table is kept as the school goes on and the lecturer with the most successful word insertions at the end is declared the winner.

Choice of target word is tricky. If you make it too mundane then it is impossible to spot and if it’s too bizarre then it’s too easy. However, the former case can be avoided to some extent by insisting that the word occurs only once in the lecture. In the latter case the lecturer can use the device of introducing sundry other random complicated words to throw the audience off the scent of a tricky word. I generally award bonus marks if the word is embedded elegantly in the talk rather than hidden in a cloud of other words.

Not all lecturers want to play the game of course and some are more successful than others. I’d like to single out Brian Schmidt for his outstanding performance at one school, smoothly interpolating the word AUTOCLAVE into a lecture on Type Ia Supernovae in such a way that it went completely unnoticed by the students. On the other hand, I have also to mention that Rocky Kolb, misguidedly going for the advanced option during his first ever attempt at the game, completely failing to get the word AARDVARK into his lecture. In fact he insisted on being given the word in a sealed envelope after he arrived at the lecturer’s podium, starting his lecture with the words “May I have the envelope please?” That’s what you get for being cocky, Rocky.

I’ve always managed to get the words in myself, and did once successfully conceal ONOMATOPOEIA in a talk about galaxy formation. On the other hand, my attempt to get CANDELABRA into a talk about higher-order correlation functions was easily – and expensively – rumbled.

7 Comments »

Mountains of Fire

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on September 1, 2009 by telescoper

I found this stunning (and terrifying) image over on Cosmic Variance, where you can read the full story of the wildfires near Los Angeles that are threatening, amongst other things, the historic Mount Wilson Observatory.

5 Comments »

Anonymity

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on August 29, 2009 by telescoper

It’s not often that I blog about celebrity tittle-tattle – I have no idea who most “celebrities” are these days anyway – but a little story in last week’s Guardian online caught my eye. I thought I’d mention it here because it raises some interesting issues.

The story is of a fashion model, Liskula Cohen (whom I’d obviously never heard of). It appears that an anonymous blogger (with the charming pseudonym “Skanks”) wrote some derogatory remarks about said Ms Cohen on a website. The latter decided to sue for defamation, but that was difficult because the identity of the blogger wasn’t known. Cohen therefore went to court in an attempt to compel Google to identify the person responsible. She won that case, and duly found out that the blogger was a person called Rosemary Port (who I’d never heard of either). Anyway, to cut a long story short, Ms Cohen dropped her original lawsuit but Ms Port is now suing Google for handing over her real identity…

Of course the story is all a bit childish, but there is a serious question behind it, namely to what extent one has a right to anonymity. I’m not at all sure what the law says on this or what it should say, in fact, especially when it comes to the internet.

In Britain we don’t have identity cards (not yet anyway), so there’s a sort of de facto right to anonymity there. However, with the increasing levels of surveillance and state intrusion into people’s lives, that is changing. The  issue generated by the story above, however, is how the right to anonymity extends into the blogosphere (or the internet generally) rather than how it applies in real life.

Some blogs I know are anonymous but I happen also to know who writes them. I presume the authors have reasons for wishing to conceal their identities so I wouldn’t dream of revealing them myself. However, these are all sites run by reasonably civilised people and it’s very unlikely that any of them would use their anonymity to engage in abusive or defamatory activities. If one of them did, I wouldn’t have any qualms at all about exposing their identity, but I’m not sure whether that would be a legally acceptable course of action.

But anonymity still makes me a  bit uncomfortable. In academic life we come across it in the context of refereeing grant applications and papers submitted to journals for consideration. Usually the default is for referees to remain anonymous is such situations. Most referees are conscientious and if they have criticisms they are usually presented politely and constructively. There are, however, some exceptions. Fortunately these are few and far between, but there are some individuals who take the opportunity provided by anonymity to be downright abusive. Us old hands have sufficiently thick skins to brush such attacks off, but vitriolic comments made on papers written by inexperienced scientists (perhaps even research students) are completely out of order. This probably wouldn’t happen if referees didn’t have the right to remain anonymous. On the other hand, having your identity known might make it difficult for some  to write critically of, say, the work of more senior scientists. Perhaps the answer is to retain anonymity but for the journal editor, for instance, to monitor the reports produced by referees and reprimand any who transgress.

Going back to the original subject of blogs, provides me with an opportunity to describe some of the behind-the-scenes issues with running this blog. In the beginning I decided to have an open comment policy so that anyone and everyone could comment without any form of intervention. That turned out to be a disaster because of the numbers of automatically generated  SPAM comments that clogged up the boxes. I therefore switched on a SPAM filter so it could veto obvious garbage, but otherwise kept an open policy. The alternatives offered by WordPress include one that requires all comments to be from people registered at the site (which I thought would probably be a deterrent to people only wanting to comment on the odd post). Another option is to maintain a blacklist which treats all messages from persons on the list as SPAM. It’s also possible to block all comments entirely, of course, but I enjoy reading most of them so I think it would be a shame to do that just because of a few breaches of netiquette.

