From today’s Royal Society compendium of science-related headlines comes this newsflash: Evangelists claim Noah’s Ark discovery on Turkish mountain: Archaeologists have recovered 4,800-year-old pieces of wood from a structure 4,000 metres up Mount Ararat. Well. Claims like this crop up fairly regularly, & then disappear without trace. And I have to say, I’m rather underwhelmed by this one, as […]
Continue readingMonth: April 2010
think before you write (or at least, before you hand it in)
I’ve spent a lot of time lately marking essays from my first-year students. For many of them, this may be the first essay they’ve written in a while, & along with getting their heads around the essay-writing process, they’ve also got to come to terms with the academic environment that they’re working in. That means: […]
Continue readingchemo vs cancer, science vs disease
In another few weeks it’ll be 27 years since my mother died of metastatic breast cancer. Not a nice way to go – but eased by a very caring family GP and the wonderful people at the local hospice, who helped her die with dignity at home. I was reminded of this by reading David […]
Continue readingwhat evolution is
The issue of who’s going to coordinate our 2nd-year evolutionary biology paper came up the other day. (I haven’t done it for the last couple of years as my ‘other’ job – in the Dean’s office – takes up a fair proportion of my time. But at some point I’d like to get back into it. We’ve had that paper, Evolution and Diversity of […]
Continue readingwhy don’t students study plants?
I was going to write about yesterday’s dreadful Herald headline on the risks of multivitamin pills (which implied that women taking multi-vits are at a hugely increased risk of breast cancer) – but Jim McVeagh beat me to it. So…
Continue readingwhat science is
"Science can give us answers, but they are not true just because science says so. They are true or at least a usefully accurate approximation of reality because anyone (at least with training and equipment) can perform the same tests or experiments and replicate the results for themselves." From a commenter over at Science-Based Medicine. […]
Continue readingwhat’s in a name
This is only sort of science – but it’s fun (& also Friday). But the secretary came in with a document & pointed out that one of the names – Goodbehere – looked really old. ‘Must be a bit of history behind that one,’ she said. Names often have a story to tell. In science they […]
Continue readingi get mail…
… although I have to say, it’s nothing like as interesting (!) as some of PZ’s correspondence 🙂 However, I thought I’d reproduce it here (despite the fact it isn’t really ‘science’) as it could form a useful basis for a critical thinking exercise (& possibly one in creative writing…). I’ve included my correspondent’s name as […]
Continue readingmore bad stats & other stories
I have a pile of marking to get through this week, & so that I can make a good start today I thought I might just point you at some interesting posts from other science bloggers. Another tale of statistics from Ben Goldacre: this time it’s the frankly appalling story of where the lack of understanding cases […]
Continue readingnature by numbers
I was having tea with very good friends of ours, a couple of evenings ago now, & they showed me this stunningly beautiful short film clip called Nature by numbers. The film-maker, Christobal Vila, describes it as a ‘movie inspired by numbers, geometry and nature.’ Absolutely gorgeous!
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