happy science

How many papers should academics publish per year?

2012-02-21T05:28:00.002-08:00

Post-doctoral researchers in Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen were told this week that they need to be publishing, on average, 3.25 papers per year in order to have a competitive chance of getting a research fellowship.

I always get worried when I hear exact numbers being quoted as 'what you NEED to have'. The number, apparently was determined by asking research councils that give fellowship grants what they look for. A good idea in theory, the ones that answered the request said they want (on average) 3.25 papers per year. But do the people that receive fellowships really have that record? That isn't clear.

With a decrease in research council funding is more research being funded by industry? I don't know, as I don't have the numbers. I'm just speculating, but, if you are industry funded my experience has been so far that you are likely to publish less as your results will go towards things like patents and be kept internally for the company. Still valid work and science BUT are you less likely to get a lifelong career in academia because of a reduction in the number of published papers?

My other question is about how science is done and the never ending push for published papers. Peer reviewed, published research is an essential part of science (and a bit of professional conflict should be encouraged!).

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2012/01/us-science-needs-to-look-beyond-our.html

There are numerous graphs that show on a global scale that the number of scientific papers published per year constantly rising. The number of scientific journals to publish in is also rising. As is the funding for scientific research and the numbers of researchers around the globe. But where is the balance between publishing number, investment and the numbers of scientific researchers? An impossible question to answer?

I know when I read published research in the literature I quite often spot flaws in experimental design and experiments that haven't been replicated. Stuff that really probably shouldn't have been published at that point in time, but did the researcher who published the work need that publication in order to be employed for the next 12 months?

Does the structure of papers restrict science? If science is mostly done to be published then experimental design, time and effort is focused on what is needed to publish the work - rather than what is needed for the project as a whole.

This is where I think Universities and research councils could do more to help, why focus on individuals and individual number publications? Would it not be better to encourage work in groups, make the sharing of resources and ideas easier (especially within institutions). I see academic science in the U.K., at the moment, as every man for himself. Is this the best way of getting the most out of researchers?

View from a Post-Doctoral Researcher

It's survival of the fittest. The question “fight or flight” has come into my head once or twice, it’s just unfortunate that so much of “scientific success” is based on luck, right place right time, and having the luxury of time to really get to grips with a scientific question without having to balance this with the prospect of being unemployed in the next 6 months! I do actually think that aiming for publication is a good target, it focuses the mind however the onus put on postdocs to be able to publish 3 papers per year when they are on 1 year contracts is unrealistic, particularly when 6 months into the job you are faced with the reality of redeployment!

I see other post-doc researchers at the same stage in career as me who have a number of technicians that do work for them, so quite clearly they will be more productive in terms of publications than me when they have a whole team behind him.

Perhaps industry funding should be considered separately from research council funding without being thought of as the lesser of the two but this is the way it is and when funding is so tight I guess the bar has to be continually raised. It’s just the times that we live in unfortunately. I guess the choice is there to leave if it’s not for you, it just seems a shame when you might actually enjoy the research, just not everything else that seems to have to go with it.

Blughhh!

Have a Happy, Scientifically Correct Valentine's Day

2012-02-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

I'm going to share a secret. I LOVE Valentine's day. But I don't do soppy, romantic gestures very well.

So if you, like me struggle to share your feelings with that special someone and you live too far away from London (like me) to enjoy one of these fabulously, amazing real heart cakes (yes, these are for eating!) I have created a science themed Pinterest board, for your science love pleasure. Featuring everyones love favourites, the brain, serotonin, dopamine and Carl Sagan.

Hope you enjoy it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Don't forget to keep your eyes and ears open for any dubious 'science' valentines stories/research appearing in the news and online :-) Maybe we will all be enlightened with the 'love formula'.

Source: lily-vanilli.blogspot.com via hapsci on Pinterest

Why Good Biologists are Better Than Sherlock

2012-02-07T04:13:00.000-08:00

Me, pretending to be Sherlock with my 'critical thinking' hat on

Sherlock Holmes is famous for his ability to apply logical reasoning. His amazing ability to watch, to observe, to put two and two together and make a conclusion. A critical thinker, his theories are not wild and are only based on fact. He studies, finds ways to find and gather all the information he can.. and then boom, hits everyone with the name of the culprit.

My argument, is that a good biologist (actually, any good scientist) needs to be at least as good as Sherlock to perform, and if they want to be really successful they have to be better.

The Cosmic Comic - Interview with Helen Keen

2012-02-03T02:05:00.000-08:00

Published in Issue 1 (June 2011) of Au Science Magazine. Find out more about Helen here

Helen’s show, 'It IS rocket science' is a humorous look at the people involved in space exploration. It was recently aired on BBC Radio 4 and has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. I caught up with Helen in Aberdeen where she did a short version of her show for, 'Skeptics in the Pub' in March.

Cannabis: menace or medicine?

2012-01-30T02:58:00.000-08:00

Latex gloves, white lab coat and an expression of intense concentration. This is not your stereotypical image of a cannabis user, but it is one. Scientific researchers from all over the globe are devoting their time to uncovering the secrets of cannabis. If you are able to believe the hype, cannabis can relieve pain, prevent infection by HIV and fight cancer. In the UK, the first medicinal license for a cannabis-based medicine, Sativex, was granted in 2010, yet cannabis remains an illegal substance. So, is it medicine or menace?

Why do rejected applications not receive feedback?

2012-01-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

If you apply for an event that is designed to help you and your career, but are then rejected without the option of requesting constructive feedback. Is the event failing to achieve its aims?

Things I wish I had known when I started my PhD

2012-01-17T07:38:00.000-08:00

I am entering the final stretch of my PhD and here is a list of things that I wish I had known (or things I wish someone would have told me) when I started my PhD...

The Scary world of Science

2012-01-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

Obscure bad-science stories (of the 'Wine, gives you cancer but makes you thin' variety) seem relatively thin on the ground at the minute. There are some lurking, but they are mostly playing second fiddle in the health sections to the very important NHS reforms and to 'Andrew Wakefield sues the BMJ'.

Maybe I haven't been looking closely enough, or I am starting to shut out the noise. There hasn't been anything that has stirred the fury in me enough to blog about it. Or, and this might be the bigger reason... I am being distracted by something else...

Acne, a side effect of being a successful 'high flying' career woman? Not at all.

2011-11-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

This is the latest blight to 'successful', 'high powered', 'bossy' women...

According to The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, Marie Claire, and Female First:

- 'Acne new problem for successful women'

- 'Acne, curse of the high-flying career woman: Growing stress levels to blame for outbreak of pimples'

- 'Stress causing acne in successful women'

Recognising Public Engagement

2011-11-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

Universities in the UK have embraced 'Public Engagement'. There is a Public Engagement Manifesto. My university (University of Aberdeen) have signed it. But who carries this 'vital' work out and are they being recognised for it?

“The University of Aberdeen is committed to achieving distinctive excellence across all aspects of its activities including the vital objective of engaging with society. We are building on a considerable track record, where public engagement has become ever more embedded in our core business. Moving forward, our Strategic Plan 2011-2015 reflects our ongoing commitment to support and empower our staff and students to help deliver a diverse, creative and accessible programme of activities with a measurable public impact. Partnership is central to our strategy and our active involvement with the work of the NCCPE extends back to its inception. We therefore endorse the principles of the Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research and fully support the NCCPE Manifesto.” Professor Ian Diamond, Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of Aberdeen

This is great news. One I am pleased with as a PhD student. I want the university I am studying at to be embracing this and I want to (and do) support public engagement events. I think there is a great value in engagement and both for the university, the people at the university and for the public.

I do see one problem though. The vast amount of public engagement activities that happen are reliant on volunteers. The volunteers tend to be a small (ish) pool of people that take part in events and often the pool is of students (both undergraduate and postgraduate).

Public Engagement is starting to be seen as something employees of the university should be doing within their 'normal work'. Some institutions are including it on their assessment and promotion criteria which is a great start at integrating it into peoples jobs (I am not sure that the University of Aberdeen have introduced this). Including it as promotion criteria makes sure that staff time is dedicated to public engagement and that people are rated, judged and recognised for the work they do.

I see plenty of support for people that want to get involved with public engagement and have an idea at the University of Aberdeen. However, I feel the recognition for people that take part in these activities; especially those that are students and on short term contracts (post doc etc) is lacking. This creates a culture where those interested in public engagement and feel strongly about it do it. But do it in their own time because they want to. There is no extra incentives other than 'building your C.V.'. As the university are placing an expectation on people to take part in these activities, should there be bigger incentives, recognition and awards or should people not taking part and not 'doing their bit' be penalised?

UCL seems to be doing a good job at both embracing and recognising people (both staff and students) who take part in these activities through the Provost awards - http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1102/11020202. However, is the introduction and use of awards such as these (although they may be great incentives to get people involved in public engagement activities) a way for the universities to get work that they deem as 'vital' done but not pay people for it?

The Cervical Cancer Jab and the 'Waking Coma'

2011-11-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

I read an extremely sad news story this evening about a girl who is trapped in a 'waking coma'. Sleeping for 23 hours a day she has been unable to open her eyes for several weeks. Her condition is according to the news reports undiagnosed, but her symptoms have been linked to ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Her story has been covered on The Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun and many other major news websites after the local newspaper covered the story.

Unfortunately, I feel that this story has only hit the big newspapers as her symptoms coincided with her receiving the cervical cancer vaccine and the headlines and articles all suggest that the cancer vaccine is the cause of the girls condition. These are some of the headlines:

Daily Mail: Girl, 13, left in 'waking coma' and sleeps for 23 hours a day after severe reaction to cervical cancer jabs

Telegraph: Cervical cancer jab left girl, 13, in 'waking coma'

The Sun: Cervical cancer jab puts girl, 13, in 'waking coma'

The link between the jab and her condition has not been proven.

Obviously it is important to get to the bottom of this story, and find out what is the cause of the symptoms, but I am disappointed to see this story being sold as an anti vaccine scare story.

News organisations may say they have a responsibility to report on stories that may suggest a danger from a product/vaccine however, is a very isolated case and overshadows the benefits of the vaccine (and other vaccines).

How can possible side effects be reported whilst making it clear that the links are not yet proven? Can they? Has the media still not learnt its lesson from previous misreporting of unsupported vaccine side-effects?

For the facts on the cervical cancer vaccine visit the NHS website: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/HPV-vaccination/Pages/Introduction.aspx

I would encourage everyone to submit a complaint about these articles to the PCC here - http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/form.html as I feel they are in breach of clause 1 (accuracy) of the code of practice - http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html

As Stephen Adams was identified as the author of the Telegraph acticle I contacted him:

I am writing to you in response to the article posted on The Telegraphs website titled - Cervical cancer jab left girl, 13, in 'waking coma'.
I am unsure why you have chosen to produce a story linking the jab to the girls condition when a link has not yet been proven. The article clearly comes across in a way that suggests the link is there and I think that is misleading. I have written more on my blog here http://sciencehastheanswer.blogspot.com/2011/11/cervical-cancer-jab-and-waking-coma.html?spref=tw
I have also submitted a complaint about the article to the PCC.
I would like to ask you why you felt the need to write the article in this way? Do you not see the need to be cautious in the representation of vaccine side effect stories after the problems with the MMR vaccine?

This Stephen's response:

The article clearly states that it is the parents' belief that the jab has produced an adverse reaction in their daughter.
It does not claim this is the doctors' judgement, or claim there is a proven link.
The article makes clear the very great benefit this vaccine should have in the future in reducing the burden of cervical cancer, and the fact that it has demonstrated a strong safety profile so far in trials and in practice.
That, however, should not stop papers from reporting suspected adverse reactions. And that is all we have done - reported the parents' fears of a suspected adverse reaction. It does not, as you write, suggest there is a link.
I believe papers should be free to report claims of such reactions, in a fair and balanced way. As a medical sciences student you undoubtedly know that vaccines can and do produce adverse reactions in a small proportion of people.
I don't have an axe to grind about vaccines, and am certainly not one of the minority who objects to them.
For your information I have written other reports on HPV vaccines, see for example here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8867961/School-suspends-cervical-cancer-jab.html and here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women_shealth/8454754/I-believe-all-young-people-need-this-vaccination.html.
Anti-vaccine campaigners might take the view that these are to 'pro-vaccine'.
You might, however, be interested to read some of the comments from parents on the bottom of the first of the two.
I am acutely aware of the need not to scaremonger about vaccinations in the wake of MMR; I think you will find most journalists are.
Yours
Stephen

I haven't got much time to write my reaction - here is what I believe is the 'original' article in the local newspaper - http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/home/the-cumbrian-girl-who-sleeps-23-hours-a-day-1.897002?referrerPath=news This article really suggests that it is the parents feeling that there is a link to the jab more than the article in the Telegraph does. A lot of the stats and statments in this article also appear in the Telegraph article.

I understand that Stephen probably did not write the headline for the article in the Telegraph and I feel that it is the most misleading part, however, he doesn't see a problem with the article at all.

Wine, gives you cancer but makes you thin

2011-11-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

Once again, reporters pick up on stories related to booze. There are two wine stories in the news at the moment. Both found on the Telegraph website (and others)

Booze, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bar_Hard_Rock_Cafe_Prague.png

Story 1, Red wine holds key to better health for obese patients

Headline suggests drinking wine = good for health. The headline is misleading, but the study write up is pretty good. No 'scientists' in this article, only EXPERTS. Whoever they are...

This article is written about a small study on humans (11 male obese patients). The patients were given the treatment for 30 days (so very short term). Treatment was an injection (not a glass of) resveratrol (compound found in grapes at low levels - according to The Telegraph you would have to drink 13 bottles a night to acheive a dose similar to that in the study - not sure where this figure comes from). Results were compared to placebo treatment (the participants were given a placebo injection for 30 days at the start of the trial). The paper found that, ' 30 days of resveratrol supplementation induces metabolic changes in obese humans, mimicking the effects of calorie restriction.'