All went fairly well and I only had to ban a couple of individuals for abuse. However, over the course of the year I have received a steadily increasing number of crudely abusive comments (of a personal nature) from various anonymous sources. These are mostly depressingly puerile and they don’t affect me much but I find it very disconcerting to think that there are people sitting out there with nothing better to do.

 Since WordPress notifies me every time a  comment is posted, it is quite easy to remove this junk but I found it very tiresome (when there were several per day) and eventually decided to change my policy and automatically block comments from all anonymous sources. Since this requires a manual check into whether the identity information given with the comment is bona fide, comments from people who haven’t commented on this blog before may take a little while to get approved.

There are still comments on here which appear anonymous (or with a pseudonym) on here, but these are from people who have identified themselves to me with a proper email address or who the software has identified through their IP address or information revealed by their web browser (which is probably more than you think…). I’m happy for people to comment without requiring they release their name to the world, and will do my best to ensure their confidentiality, but I’m not happy to publish comments from people whose identity I don’t know.

If you’re interested, as of today this blog has received 4105 comments in total, but only 1747 have been published. The rest were either SPAM or abuse.

Am I denying freedom of speech by rejecting anonymous comments? I don’t think so. If you want freedom of speech that much, you can write your own blog (anonymous or otherwise). And if every sight of this blog makes you want to write abusive comments, perhaps you should exercise your freedom not to read it.

I’d be interested to know from any fellow bloggers if they have the same problems with abusive comments. If not, perhaps I should start taking it personally!

More generally, I will not accept anonymous comments on the subject of the anonymity of comments, but any other contributions are welcome via the box.

Unless you’re banned.

20 Comments »

Go Galaxy!

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on August 5, 2009 by telescoper

This morning I was looking through my copy of the popular monthly periodical British Naturism (which I buy for the Spot-the-Ball competition).

In the magazine I found an advertisement with the slogan

If you can’t go naked, go Galaxy!

The immediate thing that sprang to mind was that I didn’t think I’d ever seen Galaxy used as an adjective before. However, this is advertising so the usual rules of grammar don’t apply. The next question was whether it might have something to do with astronomy. It doesn’t.

Galaxy is the strangest range of clothing you’ve ever seen. Essentially it contains bathing costumes that are almost transparent, enabling the Sun’s rays to pass through the material. At the same time a kind of disruptive pattern camouflage (available in a choice of designs) printed on the meshlike material makes the items appear opaque to prying eyes. Here’s an example

shortnn

This combination allows the wearer to acquire a suntan in his or her private places but the swirling patterns confuse the observer’s eye to the extent that he/she doesn’t realise that the wearer’s personal credentials are actually in full view. Perhaps this is an example of Moiré is less?

Having been swimming au naturel on many occasions, I would say the best part of it is the freedom you feel in having your private parts unconstrained. The downside is the exposure of sensitive areas to the harsh rays of the Sun. It seems to me that in this sense the Galaxy range offers the worst possible combination of being hindered as well as burnt. Still, they do offer an option to those people who are too shy to go nude on a beach and who want to get an all over tan without using one of those horrendous ultra-violet tanning machines that look like a fluorescent coffin or slapping  orange dye all over themselves.

I’m not sure how effective these things are at concealing the relevant appendages, so maybe I’ll buy a pair and see. Perhaps I could run an undergraduate project to investigate their optical properties?

5 Comments »

Going Forward

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on July 22, 2009 by telescoper

Since I’ve recently been officially awarded the title of Grumpy Old Man, I now feel I have the necessary authorization to vent my spleen about anything and everything that really irritates me.

This morning I got my regular monthly credit card statement, something likely to put me in a bad mood at the best of times. However, at the end of the itemized list of payments, I found the following:

WE ARE PHASING OUT CREDIT CARD CHEQUES. GOING FORWARD WE WILL NO LONGER ISSUE ANY CREDIT CARD CHEQUES.

I don’t actually care about the credit card cheques – they’re a ridiculously bad way of paying for things anyway –  but what on Earth is the phrase going forward doing in that sentence?

I’ve taken a swipe at this monster once before, when I blogged about the Wakeham Review of Physics. The example I found then was

The STFC’s governance structure must be representative of the community it serves in order to gain stakeholders’ confidence going forward.

Aaargggh!!

Going forward is one of those intensely annoying bits of office-speak that have spread like Swine ‘flu into the public domain. Pushing the envelope is another one. What does it mean?  Why would anyone push an envelope?

Anyway, the worst problem with going forward is that it is now used almost universally in official documents instead of more suitable phrases, such as in future, or from now on. What particularly irritates me about it is that it is usually part of an attempt to present things in a positive light even when they clearly don’t involve any forward movement at all; often, in fact, quite the opposite. It is just one symptom of the insidious culture of spin that seems to be engulfing all aspects of public life, making it impossible to deliver even a simple message without wrapping it up in some pathetic bit of PR. Any kind of change – whether or not there’s any reason for it, and whether or not it improves anything – has to be portrayed as progress. It drives me nuts!

