• The faithful must learn to respect those who question their beliefs

Tensions between religion and science will persist unless believers recognise that skepticism is a hallmark of science

Issues of personal faith can be a source of respectful debate and discussion. Since faith is often not based on evidence, however, it is hard to imagine how various deep philosophical or religious disagreements can be objectively laid to rest. As a result, skeptics like myself struggle to understand or anticipate the vehement anger that can be generated by the mere suggestion that perhaps there may be no God, or even that such a suggestion is not meant to offend.

Last week, police in Rhode Island had to be called to suppress an angry crowd at a school board meeting, and a 16-year-old atheist had to take time off school after being threatened and targeted by an online hate campaign. She was even described on the radio by a state representative as an "evil little thing". All the girl had done was to press for the removal of a banner bearing a prayer that asked "Our Heavenly Father" to grant pupils the desire "to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers" and "to be good sports".

Equally disturbing was a paper just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, based on a study of American adults and Canadian college students, that suggested atheists are among the most distrusted groups in society ? on a par with rapists. An earlier Gallup poll ranked atheists as the least popular hypothetical minority presidential candidates, and the group that people would most disapprove of their child marrying.

The researchers of the new paper concluded: "Outward displays of belief in God may be viewed as a proxy for trustworthiness ? believers may consider atheist's absence of belief as a public threat to cooperation and honesty." This probably explains recent electoral successes of openly devout presidential candidates who previously demonstrated dubious ethics, while also explaining the absence of any serious candidates without known religious affiliation.

It is fascinating that lack of belief, or even mere skepticism, is met among the faithful with less respect and more distrust even than a fervent belief in a rival God. This, more than anything, leads to an inevitable and deep tension between science and religion. When such distrust enters the realm of public policy, everyone suffers.

As a scientist, one is trained to be skeptical, which is perhaps why many scientists find it difficult to accept blindly the existence of a deity. What is unfortunate is that this skepticism is taken by many among the faithful to be an attack not only on their beliefs, but also on their values, and therefore leads to the conclusion that science itself is suspect.

One can see this in many domains appropriate to public policy from the local scale (school boards and the teaching of evolution) to the global scale (climate change and what international codes of behaviour may need to be changed to address it). But what may be surprising is that even on rather esoteric questions, the suspicion that science is akin to atheism, and that therefore science cannot be trusted, easily surfaces.

Over the past 25 years there have been remarkable revolutions in our understanding of the universe on its largest scales ? revolutions that have transformed our picture of the cosmos and its possible future, and which may shed new light on its origins.

What is truly remarkable is that observations and the theoretical advances associated with them, from particle physics to astronomy, have produced such progress that we are now being driven to address questions that science has previously shied away from. In particular we can imagine increasingly plausible natural mechanisms by which our universe came into existence from non-existence.

As a result, the longstanding theological and philosophical question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?", like many earlier such questions, is increasingly becoming a scientific question, because our notions of "something" and "nothing" have completely changed as a result of our new knowledge.

As science continues to encroach on this issue of profound human interest, it would be most unfortunate if the inherent skepticism associated with scientific progress were to drive a further wedge between science and society.

As a cosmologist, I am keenly aware of the limitations inherent in our study of the universe and its origins ? limitations arising from the accidents of our birth and location in a universe whose limits may forever be beyond the reach of our experiments.

As a result, science need not be the direct enemy of faith. However, a deep tension will persist until the faithful recognise that a willingness to question even one's most fervently held beliefs ? the hallmark of science ? is a trait that should be respected, not reviled.

Lawrence M Krauss is director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. His most recent book, A Universe from Nothing, was recently published

  • Astrologers and other inhabitants of parallel universes

Followers of pseudosciences such as astrology often draw spurious parallels between their beliefs and established science

A common tactic used by those promoting dubious hypotheses is to argue that the claim in question is just another example of something that is already supported by good quality evidence and is accepted by the scientific community.