The Daily Mail go with the headline - Red wine ingredient protects against heart disease and diabetes

but fail to mention the amount of actual wine you would have to drink in order to match the levels used in the study (shame on you) and also throw in the rather bold claim, 'resveratrol, the wonder substance which found in the skin of red grapes, is also thought to increase life expectancy'. I am not sure what backs that claim up...

Research paper freely available to read here - http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(11)00386-X#Summary

Story 2, One glass of wine a day increases risk of breast cancer: research

Another story from the Telegraph, unsure why ':RESEARCH' is used in the headline. The study did not look at wine, it studied alcohol consumption.

Information from the study paper - very large study (105 986 American Nurses) monitored between 1980 and 2008. The population of the nurses,93.7% white, 2% black, 0.7% Asian, and 3.6% other or unknown race/ethnicity. Information was collected by survey - one consideration is, how truthful were the nurses about their alcohol consumption? Were those reporting low, 'moderate' amounts of alcohol really consuming low amounts? It seems alcohol consumption was averaged over years where there was missing data for participants. They did include 'dummy variables' for missing data. Obesity seems to have been completely omitted from the variables in the study, which is a problem because weight gain and loss is a risk factor in breast cancer.

Results (quoted from paper) 'Increasing alcohol consumption was associated with increased breast cancer risk that was statistically significant at levels as low as 5.0 to 9.9 g per day, equivalent to 3 to 6 drinks per week (relative risk, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.06-1.24; 333 cases/100 000 person-years).' The first line in the Telegraph reports, 'women who drink just four small glasses of wine a week increase their risk of developing breast cancer by 15 per cent'. I am unsure where The Telegraph have got this statistic from.

Also from The Telegraph, 'Women who drank up to four units a day were 50 per cent more likely to develop breast cancer than those who did not drink at all, it was found'. Unless I am missing something, (and please correct me) the Telegraph seem to have created their own statistics for this study.

Daily Mail reports - Two glasses of wine a day could increase breast cancer risk by 50 per cent

Made up statistic in use on the headline. Article seems to be copied from The Telegraph, just rea-arranged in a different order.

Research paper available here - http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/17/1884.short

Bring Back Board Games

2011-10-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

I LOVE board games. I get aggressive, grumpy and bossy (but I NEVER cheat, despite what my family say). A couple of years ago I found this beauty of a board game on Ebay, NORTH SEA OIL (I think it is from the 70s). I bought it for my boyfriend (who works in the oil industry) -

It is FANTASTIC. It's like oil Monopoly. It has mini oil rigs and real life oil situations (bad weather = no oil production).

Board games have always been 'big' in my family... we have this one 'ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ'.. for a million years, although we have no idea how to play it. Our Monopoly board was bought by my Grandma when she was a teenager (she likes to tell us every time we play) with real metal pieces...

I usually buy a board game for Christmas, the weirder the better.. here are some suggestions from the lovely people on my Twitter feed. They all look FAB.

LOOPING LOUIE - some kind of crazy German game where you fly 'Louie' round a crazy obstacle course... (@sulsatweets)

UCKERS - Like 'Combat Ludo' - (@mrtotes)

THE GRAPE - You are your own wine grower (what's not to love!?) Even has it's own Facebook page (although only 5 'likes') (@don_frank)

DUNGEON QUEST, with a very reassuring 15% survival rate... (@Astronick)

SETTLERS OF CATAN Comes with high praise from @hollyjunesmith and @anclag !

Board games can be great fun (and can be very cheap).. Just get on ebay, type in 'board game' and hit 'ending soonest'. The weirder, the better.

No Grazie, Grazia

2011-10-11T03:26:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Dr Petra (@DrPetra) highlighted a story that was doing the rounds in the national press about 'bossy women have less sex'... Google it under news and you will see the stories from around the globe (see here, safe to click). The story was formulated from a piece of research carried out with Sub-Saharan African Women, (freely available for all to read here)

This extract is taken from the abstract of the research article, 'Understanding how women’s position in the household influences their sexual activity may be an essential piece in protecting the sexual rights of women and helping them to achieve a sexual life that is both safe and pleasurable.'

This weekend I picked up a copy of Grazia Magazine and found this story -

I tweeted it because I was frustrated, I tweeted it at Grazia and Dr Petra. I was frustrated that a magazine, marketed at women, that aims to go beyond regurgitating the usual trashy gossip that other magazines print, found it appropriate to include a 'debate' about this headline, which should never have been a headline. Another case of misrepresented research.

Others offered their support and said they were disappointed also. I sent an email to Grazia saying why I thought this story was inappropriate and that they could have done a much better job by covering the fact that the mainstream press thought it was appropriate to change this study about empowerment in women in Sub-Saharan Africa into a story about 'bossy women having less sex'.

The response from Grazia:

JaneGRAZIA @hapsci Sorry you feel that way, but that certainly wasn't our intention

DrPetra @ Tbh @janeGRAZIA unsure saying 'it wasn't our intention' to misrepresent research on African women's empowerment is good enough @hapsci

DrPetra @ Was it that writers didn't read this research http://bit.ly/r2gQPO or read it+ decided to misrepresent it?Both worrying @hapsci @janeGRAZIA

DrPetra @ A better approach=reflect on why folk upset with column+commit to reporting research more accurately AND entertainingly @hapsci @janeGRAZIA

JaneGRAZIA @DrPetra @hapsci It was a huge story in national press we were debating - not original research

JaneGRAZIA @ @marykmac @hapsci Hard not to react with frustration when accused of misogyny, and for that I apologise. We do take your comments on board

I wrote this blog post because I wanted to share this story with my friends away from Twitter and get their response about a magazine I know they read - what do you think?

UPDATE 12.10.11

Response from DrPetra

Thanks for writing this @hapsci. While Grazia's coverage wasn't the only problematic piece in this whole sorry media saga (which managed to completely twist a piece of research into suggesting the opposite of its actual findings), it is a good illustration of how the media relies on other press coverage rather than original research papers to inform stories. As such it's a great case study for teaching both journalism and science communication students/practitioners.

I may be wrong but it seems Grazia had not read the original research at all and probably had no idea about what it was really about. Again that's not unusual as often journalists misunderstand papers. In this case the research was freely available and easy to track down. The press release was also easily accessible. It would have taken a bit longer to find the original study and report it than it would have taken to simply do churnalism with existing press coverage, but that would have made for a lot more interesting piece. I'd be interested to hear from Grazia (and other journalists who covered this story) about why they did not do this? Or why they felt talking about the press coverage rather than the research itself was adequate?

Following the discussion on Twitter Grazia asked for people to get in touch. For the purposes of transparency here's the message I sent them:

"Following the discussions about the 'bossy women have less sex' here's a few resources that may be of use to you if you plan on taking this story further.

The original study (open access) is free to view here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2011.554918

and the press release that went with it here: http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2011/hindin_sexual_autonomy.html

As you can see neither of these go with the 'bossy woman' angle. In fact what the study set out to do was see how much autonomy women had within their lives and from that looked at sexual activity. They found that women who have more say over what happens elsewhere in their lives are less likely to be coerced into unwanted sexual behaviour. So rather than it being a case of 'bossy women having less sex', the study found that women who have control over their lives have more equal relationships. This is important as equality in relationships translates to more pleasurable sex for women and their partners. It's also very important given the context of this study was Sub Saharan Africa where there can be problems of gender equality and where coercive sex can be a problem. As talking about sex is often taboo, having a way to discuss relationships based on women's wider autonomy in the home could be a helpful means to uncover problems of coercion/violence but also be a way of looking at achieving gender equality and empowering women more widely.

When this research hit the headlines it got respun into 'bossy women have less sex' (summarised here by The Media Blog http://themediablog.typepad.com/the-media-blog/2011/09/daily-mail-issues-sex-warning-to-bossy-women.html). It's not clear why this happened, or where this angle originally came from. But if you compare this coverage to the original paper it's not just a case of getting the science a little bit wrong, it's an entire rewrite of the findings to basically advocate for the opposite position that the research is coming from. Resulting in reporting of this research that airbrushed out African women entirely while repackaging a study about women's agency into a stick to beat UK women with - for being both opinionated and withholding sex. A study that was looking at avoiding coercive sexual practices was transformed into coverage that implied saying when you don't (or do) want sex is a bad thing.

At the time of this reporting people were complaining about how badly the research had been covered, but it didn't stop it being picked up in other media outlets (including your own) in ways that rehearsed or added to the myth of the 'bossy women have less sex' account. Which is why there has been some vocal criticism about the coverage in Grazia.

I'm really glad you're taking time to reflect on this particular case and hope it can be something that could be used in future. Perhaps either as a timely warning that a research report in mainstream media always needs checking at source, or if you wanted to revisit the study to write up what was found (and perhaps interview the researchers who did the study), or to use the main outcomes from the study to discuss how women who have greater autonomy may enjoy more pleasurable sex lives - and how that might be achieved. UK women also can struggle in this area so it could become a sex positive piece about enjoying greater intimacy without rehearsing the usual misinformation about great sex being measured simply on how often you do it. I'd be happy to help out if you wanted to take this forward at all. And if you are writing about research in future and aren't sure about a study (or can't find an original paper) please do ask as if I can't help interpret it I'll usually know someone who can. Most academics working in this area want to help as much as we can to ensure interesting research hits the headlines in fun and empowering ways (that are also accurate)".

They've replied thanking me for my response and restating they were debating the coverage of the story as it appeared in the press, but they'd discuss it at their next meeting and as they're always looking for people to help with features would I be willing to provide quotes for future pieces. I've replied saying this is fine as I'm always happy to help journalists where I can.

In my experience with other cases like this journalists often seek to placate critics by seeming like they'll improve future pieces, but usually are just hoping the pesky scientists will go away and have no intention to alter practice. Time will tell if Grazia truly intends to sort out content and use original research to create fantastic coverage. I hope they do, and I'd be interested in hearing from them or any other journalist who could reflect on what happened here and how this could be moved forward positively.

Disclaimer: I wrote an advice column for Grazia for a while after launch and helped with content ideas for the early issues. More recently I've provided quotes for features.

Why get involved in 'Public Engagement' and 'Science Communication'?

2011-10-07T05:39:00.000-07:00

I was asked to talk to the new PhD students about some of the 'public engagement and science communication' activities that I am involved in and encourage them to take part.

I just got stuck. Why should students give their time to get involved with these activities on behalf of their university? Are they really going to help their career? I was told that if I was applying for a post doc, I should probably leave out of my application all the activities I do, as the potential employer may worry that I do not do spend enough time in the lab. (Just to stress... my PhD is my absolute priority, I make sure that I prioritise my PhD first and I never do an 'activity' instead of my PhD. I do them as well as, and mostly in my spare time).

So why do I do them?

Honestly, I started getting involved these 'activities' in an effort to meet people. I moved here from London after growing up in the North West of England and going to university in the North East of England. I knew very few people in the far North East of Scotland (/arctic circle), probably about 6 people. I am a sociable person, so I started getting involved with things and I got involved with science things, because I am rubbish at sport and those seemed the best option for me. I also enjoy new experiences and love a challenge. I struggle to say no.

I am a registered STEM ambassador and during the past 2 years I have blown up film canisters for 5 year olds and talked about my PhD project to a group of people that wanted to hear about it. Just because the opportunity was available.

I started up Au Science Magazine because I felt that the University of Aberdeen produces some really great science, and really great events, but students and people in city did not know about any of it. How can a story get on the BBC news website, yet students from the university know nothing about it? (I am not sure why I felt so strongly about this; it isn't my job to feel like this!)

I wanted to share with people just how exciting 'science' can be, because I find it exciting. I started by trying to get involved with the student newspaper, but that attempt failed somewhat, so I put forward an idea for the science magazine. It worked, and I met a great bunch of people through the magazine.

I started Aberdeen Skeptics in the Pub because it looked like fun...

As a PhD student you are supposed to give a certain number of hours to 'development activities' but make of that what you will. You could spend your time teaching, attending some of the skill development courses that the university runs, enter yourself into business competitions (like Biotechnology YES) or do nothing at all. These alternatives could all help develop communication skills, without needing to get involved in 'public engagement'. The time is your own.

The situation gets even more difficult as a post-doc. Jobs are hard to come by and research papers are a necessity for employment, if 'public engagement' is not specifically written into your employment terms -why waste any precious time outside of the lab?

Do academic researchers have a duty to communicate what they are doing? (I would say yes if they are publicly funded). But what if they are industry funded? Do they have a duty to share their work?

The university depends on people giving up time and being involved in these kinds of activities, but what real incentive is there for the students? Is the promise of 'experience' or as a C.V. enhancer enough?

I know there are a million and one reasons why the universities encourage people to take part in 'public engagement' just take a look at http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/why-does-it-matter/manifesto.

So why should students get involved in public engagement? Why did you get involved? Alternatively, why do you not get involved?

Get Ripped by Scoffing Chocolate

2011-09-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

The world press has gone ABSOLUTELY CRAZ-EE with this fabulous piece of news, 'SCIENTISTS' claim, 'eating chocolate may be as good for you as going to the gym', ' eating chocolate is as good as jogging', 'as good as exercise'.

OM-NOM-NOM - CHOCOLATE
Image: André Karwath aka Aka
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chocolate.jpg)

WOWZERS. As if we needed another excuse to skip a gym session and eat more chocolate. Unfortunately, none of the headlines above are true. Sorry. Here's why:

- The study was small and carried out on MICE. Not people.

