Trust me, I’m a scientist. I’m not sure if those words rang completely true, but they certainly don’t these days on issues of widespread public interest like GM foods, climate change, or stem cells. Everybody and his dog, bolstered by ill-informed newspaper articles and skimming-the-surface TV documentaries, has an insight into these and other topics. Once, these would have been called opinions - nowadays those holding them are likely to claim that they are something much more valuable: truth. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, my apologies to those of you who received a slightly garbled version of last week’s newsletter (and my thanks to those who pointed it out). An error in production meant that some copies were filtered through the wrong spillchucker, with predictable results. Ah, technology. I console myself with the knowledge that at least we are in good company, and have been prompted by this experience to look back through some of the dafter examples of what happens when the machinery takes over. Read the rest of this entry »

I do love a bit of pseudo-science, on the side, to provide some light
entertainment. These days, thanks in large part to the witchcraft that
is the internet, it is not hard to find examples of crackpot theories
and plain old wrongheadedness. If anything it is too easy,
paradoxically making it harder to find the truly mental examples among
the flotsam of countless blogs, tweets, and other emissions. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it’s the simple facts that tell the best story. A weekend trip to Jodrell Bank, as part of my ongoing campaign to generate some interest in science among a small subset of the planet’s youth, was preceded by a little priming about radio astronomy in general and this dish in particular. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago I took treated myself to a new mobile phone, and have since come to realise that making telephone calls is about the least used of its many functions. I use the stills camera, the video camera, the music player, text messaging, and other features of this pocket sized marvel of technology far more often than I use it to connect my voice to somebody else’s ear. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m no rocket scientist, but I know enough to know that the popular phrase ‘It ain’t rocket science’ is both cliched and meaningless. There is, of course, nothing difficult about rocket science. Any six year-old playing with a balloon can quickly appreciate the basics, as expounded over 320 years ago in Newton’s third law of motion (the one about actions and reactions). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of online video here at Laboratorytalk, with a steadily-growing volume of material on our own site and plans for a great deal more (we’ve added a handful of stories just this week about companies using video as a sales tool, such as Waters - see No 3 in the Top Ten below). We also like to take note of what is going on in the wider online video community, including the daddy of all video servers - Youtube. Read the rest of this entry »

Little could I have known, when I wrote last week’s column, how much more than usual the nomination process for the Nobel Prizes would be in the public spotlight. But in the absence of a new Nobel Prize for Prescience, for which nominations close two days before they open, what follows are the distilled thoughts on what the world’s most prestigious prizes should encompass. Read the rest of this entry »

You may have noticed that it is Nobel Prize week, with daily announcements of the names of those elevated to the highest status science can bestow. It has also been a week in which the Nobel Foundation rejected calls for the structure of the prizes to be updated with the creation of new categories. Read the rest of this entry »

Something of a departure from our usual format this week, with news of the launch of our new Laboratorytalk TV service. Regular readers may be aware that we have been rolling out new ways of delivering information over the last few months, with still images and video clips embedded in stories, and dowloadable posters and data sheets. In internet jargon, these are all known as rich media - and the webTV programme is just the latest of these. Read the rest of this entry »