Brian Clegg's Blog, page 110

Very good advice from Goodreads

I tend not read reviews of my books on Goodreads or Amazon. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't appreciate people writing them - I do. But while I tend to make use of good reviews in the press, for instance quoting them on my website, all reading a Goodreads or Amazon review can do is slightly inflate my ego (if it's good) or make me feel really grumpy (if it's bad).

I was looking at the Goodreads widget, something you can put on your website to point people to Goodreads reviews of your books (which, as I said, I don't want to do, but hey I was curious) and I noticed the top review shown for my book A Brief History of Infinity was a 2 star one that started off pretty damned miserably.

I couldn't help but be sucked in and looked at the rest (which, true to form, made me feel grumpy). But I was then cheered up by some superb advice from Goodreads at the bottom, discouraging authors from responding to a bad review. They are so right. It is tempting, and I know some people who have succumbed and done it - and they all regretted it. I would certainly never do it. I once had a review removed from Amazon because it was a downright lie and irrelevant to the book it was supposedly reviewing - and Amazon took it down straight away. But even that probably wasn't worthwhile, as the same person then put up another negative review, this time also crying foul because his last one had been taken down.

It's fascinating because this is totally different to the advice of what to do if a customer complains about your service as a business. In that case it is best to respond (and generously at that), because if you recover the situation you win a strong supporter. But bear in mind the crucial difference. When customer service goes wrong we are talking about something that can be fixed. But when someone gives you a bad review we are simply dealing with someone whose doesn't like what you've written. You won't win them over by arguing - or by sending them a present. They still won't like your book. So grin and bear it. If you find that impossible to do, don't look at these reviews. Your blood pressure will thank you.

It is worth repeating Goodreads' wise words below:

Ok, you got a bad review. Deep breath. It happens to every author eventually. Keep in mind that one negative review will not impact your book’s sales. In fact, studies have shown that negative reviews can actually help book sales, as they legitimize the positive reviews on your book’s page. 

We really, really (really!) don’t think you should comment on this review, even to thank the reviewer. If you think this review is against our Review Guidelines, please flag it to bring it to our attention. Keep in mind that if this is a review of the book, even one including factual errors, we generally will not remove it 

For more on how to interact with readers, please see our Author Guidelines.
If you still feel you must leave a comment, click “Accept and Continue” below to proceed (but again, we don’t recommend it).

Valobox: seeing books differently?

History is littered with startup websites that intended to break the mould. A few did. Many more were themselves broken by the market. Because what seems a good idea in your garage doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense when it becomes available to the world.

I am honestly undecided about one such new website in the publishing field, Valobox. It is, they say, a new way of accessing ebooks. The idea is that you can take a look at an ebook online, read a chapter free and then either buy the whole book or individual chapters at a time. It is all done in the browser, so there are no apps and it works on anything that can run a browser.

It's a really fine balance when you put it up against something like Kindle. Using the Amazon ebook format gives you a free sample chapter, and is readable on pretty well any platform you can think of. Here's my quick pros and cons for Valobox:

PROS
It's simple and you can try before you buyIt has text searching, highlighting etc.Works anywhere without downloading an appUnique ability to buy selected chapters (could be useful in non-fiction and/or research)
CONSAlthough the formatting on web pages is good, it's not as flexible as an appYou have to have internet access - can't download and read offlinePage turning is quite slow as you have to wait for download (though a whole chapter comes as a single page)I really can't make up my mind what I think about Valobox. I suspect in the end, the convenience of using Kindle or iBooks, with their vast libraries and easy apps, will probably generally push me in their direction. And I do like to be able to read offline. But I will be disappointed if Valobox fails as it is a very neat concept. Why not give it a try?
To get a feel for it, here is the Valobox version of my book Roger Bacon. You can see exactly what is available for free and what you would pay for the rest, though if you join (it's free and you get $1 credited to your account) you can select another 10 pages to read for nothing.

The day a comet came to tea

I found myself yesterday at the Royal Institution in London. The poor old RI has struggled to find its place over the last few years. It's understandable. With my heart I love this old pile and all it's historical baggage. I mean, this was where Faraday went from being a bookbinder's apprentice to one of the greatest physicists ever. He, of course, began the wonderful Christmas lectures for children that inspired so many would-be scientists, including me.

With my head, though, it is ludicrous that an establishment like this should be positioned in such a ritzy bit of real estate, in what must be amongst the most expensive districts of London. Think how much more outreach the RI could do if it sold up and bought a more flexible and accessible site. And yet...
One of the best things the RI used to do is to have regular events where the author of a new popular science book would talk about the subject. It's where I got my first chance to speak there, when A Brief History of Infinity came out. These events seemed to win all round - the punters got an interesting talk (mine was sold out), and the RI got a subsidy as the publisher would contribute financially/arrange drinks for the audience afterwards in exchange for being able to sell copies of the book. These events were stopped by the previous administration, which was a real shame.