- The mice were not given chocolate, they were given an extract, (–)-epicatechin (which is found in chocolate). There is nothing to say how much chocolate (and what types of chocolate) you would have to consume to get the benefits that were seen in mice. You might have to eat 5 bars of chocolate a day to get those levels of (–)-epicatechin, who knows. Chocolate contains lots of other things, namely fat and sugar (which is why we like it). They did not investigate chocolate vs exercise in this study, they investigated (-)-epicatechin.

- They only measured certain benefits of exercise, namely muscle performance. Exercise is known to have a whole host of other benefits, which were not assessed. The paper actually found that there were no differences in muscle mass between the groups.

It is impossible, incorrect and irresponsible to conclude that eating chocolate is as good for you as a gym session. The researchers did not conclude that either. The press did and/or the journal press department did.

The research is valid and interesting but it doesn't mean we can stop going to the gym. The news coverage of this story not only misrepresents the science, it is completely irresponsible. The U.K. (and other parts of the world) has a serious obesity problem. Reporting that chocolate, 'is as good as going to the gym' does not help the fight against the flab. It only encourages consumption of high fat food.

The research was published in the Journal of Physiology (paper available to read via this link). A peer reviewed scientific journal (therefore, 'good'). The NHS Choices website have already carried out a really good debunking of the news coverage, so I have just summarised why the news coverage is untrue - for a more in depth coverage of the paper vs the news, see here.

This 'story' has been covered by Marie Claire, The Mirror, The Scottish Daily Record, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail.. and around the world. EVERYWHERE. I am not including links to the stories. I don't want to encourage even more views on the web pages... If you are interested, just google 'exercise and chocolate' and please leave them a comment as to why they are incorrect... This is standard bad journalism.

I can't seem to find the source of this story, but I will try.

Who Can You Trust?

2011-09-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

HAPPY MEN ARE LESS ATTRACTIVE

It has been proven by leading scientists that happy men are less attractive. However, happy women are more attractive. Have I got your attention? Do you trust me? Do you trust the 'scientists'? Are you going to change your behaviour?

How can you tell what to believe out of what you read, see or hear? Have you believed in something and then lost your belief? Green men from outerspace? Ghosts? Crop circles? God? Have you ever bought a new shampoo/mascara/body spray/car thinking it would change your life/get you the person of your dreams? We are bombarded with information, ideas, views and adverts. It is impossible for us to look into all the information that is thrown at us. How can we question an expert on a complex issue when we are not experts ourselves? Do we just pick and choose what we like to make ourselves feel better and to suit the beliefs we have already?

Often when we are given information we are presented with snapshot of the story, sometimes with an added bias from the person giving the information. Take news articles as an example. News articles are short, punchy and usually have a big bold strapline. GRUMPY MEN = MORE ATTRACTIVE. Although these snapshot headlines certainly do a great job of attracting attention and selling newspapers and other stuff they can often confuse the issue in question. How often do you check a news website to get a snapshot of what is going on that day? How many stories do you read into in more detail? And how many do you discuss with others?

Headlines stick in the mind. A headline might tell you that more carrots may help prevent Alzheimers, next time you are in the supermarket, instead of buying your usual vegetable of choice (let's say peas) you might buy carrots. Companies and organisations know this, obviously and can cook up ‘news’, in the form of dubious scientific studies, equations and stunt events in order to get attention. The example I created is probably harmless enough to everyone other than pea farmers. What if the headline tells you that chocolate, wine or cheesecake contains miracle crystals of health? You might use that to justify buying an extra treat, even if you know you are at risk of diabeties… still harmless? What if the headline tells you that the MMR jab causes autism? Or that climate change doesn’t exists and was created by scientists. Harmless now?

People are aware of these tactics but real news and rigourous scientific investigations get mixed up with the rubbish. How can you pick out what has sound reasoning and what hasn't? The BBC recently had a change in policy, all news articles that mention a scientific study or research link back to the journal of publication, which makes it slightly easier for people to follow up on the story. However, a lot of research is not freely available. Beauty products do not provide the justification for the claims on bottles of shampoo. Everything is limited, the data is limited, which leaves everyone else in the hands of ‘experts’.

Time is limited too, how do you know when to be sceptical? Is it worth the effort? Do you believe that you can spot a marketing tactic from a mile off? I am pretty good at it (although it doesn't stop the sales tactic working on me). Do you disregard anything that sounds too good to be true?

I didn't make the grumpy men are less attractive headline up by the way, it's a classic example from The Daily Mail.

At risk of sounding like an advert...If you are interested in delving deeper into stories (and find yourself researching the information behind the headlines) you might be interested in attending a Skeptics in the Pub meeting.. if you don't already, more info can be found here ...

Meeting with Supervisor

2011-08-31T05:18:00.000-07:00

This is a 'graph' of the one hour meeting I have just had with my supervisor. Fairly typical. The big drop occurred after we had a little search on Pub Med. I am now exhausted and need a large lunch to keep me going.

If you want to know more about my supervisor, she is on the fabulous Naked Scientist podcast this week, talking about medicines from Cannabis.

Wine and Grapes Will NOT Prevent Sunburn

2011-08-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

I was really disappointed to see this article written in The Telegraph, ' 'Drinking Wine Could Help To Stop Sunburn' this week. A really glaringly obvious example of really bad science and bad churnalism.

The article states, 'Drinking wine or eating grapes could protect you from sunburn, according to a new study that found a chemical in the fruit can limit cell damage.' Alongside this very appealing picture of a glass of wine in the sun. Nice, well then, let's all go outside and have a glass of wine in the sunshine and feel good about ourselves. Sound too good to be true? It probably is.

The article refers to a study published in Agricultural and Food Chemistry (not free access). The study tested some grape extracts (polyphenolic fractions, not wine) on some skin cells in a dish. They then exposed the cells to some UVA and UVB rays. They found that some of the extracts reduced the numbers of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the treated vs untreated cells. The concentrations of the extracts the study uses are fairly high (5-20ug/ml). The research paper discusses potential topical applications for these extracts (putting these concentrated extracts on your skin) NOT benefits from eating grapes or drinking wine. Nowhere does the research paper state or allude to that drinking wine or eating grapes can help prevent sunburn, skin cancer or skin aging (which are other benefits of drinking wine/eating grapes that the Telegraph article mentions). I bet you all the wine I have in my fridge that the levels of extracts used in the study are not achievable by drinking your recommended daily wine allowance.

Onto the sunburn, I believe in my somewhat limited knowledge of sunburn (despite being a bit ginger and suffering from it a few times) that the vast majority of the 'burn' is caused by direct DNA damage by UVB rays. The study did not look at DNA damage/cell death, they only looked at some upstream cell signalling pathways and the amount of ROS. UVA rays, however, are thought to cause damage through activation of ROS, so this is a reasonable way of assessing the efficacy of certain compounds against UVA damage, but not UVB, which is what causes the 'burn' (someone correct me if I am wrong here). So the study wasn't even focused on compounds that prevent sunburn.

Continuing on the subject of sunburn, the study does not indicate what the level of UV radiation the cells are exposed to is comparable too. There is no measure to say that the UV rays the cells were exposed to are approximately equal to 1 hours sunbathing in a UV index of 8 or 36 hours in in the sun in the north of Scotland (or any other equivalent). To be fair to the study, it is designed to compare the efficacy of different types of compounds rather than prove a direct link to preventing skin damage (although that is eluded to). The problem here is with the Telegraph article directly concluding that drinking wine could help prevent sunburn as found by this particular study.

My next issue is with the study itself. As a pharmacology PhD student, the importance of a vehicle control is drummed deep into my soul. Whenever you use a compound/extract/anything you need to dilute it in something else to get the desired concentration, this is the 'vehicle'. Standard practice in an experiment, you need to run a vehicle control to ensure that the thing you are diluting in isn’t causing the effect you are seeing in the experiment. This research paper HAS NO VEHICLE CONTROL. They only compare the effects to untreated cells, which are different (as they haven't been treated with the vehicle). Bad science.

I am surprised this article didn't generate more groaning and criticism. It has certainly created a storm of spin off stories on various news stories around the world. It also has made a lot of people happier about sipping a few glasses of wine on holiday... I have also drank wine in the sun, I still suffered from sunburn (actually more so as it caused me forget to reapply suncream as frequently!!). In conclusion, WINE AND GRAPES WILL NOT STOP YOU FROM GETTING SUNBURNT.

I have access to the journal, so I have read the paper, if you would like any more info, just let me know. Had some sucesses with getting the story changed (see below) but unfortunately the story is now all over the internet...!

Read Magdeline Lum's take on the chemistry of this research here - http://philosophicallydisturbed.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/red-wine-sunscreen/

EDIT 3.8.11 The Huffington Post changed their story in response to mine and Magdelines blogposts, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/wine-sunburn_n_914955.html. Nice to know they are prepared to change a story.

EDIT 4.8.11 The Telegraph have now altered the story to reflect the study and removed the old story. Thanks to @TomChivers who helped get the story changed at The Telegraph.

Update:

My blog was featured in :

C&EN - http://www.cendigital.org/cendigital/20110815_sub?sub_id=SdyfGGSGvq41#pg50 August 15th http://pubs.acs.org/cen/newscripts/89/8933newscripts.html?featured=1

Fashonista - http://fashionista.com/2011/08/wine-and-caffeine-as-sunscreen-pour-us-a-big-glass/

the life of science

2011-07-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

I have been talking to friends and others about careers in science. This started me wondering about a science career. The vast majority of people I have spoken to have had to move for postdocs and jobs. Do you have to be a nomad for a few years before you can 'settle' (and even then you might be required to uproot yourself and move at the drop of a hat) to have a career in science? Is the only way to get a 'good' career to be prepared to go wherever the wind takes you? And how many other careers require that kind of flexibility? Is it unusual? To have a good career in anything do you need to be prepared do down tools and move on (but is it 'unusual' in other careers, whereas in science it is more the norm)? I am not talking about 6/8 months away at a time. I am talking years. If it is, this sounds like a perfect career for me. I love change. I thrive off it. I love meeting new people and seeing different places (no matter where it is). But can I do it?

I am in Indiana for 5 weeks visiting a lab to try something new as part of my PhD project. I find myself stuck, wide awake at 21.30 (in the USA) with a lot of thoughts but no one to talk to. The vast majority of people I know and speak to regularly.. are asleep. That leaves me with twitter, Facebook (where no one is responding), blogging and some paper. I wanted to do this, I wanted to experience life in another lab and try something new and learn from someone else. I am somewhat blessed that my supervisor is incredibly supportive and used her contacts to set this up. I am loving it. That said, moving somewhere new, on your own, is hard. It is lonely (despite being surrounded by incredibly friendly people). It isn't home. I am enjoying it, but it isn't a walk in the park (nor did I expect it to be). A few weeks is not a long period of time, not long enough to properly immerse yourself in another place and build friendships, but it is an insight into what life might be like if I moved.

When I head back to the U.K. I will be going into the final year of my PhD, so I need to think about and be able to answer the horrid question, 'what next?' I would like to stay in science. I would also like to stay with my boyfriend. He works in the oil industry. There lies another problem. How do we coordinate if I am required to spend 5 years here there and everywhere? His career also requires flexibility. How long can long distance survive? In the end are we ever going to end up in the same place? What is the point of perusing a particular career for a number of years, if in the end one person has to give it all up to start from scratch? One reason I did this PhD was because I wanted to move closer to him. It was a good move (for many a reason other than being closer to him!) but it wasn't an easy move (made easier by the great opportunity). I am not scared of moving, but it does prevent you from settling. I haven't lived in the same house/room for longer than 18 months since I was 18 (the PhD move being by far the longest 'settled' period). I don't long for home. I don't think I have ever experienced homesickness. How do you start to think about 'long term' if you have absolutely no idea where you are going to end up? Part of me likes this uncertainty but there is another part of me that doesn't.

I know no one can answer any of these questions and you have to do what is right for you at the time. Just thought I would stick my ramblings out there... I think it ultimately comes down to that horrid career vs 'life' decision lots of people have to make at some point!! Is this one of the reasons so many people leave a research career?

(I do not usually blog about myself and I do not usually read more 'personal' blogs. I am being extremely self indulgent here and this is a bit of a ramble about myself and what I am thinking at this moment in time!)

Science Communication Conference 2011

2011-06-02T02:49:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended the British Science Association, Science Communication Conference 2011. I was granted a bursary to attend, covering transport, accommodation and conference fees - which was nice, as without it I would not have been able to go! I was really looking forward to meeting people involved in science communication across the UK (& world) and some of the people I have spoken to through email & twitter. Creating networks when you are based so far away from the main source of the action can be difficult, social media does help enormously - but it still never beats meeting someone and having a conversation in person. The conference seemed the perfect opportunity to do this. So, off I went to London town with a bag full of Au magazines to share. I was really pleasantly surprised to find that quite a number of people had already come across the magazine and were interested in the project. That made conversation easy! As I was at the conference on my own I had no option but to speak to everyone I met (I'm not a fan of silence) and I met lots of wonderful, lovely people and shared lots of ideas and found a few ideas that I would like to 'borrow' ..

The point of the conference, besides networking, was to have the opportunity to learn about different aspects of science communication and listen to a few keynote speakers. I don't wish this post to sound negative, but what I took from these sessions was somewhat limited. I felt that there was plenty of opportunity to share ideas & ask questions openly throughout these sessions but there was very little guidance or talk about how to actually push through the ideas discussed and implement them. Although I enjoyed the keynote speakers talks I felt the talks in someways were disconnected to the realities of implementing 'outreach/engagement/communication' activities. The beauty of the conference is that people from all different sides of science communication were there and maybe that is why (as science communication is not a part of my full time job) I felt somewhat disconnected to some of these discussions.