A recent example caught my eye in a letter to the Guardian from the Committee on Ritual Abuse applauding an article that summarised the alarming rise in the number of cases of child abuse among black children that are linked to belief in witchcraft. Children are being subjected to appalling violence as a consequence of misguided attempts to exorcise the evil spirits that their abusers believe possess them.

But the letter went on to express concern that while the media and society generally accept such claims when black children are the victims, ritual abuse claims from white, middle-class children and adults are dismissed as nothing more than bizarre delusions.

The ritual abuse cases that the Guardian article described differ in crucial ways from those that the committee claims are being unfairly dismissed. Although at first glance both types involve the ritual abuse of children in a context of belief in witchcraft, there the similarity ends.

The cases that have been the subject of recent trials in court involve black children who were believed by their Christian extremist abusers to be possessed by demonic forces that could only be exorcised by extreme and barbaric cruelty. The results of this abuse, up to and including death, were plain for all to see and were well documented by forensic experts.

In cases of alleged ritual abuse involving white middle-class victims, however, the perpetrators are said to be Satanists who are not trying to save the victim from possession but instead are supposedly engaged in devil-worshipping rituals involving sexual perversion of all kinds, human and animal sacrifices, forced abortions and cannibalism.

There is no forensic evidence to support such claims, which instead depend entirely upon "recovered memories" of abuse obtained using techniques that are now widely accepted to produce false memories. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that when children do suffer abuse, they do not "repress" their memories of it. On the contrary, they find it difficult to keep such memories out of their heads.

To the best of my knowledge, the "argument from spurious similarity" was first explicitly described by Daisie and Michael Radner in their slim but influential volume, Science and Unreason. As they point out, pseudoscientists are fond of claiming that the principles upon which their claim is based are, in fact, already part of established science and that the claim should therefore be accepted.

One of the examples that the Radners discuss is astrology. Not all astrology believers claim that it is scientifically based, but many do. They will often point out that science already accepts that celestial bodies exert numerous effects on the Earth, implying that their own claims are simply another example of such effects.

The most common effect they cite is the tides, which are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. Given that gravity can cause whole oceans to rise and fall, isn't it obvious that our bodies, which are composed mainly of water, will also be subject to tidal forces?

The answer is no. Tidal forces are caused by the differences in gravitational pull on a body of water due to the fact that different points on the Earth are different distances from the moon and sun. The size of these differences with respect to ocean tides is orders of magnitude higher than those relating to the water in your body. The proposed mechanism just could not work.

Astrologers might object that even if an explanation in terms of tidal forces does not work, it is undeniable that all celestial bodies exert a gravitational pull on each other and that astrological effects are produced by gravity in some other, as yet unspecified, way. But again, this just does not work. The gravitational pull on a newborn baby as a result of being held by its mother is greater than the gravitational pull on the baby from most celestial bodies.

Attempts to explain astrological effects in terms of electromagnetic influences don't work either. The sun's electromagnetic activity can have effects on the Earth, such as the aurora borealis. Massive solar flares have even been known to knock out power supplies. But many bodies of supposed astrological significance, such as the moon, Venus and Mars, have negligible magnetic fields.

Astrologers also point to cycles in nature. From circadian rhythms relating to temperature and hormone levels to the widespread effects of the changing of the seasons, many biological processes follow such cycles. Their reality is indisputable, as is the reality of the astronomical cycles relating to celestial bodies ? which astrologers rely on to cast their horoscopes ? but there is no evidence that astrology can use the latter to describe someone's personality or make accurate predictions about future events on Earth.

Real scientists often draw analogies between phenomena in different areas. But they recognise that the existence of a superficial similarity between an established and a novel claim is never enough in itself to establish that the novel claim is true. They are careful to consider both the similarities and the differences between the claims. Often this will reveal that the claims differ in crucial ways that undermine the credibility of the new claim.