However the new RI seems more open to different kinds of events, and yesterday I spoke at the launch of a book (currently in the form of an iPad app) for young children called The Day A Comet Came To Tea . It was a fun event in one of the RI's smaller rooms, but I have to say it worked particularly well because of the atmosphere. So maybe the heart ought to win, maybe it is worth keeping that wonderful old building.

As for the comet book, it's a great example of how you can introduce a touch of science into even the youngest children's books. It is story book - it doesn't attempt to heavy handedly educate (which is always a disaster in fiction), but it does give a hook to then talk about some interesting science, always the most important thing in getting children started.

I know the RI is in financial difficulties, but I think if it could do more with publishers again - physical and digital - in the future it would help both make its programme more inspiring and to keep it going in a rapidly changing world.

Hating a word

The other day I was watching that ever popular soap opera Coronation Street (come on, I'm a Northerner. It's an old charter or something - I have to watch it or I will be expelled from the South). A couple of times in the episode, characters used a word that totally sets my teeth on edge. I hate it with a vengeance.

That word is 'scran', meaning food, but in a 'shovel it in, don't care what it is,' sense. Now you might think that my delicate sensibilities are being offended by this being a relatively new word, and slang to boot. But no, I might not like every neologism, but I coexist quite happily with most of them. I can even cope with LOL being used verbally, as one of my daughters sometimes does. And anyway, scran isn't new.

The OED has references for it being used for food going back to 1808, though interestingly then it was rubbishy food - to be precise 'broken victuals'. The oldest quote is worth repeating, as it is very fine:

Fine skran, a phrase used by young people when they meet with any thing, especially what is edible, which they consider as a valuable acquisition, S. 2. The offals or refuse of human food, thrown to dogs, Loth.

Later, it apparently entered nautical slang as a more general term for food. So, really, here is a word with a fine pedigree. But it simply winds me up to the extreme.

Answers on a postcard as to why. I really don't know.

Its the usage, stupid

A rather young me as BA's PCHQ Manager.
Shame about the hair.When I worked at British Airways, one of my main interests was user interface design and it has remained a passion for me ever since. If there's a 'first rule of user interfaces' it is not that we don't talk about user interfaces. Rather it is that the user interface should not get in the way of what you are trying to do. All too often it does, and I've had a good example of this recently.

I do my accounting use an excellent online package called Sage One . It is easy to use, makes doing my VAT returns and accounts a breeze and generally keeps me on top of my business finances. And being online, I can access it from any device, wherever I like. So far, so good. And up til now, when I logged in I went straight to my main account screen. Now, though, when I log in I get the screen below.

I then have to click on the Accounts button and I'm where I started before. It's just one extra screen, yet it is enough to be irritating. They have added in an extra feature where I can collaborate on my accounts with my accountant. This is fine, but I don't currently use it, and if I did, I would probably only do so once or twice a year. So they have made me go through an additional screen, almost always using exactly the same selection. I am inconvenienced maybe two or three times a day for something I will only use annually.

What they should have done is continued to go straight into the accounts screen and given an option, for instance in that menu at the top, to go to another module like Collaborate. (In fact I think this may even be what the 'Services' option does.) But instead, they have messed up their interface.

I have pointed this out to them and they are considering whether or not to make a change. I hope they see sense. After all, my user interface consulting is usually charged out at a considerable rate...

Will the real economics step forward?

Traditional economics is a fantasy. It is about as relevant to the real world as orcs, wizards and fire-breathing dragons. Which makes it a trifle worrying that politicians put such dependence on it.

The big problem with old-style economics is that it thought of human beings as perfect actors who always took the best possible action to maximise return. It is only ridiculously recently that some economists have realized that this is not a realistic picture and have launched the discipline of behavioural economics, which makes the rather more realistic assumption that people will make decisions based on all whole host of factors, not just maximizing return - and that they often get things wrong. Really, behavioural economics should be renamed 'economics' while what used to be called economics becomes 'fantasy economics', but I think economists are too embarrassed to do this (especially as they would have to rename a lot of their Nobel prizes 'fantasy Nobel prizes').

Most of the books on behavioural economics to date have been either textbooks or popular science books like Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational , but what businesses are crying out for is practical business books that help a company make use of behavioural economics - exactly what Enrico Trevisan sets out to do in The Irrational Consumer (noticing a trend in the titles here?). It is subtitled 'applying behavioural economics to your business strategy' just to underline this.

The result is a partial success. Trevisan does tell us lots of interesting things about behavioural economics within the context of business transactions. But this title doesn't work as a practical business book. There are three reasons for this. One is that it is written like a dull academic textbook. You often have to read a sentence two or three times to grasp what it is trying to say. Here's a sentence genuinely picked at random: 'Many critical aspects of this approach to the market and to the client are now widely known, such as the balance between dis-homogeneity and tractability of the various segments, the instability of these over time, their responsiveness to external deciding factors, the limited duration in time of the characteristics, and so on - these are some of the more evident methodological questions.' Still awake? I thought not.

It's a shame because when Trevisan is talking about real world examples he suddenly becomes lucid and readable, but unfortunately the majority of the book is written in that verbose, difficult to digest style.

The second problem is that there is no real attempt to make this a practical how-to book. He describes the impact of behavioural economics on, for instance, the decision a customer makes in choosing a product. But there is no practical guidance on what to do about this, how to use it to make your business better. So there is really no delivery on that subtitle - it doesn't give any guidance on business strategy.

Finally there is a questionable assumption. Trevisan tells us that this approach could be use either to help customers to make better decisions or to make use of the understanding of their economic processes in order to maximize profits from them. He decides rather arbitrarily that we should be doing the selfless thing and helping the customer to get it right for them, because this will lead to better long term relations. While in principle with some customers and some products this is true, it is a big assumption, and it certainly isn't aways the case. So I am afraid we really do need the missing chapter 'How to screw every last penny out of your customers using behavioural economics.'

Overall, then, you will learn a lot by reading this book, but sadly it will be considerably harder work than it should have been, and what you learn will not include direct, practical things to do.

You can see more at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Why scientists need philosophy

Trainee scientists in their natural habitatThere has been something of an argument raging in the science world. This may seem surprising when we often portray scientists as cold calculating types, but of course there is every bit as much backbiting and antagonism there as in any other competitive discipline. The dispute seems to be between those who think that science has flaws that should be widely understood, and those who think they should be swept under the carpet.

There seem to be three prime points of argument. What science does, whether one can dare to question Richard Dawkins (probably the most heinous of the three in some people's eyes) and whether it is acceptable to equate science with religion.

Before looking at these points in a little more detail, I think it's telling that those who seem to think science is beyond criticism are primarily biologists. I suspect this is because biology has only been a proper science for such a short time. Pre-Darwin, I think few could argue with Rutherford's telling jibe, largely aimed at biologists, that 'all science is either physics or stamp collecting.' For many biologists, science is a fervently believed truth. Physicists have had to live through the traumatic 20th century when most of our best-loved theories (think Newton's laws of motion, for instance) were shown to be wrong or at best inaccurate. For that reason, even though I love relativity as it stands, I accept that it may be necessary to replace it with something better if we are to get a working theory of quantum gravity. Biologists rarely have this perspective.

So, first let's take the biggie. What science does. It might seem obvious that scientists would understand this, but all the evidence is that many don't. When, for instance, Stephen Hawking pronounced there was no more need for philosophy, he was demonstrating his own ignorance of the nature of science, because we need philosophy of science to understand the role. And what is that? Scientists build models that predict outcomes that match what is observed in the world. Over time those models have got better - some, including the modified versions of evolution, are superb. But it is pure ignorance to say that science is about truth or about describing reality. All science can do, and it does it very well (and nothing else will ever do it as well), is produce models which are a good match to the observed outcomes of reality.

As shorthand, scientists tend to speak as if their theories are the truth. It's easily done. I've done it myself when speaking about the big bang, say, because it's too clumsy to do otherwise in a few words. But when writing a book about it, I am careful to emphasize that this is just our best theory at the moment based on the data we have at the moment. It isn't the only theory, it may easily be disproved by new data, but it is the best we have at the moment. And given that it is the best, why would you want to say anything else is 'true'? But equally you have to be aware of what you are doing if you say the big bang is what happened. Because there is no basis for doing that.

The second problem is over Richard Dawkins' approach. Dawkins is a great science writer. I love his science books. But he seems to have no understanding whatsoever of psychology, which means he was an extremely poor Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. Dawkins probably puts more people off science than any fundamentalist religious preacher. He has made so many insulting remarks about people who disagree with him that he inevitably puts people off science before they get a chance to look at the evidence. I am always reminded of a remark Dawkins is alleged to have made to someone before a TV programme about psi phenomena. 'Don't you want to look at the evidence?' he was asked. 'I'm not interested in evidence,' Dawkins is said to have replied.

Which neatly leads me on to the third point about whether science can be equated with religion. It is certainly true that when scientists assert that science is 'the truth' (and quite possibly 'the way and the light') or, like Dawkins, scientists say they are not interested in evidence, then science is opening itself up to the accusation of acting like a religion. And the kind of attack that all too often comes whenever anyone dares to suggest science is fallible just shows how much that 'must not be questioned' part is true.