This sort of language is frequently lampooned by Laurie Taylor in his brilliant weekly column for the Times Higher.  The Director of Corporate Affairs for the fictional Poppleton University, Mr Jamie Targett, contributes regularly to his column, always in meaningless business-oriented gibberish of this type. In fact, shortly after reading the Wakeham Review quoted above, I sent a letter to the Times Higher (which was published there) accusing Jamie Targett of moonlighting from his job at Poppleton to work on the Wakeham Report.

In the case of my credit card cheques, the implication is that the withdrawal of the service represents some sort of progress. In fact, it’s just to save money. A friend of mine who uses a local gym told me today that the gym had recently announced that

Going forward, members of the gym will no longer be supplied with free towels.

They went on to portray this as a great leap forward in caring for the environment, but in fact it is obviously just a way of saving their costs. Likewise with a sentence I found in a railway timetable recently:

Going forward the 8.15 train from Paddington will no longer call at Didcot Parkway

At least it’s still going to call at Didcot when it’s going backwards, which is the obvious implication of this sentence.

I’m glad I’m not alone in my disapproval of going forward.  A year or so ago there was an article on the BBC website making much the same point. However, the amount of going forward has continued to increase. Robert Peston, the BBC business editor, once managed three going forwards in a four minute item on the Today programme.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council has obviously taken this phrase to heart. Their website is chock-a-block with going forward. Here’s an example (referring to a budget cut)

It will result in an approximately constant volume of project activity going forward ..

Obviously, once you start going forward there’s no going back, even if what lies in front of you is financial catastrophe…

PS. Feel free to add your own pet hates via the comments box going forward.

41 Comments »

Everyone’s Gone to the Moon

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on July 16, 2009 by telescoper

Since the media have been banging on about it all week, as have various other bloggers, I suppose I should at least mention that today (16th July 2009) is the fortieth anniversary of the launch of NASA’s  Apollo 11 mission which put the first man on the Moon. I’m reliably informed that the picture on the left shows the second man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, although I don’t think the costume gives much clue to the identity of the wearer.

My response to the media furore  is muted because I’m decidedly ambivalent about the whole business of manned space exploration. I’m not going to be churlish and say that all the Apollo missions did was provide America with a much-needed propaganda victory during the Cold War. I think it’s true that putting a man on the Moon was a great achievement in terms of ingenuity and organization. It’s  probably also true that it inspired many people to go into science who otherwise wouldn’t have done so. I’d even say that the sight of Earth from the Moon marked the beginning of a new age of awareness of the fragility of our own existence on our home planet and, perhaps even a step towards our coming-of-age as a species.

The reason I am ambivalent, however, is that the scientific returns from the Apollo missions were entirely negligible, at least in terms of value for money,  partly because the Apollo missions weren’t really designed to do science in the first place and partly because the Moon just isn’t very interesting…

Mankind hasn’t returned to the Moon since the Apollo series came to an end. That’s not a matter for regret, just a reflection of the fact that there isn’t much to be found there. In those forty years  astronomy and space science have moved on immeasurably through spaceborne observatories and unmanned probes. We have learned far more about the Universe  those ways than could ever be achieved by sending a few people to collect rocks from a dull piece of rubble in our backyard. In the process, the Universe has grown in size relative to the scale possible to reach by human engineering projects. The last forty years has shown us that, in retrospect, going to the Moon wasn’t really all that impressive compared to what we can find out by remote means.

Unfortunately there appears to be an increasingly vocal lobby in favour of diverting funds from fundamental science into manned space exploration, much of it aimed at the goal of putting a person on Mars.  This has not yet resulted in a commitment by the United Kingdom government to join in manned space exploration, but it is worrying that the Chief Executive of the Science & Technology Facilities Council is a failed astronaut who I fear sees this as an attractive option. Even more worryingly, Science Minister Lord Drayson seems to be keen too. It’s up to  scientists to present the case to government for maintaining investment in fundamental science and against having the budget plundered to play Star Trek.

The European Space Agency‘s Aurora programme is intended to culminate with a manned trip to Mars, at an overall cost of over £30 billion. One of the arguments I hear over and over again in favour of this programme is that it will inspire young people to take up science, especially physics. Well, maybe. But people can’t become scientists unless they have the opportunity to learn science at School and there is a drastic shortage of physics teachers these days. What’s the point of being inspired if you can’t get the education anyway? You could train an awful  lot of school teachers for  a small fraction of the Aurora budget.  And what’s the point of inspiring people to take up astronomy and space science when you’re also busy slashing the budget for research and ending the careers of those excellent scientists we’ve already got?

So by all means let’s celebrate the marvellous achievements of 1969, but let’s move on and not pretend that there is any good scientific reason for repeating them.

11 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »