I have a piece on New Scientist blogs today, about whether scientists should rule the roost when it comes to policy decisions. It comes from a talk I went to last night at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Just wanted to flag up something else that came up, though.

DEFRA, the dept for food, environment and rural affairs (though not necessarily in that order) has downgraded some of its research lines. One of those is animal welfare: there’s a feeling, it seems, that they now know what they need to about the subject.

I reckon that’s pretty good news. It suggests that the animal welfare campaigns of the last decade or so have succeeded in bringing these issues to the fore. Kudos to the campaigners. It’s also good news for the campaigns of now: raising public awareness works.

Other downgraded issues include noise, pesticides and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (eg BSE and CJD). On the up? Biodiversity, food chain, soils and sustainable development, as well as the inevitable adapting to climate change.

You can get the DEFRA document here, or watch Bob Watson present it (at breakneck speed, if last night is anything to go by).

There's not many days in your life when you have two books come out. By coincidence, the UK paperback of 13 Things That Don't Make Sense, and a new book of mine - The Big Questions: Physics - are both out today. The day has gotten away from me, so I'm going to do little more than highlight them here - more (especially about the new one) very soon.

Yes, it really does have a moleskine-style elastic cover strap.

Here's what's on the back:

THE BIG QUESTIONS series confronts the fundamental problems of science and philosophy that have perplexed enquiring minds throughout history, and provides and explains the answers of our greatest thinkers. In Big Questions: Physics, Michael Brooks demystifies 20 mind-stretching questions about quantum physics, relativity and the true nature of reality.

• WHAT IS THE POINT OF PHYSICS?
• WHAT IS TIME?
• WHAT HAPPENED TO SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT?
• WHY DOES AN APPLE FALL?
• ARE SOLIDS REALLY SOLID?
• WHY IS THERE NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH?
• IS EVERYTHING ULTIMATELY RANDOM?
• WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE?
• AM I UNIQUE IN THE UNIVERSE?
• CAN WE TRAVEL THROUGH TIME?
• IS EARTH'S MAGNETIC SHIELD FAILING?
• WHY DOES E=MC²?
• CAN I CHANGE THE UNIVERSE WITH A SINGLE GLANCE?
• DOES CHAOS THEORY SPELL DISASTER?
• WHAT IS LIGHT?
• IS STRING THEORY REALLY ABOUT STRINGS?
• WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?
• DO WE LIVE IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?
• WHICH IS NATURE’S STRONGEST FORCE?
• WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY?

Big enough for ya?

And here's the very nice cover for 13 Things - complete with some very nice people saying very nice things about it...

There’s a brilliant story on New Scientist today about why you should draw second in a gunfight. The best thing about it is the recollection that Neils Bohr, the father of quantum theory, used to force his colleagues to participate in gunfight experiments:

Niels Bohr once had a theory on why the good guy always won shoot-outs in Hollywood westerns. It was simple: the bad guy always drew first. That left the good guy to react unthinkingly – and therefore faster. When Bohr tested his hypothesis with toy pistols and colleagues who drew first, he always won.

Turns out Bohr was right: the circuits involved in reacting to a threat work faster than those that are self-stimulated. But it puts a whole new spin on Heisenberg’s troubled relationship with Bohr. Bohr was a big bully, and the man behind the uncertainty principle recalls one discussion over the implications of quantum theory ending “with my breaking out in tears because I just couldn't stand this pressure from Bohr.”

Heisenberg should be glad that quantum theory was invented before paintball – otherwise Bohr really would have given him something to cry about…
 

So it’s been a very long break from blogging, while I work out what’s coming next. I’m now focussed on a new book, provisionally titled The Nobel Prize for Anarchy. My aim with this is to show that science isn’t what most people think: in fact, it could be described as entirely the opposite of what most people think. Scientists – at least good scientists – defy all the stereotypes. To get science done, you have to be willing to break all the conventional rules: in fact, anarchy is built right in: the very core of science is about overturning received wisdom, proving your predecessors didn't have it right - and that you do.

In 1974 there was an article in Science that asked, “Should the history of science be X-rated?” The author, Stephen J Brush, argued that the idea that the scientist is a rational, open-minded investigator who proceeds methodically, is grounded in the outcome of controlled experiments and seeks objectively for the truth, is "a useful one”. If young scientists were to find out what really happened in the history of their subject, it might “do violence to the professional ideal and public image of scientists," Brush said.

I don't agree. I’m not out to do any violence. But surely the truth is to be celebrated? The book will look at how real science, as done by very human beings, happens. And this is good science. It is the way progress has been made.

So here goes – I’m going to make the argument that science is a lot more rock ‘n’ roll than you might have thought: there’s drugs, fraud, near-death experiences, religious mania, hallucinations… and, remember, these are not the “crazy scientists”, but the successful ones. It raises an obvious question: are we missing something when we describe science as a “beacon of rationality” in an increasingly irrational world? Is it possible that, in reacting to the perceived threat from an “anti-science” lobby, scientists are in danger of cutting themselves off from the source of many of their best ideas?

What I’d really like to know is, how does science actually happen today? Most of the juiciest stories seem to come out decades later; so what are you privy to? I’m not asking for whistleblowers to come out of the woodwork, but it would be useful to collect some reliable tales of what fascinating (and maybe a little bit scandalous!) things scientists are up to, things that they, perhaps, wouldn't necessarily want the funding bodies to know about. If you’re working in science, or know someone who is, perhaps you could spread the word and put some feelers out.

I’m going to start putting some stuff out on Twitter too (related to this, not what I had for breakfast, I promise) that I hope people will respond to. I reckon new technologies can provide a new way to research books – it can’t still only be about losing hours in fusty libraries, surely?

Anyway, check back soon, and look out for the Twitter feeds (drmichaelbrooks). Let’s see where this goes!

 

I have an article on the nuclear fusion reactor being built in the south of France in this week’s New Statesman. ITER ( the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an incredible project – the idea is to build something on Earth that operates at 150 million degrees, but generates useable, controllable energy through the same process that powers the sun.

The most interesting aspect of researching the piece was the fact that scientific objections are incredibly thin on the ground. There have been objections in the past, but now the project seems to have gathered enough evidence that it might just work.

It’s still an incredible longshot, though: a whole lot of factors have to come together to make it work. As someone said, "we're trying to put the sun in a box - but we don't know how to build the box." Others have been more directly scathing, and called it  “the science of wishful thinking”. Charles Seife’s book The Sun In A Bottle, for instance, concludes that, "so long as there are other energy sources available, fusion is unlikely to make a huge dent in humanity’s energy needs.” (It's a great book, by the way – Charles is an incredibly gifted writer)

For decades, people have joked that nuclear fusion is “just forty years away – and has been for forty years”. I don’t think that’s quite fair any more. Having said that, when you read the New Statesman article, you’ll find that it is still forty years away. At least...

So, if you have a genetic predisposition to aggression, you can get a reduced sentence for murder. In Italy, at least.

As I mention in 13 Things, Patrick Haggard is trying to avoid a similar problem: defence lawyers want to use scientific arguments (such as “he has no free will”) to sway legal judgements. Haggard, an expert on the neuroscience of free will, says he can’t be sure enough of anything that neuroscience is saying to testify about it in court.

What’s more, would we even want him to? I don’t think anybody in their right mind likes the idea of a murderer being released earlier because he is predisposed to aggressive behaviour.  And we feel that way precisely because of what the science says, not in spite of it!

At the risk of repeating myself, this all plays into the same tricky territory as the Nutt case. Who says science is a neutral, implication-free pursuit of the truth, or that we should blindly say that if the scientific evidence says something, that trumps experience, culture and context?

On yesterday's George Lamb show, I mentioned how researchers have discovered that there might be gene variants that can make you a bad driver. Does this mean these people should be excused from prosecution if they kill someone in an accident? Or does it mean that they shouldn’t be allowed to drive?
 

The government’s scientific advisory panel on Free Will has made it clear that science has shown there’s no such thing. Despite this, the government insists on holding people responsible for their actions. Should the chair of the panel resign?

Here’s the thing. Just because you’re a scientific expert on a particular subject, does that mean people should do what you say? Or should they take your scientific opinion and weigh it up against other, non-scientific factors that also matter to them?

If you’re a believer in the supremacy of science, then I guess you’re going to be astonished and exasperated when people shrug their shoulders and decide that, despite what you say, they’re going to stick with their own worldview. I’m not a believer in the supremacy of science as a viewpoint: I think it’s one (very important) angle on how to run a society. There’s more to being human (and being in a human society) than can be measured and reported in scientific terms.

I’m talking, of course, about the David Nutt affair. The UK government’s advisor on drugs resigned last week after the government decided not to follow his advice. I won’t repeat the story: there’s loads of stuff about the controversy at the Guardian.

Yes, science says that alcohol and tobacco are worse than cannabis in terms of harm. But we have a cultural tradition of accepting their use – and we have developed ways of coping with the impact. With cannabis, it’s different: we don’t know how to deal with it. Science has little or nothing to say about the various ways our culture deals with these issues, and so a simple measure of harm can’t be the only factor involved in deciding how we deal with their use.

Everyone is weighing in on the latest Ida fossil news, so here’s my take. For me, what’s interesting is how times have changed. When the original story came out, it smelled wrong. Not from a scientific perspective  - I don’t have enough information to comment on that – but the fact that publication of a peer-reviewed paper was not the focus. Instead there was a David Attenborough-voiced documentary on the BBC, a book, a press conference…it was SO much worse than the whole cold fusion debacle that is held up as the worst case of bad science, basically because a press conference preceded their peer-reviewed paper.

So how come it’s OK to do it like this now?

Well, maybe it isn’t – if you ask Jørn Hurum’s scientific peers, many will say he’s a showman (and that’s not a good thing among scientists – I once heard Michio Kaku described as “the Jerry Springer of string theory”, and it wasn’t meant as a compliment). But the fact is, everyone now expects, or even wants, a bit of showmanship from their scientists (hence Kaku’s popularity?).

So, in many ways, Pons and Fleischmann were simply ahead of their time. I wonder what would happen if their announcement of a potentially revolutionary new energy source had come in 2009, not 1989?
 

I got a nice mention in the Observer yesterday, in a review of the George Lamb Show on 6 Music. When you do these things, you forget someone might be listening, let alone that someone might be reviewing it.

Anyway, gratifyingly, Miranda Sawyer says George has “interesting guests”, I am the “regular clever bloke”, and I was “fascinating” when talking about the Large Hadron Collider:

“According to Brooks, one of the reasons why the LHC might keep going wrong is because time travel is too problematic to be allowed and someone/thing from the future is coming back to stop the collider working and save us all from broaching the space-time continuum. Yeah!”

Just wanted to throw in a note of clarification. Before any of the world’s physicists turn on me (again) I wasn’t quite saying that. I was saying that a couple of quite respectable physicists have suggested it. It’s appealing, especially when a couple of Russian mathematicians have suggested that the LHC could rip holes in spacetime and allow time travellers from the future to visit. But if that seems far-fetched (fun, though, huh?!), the new idea is just plain crazy. They seem to have forgotten Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is usually the right one. And when you know that a couple of solder joints are the cause of the failure, there’s no need to invoke interference from the future.

The LHC is due to start up again in mid-November. If it fails for some inexplicable reason, then maybe we can invoke Stephen Hawking’s Time Cops. But until then…

I haven’t yet been to see the new Pixar movie Up, but if this review in the New Statesman (of all places!) is anything to go by, it should be worth it.

Coincidentally – at least I think so; the PR people at Disney are good, but surely they’re not that good – there was a story out this week about something in science that Pixar have long known about.

Experiments have shown macaques getting creeped out by CGI macaques who look quite real, but not real enough. Apparently, as you increase the realism in computer graphic renditions of humans (or monkeys), you reach a point where people (or monkeys) don’t like to look at them. It’s known as “Uncanny Valley”. The reasons given for the existence of Uncanny Valley are typical evolutionary psychology generalities: these non-humans look like corpses and remind us of death, and other pish (does anyone buy that?).

Anyway Pixar has long known about Uncanny Valley, and kept their cartoons well away from it. That’s why they give you fantastic creations such as WALL.E , and no creepy Polar Express Tom Hanks-alikes. And as for the weird Sean Bean/Ray Winstone hybrid Beowulf, well - that was even scarier than the monster he had come to kill...