Although analogies may provide a fruitful means of generating new and interesting hypotheses, the final verdict must always depend upon the results of direct, empirical tests of those hypotheses.

Chris French is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and heads the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. He edits The Skeptic magazine

  • Government rejects a pardon for computer genius Alan Turing

But the campaign goes on in his centenary year, with support from all over the world. Leading US mathematician calls for 'hullabaloo in the UK' over the decision.

The government has given an initial rebuff to the campaign for a pardon for Alan Turing, the brilliant British 'father of the computer' whose career ended in tragedy after a gross indecency conviction at a time when gay sex was against the law.

Signatures are gathering on an e-petition for a pardon but the justice minister Lord McNally used the precedent argument to discourage the notion in the House of Lords.

Asked by the Liberal Democrat Lord Sharkey whether a pardon would be considered, to mark this year's centenary of Turing's birth which is the subject of international scientific celebrations, he told peers:

The question of granting a posthumous pardon to Mr Turing was considered by the previous Government in 2009.

As a result of the previous campaign, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal posthumous apology to Mr Turing on behalf of the Government, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". Mr Brown said the country owed him a huge debt. This apology was also shown at the end of the Channel 4 documentary celebrating Mr Turing's life and achievements which was broadcast on 21 November 2011.

A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted.
It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.

Turing suffered twice-over during the episode in 1952 which was followed by his death from cyanide poisoning two years later. His crucial wartime role at the code-breaking centre of Bletchley Park could not be disclosed to anyone, including his colleagues at Manchester university where he effectively built the first modern computer.

You can read more about his work in the Guardian Northerner's previous post on the campaign here. The website for the Alan Turing Year is here.

Professor Barry Cooper of Leeds University, a leading mathematician who is chairing the centenary celebrations said:

This is very disappointing ? but we are regarding it as only an initial attempt to kick controversy into the long grass. Turing had an absolutely exceptional mind and we can only surmise what progress the UK lost through his tragic death. It would be a precedent but a welcome one, for all those lesser-known people who suffered similar disgrace and unhappiness at a time very different from our own.

Cooper said that protests were coming in from all over the world, including one from the leading American mathematician Dennis Hejhal which deplored the government's use of precedent to defend the decision. In a message to Cooper, Hejhal uses maths to good effect:

i see that the House of Lords rejected the
pardon Feb 6 on what are formal grounds.

if law is X on date D, and you knowingly
break law X on date D, then you cannot be
pardoned (no matter how wrong or flawed
law X is).

the real reason is OBVIOUS. they do not
want thousands of old men saying pardon us
too.

i hope there is an appropriate hullabaloo
in the UK.

In his 2009 public apology, Gordon Brown said:

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.

The e-petition can be signed here.

  • Science Weekly podcast: Transplants and the future of intensive care

This week, we're focusing on some pivotal stories from the history of science and medicine.

First up are human-to-human transplants and intensive care medicine. These are among the greatest successes of post-war medicine, but they also raise some of the most profound ethical questions. Ahead of a discussion at the Royal Institution in London, Kevin Fong, an anaesthetist and physiology lecturer at University College London, and medical historian Richard Barnett came into the studio to discuss how these important medical interventions started and, crucially, where they are heading.

The debates will be held at the Royal Institution on 28 February. "From iron lungs to intensive care", "Hearts to hearts" will be on 15 February.

The Observer's science editor, Robin McKie, was on hand to delve into the secrets of the Piltdown Hoax of 1912. The discovery that the Piltdown Man remains were not all they seemed rocked the scientific establishment of the time, and now a new generation of researchers wants to find out the truth. Who was behind the hoax?

And finally ? with Nature and Science voluntarily suspending their publication of studies into bird flu, we ask: should scientific research ever be censored?

Subscribe for free via iTunes to ensure every episode gets delivered. (Here is the non-iTunes URL feed).

Follow the podcast on our Science Weekly Twitter feed and receive updates on all breaking science news stories from Guardian Science.

Email scienceweeklypodcast@gmail.com.

Guardian Science is now on Facebook. You can also join our Science Weekly Facebook group.

We're always here when you need us. Listen back through our archive.

  • Why the energy industry is so invested in climate change denial | Bill McKibben

The world most's profitable companies are valued by their carbon reserves ? never mind the resulting ruin to the planet

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet ? as we shall see ? it's unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, Nasa updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization's gallery: "Blue Marble", originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on 4 January, a good day for snapping photos because there weren't many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web's most widely read meteorologist, explains:

"The US and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the western US is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s."

In fact, it's likely that the week that photo was taken will prove "the driest first week in recorded US history". Indeed, it followed on 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history ? 56% of the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since "climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier." Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters, each causing $1bn or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: "Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids."

In the face of such data ? statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet ? you'd think we'd already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we're witnessing an all-out effort to ? deny there's a problem.

Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they'd appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he'd caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming "hoax".

Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what's happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. When, say, there's a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss "extreme weather," but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.

And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by "16 scientists and engineers" headlined "No Need to Panic About Global Warming". The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.

It's no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we've ever faced.

Why doesn't it fold, the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn't it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy?

The answer is more interesting than you might think.

Part of it's simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can't stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron's not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they've got a deeper problem, one that's become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won't be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we're already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.

If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we'll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons ? five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.

Put another way, in ecological terms, it would be extremely prudent to write off $20tn-worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).

If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that's far scarier than drought and flood. It's why you'll do anything ? including fund an endless campaigns of lies ? to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So, instead, we simply charge ahead. To take just one example, last month, the boss of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, called for burning all the country's newly discovered coal, gas, and oil ? believed to be 1,800 gigatons-worth of carbon from our nation alone.

What he and the rest of the energy-industrial elite are denying, in other words, is that the business models at the center of our economy are in the deepest possible conflict with physics and chemistry. The carbon bubble that looms over our world needs to be deflated soon. As with our fiscal crisis, failure to do so will cause enormous pain ? pain, in fact, almost beyond imagining. After all, if you think banks are too big to fail, consider the climate as a whole and imagine the nature of the bailout that would face us when that bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, it won't burst by itself ? not in time, anyway. The fossil-fuel companies, with their heavily-funded denialism and their record campaign contributions, have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in carbon emissions. With each passing day, they're leveraging us deeper into an unpayable carbon debt ? and with each passing day, they're raking in unimaginable returns. ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41bn, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil, in 2008, at $45bn.

Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That's why the fight is so pitched. That's why those of us battling for the future need to raise our game.

And it's why that view from the satellites, however beautiful from a distance, is likely to become ever harder to recognize as our home planet.

  • Mystery bird: Rüppell's black chat, Myrmecocichla melaena | GrrlScientist

This handsome Ethiopian mystery bird is placed into several taxonomic families, depending upon which authority you refer to

Rüppell's black chat, Myrmecocichla melaena (synonym, Thamnolaea melaena; protonym, Saxicola melaena), Rüppell, 1837, also known as the black chat, as Rüppell's (Rueppell's) chat or, according to email from a reader, as the chiru by the indigenous Etritrean peoples, photographed at the Lalibela, northern Ethiopia (Africa).

Image: Dan Logen, 9 February 2011 (with permission) [velociraptorize].
Nikon D300s, 200-400 mm lens at 400, f/5.6, 1/800 sec, ISO 800

Question: This handsome African mystery bird is endemic to Ethiopia and Eritrea. It also is placed into several taxonomic families, depending upon which authority you are referring to. Can you identify this mystery bird's taxonomic family(ies) and species?

Response: This is an adult Rüppell's black chat, Myrmecocichla melaena. It is locally common in its very small range, being found exclusively in highland rocky areas with waterfalls. It was originally placed with the thrushes into Turdidae but some authorities have removed it into the Muscicapidae family (chats & Old World flycatchers). However, there are more than 500 passerines in the Turdidae-Muscicapidae lineage, and the relationships between them are a gigantic tangled mess, so we really won't know much until the entire lineage has been subjected to extensive study and revision.

This monomorphic species resembles the white-fronted black chat, M. albifrons, but Rüppell's black chat is easily distinguished by its larger size, by the lack of white on its forehead, b y the presence of a bold white underwing patch (only visible in flight) and by its preference for higher elevations.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.

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  • How the 'wind farms increase climate change' myth was born | Leo Hickman

University of Illinois wind farm researcher responds to how his paper was reported in the media and on the internet

Such is the viral nature of information flow on the internet, we can sometimes see myths and memes developing before our very eyes. Just such an example has occurred over recent days with the rather irresistible news that wind farms can "increase climate change".

The article that really gave this idea a push online was published on Sunday evening on the Daily Mail's website. It was delivered with the headline: "Wind farms can actually INCREASE climate change by raising temperatures and causing downpours, warn academics."

Somewhat predictably, that headline quickly attracted attention and was being disseminated with particular gusto on climate sceptic sites such as Climate Depot and JunkScience. The news was also reported on Dallasblog.com ("Wind Farms Cause Global Warming, some Scientists say") and then on the Orange County Register website with the headline: "Another Global Warming Oops Moment." The article itself was clearly rejoicing in being able to ladle big dollops of schadenfreude:

More windmills to fight global warming = more global warming. You have to love it.

But if we reverse up a bit, we can actually see how this new myth was born. The Mail ? which has a long track record of running stories hostile to wind farms, and more, widely, climate science - was clearly picking up on a story that day by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times. This story is behind a paywall, but it ran with a headline that fairly summed up the thrust of the article: "Giant wind farms can alter weather." However, the Australian - yet another climate sceptic paper - has since republished Leake's article, albeit with a new headline: "Big wind farms 'alter climate', but could be used to control the weather."

The Leake article, which attempts to summarise some of the research being conducted into how wind farms might affect localised weather conditions, led with the findings of a study published by Somnath Roy, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But Roy's study was published in 2010. So why has the Sunday Times ? again, another paper that is hostile to wind farms - run it as a news story now? Could it be a way for the paper to frame the news, contained within the article, that some Tory MPs have expressed their own hostility to wind farms?

The germ of this current interest in Roy's study can most likely be pinned to an article in the New Scientist published on 30 January, entitled: "Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever." It covered a lot of very interesting research, including a passing mention of Roy's 2010 study. (Interestingly, the New Scientist itself got into a spot of bother last year over a headline covering similar research.) But it was an article - as you might expect given it was reflecting the state of fledgling research into this topic - peppered with words such as "could", "possibly" and "might". It also made it clear that Roy's study was focused on how wind farms can affect their local climate (within an area 300 metres "downwind" from the turbines), not, as might be interpreted from the Mail's headline, the much wider phenomenon of "climate change". In fact, Roy's study can be read in full here. (A curio: it appears to be one of the very last paper's edited by the late climate scientist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University.) From the abstract:

Utility-scale large wind farms are rapidly growing in size and numbers all over the world. Data from a meteorological field campaign show that such wind farms can significantly affect near-surface air temperatures. These effects result from enhanced vertical mixing due to turbulence generated by wind turbine rotors. The impacts of wind farms on local weather can be minimized by changing rotor design or by siting wind farms in regions with high natural turbulence.

Yesterday, I asked Roy himself to summarise his paper. He said:

My Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper is on local-scale processes where we find that wind farms may make the nights warmer and days cooler in their immediate vicinity. Climate change is a longer-term phenomenon involving process that operate at larger spatial scales?My expertise is in small-scale (what we call atmospheric boundary layer and/or mesoscale) processes, not climate. Additionally my paper does not talk about precipitation. The impacts of the wind farms that I have studied are confined to the lowest part of the atmosphere. To affect rainfall, the wind farms have to reach pretty high into the troposphere where clouds are formed. I am familiar with research done by others on this topic. At this point there is no agreement. Some global scale studies (pdf) show that extremely large wind farms covering millions of sq km will affect rainfall. On the other hand, a recent study (pdf) of a approximately 500 GW wind farm showed that the impact on rainfall would be about 1%.

I then asked him if he felt his 2010 study had been fairly represented this week in the media. He said that Leake had interviewed him for the Sunday Times article and that "the 2-3 paragraphs on my research discussed in the body of the article are a reasonable representation of a PART of our paper". He added: "The headline probably reflects the work of other scientists rather than mine."

We then moved onto the Mail's article. He said:

I am already getting emails on this. I will have to categorically say that the headline is not an accurate representation of my work. But I guess there is little I can do now.

I then showed him how the Mail's headline was starting to get picked up elsewhere. He replied:

Wow! Actually I also heard from some colleagues. Strangely, nobody has read the Sunday Times article or the Nature editorial [from 2010], but everybody knows about the Daily Mail piece!

And, lo, a myth was born.

  • Today's mystery bird for you to identify | GrrlScientist

This dramatic little Central American mystery bird is notable because it has no sister species

Mystery Bird photographed at the Arenal Volcano Observatory, Alajuela province, Costa Rica (Central America). [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]

Image: Nick Athanas/Tropical Birding, 8 February 2010 (with permission) [velociraptorize].
Canon EOS 50D

Question: This dramatic little Central American mystery bird is notable because it has no sister species. Can you identify this bird's taxonomic family and species? Is this a male or female?

The Rules:

1. Keep in mind that people live in zillions of different time zones, and some people are following on their smart phones. So let everyone play the game. Don't spoil it for everyone else by identifying the bird in the first 24 to 36 hours.
2. If you know the mystery bird's identity, answer the accompanying questions and provide subtle ID hints so others know that you know. Your hints may be helpful clues for less experienced players. Keep in mind that some hints may read like "inside jokes" and thus, may discourage others from participating.
3. Describe the key field marks that distinguish this species from any similar ones.
4. Comments that spoil others' enjoyment may be deleted.

The Game:

1. This is meant to be a learning experience where together we learn a few things about birds and about the process of identifying them (and maybe about ourselves, too).
2. Each mystery bird is usually accompanied by a question or two. These questions can be useful for identifying the pictured species, but may instead be used to illustrate an interesting aspect of avian biology, behaviour or evolution, or may be intended to generate conversation on other topics, such as conservation or ethics.
3. Thoughtful comments will add to everyone's enjoyment, and will keep the suspense going until the next teaser is published. Interesting snippets may add to the knowledge of all.
4. Each bird species will be demystified approximately 48 hours after publication.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

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  • Due diligence | Jon Butterworth | Life & Physics

The Higgs search results you heard in December have now been submitted to journals. What happened in the meantime?

Well, a lot of cross-checking, a lot of work, but not a great deal of change in the results.

The CERN council seminar on 13 December last year caused a lot of interest, in that a range of possible masses for the Higgs boson were excluded, and there were intriguing hints that it might even be there in the remaining mass range.

The fact that there were talks and a press conference led to some criticism because the results had not been submitted for publication. In fact this was unfair, since detailed technical descriptions of the analyses were made public at the time. These were labelled "preliminary". This is a way of indicating that some loose ends need to be tied up before submitting the final results for peer review. But the information is there for interested scientists to see, and no one expects major changes.

Today's paper submission shows that these loose ends have now been tied up, and cross-checks have been done. Frankly none of them are interesting enough to describe in detail here. Which is a relief, really. The ATLAS result has not significantly changed; you can read about, and find links to the papers, here. The CMS collaboration have also submitted their papers.