I do not want to post about all the problems and disagreements I had. The whole nature of the conference was to encourage debate, discussion and provoke different viewpoints. However, I think there were two rather large things missing from the conference that really need to be addressed.

I felt there was a lot of emphasis and talk about the monetary cost of engagement/communication activities. There was no talk (apart from the times I pushed it) about the time cost that people give up to take part in engagement/communication activities. Following this, there was no talk about how the people that do have an official engagement/communication role as their main job could help people that volunteer their time and put a serious amount of effort in to organise engagement and communication activities. There was however, a consensus that all PhD students & post docs have a responsibility to take part in these activities and Universities should support that. Would it not have been worthwhile to have a specific session for 'volunteer' engagers/communicators to help them get a network of support (these networks are there) and give some guidance on what they can do to make their somewhat 'extra curricular' activities become part of their main job in some way? I know that the activities of my university rely heavily on people volunteering to help. How do you make Universities realise the worth (and give proper reward) to these people?

The second point is regarding outcome and 'next steps' (to put my business hat on). There is no point just having endless discussions without some guidance/help of how these steps will be implemented after the conference. Going back to the point above. Although everyone seemed to agree (to a point) that engagement/communication should become part of the role for scientists, there was no talk on how people could communicate that to universities and help supervisors implement it. What can a student, who has a story they want to tell, do if their supervisor views 'engagement'/'communication' as a waste of time? You might dismiss that point as 'well that supervisor is missing out/doesn't understand' but that still leaves the student in a tricky position. I made the point at the conference, no PhD or Post Doc is going to be denied a job in research because they haven't taken part in any science engagement activities (and in fact, some people view taking time out away from research as a disadvantage), but that is a whole other debate...

I do think the science communication network/field/movement (whatever you like to call it) could learn an awful lot from the 'business community'. Essentially what a lot of people are doing, is, selling science. We have a segmentation model of how people think about science, which is a fantastic tool to use to understand how to reach out to the different people in a group of people. All businesses that have a product to sell have a segmentation model and there are many different ways to use these models, learn from the model and develop it further. Seriously tapping into that world of knowledge may open a lot of peoples eyes. Although, whenever I mentioned the word 'business' to people, I mostly got a look of fear and worry....

Launching a Magazine

2011-05-11T07:46:00.000-07:00

Blogging has taken a back seat recently, whilst I along with a team of others at the University of Aberdeen launched a new science themed magazine.

I think I am in a very lucky position here at the University of Aberdeen. I mentioned this idea of a science magazine last September to the public engagement team and since then they have very kindly sent anything they came across (including people, interviews, events, stories) in my direction. I organised a meeting with 5 others that had mentioned creating a science magazine to the public engagement team. We met, clicked and then set on a mission to create the magazine. Without working as a team this would have been impossible.

We have written stories that we think are interesting, but the science is not over-hyped. We do not shout about the latest cure for cancer, but we discuss how compounds in the cannabis plant are being tested for their therapeutic potential. We do not say there is life on Mars but we do talk about how we are exploring the possibility that there is life in space. We also explore links between art and science, the life of a researcher and have a bit of fun with Helen Keen.

It has taken A LOT of work and we have had a few setbacks (mainly bank account related) but we have done it and we have launched our magazine. It will be available in communal areas of the University of Aberdeen but also across Aberdeen city in bookshops, coffee shops etc (including Waterstones and the Satrosphere).

You can find Au (get it?) here www.aumag.co.uk on twitter @ausciencemag and on facebook

We are really interested in what people think, so please fill out our survey (accessed by clicking on the picture of mars on the homepage).

Why I dislike the term Scientist

2011-03-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

What does the word 'scientist' mean? Really mean? Who can call themselves a ‘scientist’? Someone who studied a 'science' subject at degree level? But what if they became a HR manager and worked in a non 'sciency' company, are they still a scientist? Do you need to have a science PhD to be called a scientist? Or be actively doing science research? But what about all the people that work in science without 'sciency' qualifications? Are they still scientists?

Apparently the word scientist was coined by William Whewell in 1834 at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, to describe a group of people all studying different scientific disciplines (I have to admit, I haven't found any solid sources for this but you can read more about the term scientist here). The word scientist can be used by anyone. The description of someone as a scientist in my view is pretty meaningless; it tells you nothing about the person. I think there is a problem with overuse of the futile word 'scientist' and I do not feel that science reporting, 'engagement' or the image of science in general is helped by the term. This thought occurred to me whilst watching the BBC Horizon programme (Horizon: Science Under Attack). Part of the programme involved looking at climate change articles in different newspapers, the conclusion being that the articles presented an inconsistent story and lead to confusion. Some of this confusion comes directly from the topic, in an area that is still being researched there are bound to be inconsistencies and limitations to what is known, theories are new and still being disproved. However, many science stories have different 'expert scientists' or 'a group of scientists' (named only as 'scientists' and not by their proper job title) who have ‘discovered’, offered an opinion on or have written about the topic in question. Calling yourself a 'scientist' does not give you an expert view on every aspect of science and the majority of media offerings do not make the distinction between different types of scientists or researchers. This lack of distinction is where confusion lies. Unqualified individuals can comment on issues and be seen as an 'expert scientist' in the eyes of the press and public, if the research is questioned by another scientist there is no distinction made between the expertise of the two scientists and therein is the problem, who do you believe? The more sinister side of the story is that people who are not qualified in any way start offering advice to people (an extreme example being misleading use of the word ‘Dr’ by Gillian McKeith) and become recognised public figures, whilst the real experts are ignored. Take this ‘Chocolate healthier than fruit’ (research carried out by scientists) story as an example (it is an example of awful journalism too, the science was carried out at ‘Hershey Centre for Health and Nutrition’ which is clearly a conflict of interest). What it all basically comes down to is checking your sources.

There are other problems with the term 'scientist', such as the negative connotations it generates. For the majority of people the word scientist creates an image of a 'crazy mad scientist' and this has been proven through 'draw a scientist' experiments (if anyone has any other links to the results of any of these experiments please share it with me!). If you do not believe me, just do a quick Internet search for images of scientists. How much is the opinion of a crazy mad scientist who spends all day hiding in a lab really valued? I do not know - I imagine there has been some research into this, somewhere. The solution to this problem could be to drop the word scientist in the media all together and for people to insist that the proper job title of the person or group of people in question is used. I had a little tweet exchange with Mark Henderson (@markgfh) (Science Editor of The Times) and he said he tried to use proper titles but the title or explanation of the person had to be accessible/understandable to all readers. Personally, I think most terms are understood (biologist, pharmacologist, geologist, chemist, mathematician to name a few 'general' terms) by the public. If you really need to use the word scientist or scientists then I see no harm in specifying what kind of 'scientist' the 'scientist' in question is (i.e. cancer research scientist) or when describing a group of people, so a biologist, psychologist and a chemist there is no problem using the description as a 'group of scientists' as long as you specify who makes up the group.

Let me also add that I have no problem with use of the word science my only issue is with 'scientist'.

I would be interested to know what other people thought about this!

The Skeptic Guide

2011-01-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

I am compiling a list of interesting skeptic people/events/blogs to post on the Aberdeen Skeptics in The Pub Facebook site. I am giving a talk about other Skeptic groups, activism and the role of Skeptics in The Pub (if there is one) for our next event. A lot of the people that come to Aberdeen Skeptics in the Pub are not on Twitter and I wanted to give out a list of skeptics 'things'. This is what I have so far - please help me grow the list!

The Skeptic Guide:

www.skeptic.org.uk Home of The Skeptic (magazine), blog, skeptic news & events (lists all Skeptics in the Pubs in the UK and abroad)

Scotland:
There are Skeptic events in Dundee (http://dundee.skepticsinthepub.org/), Glasgow (http://glasgow.skepticsinthepub.org/) and Edinburgh (http://edinburgh.skepticsinthepub.org// also http://www.thetwentyfirstfloor.com/ for independent skeptical news and commentary in Scotland.

Aberdeen Skeptics in The Pub - Follow the Facebook page for events and news.

Twitter:

Twitter is a great way of sharing ideas and for up to the minute news. People often tweet from conferences and events, so if you can't make it you can always follow what is going on. There are plenty of active skeptics on twitter, which stimulates a lot of discussion!

Follow #sitp for general skeptic events/news/info

Follow me for tweets about Aberdeen Skeptics in the Pub (@hapsci)

Events:
QEDcon - Skeptic conference in Manchester in Feb (www.qedcon.org)

Aberdeen events:
Uncaged Monkeys : 8th May 2011 (Robin Ince, Professor Brian Cox, Dr Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh)

Word Festival: University of Aberdeen festival (May 2011) http://www.abdn.ac.uk/word/

Cafe Scientifique/Cafe Controversial/Cafe Med: Series of talks given by researchers and experts about all different areas of science. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/index.php

Some interesting blogs and things:

Eu:Sci - www.eusci.org. University of Edinburgh Science magazine, some really great stories and writing, all published online. Twitter @Eusci

www.badscience.net: Ben Goldacre's Blog (also has a message board forum) Twitter: @bengoldacre

Through the Looking Glass - http://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/ - A blog by Alice Bell a Senior Teaching Fellow: Science Communication at UCL (also does other science communication work). Twitter: @alicebell

The Lay Scientist - Martin Robbins writes for The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist Twitter: @mjrobbins

The Geek Manifesto - https://geekmanifesto.wordpress.com/ - Mark Henderson (Science editor at The Times) is writing a book about science and politics (the disconnect between the two and consequent policy failures) . It’s called The Geek Manifesto. He is looking for contributions and will be posting questions and thoughts via this blog. Twitter: @markgfh

The Welsh Boyo - http://thewelshboyo.wordpress.com/ - Updates from Rhys Morgan about skepticism and MMS #bleachgate. Twitter @Rhysmorgan (see also @superwooduo for Rhys podcast)

Gimpy's blog - http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/ 'inane witterings and badscience' from 'gimpy' sometimes a little controversial, but good. Twitter @gimpyblog

Cardiff SITP organisers blog at http://aliceingalaxyland.blogspot.com/ and http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.com/

Science, reason & critical thinking: http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @crispian_jago

Purely a figment of your imagination: http://noodlemaz.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @noodlemaz (also part of @superwooduo)

Science Punk : http://scienceblogs.com/sciencepunk Twitter: @sciencepunk

Dr Petra (likes to talk about SEX) : http://www.drpetra.co.uk/ Twitter: @DrPetraOther Twitterers worth a follow for science and skepticism @JDMoffatt, @xtaldave, @penguingalaxy, @endless_psych (The 21st Floor and Edinburgh Skeptics), @scottama (organiser of Dundee and Glasgow Skeptics), @janisbennion, @MrMMarsh (Merseyside skeptics), @scientistmags, @christheneck (birmingham skeptics), @harrison_peter and many, many more!

Lab Politics and Post-it Notes (Not quite I Lick My Cheese)

2011-01-11T04:39:00.000-08:00

In a shared house notes are often left to pass on information, claim ownership or discourage others from eating your food (see I Lick My Cheese, a brilliant book). In a communal lab, notes are also left to offer instructions as to how the lab should run, pass on info, claim ownership and discourage others from nicking your stuff. I use a communal tissue culture lab where most people use the lab for limited amounts of time (30mins or so) to culture their cells and then they go elsewhere to do their experiments. My experiments involve me spending longer periods of time in the tissue culture hood (HOURS). On my own. It is mind numbingly boring. So we introduced a radio. A lot of labs have radios, this is not unusual (the lab next door has a radio, usually on so loud that we can hear the bass thudding through the wall, 'the party lab'). I didn't think it was a big deal, everyone in the tissue culture lab is pretty friendly and says hello to each other. The protocols for radios in labs usually run so the radio is on, but if someone wants the radio off, they either turn it off or say 'I am turning the radio off'. No biggie. Everyone understands that not everyone wants the radio on.

The radio was in the lab for a couple of days, when, out of no-where, without any warning, THIS APPEARED.

Firstly, it was not MY CHOICE of music, it was the local radio station, which is RUBBISH admittedly but there is very limited radio reception with a £5 radio from the tissue culture lab. Secondly, NO ONE had mentioned that they found the radio too loud or wanted to turn it off. I had seen others using the radio when I was not in the lab. Thirdly, the note was anonymous which annoyed me greatly. Why leave an anonymous note? It makes it impossible to discuss the issue and reach a compromise agreement.

So, I posted a reply,

This note went up in the morning, by the afternoon it had vanished. No response. We continued to use the radio. Two weeks later, this happened...

Oh look, it is the radio. WITHOUT A POWER CORD. SOMEONE TOOK THE POWER CORD!!! We are a few months on now, there is still no sign of the power cord or the mystery note poster.... for a bunch of adults to behave in this way (there were no undergrad students around at the time) is absolutely ridiculous. I am pretty sure that this is not an isolated experience. Working in a lab can be like living with people at times (who forgot to do their washing up?!) Please share any stories you have that are along these lines! For further amusement I am posting these notes, which are also found in that same lab.

To the Enthusiastic Chloros user -

There really are NO PRIZES in this lab:

THERE IS EVEN A NOTE ON THE BIN (notice how it is being ignored)

'Complementary Therapies Help Boost Fertility' a truly awful article from the Daily Mail

2011-01-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

I haven't been rattled by a news story for quite a while. This afternoon I came across this little beauty from (yes you guessed it) The Daily Mail, written by Naomi Coleman.

'Complementary therapies help boost fertility' - The title seems innocuous enough. The article itself is AWFUL the content is absolute rubbish and the advice given is absolute rubbish.

The first line, "Scientific evidence shows that a range of alternative therapies from acupuncture and homeopathy to nutrition and hypnotherapy can help boost fertility." -Oh really, does the scientific evidence say that? Homeopathy you say? REALLY?

Queue quote from Zita West (Kate Winslet's midwife), complementary therapies can encourage conception by 'bringing the body back into balance'. I can understand that some therapies may reduce stress and aid relaxation and therefore could help someone get pregnant. Her website however, http://www.zitawest.com/ does support and sell various supplements (including omega 3 & 6 capsules), various 'fertility test kits' and also has a blog. Zita West's latest blog post is about how antioxidants improve sperm quality and how her vitamin supplement could help. No link to any scientific papers or where to find further information. I did a quick search myself, but I am at home and do not have access to journals and therefore don't want to pass any view from the few I could read in full. If anyone has more information about this area, please share! I am interested to know more and I will have a look when I am able to access scientific journals.

Back to the Daily Mail, the article goes on to 'their guide to homeopathy'. Homeopathic remedies are diluted stuff. Fair enough. 'Practitioners claim homeopathic remedies can help women with a variety of fertility problems from blocked tubes and endometriosis to polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).' Well the 'Practitioners' may claim that, but it is a load of rubbish. According to Dr Bob Lekridge (who is a real doctor and practiced as a GP) from Glasgow's homeopathic hospital, folliculinum may help kick start the reproductive system. RUBBISH. Folliculinum is made from Oestrone, a synthetic form of oestrogen (apparently, according to the homeopaths, the only link I could find on it). Oestrone (or E1) in my eyes is a perfectly naturally occurring oestrogen, secreted from adipose tissue (fat tissue) and the ovaries. It is the primary oestrogen in post-menopausal women, so it isn't synthetic. Regardless, the 'remedy' involves diluting it millions of times so it isn't going to do anything at all and there is no evidence to support that it does.

The next question from the Daily Mail, 'Is it effective?' Ooh, promising here, are they going to question the evidence?! No. 'There is a strong body of evidence to show that homeopathy aids fertility. A German clinical trial showed twice as many women taking daily doses of the herb agnus castus fell pregnant compared to those not taking the drug. In another German study more than half of women with fertility problems experienced improved ovulation or pregnancy after taking a homeopathic remedy.'

Oh, never mind, they are talking about something completely different to Folliculinum here. The herb agnus castus is NOT A HOMEOPATHIC REMEDY, it is not diluted, it is a HERB. So, about the 'other Germany study', which study? Which homeopathic remedy did they take? No information provided.

The rest of the article is about acupuncture, the evidence for acupuncture was all supported by more unnamed German studies (is the author German or something?!)

This article really is poor and provides poor information to people who are trying to have children. Unfortunately the Daily Mail website does not let you comment on the article, so I cannot share my views on their website.

People are praying on the fact that sometimes there is no medical solution to infertility and that budding parents will do anything they can (and go to many lengths) to boost their chances of getting pregnant in order to make money. Folliculinum is also being 'prescribed' along with many other homeopathic remedies to help women with problems going through the menopause and for other hormonal problems. Although Folliculinum doesn't appear to be harmful (if it is just a sugar pill), it is a waste of time and money. The Daily Mail through it's bad journalism isn't helping wannabe parents in their quest.

*picture pinched from -http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201005/how-the-pill-could-ruin-your-life

Legal Highs - a few thoughts

2010-11-25T07:01:00.000-08:00

Legal highs have been splashed all over the news recently, but what are they? Are they actually legal? Does that mean they are safe?

The expression ‘legal highs’ is not a new term, all it means is that the active compound in the drugs is not a controlled substance. Les Iverson, a retired pharmacology professor and chairman for the Government Advisory Council on the misuse of drugs recently presented a lecture titled, ‘Can we control legal highs?’ at the University of Aberdeen for the opening of the new Kosterlitz research centre. His definition for ‘Legal highs’ was, “[they are] defined as psychoactive substances obtained legally or by diversion from medical use [they], are not a new phenomenon. We are all aware of solvent misuse, nitrous oxide, party poppers and 'magic mushrooms'”.

The new wave of ‘Legal highs’ that have been plastered across the media over the past few months are mostly based on mimicking the effects of well known illegal drugs such as ecstasy. Some are herbal, which only means they are extracted from a plant, but many are drugs that have been synthesised in a laboratory (for example, K2 and spice, two cannabis alternatives which are purely synthetic). Because the compounds are different to the illegal drugs it makes the drug not illegal (although that does not mean the substances are legal).

There is a new system of a temporary 12 month ban on any new substance deemed as a ‘legal high’ but this seems to be a rather vague grey area (how do you define a ‘legal high’ ? What does a ‘ban’ mean?). Some drugs previously known as ‘legal highs’ are now definitely illegal, Mephadrone (also known as meow meow) was classified as a class B drug in April 2010 and Naphyrone (NRG-1) was classified as a class B drug in July 2010– along with some others.

As Les Iverson explained in his lecture, the problem with these types of substances is the speed at which they are becoming available. The majority of them are synthesised in a laboratory and no one can predict what effect these alien compounds will have in the body. Legal prescription drugs have to go through rigorous testing before they are deemed safe for use, this testing takes years and involves controlled human and animal trials. The drugs being sold as ‘legal highs’ have not been tested; they are created as alternate versions to illegal drugs. They are not legal drugs. Further, as with any substance that is not regulated, you do not know what you are getting. The government is busy consulting and trying to work out the best way to control and classify these compounds over the next year new advice and information is expected to become available.

I wrote this article for the student newspaper, I had a few other thoughts on Legal Highs that I wanted to discuss.

Reporting on ‘legal highs’ in the media hasn’t been incredibly helpful or clear. I know reporters have taken legal highs to report on their effects (if anyone has the link to any of these articles it would be appreciated!). I don’t see this kind of reporting being helpful, it brings up the argument ‘because they have taken it, reported on it and survived does that mean it is OK?’

People are clearly curious about ‘legal highs’ (whether this is as a result of the press coverage of them or not is another debate), the website FRANK reported in February 2010 that 1 out of 5 of all visits to its website were to look up information on legal highs (80,000 hits in one month). I expect that these people didn’t only look at the FRANK website, but checked on other drugs websites and Internet forums where (as you would expect) the advice ranges from the sublime to the obscene. The government has launched an awareness campaign aimed at students (although I haven’t seen any evidence of this on my campus – also do they know that it is students that are mostly using these substances? Or is that a presumption?) . The campaign to me (as a student, in their target group) looks shocking. Even the Daily Mail ran a story on how rubbish people think it is. A lack of informative educational tools, clear advice and position on ‘legal highs’ from the government doesn’t make it any easier for people to understand and make up their own mind about legal highs. I think communication on drugs has many problems. It does have many limitations too, how do you educate people without increasing the interest and popularity of the drugs? I expect fewer people may take and be aware of ‘legal highs’ if they hadn’t been so widely covered in mainstream media.

Les Iverson did get asked during the lecture, could the government legalise some of the drugs? His reply was based around the funding for research on the drugs to ensure that they were safe for use (they would need to be treated the same as prescription drugs). Would the tax payer be keen on funding trials with these drugs for recreational use? I think not. There is also the cost to society involved with people taking recreational drugs. I am not against legalising currently illegal drugs and actually my view drifts over to the side of legalising some recreational drugs, however, I do understand the huge barriers as to why this doesn’t really seem to be an option for the government at the moment.

Going back to ‘legal highs’, in order for the government to have any kind of control over the situation, I think better classification is needed to allow differentiation between substances that are legal but abused as recreational drugs, drugs that have been deemed illegal and unsafe and drugs that are unknown. Education needs to be improved about drugs (and correctly targeted), I think proper definitions so people know where they stand would aid this. There are a lot of grey areas and there are definitely no right and wrong answers in this debate.

Cooking -art or science?

2010-10-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

Firstly - a quick plug of my jobs.ac.uk website blog - a blog about life as a PhD student and some advice/tips and experiences which is now up and running.

I am sat here, watching Masterchef. Feeling very hungry. On Friday I am going to the BBC Good Food show in Glasgow and I am VERY excited. I LOVE food. I love eating, cooking and playing. I have often thought to myself that doing experiments is quite similar to cooking - sometimes following recipes and sometimes going off the wall - sometimes being successful (and sometimes not). Equipment can play a large part in the success of an experiment/cake (my oven does not distribute heat evenly and therefore I always create wonky cakes).

There is an awful lot of money spent on research into food - how to make food taste better, the science behind what we taste. Just recently there was a report on why plane food always tastes rubbish (apparently due to the high noise levels). Heston Blumenthal as made a good fortune from mixing 'science' and cooking to create things beyond the imagination that are out of this world (I dream of going to The Fat Duck). He often goes beyond what people can do in their own kitchens though. So what can science offer for the home cook? Anything?

I came across an American website which explores the science of cooking and answers simple questions such as why do you get a green ring between the yolk and the white of a boiled egg? It also gives ideas of how to use science in cooking and how to use cooking ingredients to demonstrate some science (you wouldn't believe the number of things you can do with eggs!). As far as I can see this is the only website like this and I think its fab. A great idea to help improve cooking skills, demonstrate some aspects of science in lay terms and also for creating an interest in science and cooking with kids.

I am also loving Channel 4's FOOD programme which goes back to basics with food and looks into what goes in pre-made food and how food gets to us. The only criticism from me is that it doesn't have much about the science of food..... but that's just my point of view.

Shuttle pilots, news and new stuff.

2010-09-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have had a busy few weeks and due to some new things my blog may change slightly...

I have been asked to become the 'real life PhD' blogger for http://www.jobs.ac.uk/ - so I will be posting regular career type information on that blog, I will post the proper URL for this when I get it. I have also set up a science journalism society at the university, we have had some sucess this week with two articles being published in The Gaudie (student newspaper). Small but a start!!

I wrote an article about a talk called 'Reaching for the stars' which was part of TechFest in Aberdeen . A great science communication event with loads of interesting talks and other funstuff. I spent some time at TechFest at 'car boot science' and it was great fun & extremely messy (lots of coke/mentos/vitamin tablets/rockets) !!

I thought I would share the article I wrote on my blog as unfortunately I do not think that the newspaper is online. I could have written lots more but unfortunately due to restrictions in the newspaper my peice had to be shortened (boo)!

So here it is -

REACHING FOR THE STARS

Techfest started with an ex NASA shuttle pilot, Duane Carey, giving an inspiring talk about his fascinating life as an air force commander, test pilot and astronaut.

His talk covered many of the interesting and exciting parts of being an astronaut, including showing a short film that was made in space by himself and a friend (including how to sleep, eat and go to the loo in space). What struck me the most though, were the images of space that he showed; some were of the earth, and some were taken by the Hubble telescope of the many thousands of galaxies which exist in the vast expanse of space. Space is mind-blowing; its sheer size is beyond what most of us can comprehend.

Duane believes that there is life in space. His view, everthe scientist, is that statistics suggest there is life in space. The huge numbers of galaxies are full of stars and planets, so it would be incredible for our planet to be the only one perfect for life. He also believes we should continue exploring in space, send people to Mars, (people could learn a lot by forming new colonies on another planet), as well as leaving the human race in a better position if anything happened to earth. For this, engineers, physicists, and biologists are needed - Duane recognises and praises greatly all the NASA experts on the ground; without them there would be no space exploration.

So how to become an astronaut? Duane tells the story of how anyone can achieve their dreams through persistence and hard work. Duane himself says that he isn’t anything special; he failed science at school, didn’t go to college straight away, but decided on what he wanted to do withhis life and went for it. So if you have a dream and think it is impossible, how do you get there? Some of Duane’s advice was: if you have a dream of something you want to achieve, plan how you are going to get there. You may have to go through years of doing things you do not enjoy, but remember why you are doing it. The easy option isn’t always the most rewarding. The final piece of advice is incredibly important – don’t give up. If someone tells you no, find out why, work harder and then try again. His story is one of genuine determination and hard work.

Duane retired from NASA; he and his wife promised each other that when their oldest daughter went to college they would travel the world on motorbikes. They are now spreading the word of science, technology and inspiration as they go. Life is about living; not just about work. Make sure that what you are doing in life makes you truly happy - create and stick to career AND personal dreams.

If you want to know more about Duane 'Digger' Carey his website is here - http://astronautbiker.com/index.html

The Great Science Communication Debate

2010-09-09T04:07:00.000-07:00

This blog post will be of no interest to people not actively involved in science communication. It is not accessible for people 'outside' of the science communication scene and for that reason I was reluctant to write it, it is also a rather grumpy post, but there were some things I just felt I had to get off my chest.

I stumbled upon what is known as 'Science Communication' through my interest and love of science & talking & writing. I love sharing ideas and thoughts and meeting new people so I have become actively involved in 'communicating science'. I have communicated to school children, fellow students & strangers. The people I have spoken to have been interested in what I have had to say. I started this blog because it seemed like a fun thing to do in between waiting for experiments to finish. I get annoyed with news articles that do not present data/facts & research correctly. I read BadScience and LOVED IT. I even joined Twitter (after refusing to for many years) after finding out that there is quite an active science community on there. I am based in Aberdeen, I moved up from London so I do not know that many people, I wanted to meet more science geeks up here I am (along with a science geek colleague) starting a Skeptics in The Pub meeting as a platform for people to meet. So this is my 'science communication' journey.

What I didn't realise until a few weeks ago is the massive debate that is going on about how to communicate science. I am including within this debate the skeptics (which are too militant), the bloggers (that blog but do little else), the journalists (which seem to debate endlessly on how things should be done), the academics who are a mixed bag... this is just the impression & some of the views that have been expressed by people since I 'joinined the scene'. The whole scene like many other scenes is quite elitist, mostly run and governed by a select few that interact with the media already. So why the constant put downs within the 'science communication' group of people that don't do enough or do things in a way that other people dislike? I thought the whole scene was based on a shared interest in science (or maybe I was being too naive there) and encouraging a wider interest in science? That was my purpose for getting involved.

From what I can see, it appears that the whole scene is being blurred. Take for example, 'science bloggers', they may not be blogging in order to communicate science to a wide non scientific audience. They may just want to share their thoughts and writing with a group of scientists or friends. It depends on the nature of their blog and that is the beauty of blogs - it is up to the individual what they write & who (if anyone) they target it at. The group shouldn't be lumped together as one.

The 'Skeptics' seem to like to raise awareness (but sometimes struggle to reach out of their own group) but from what I can see they are trying and are sometimes successful. I do not agree with instant dismissals of papers/information/formulas without first looking at the evidence, which I fear is where the skeptics sometimes let themselves down (and go against the whole nature of being a skeptic).

Then there are the science journos, the media bods. I have noticed a change in the way science has been reported over the past 12 months, a lot of science news is reported fully with pros and cons and less of the 'miracle' cure' hype. I know that things aren't perfect and that they never will be, but it is better/getting better. So here there seems to be some winnings! But should they preach to the scientists how they should share their data and ideas before publishing to get a news story out of it? No.

The phrase 'science communication' is massively overused and encompasses a whole range of people who are communicating for different reasons and purposes. A lot of this communication goes on 'underground' in blogs etc. Really the only people that actually communicate science to lay audiences are the few 'celebrity scientists' (maybe they will become like celebrity chefs), the journalists, the endless number of scientists that give up their time to do work in schools and science teachers.

I think the greatest challenge for all communicators (not just science, science isn't special and greater) is to be accessible to who you are trying to speak to. Not all communications should be targeted to a lay audience, nor should it all be targeted towards the science community, but depending on what you are trying to achieve you need to think about who you are trying to reach out to. I think a lot can be learned from other areas and communications experts. The science community in general has a disregard for anyone that doesn't come from a science background or isn't a scientist. I think science communication is failing here because the two groups (science & communications/PR) are so alienated from each other and more allegiances here would make communications more successful, to whoever you are trying to reach out to.

Suffering from Information Overload... BING.

2010-08-20T03:19:00.000-07:00

The Microsoft advert for it's Bing search engine has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks now. Do you like mustaches? As someone that fell head over heels in love with Apple products about a year ago I was slightly reluctant to go back and try something that Microsoft has created. The persistent marketing tells me that, Bing promises to make search results easier to read by being 'visually organised' - I am presuming that is a fancy term for 'uses pictures', but I wouldn't know, I haven't used the system yet. I generally use Google and Pubmed to search (along with a few other sciency search engines).

This morning I have been dealing with/suffering from information overload (apparently soon to become a medical term, 'information fatigue syndrome'). I am trying to figure out a puzzle in my PhD project and I am attempting to do this by going through the literature. It's tough going. A search produces 1000s of results and the information thrown back at you can vary from being relevant to being useless. Trawling through endless papers to try and decide a) if it makes sense b)if the paper is actually talking about what you want c) if it's credible and useful. I just did a quick google search just now about 'searching for scientific papers' helpfully it threw up this result from the New Scientist stating 'most scientific papers are probably wrong', they most certainly nearly all are out of date - see my last post on e-lab books for my thoughts on making scientific information available instantly.

So, is a simple search on Bing going to change my life? Will I find all the information from the search clearly laid out and will it be obvious which site/sites I need to visit? I am going to try Bing with a search for 'number of scientific publications per year'.... here goes..... HMM, disappointing. The results page looks similar to a google search... I won't go through what results I did get, let's just say I didn't get what I was hoping for, which was a nice graph showing the number of papers published yearly per journal/country/region. Maybe this information doesn't exist, but I am sure it does. I would try searching for images, but I can't seem to find this option on Bing. Maybe I am being simple, but I can't see why I should use this over Google. I did the same search on Google, for comparison purposes didn't find a graph there either, however I did find this, from http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=3263000957901

Showing that the number of publications per year is increasing (up until 1998). I presume that the same trend is going on (I will look further into this).

If the amount of information just keeps going up and up and up how on earth are we supposed to find out what we need and prevent duplicating work that someone has already done?! I really can't see what solutions there are to this, other than spending increased amount of time researching topics and trying to keep on top of what is going on in the world. For now, here are a few tips that might help:

1) Start big, if researching a new topic perform general searches with a couple of key words to get an overview of what is current/popular about the topic at that time. DO NOT STOP THERE THOUGH!

2) Learn how to use search engines properly, especially scientific ones, then you can use advance search options and narrow down the number of results you get and you get results that are more specific to your needs.

3) Learn to scan read scientific papers so you can quickly identify if the paper will be useful or not.

4) File properly, save files/links appropriately in a system you can use simply, this will save a lot of time and effort later when you suddenly think 'ah I read that somewhere, I think, now how did I find that... where will it be'

5) Make notes on things you have read and link to where you read it, this helps and can help you prevent doing dupicate information searches six months down the line

6) STAY UP TO DATE. Make sure you sign up for updates from pubmed etc and regularly (weekly) do searches on your topic so you are sure that the information you have is the most current.

By the way, I am dubious about 'information fatigue syndrome' as a medical term. All I know that trying to find information is increasingly becoming a pain in the bum due to the the fact that the amount of information we have is increasing. It makes the mind boggle.

Science - all about the new, in an old fashioned way.

2010-08-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

Scientists work on the unknown; they are at the forefront of knowledge. They know what is new in technology, engineering and medicine before anyone else. Ironically, the way scientists record their information is firmly stuck in the dark ages, they hand write stuff, with pen and paper. The record of the experiments they carry out is contained in handwritten lab books. Hardly anyone still works with paper and ink anymore, is this an example of where something that isn’t broken shouldn’t be fixed, or can technology help make life easier?

Filling out a lab book is annoying. Just writing one basic experiment can involve 2/3 pages of handwritten notes, 3 trips to the printer and a lot of cutting and sticking. As most experiments are repetitions of previous ones the methods are the same but the methods still need to be written out by hand in the lab book. For the majority of experiments results are revealed through a computer and the graphs created from results are also created by a computer. To record the results from the computer you have to print them out, cut and stick in your lab book. It's a laborious job. I sometimes feel a bit like a primary school student with all the cutting and sticking! It doesn’t help that the scissors I use are actually from a primary school!

Accurate recording of results, methods and thoughts is priceless. Lab books are actual legal documents, they can be called upon in court to help resolve patent disputes and plagiarism disputes. They are also invaluable in that they help you remember what you did 6 months ago! Sadly many lab books are not up to scratch, a lot of them are illegible and experimental methods are badly recorded. Making the process of recording experiments easier and simpler would save time and effort and potentially would make people record their work a little better. Some people do have extremely neat, fully completed clear lab books. I would say mine lies somewhere in between super neat and a big mess, it depends how busy I am and how much effort I can be bothered putting into it. Think about being at school and writing in exercise books, some peoples are super neat, others are a scrawling mess that only they can understand - this is what lab books are like.

These days nearly everything is done electronically, so why can’t science catch up with the times and use an electronic lab book to record lab experiments and information? Surely other people have thought of this before me, I know many people that grumble about having to update their lab book. Data could be recorded easily and simply in an e-lab book, results and images from experiments could be directly inputted from the system/software used for the experiment, saving time and effort. Methods could be copied and pasted and altered as required - typed text is always legible, it beats handwriting anyday - this could make the court cases easier! The e-lab book could be date controlled, every time a entry is inputted the lab book could automatically record the date. Any edits to the information could be recorded on the system, so the opportunity to fudge results is reduced and the e-lab books would be as fool proof as hand writing the results/ideas. Another major advantage is one to the wider world of science, E-lab books could be made available on the Internet - no waiting 6/12 months to publish a paper the newest data would be accessible to all, this could potentially speed up science and research and reduce repetition across labs. When a research paper is produced, it could link back to the e-lab books where the experiments were carried out so the original data is available. This would be another great step forward, interactive research papers would be more useful than the standard ones we have today and also far more exciting!

So why aren't we there already?
There are of course disadvantages to using e-recording.Technology can fail, I think nearly everyone that has completed a PhD in the last few years has gone through the drama of losing some results/PhD thesis through system failures. In these cases the paper copies of their results become extremely important. Until e-recording is absolutely fail safe then there is a huge risk here. Opportunities for altering results are potentially higher if everything is recorded electronically, however I think if someone is set out to fudge results they could do that through the paper recording method too. Having a date monitor on the e-lab book possibly could help prevent results being altered. Ultimately, until industry decides that what they want and need is e-lab books, it won't happen. I very much doubt that in this economic climate academia will lead the way, but you never know.

A change in the way people work is always difficult, people mostly dislike change, even scientists that are changing the way we look at the world through their discoveries are still creatures of habit. Some experiments are still recorded by hand, I know I have to count cell numbers by eye and hand - so I would need a way of transporting my computer to the microscope room (4 floors below me) in order to input the data. It’s not so easy to type when peering down a microscope; however, it is relatively easy to use a pen. I do own an iPhone, I could quite easily record my results where-ever I am through my e-lab book on my iPhone. Not everyone has a smart phone at the moment, which brings me on to the next barrier, cost. Technology is expensive; I imagine an e-lab book system would cost a lot more than rolling out paper lab books. I can understand why academia isn't pushing for this option. Other industries with a bit more money to play with could benefit from e-lab books, the pharmaceutical industry is regularly involved in patent disputes where lab books are brought up in court, accurate and clear e-recording of information could potentially make this process simpler and the time saved would make their scientists more productive.
Regardless of what I posted above, sometimes it’s quite nice to be reminded of what writing by hand is like, the opportunity to hand write doesn’t come very often. Writing by hand makes you think before you write, you cannot delete something in ink on paper. In this age where information and thoughts are batted around 2 a penny on the Internet as soon as they appear in someone’s brain, it can be quite nice to write something that you have thought about a lot before hand on paper, especially when it is random notes containing your thoughts, ideas and theories on a subject. I don't think you would get as many ridiculous and offensive tweets if people had to go to the trouble of handwriting them. Writing on a computer/iPhone does not give you the same feeling; it's like writing a letter, old fashioned, but nice.

Conflicts of Interest - What Journalists can Learn from Research

2010-08-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

There is a report today in the Guardian covering the 'news' that various PR groups are changing images of areas (such as the country Rwanda) by giving journalists huge freebies (such as holidays to Rwanda) and then getting them to write about it. Of course they are. PR companies are experts in changing the opinions of the general public on people/places/organisations - that is what they are paid to do. I do not have a problem with this, PR is a good thing, it can change lives and educate people on certain topics. The problem with this sponsored article writing is clear, only one view is being represented by the journalists involved as they are being 'paid' (through the freebies) to represent the people/place/organisation. This leads to an unbalanced article being reported - the journalist more than likely wouldn't have come to the same conclusions if they had been simply told by their boss to 'go and write a report on Rwanda'. Further, it leads to inaccuracies being reported, the reporters are reporting what they are told by the groups they are set up with by the PR company (the Guardian article nicely explains how inaccurate reports on corruption in Rwanda were reported).

The other side of the argument is that without the push from the PR company there wouldn't have been an article on Rwanda at all - so the PR group is raising awareness of the area, and if people are REALLY interested in Rwanda then can then go out and search about Rwanda themselves - however, people only do this if they are REALLY interested - a lot of people will take the article written by the respected journalist in the respected newspaper to be fact. The reader will not know that the report they read was sponsored by a PR company paid by the Rwandan President. The problem here is freedom of information and conflicts of interest.

All research papers have to declare any conflicts of interest, this is standard. Sometimes carrying out research with a conflict of interest is unavoidable and is not necessarily frowned upon. The most important point is the transparency of the report. Why can't this be introduced for journalists? Why isn't it in practice already? I see no barrier as why this shouldn't become standard on informative news articles. It would also help with science journalism, where 'research' is often presented to the public (e.g. a report on walnuts preventing cancer- see earlier blog) seems innocuous enough, however the research actually has a number of flaws and the research only got into the newspaper through a press release which was a result of the research being sponsored by the Californian Walnut Board. The original research paper would state that the research was sponsored by the Californian Walnut Board. No problems there, people need sponsors for research and anyone interested in the information could read the paper (with all the facts) see the flaws and see that the research was sponsored, they can then make up their own mind about the validity of the research. If you simply read the news article about the research, none of that information is presented (neither is a link to the original research, which also should happen in any science journalism). In order for people to make a balanced judgement on an article or piece of information they need to have the full background, reasoning and sources for the article. This is impossible if information is withheld, like in many cases of science research and PR sponsored holiday guides

So PR companies, you are doing a good job - keep promoting what ever you are asked to do! Journalists - make sure your reports are clear, informative and entertaining but also make sure you declare if you have been sponsored to do the work, i.e. in the introduction state that you were asked to visit Rwanda by xxxx OR have box at the bottom of the article that declares any possible conflicts of interest. I can't see why that would be a problem and also, it would probably make journalists investigate their facts a little better - and therefore give the public better, more informative articles. It's a simple change in the way things are done, that could make a huge amount of difference - and I expect credible journalists would not have any problem with it - much like any respected researcher.

Dance your PhD

2010-07-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

PhDs or any form of research can be incredibly frustrating. The nature of what you are doing means that things do not work out as planned and often take 10x as long (for no apparent reason). People that have not undertaken a lot of research may not understand this and may presume that it is down to bad planning of the person involved, sometimes it is, but more than often it is not. I can plan for Great Britain. Day plans, week plans, yearly plans - but I cannot plan for experiments spontaneously not working, or fire alarms interrupting experiments or other random events that seem to happen when an experiment is in mid flow (if aliens were to land they would do it in the middle of a very expensive, very important experiment). As you can probably tell I am going through one of these frustrating times - everything I am doing seems to be failing on me or has come to a complete standstill. HOWEVER, I am not going to moan about how rubbish a PhD is... as many people in the Internet forums seem to http://www.postgraduateforum.com/forum.aspx . I have chosen to do this, I do enjoy it ... and I WILL finish this in 3 years.

I have chosen another way to spend my morning ..... DANCE YOUR PhD! A craze from the country where nearly all crazy ideas come from (the US & A) ... Just search on YouTube for 'Dance Your PhD' and I guarantee you will no longer be annoyed or frustrated with your life/PhD, and a whole world of good feeling and laughter will come your way. It is the best idea I have seen in a very long time - no longer will people have to worry about explaining what exactly your PhD is on, or what you are doing with your life, everything can be made clear and simple via the medium of expressive dance and YouTube. As an added bonus you can actually win real money for your efforts. This is like Glee, but waaay geekier. Glee for scientists.....

This is my personal favourite, mostly because it involves some Daft Punk, ass wiggling and stripping:

More info about the 2010 competition can be found here - http://gonzolabs.org/dance/

Maybe the media could take this mainstream and report all science topics via expressive dance? It would probably make things clearer than they are today.

I will keep you posted, I am off to plan my dance :-)

Anyone here a Doctor? YES, ME! Oh no, not that kind of Doctor - Gillian McKeith (not PhD)

2010-07-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I gave in, I put aside my pride and joined Twitter. The only people that I thought might be interesting on Twitter are Ben Goldacre, Tim Minchin and Stephen Fry, so I added them and began to follow.......Oh how glad am I that I joined last week!!! Much to my delight (although probably not to my supervisors) I got to watch the unfolding of Ben Goldacre (actual Doctor) vs Gillian McKeith (not a medical doctor, dubious PhD). If you do not know what this debate is about - check out this link for a quick summary of what happened. People are covering this amazing spectacle all over the Internet as it unfolds (and I am sure there is more to come) so I am going to discuss - what does being a Doctor mean? Who is a Doctor? Can you trust people that call themselves Dr ... and what on earth is a PhD?!

Doctor type 1 - Medical Doctor, usually found in hospitals/GP surgeries looking a bit ropey due to overwork and stress. These people have studied Medicine at a university. Medical Schools in the UK are governed by the GMC, in the US they have a similar system through the AAMC. This is in order to ensure that all students with a degree in medicine are capable and educated to a certain standard. All of these courses are deemed to be 'equal' - therefore churning out equally able trainee doctors. More training then has to be carried out before medical graduates can practice as GPs, Surgeons, Consultants etc. Other countries have similar systems and to practice as a medical doctor in the UK you have to be approved by the GMC. These people are trained and well equipped to give advice on various health topics. Gillian McKeith is definitely not a medical doctor.

Doctor type 2 - PhD/Ph.D./D.Phil. Where PhD means - Doctor of Philosophy. These people are called Dr as recognition for their expertise in a certain field - usually where they have researched and studied a certain field or topic for a number of years. This is where it gets a bit complicated..

The requirements for a PhD differ from country to country but the main point is, wherever you study for a PhD you have to demonstrate that you have carried out novel, independent research. In the UK this is generally done by researching a topic for 3-5 years then summarising the work in a thesis - the PhD student is then examined on the thesis. The thesis exam or viva is carried out to to check that the thesis is PhD standard and to check that the student is worthy of being granted a PhD. Students are examined by an internal examiner (from their university - but not their supervisor) and an external examiner who is generally an expert on the PhD topic to be examined. Some countries require a presentation to a panel and a certain number of published papers before a PhD is granted. Basically, as I said above you have to demonstrate novel and independent research into a topic and prove to others that you have done this. PhD thesis are usually kept in the university library and are freely available for others to read. Some PhD thesis contain confidential information and therefore are not available (this can happen if the research is done on something patentable, such as a new drug) but thesis are only kept confidential in these instances for a certain period of time (e.g. 5 years).

The strength of the PhD is based on the thesis and the institution from which it was granted - much like how traditional degrees are judged. For example, a degree from Oxford = good. Degrees and PhDs can also be accredited from certain institutions e.g. a Geology degree can be accredited by the Geological Society ... this gives some some degrees more weight against others.

Gillian McKeith studied for her 'PhD' in Natural Health from a controversial unaccredited institution (not a medical school nor is it accredited by the American Naturopathic Medicine Association) in the USA. With somewhat excellent comedy timing it was revealed this week that this institution where McKeith 'studied' has now shut down - see link. Also her thesis is unavailable to read - but this book is supposedly a published version of her PhD. I haven't read it, but from what I have heard it would not be worthy of a PhD from any established UK institution. Ben Goldacre has covered this in much detail... and there we have it - twitter - '#gillianmckeithhasnophd'

Doctor No 3 - the Honorary Dr - this is when an educational institution gives someone they deem as doing a lot of work for a particular field (without studying at the university) an honorary degree/doctorate. These as far as I can see are handed out by universities as they wish and are not really seen as proper qualifications, but they are quite often an ego and publicity boost and people like to be recognised for doing good work. I believe Dr Ben Goldacre is receiving one soon from Loughborough...

SO the answer to my question is, you can trust some Doctors and calling yourself Dr after studying for a PhD is fine (anyone with a PhD definitely deserves recognition for their work, very few get much monetary recognition, so an ego boost is given instead). Misrepresenting your qualification (which is the accusation against McKeith) is not acceptable - although if you do not know how the system works then it is difficult to question what people are telling you. My Grandma does not understand the concept of a PhD - my parents barely understand what the point of it is, but they do know I will be called Dr .. in a few years. If you tell someone you are 'Dr so and so' and proceed to hand out advice about food and health - the majority of people will assume you are a medical doctor - someone like McKeith as a public figure who regularly gives out advice, should make it extremely clear what her qualifications are and what research she has done. A respected doctor of any description would happily do this - people rarely ask about PhD topics - let alone request to read their thesis, normally people would be flattered.

Women in Science

2010-07-05T03:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything for a few weeks as I have been running up and down the country living in a field and giving presentations to my PhD sponsor.

I did manage a visit to the hairdressers (I seem to think more at the hairdressers than anywhere else, maybe its the massaging chair) which made me think back to one of my earlier posts Women in Science and the media where I had a bit of a moan about how women in science are often ignored by various 'women of the year' award type efforts in womens magazines. I never did get a response from the editor of Red magazine ... Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see an article in one magazine (2 page spread in fact) about L'oreals women in science award with an article that featured two proper lady scientists. It's great that a brand like L'oreal is supporting schemes like this (it does add a hint of glamour to the world of science) and its also great that the magazines are giving it some space (although I suspect L'oreal may have had to pay for the privilege). Unfortunately I can't find the article online, so I am unable to link to it, but here is the link to the L'oreals women in science website.

I managed to read two magazines in my time in the chair and I was even more surprised to see a mentoring scheme in Marie Claire which offered the services of a female scientist! Julie Mcmanus a scientist at L'oreal (it seems L'oreal seem to be pushing the boat out a bit here on promoting females in science, yey for them!) is offering to mentor one person for 6 months. I think this is a fab idea, I have learnt that mentors can be invaluable in the advice they offer - no matter what job role you have (science or not) and I have also been told that they are incredibly useful at any stage in your career, many good managers still have mentors. Seeing a female scientist offering up her services in a womens magazine I think is incredible, I hope whoever she mentors makes full use of her! I also hope that it leads to more people getting involved with mentoring schemes!

Dejunk/declutter/simplify your life.... by buying more!

2010-06-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

Since the CREDIT CRUNCH, quite predictably there has been a big interest in thriftiness (or at least the media are presuming that people are interested in it). To live your life properly now you must have - Auntie Gok's capsule wardrobe (consisting of only 24 items - from the high street), a variety of craft skills so you can fashion homemade gifts/trinkets/sellable items and of course you must de-clutter and sell all the crap you have accumulated over the 'glory years' on E-bay.

I found this article in The Sun, at first glance it appeared quite helpful - 'How to beat a beauty cream habit'. It reveals that British women have 50 million skin products that they will never use. I don't know who they polled for this, but I imagine I have 10 million skin products personally lying around in my drawers, bathroom, kitchen and car (yes car). I do have half an excuse though, I did work for one of the worlds biggest personal product manufacturers in the world... so most of them were free, or 1p. Is that an excuse? I am not sure..

The beauty industry is HUGE, it makes big money. People are vain, they want to look and feel nice, so they will pay for it. Most moisturisers/face creams are quite similar, they are moisturisers and they do work - they moisturise! Which makes your skin look nice and feel nice (not dry and flaky). Some have SPF too, which is good, sun burnt/leathery skin is not a good look. However, many of them are extremely similar, just in different bottles, in different colours and with different additives - which largely do not very much other than allow the manufacturers to claim that the product contains 'wonderaminoacidantioxitantX'. Which makes people want to buy them. I think people really do get addicted to spending money on these products in the hope that their life will be transformed, I know sometimes I walk out of various shops having spent far more than I intended too!

Back to my point, the article. What you should do is throw out all of your creams/wonder potions and just keep a few which are useful and targeted to your skin type and ones that you aren't allergic to (a problem I personally have). Sounds reasonable so far - the obvious benefit is that it would give you plenty of extra drawer space for more wonder mascaras and foundations. The next obvious and predictable move from the article is to move to the advice of an 'expert', so they bring in the Dr, Dr Patrick Bowler (Dr's are good for advising, beauty editors are not). Dr Patrick Bowler now advises some lovely ladies on their skin and he recommends two or three products for them to use (I thought we were de-junking here?) he also recommends that you change brands because if you keep bombarding the skin with the same products the favourable response will stop. SO YOU NEED TO BUY MORE CREAM ?! - this isn't the usual advice that people give to addicts.

I know nothing about Dr Patrick Bowler, so I cannot critique him and his advice, all I can end this post with is a link to his website, which specialises in skin advice and sells skin creams, anti aging treatments and links to a cosmetic surgery clinic.... To be fair to him, he doesn't recommend any of his own products in The Sun article. He is however helping to convince people to buy more, rather than use and understand what they have, which unfortunately seems to be a running theme with the majority of beauty and 'thrifty' TV programmes and articles around at the moment.....

Science Story Tracking

2010-06-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

The Guardian newspaper is way ahead of the rest of the UK media when it comes to science reporting. They actually publish science articles written by real scientists who have a real understanding of what they are talking about. It's quite simple really. Newspapers wouldn't employ someone who isn't an expert in finance to fill out their Finance sections - so why do they feel that it is OK to get any Tom, Dick or Harry to cover a big science story? Newspapers like science stories (especially health related ones) because the resonate with a large majority of people - so why not spend just a little more time doing it properly? I am pretty sure I can speak for a lot of people when I say that everyone is sick to death of the 'Meat/Bananas/Talcum powder cause cancer' stories.

The latest idea from the Guardian is for a 'Story Tracker' . This week an article on Autism was published in Nature, the Guardian ran an article about the paper and now they have set up a way of tracking how the story is covered across the world - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jun/09/science-story-trackers#start-of-comments.

When a science news story appears in the media, I always try and track it back to where it came from - quite often there is no actual published data and the story comes from a press release (see my Walnuts and Prostate Cancer blog). This method of story tracking - along with Nature making the paper free for everyone to see allows transparency in the system. No research is perfect - ever. There are always limitations and people will always have different views on how good the research is - how it can be used and what benefits it may have in the future. The 'story tracker' allows people with a good knowledge of science to easily read all the articles published by the media of the paper and can also read the paper to make their own mind up. It also allows an interested person with maybe less of an understanding to easily read all of the information - from this they can form opinions, rather than being limited by reading one or two articles on the subject (which could be misinformed).

So, all in all a great idea. I have already emailed in 4 articles I found on US websites about the research. I hope this trial is a success and something like this becomes common place with science reporting!

Simon Singh (get a new hair do)

2010-05-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

I was very excited last Friday that I got the chance to listen to and meet Simon Singh at the Aberdeen Word Festival. If you don't know who he is - he's a physicist and writes a column for the Guardian. He has a bizarre haircut. He is an advocate of evidence based medicine and wrote the book, 'Trick or Treatment' (looking at the evidence for and against alternative medicine). He was sued for libel in 2008 by the British Chiropractic Association, you can read all about it on his wikipedia page and all over the Internet -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Singh and if you haven't heard about it then you probably haven't seen any news from the UK regularly for the past 2 years.

Anyway, it was a good discussion which focused on the libel case.After the talk, my boyfriend asked Simon Singh, if you make it easier and less costly to sue someone for libel, then surely then people will be suing each other more? But he made the clever point that other countries seem to survive quite well without incredibly stupid libel cases carrying on every second - plus everyone should have the right to sue for libel. One thing I didn't realise before the talk was the incredible cost of a libel case (running into millions) and even if you win your case you will not receive all your money back - which is a ridiculous situation. Making libel cases less costly, quicker and easier should help the situation an awful lot.

Even better news came this week that Lord Lester QC has filed a bill in Parliament to reform the libel laws. So that's something to look forward to and hopefully things are on there way to being sorted out. If you haven't signed the petition yet and this is the first you have heard of it - go and do it now http://www.libelreform.org/sign !

I really like Simon Singh - he was brave to stand up for something he believed in (on his own, without the support of The Guardian), if you ever get the chance to meet him/see him talk I would recommend it. I haven't read all of 'Trick or Treatment' yet so I will reserve judgement there! I don't mean to be nasty about the hair... but it really is quite bizarre!

Election Fever

2010-05-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Its the day before the election and to be completely honest I am REALLY excited. An election appeals for my geeky love of numbers and stats. I am loving reading the many articles and Internet tools devised to determine how much your vote would count, who you are most like and my favourite Facebook group ' We got Rage against the machine to number 1, we can get the Lib Dem's into office' !. My favourite election 'tool' by far is votemach, matching your views to the party policies. Simple!

The big topic is how each party is going to cut the budget deficit without harming the economy.. all parties will need to save money somehow whilst still making sure that the country doesn't come to a standstill. So what does that mean for science? Luckily politicians seem to take the view that science seems to be a hot area for investment (quite rightly). The Lib Dems, Labour and Conservative all pledge to continue investment in science - so that is good news.

I had a read of the three manifestos and there is just one thing that stood out for me. The Lib Dems are the only party in their manifesto to dedicate a whole section to science (The Conservatives do have a section on 'Making Britain the leading high tech exporter in Europe' but its not nearly as explanatory as the Lib Dems).

The Lib Dems promise funding in science (as do the other two) but they go further, pledging that they will use independent advice to create science policy and safeguard academic freedom, so that advisers are able to provide advice without fear of bullying or mistreatment. They also support open access academic publication, so everyone can see the results of state funded research. I think it says something about the Lib Dems that they make a point of drawing these out in their manifestos - where the opposing parties are staying relatively vague.

I think another difficulty when it comes to science and politics is that so few politicians understand important topics in science and so understandably feel somewhat uncomfortable discussing them aaaaaaaaaaaand swiftly moving on to another stat... 110 of 645 MPs have a BSc (about 17%) you may say the number is quite high, but that includes many social science graduates and arts degrees that carry a BSc. According to the article, the number of MPs with a background in science is likely to fall after this election. I do not think that Parliament should be run by scientists and I know that a lot of people think 'What's the point in science?'. But as key player in the UK economy and a growing field I think its only right to suggest that all political departments should have a scientific advisor on hand (you never know when a killer virus crisis could strike).

Anyway, enough about that, it all comes down to tomorrow night... I will be watching the numbers come in whilst flicking over to Channel 4's Come Dine With Me Election special which I am equally excited about!!

Women in science & the media

2010-04-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

On a rather long visit to the hairdressers (yes scientists do visit the hairdressers) I was handed a copy of Red magazine. Now I enjoy a glossy, trashy, gossip filled magazine as much as the next person but Red is a little different, it's a little more 'serious', it isn't based solely around fashion. Currently it is promoting 'Red's Hot Women' which is a competition promoting intelligent women that work hard and have showed great achievements in their field. The article was entitled 'the top 20 under 30' and all the women featured in the magazine are extremely talented and inspirational... I just have one problem, not one of them was a scientist.

Now this is just one example, I am sure there are scientists that were in the shortlist but didn't make it for whatever reason. I am also not saying that women scientists are better than anyone else. I just want to highlight the fact that the world of science and women scientists get practically ZERO mention in women's magazines.

I can speculate the reason for this, people that work on the magazines probably do not have an understanding of what goes on in the career of a scientist and lets face it, science doesn't equal glamour.

But I do believe they are missing out on something here... who better to debunk the latest beauty fad than a level headed scientist? 'Wonder cream claims 0 wrinkles in 30 minutes'. Someone who understands the basics of skin science, formulation and statistics could give a pretty well rounded view of the truth behind claims like these. I don't want to bring doom and gloom to the whole picture, I know these magazines are largely used for escapism and if buying that cream makes you feel good, then it make you feel good and I wouldn't want to deny anyone that pleasure! But if someone could give the truth behind what is being sold, it might enable people make their own minds up a little easier, rather than being clouded by opinions.

They also have many articles on various diseases that effect women and regular articles on breast cancer, in fact lots of them are linked to fundraising for charities that support research in these areas. So why do they never cover where the money goes? They never cover the path to drug discovery, the fact that it takes a bare minimum of 5 years to get any new treatment out and available for public use. I bet the majority of people don't know that the money that they provide goes to fund short contracts in research - meaning that the majority of scientists doing the work never have job security as their contracts only last for 3-18 months.

So, off topic I am going to give my own little dedication to women from science and the good that they have done.

Marie Curie (Named New Scientists Greatest Female Scientist of all Time)

Nobel Prize winner (x2!), Chemist and physicist - Created the theory of radioactivity, many people (men) refused to believe that it was the work of a woman. Through her direction, the first studies into using radiation to treat cancers were carried out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - The first British woman to gain a medical qualification in the UK (Elizabeth Blackwell was the first British woman to gain a medical qualification, but that was in the US)

She went on to build a medical school for women

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Garrett_Anderson

Sorry to overdo the wikipedia links a little bit.. but this is an excellent article about women in science throughout the centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science

Rosalind Franklin - The somewhat unsung hero

It was her data Watson and Crick reportedly used to formulate their hypothesis of DNA structure.

And there are many many more! Also, I never knew that Beatrix Potter was a mycologist!

Election Fever

2010-04-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty quiet on the scaremongering science news report front, probably because there is plenty of actual news with the announcement of the general election. I think it is a little early to pass judgement on what it would mean for science depending on which party gets into power (partly because I haven't had chance to have a good read through all of the 'promises' yet) so I will save that for another day.

I did however come across this little gem lurking on the Daily Mail website,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1265857/Dieting-exercise-NOT-help-lose-weight.html

Headline : Dieting without exercise 'will NOT help you lose weight'

Actual meaning: Reducing calorie intake in monkeys reduced their activity levels and thus resulted in no weight loss. SURPRISING? Not really.

My rough translation of what that means for humans, if you eat 3 cheeseburgers a week and run for the bus everyday but want to shift a few pounds, don't eat salad then take the car - keep running for that bus.

It's fairly simple really, if you take more calories in than you burn off then you will get fatter, take fewer calories in and burn more off you will get skinnier*.

I am not sure why so many people struggle with this extremely simple concept, maybe its because people want to justify eating that extra bit of cake.

*Of course there are some exeptions to the rule, people with thyroid problems for example.

The Press and Journal and the Ginger Gene

2010-04-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

Following on from last week, I contacted the newspaper that printed the walnut/prostate cancer story and I was pleased that I got a response quite quickly. The editor pointed me in the direction of this website which he assured me 'would answer my questions'.

http://www.webmd.boots.com/prostate-cancer/news/20100322/walnuts-may-help-fight-prostate-cancer

This report seems a fairly well rounded view of the research which was apparently presented (I still cannot find any details of the original research) pointing out that the research has yet to be subject to peer review. There are quite a few discrepences between the Boots article and the one reported in the newspaper, so I sent a polite reply back to the editor,

Dear SIR

Thank you very much for your reply and pointing me in the direction of the article on the Boots website.

The article on the Boots website makes it clear that this research has not yet been subject to peer review and also that the test was carried out in test animals. It does not indicate that the test results are directly related to humans.
On the subject of, ‘Prostate cancer growth was reduced by 30% in mice...Tumours in mice given the nut diet were half as big as those of animals not fed on walnuts’ the Boots article clearly states that ‘The walnut-fed mice developed prostate cancers that were about 50% smaller than the control mice. Those cancers also grew 30% slower’.
I appreciate that newspapers wish to report on breaking news stories/new findings but I suggest you exercise some caution in how you report this information. It is unfair to mislead people (especially those which may be suffering from prostate cancer) by incorrectly reporting on a scientific study. The headline used ‘Researchers hail walnuts as prostate cancer treatment’ is a fairly big over exaggeration of what the study actually showed.
I don’t wish to come across as a complete pain and I am all in support of encouraging people to eat healthier, however, as I work in the field of scientific research I regularly come across articles in the news that incorrectly interpret study results and so I feel it necessary to highlight the problems it causes.

Many thanks and regards,

Their reply,

Thank you for your further e-mail.

I will forward your comments onto the news agency which supplied the report. It may well be that further information they have elicited indicates the relevance of the findings to humans, or that the Boots report is only a partial record of findings disclosed to the conference at which the research was discussed.

I hope he did pass on my comments to this mystery news agency.

Anyway, moving on to this weeks excitement...

I have enjoyed following the evolution of an article written by a student in the EUSci (University of Edinburgh Science magazine) particularly as I am a lone ginger in my family. The original article is very entertaining however what is more entertaining is the way in which national newspapers picked up on the story and turned it into their own story. Here's a link to the website, http://www.eusci.org/ if you want to read it.

The Daily Mail reported that The 26-year-old came up with the theory, 'genetic mutation + bad weather = red heads'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256269/Emily-Pritchard-Scotlands-weather-ginger-hair-linked-says-genetics-student.html#ixzz0jwEUeDGa

The Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/genetics/article7053424.ece

and The Sun's expert reporters said, 'LOUSY weather is responsible for Scotland having so many red-heads, a study claims.' (which she clearly didn't)

Read more: http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2884336/Poor-Scottish-weather-is-why-the-nation-has-a-high-number-of-redheads.html#ixzz0jwFEdtDk

Just another example how newspapers and journalists can twist a science story into something it isn't. I know this is a fairly lighthearted ginger story (and everyone loves a ginger story) but this exactly how more serious health/science stories can be misinterpreted and come out of nothing. It shows how something fairly obscure in the world of science can become mainstream and blown into something bigger.

I have had a quiet week research wise as you can probably tell. Everything is at a standstill at the moment (waiting for kits for experiments/cells to grow) and I am not the most patient patient so it is driving me nuts!! I am just glad there has been a good ginger story and plenty of April Fools stories to keep me amused!!

Holiday & Badscience

2010-03-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

I took a much needed (due to the severe lack of sunshine in the far north of Scotland) holiday for a couple of weeks. It's amazing how good a few hours in the sunshine can make you feel!

I took 6 books with me, most of which were trashy rubbish. Two days before the holiday I bought a book called Badscience on impulse after drinking a few glasses of wine at lunchtime. Wine clearly improved my book choices, Badscience turned out to be the only decent book out of the 6. I really would recommend this book to EVERYONE especially if you work in media/PR/marketing. It really hammers home how science is misrepresented and 'dumbed down' in the media.

Here is my own short example,

I had a little look for the latest ‘revolutionary’ health story in the local newspaper. It didn’t take long to find an article entitied 'How walnuts may fight prostate cancer'.

I will just share with you this small snippet, taken from the article, ‘Prostate cancer growth was reduced by 30% in mice fed the human equivalent of two handfuls of walnuts every day for two months. Tumours in mice given the nut diet were half as big as those of animals not fed on walnuts. The US researchers believe the findings are directly relevant to humans.’Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1658509#ixzz0jIcnnlEH

I only did maths up to G.C.S.E but I am pretty sure that in no way does 30% = half. Also I am not sure how these findings relate directly to humans.

I wanted to investigate further. Despite me having access to many academic journals through the university intranet I could find no trace of a scientific paper related to this study, nor on study leader Paul Davis’ university website does it mention the study.

I am going to write a small note to the paper shortly.

I really want to make sure that in my career I can help change some of these problems with the way ‘science’ is reported. I have started the blog already (although I haven't said anything on this subject previously). Following the lead from Ben Goldacre, the Badsciences author, I will make sure I contact and explain my problems to the writers/sources of science stories I come across that mislead/confuse or incorrectly report findings.

Frustration

2010-02-15T06:18:00.000-08:00

I am suffering from my first bout of PhD frustration and I am pretty sure this will not be my last!!

My cell cultures have an infection, which means they go in the bin and I can no longer carry out any experiments on them. So I am stuck, I have to wait and grow some more...

I like things to move quickly, I like getting results, I like jumping from one thing to the next and being rushed off my feet!! If I don't have too much to do its likely that I won't get anything done... (bizzare logic, but how I work).

It seems that other students I have spoken to are rushed off their feet, their supervisors seem much more hands on than mine (mine never enters the lab). Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages but I think at the start of the PhD at least it would be really helpful to have someone in the lab - if you don't get told you are making mistakes you may never know and by the time you find out you may have wasted a lot of time!

I am lucky I have a post doc around to help me out...

Anyway, I am going to try and do something productive and write up a method (hopefully in the correct way, but we shall see!)

2010-02-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

So it's Friday! (Yey) and I am finishing the week on a high, I have my first big data set of results!

I have spent the past 3 hours creating many colourful graphs and I have no idea what the results mean yet... my brain is too frazzled to start thinking about it!

I went to a 'science communication' course this morning which was interesting, they set a challenge - describe your research in lay terms in less than 60seconds. It may seem simple but it is actually quite difficult when you are used to talking in acronyms and technical language! I have to say though, I was a lot better than others!! My thoughts were that you have to think what other people want to hear, you need to give them a reason to listen, how will your research impact them? Or impact something they can relate to? All research, no matter how narrow and in depth it seems can be brought back out to the bigger picture somehow, whether its to help save energy, help someone with disease or studying the universe! I might attempt to explain my research to my mum and dad now... because they don't have a clue what I am doing!

Anyway, it's Friday afternoon and it is time to go and start the weekend!

New Scientist

2010-02-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

This is my first experience at blogging, so to tell you a bit about myself.

I am a new scientist, I started a PhD in Medical Sciences about 4 months ago. I gave up a good job and moved 500 miles in the pursuit of love and freedom... (very sad but true and the translation of that statement is - I moved to be nearer my boyfriend and away from a job that was working me 10hrs a day and the odd weekend).

I currently spend a lot of time sat at my desk wondering what I should be doing and thinking up elaborate goals and experiments that I won't be able to do. If I am not doing that I am on facebook or planning a ridiculous holiday experience that I have neither the time or money available to go on.

I do spend some time in the lab, mostly getting lost!

I have seen online quite a few blogs about science/PhDs etc and it seems to me all people do is moan (my boyfriends theory is that people, "don't go on the internet to say nice stuff"). I am a pretty positive person and can stay happy throughout many a drama, so hopefully my blog will make people smile or maybe it will be a story of the slow decline of a happy person to one with no social skills, friends or ability to smile as 3 years as a PhD student has worn me down, let's see!

:-)