The Crime StudioThe Crime Studio

The Crime Studio

Nick Cotter  //  Wired, tired, and tedious to know.

Filed under

science

See all posts on posterous with this tag »
 
Feb 26 / 1:57pm

Snake Oil Supplements

A cunning interactive chart showing the worthiness, or not, of different supplements, based on the evidence so far:

snakeoil_supplements_956.png
Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //  fail   food   health   science   visualisation   vitamins   win  

Comments (0)

 
Jan 28 / 7:13am

Empathy linked to sounding Australian

Music in Speech Equals Empathy in Heart?
via sciencedaily.com

Actually I oversimplify mercilessly for comic effect. The actual (interesting) article relates prosody with empathy.

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //  australians   empathy   science  

Comments (0)

 
Nov 13 / 2:08am

where are the concerned scientists?

The recent dismissal of David Nutt by Alan Johnson is very concerning in its own right - the UK government clearly wants science to be malleable to its own ends, regardless of the facts on the ground. See also their response to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers' analysis that the government's climate targets are physically impossible to achieve.

However, there is a flip side to Nutt's dismissal which I've not seen much outcry about, particularly where I'd want to see it most - the scientific community. That is that any scientist who his still employed by the government must therefore be in some way untrustworthy, since they seemingly happy to mould their results to their employer's expectations. 

Things are not as clear cut as that of course! I'm sure there are plenty of government scientists who are perfectly honest in their endeavours. But the effects of government and corporate influence can be very sneaky indeed, and I'm hoping scientists will start speaking out about this a little bit more forthrightly.

There are some signs of this - a recent article in New Scientist, entitled "Stop selling out science to commerce" is a call for the independence of science which I hope will be taken up. The examples given in the article are disturbing and it's well worth a read.

But it's a tricky business. Government is more or less synonymous with "commerce" these days, and such independence may be too much to hope for.
Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //  government   integrity   science  

Comments (0)