I will have annoyed the SEO by not putting "Higgs" (or "god particle" argh argh) in the headline, but actually I deliberately did not, because I don't think this is big news. I don't want another round Higgs frenzy (yet). But I thought it was worth recording and explaining a bit more about how the process works, for anyone who is interested.

The next thing? The papers will be peer reviewed (by non-ATLAS members, this time) and, we hope, published in journals.

But much more importantly, in a few weeks the LHC will turn on again, and then we start collecting more data, and squeezing those probabilities.

  • The periodic table: a very short introduction [Book Review] | @GrrlScientist

A wonderful retelling of the history and evolution of the periodic table, including the close relationship between chemistry and physics

The modern periodic table is basic to the sciences and is so familiar that popular songs have even been written about it. But perhaps surprisingly, even many professional chemists don't know much about the history of how it was discovered beyond Mendeleev's contributions.

In his newest book, The Periodic Table: A Very Short Introduction [Oxford University Press; 2012: Amazon UK; Amazon US], university lecturer and writer Eric Scerri takes us on an engaging and fascinating journey into how the modern periodic table came to be. This small book provides a surprisingly big overview of the many discoveries, developments and individuals that defined this universal law of nature, the periodic law, and all this is all rolled up into an absorbing and educational narrative.

In this book, we are introduced to an interesting cast of international characters, including physicists, chemists, geologists, teachers, tradesmen and nobleman, all who played a role in the discovery and evolution of the periodic table. Notably, we meet Scottish physician, William Prout, whose proposal that all matter was composed of hydrogen atoms motivated the scientists of the day to obtain ever more accurate weights for each atom in their quest to prove whether his hypothesis was correct. We meet Danish-American eccentric, Gustavus Hinrichs, who saw the connection between the frequencies of spectra emitted by the elements and the internal structures of their atoms. We also meet German physical chemist, Julius Lothar Meyer, who is considered by some historians to be the co-discoverer of the periodic table, along with the Russian scientist, Dimitri Mendeleev, who sketched out his periodic table on the back of an invitation to a local cheese factory.

But more than simply recounting history, Scerri also discusses how the deeper meaning of the periodic table's structure gradually became evident to scientists, and served to reinforce the growing cross-pollination between chemistry and physics by contributing to the development of atomic theory and quantum mechanics. Further, there is a chapter devoted to the artificial synthesis of super-heavy elements beyond uranium (element 92). I especially was fascinated by the discussion of the many alternative forms of the periodic table -- ranging from trees to spirals -- both from a scientific and philosophical point of view. I am not sure if the author did this intentionally, but by the telling the multi-faceted story of the periodic table, the reader gains an appreciation for the scientific method and for how science is really done.

Researchers, scientists, science educators and students will all enjoy this book, as will fans of science and of the history of science. This small paperback is 147 pages long, and includes black and white photographs, tables, and diagrammes, a list of additional readings, and an index. Chapters include:

Although this book is really well-designed and written, there is one small addition that may possibly improve it: a timeline that notes when the relevant discoveries were made in chemistry and physics to provide the reader with a concise mental image for how all this information fits together into a coherent story.

This small paperback is part of Oxford's growing collection of "Very Short Introduction" books that collectively have sold more than three million copies around the world. Written by experts in their fields and peer-reviewed before publication, these books are small enough to fit into a pocket, handbag or rucksack. Based on the titles I've read so far, I have found these slim volumes to be interesting, informative and very readable, and I eagerly look forward to each new book.

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Eric Scerri is a lecturer in chemistry and in the history and philosophy of science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written and published more than 100 research articles, numerous book chapters, is featured in many online video & audio lectures, is the editor of the academic journal, Foundations of Chemistry, and has edited or written six books. His 2007 book, The Story of the Periodic System: Its Development and Its Significance earned him UCLA's Herbert Newby McCoy award, which honors significant contributions to the science of chemistry. The Periodic Table: A Very Short Introduction is Dr Scerri's sixth book. Visit Dr Scerri's website.

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