I think a rational scientific (!) assessment of science must come up with the understanding that it has a lot in common with religion. It has one huge benefit over true religions, in that it has a mechanism for disproving things which (on a good day) it considers more important than the established body of writing, but there are certainly many similarities. After all, science is a belief system. It is by far the best belief system, but all of us, even working scientists, have to take 99.99% of science on trust. We have to believe what other people tell us, because we can't go and check whether or not what they say or write is true. If any biologist does not agree with this, I would ask them how they personally would check to see if the evidence supports the existence of the Higgs boson to the p levels advertised.

Operationally, science is not a religion, but there are many (again, more biologists than from any other discipline) who treat it with religious fervour and who take what might be considered a fundamentalist attitude. Like most religionists don't understand the nature of religion, so these scientific fundmentalists don't understand the nature of science.

What it is important to do is to accept that there are ways that science gets it wrong. It doesn't stop science being wonderful. It doesn't stop science being the only way to get a better understanding of how the world behaves. It doesn't stop science being essential both for expanding pure knowledge and in the way it feeds technology and medicine. But pointing out the flaws is not heresy, it is important for an understanding of science. Those who can't accept this are not being scientific about science. They are pretending things are not the way they are. And people who do that really don't deserve to call them selves scientists.

Image from Wikipedia

Feeling sorry for Farage

The Farage in questionI am not a natural supporter of Nigel Farage, head of the UK Independence Party. The Party's politics put my back up in a big way - it tends to be small minded and altogether too Daily Mailish. Farage himself comes across to me as rather creepy - not at all the 'jolly guy down the pub' image that he puts forward. But after a piece on Channel Four News last night, I feel I have to defend the man.

About the first 15 minutes of usually excellent C4N yesterday was dedicated to what I presume was an exclusive 'scoop' that while Farage was at school (the rather posh, definitely not 'man down the pub', Dulwich College) many of the teachers didn't like him, mostly because of his right wing leanings, and there was a concerted effort to try to prevent him being a prefect because of this. It was even alleged that during a residential trip, he and friends walked through a sleepy village singing 'Hitler Youth songs.'

I'm sorry, but this isn't fair. Firstly the songs business, put forward as the most extreme example. It just doesn't ring true. How many teenagers in the 1980s would know Hitler Youth songs? Farage makes the point that he wouldn't know them, and frankly I agree. And taking the situation as a whole, I think it's both unfair to throw someone's teenage political experimenting at them (how many Labour politicians dabbled with communism as a youth over the years?), and I also agree with Farage's suggestion that much of this was just rebelliousness/a wind up.

The reason I have some sympathy is that when I was a similar age, I was standing on a railway station platform (Levenshulme if you must know) with several other people from my school. It was one of those stations where a lot of fast trains pass through without stopping. At the suggestion of one of our group (not me), when we saw a train coming, we all lined up on the platform and did a Nazi salute to the passing train. Let's be clear here. This did not indicate anything whatsoever about our political leanings. The sole aim was to do something offensive, because that's what teenage boys in a group sometimes do when they egg each other on. We might equally have mooned at them, had we been more daring.

I'm not defending what we did. It was stupid and puerile. But that's the whole point. Young people sometimes do offensive things purely for the sake of it. Farage was at what seems to have been a school with quite a left-leaning attitude, and to take the kind of stance he did would have been a natural act of rebellion. It doesn't indicate anything either way. And it's certainly not worthy of 1/4 of a major news programme.

Image from Wikipedia

The power of Free

I'm currently reading the book The Irrational Consumer for review here in this very blog (I expect the review to appear in a few days). The rather attractive idea is that this is a business book that makes use of our irrational approach to economics to improve customer relations. (The author specifically declines the alternative approach, which is to make use of our irrational approach to economics to rip 
off our customers. What a nice chap.)

Something I'd come across before, but still has such a dramatic impact that it is worth repeating here is the power of free. Don't worry if you aren't in the business of selling things to people - it is still fascinating, if only as a way to think about your own rationality, or lack of it, when faced with economic decisions.

The example given is an experiment undertaken by Ariely in 2008 where a series of participants were offered a choice between a quality praline at 15 cents and a mass produced chocolate at 1 cent. I personally think this is a slightly risky experiment because chocolate is such a personal taste. I, for instance would rather have a piece of cheap Cadbury chocolate than anything the Lindt 'chocolatiers' can whip up in their workshops. However, let's ignore that foible.

When the experiment was done 73 percent went for the fancy chocolate and just 27 percent went for the cheap and cheerful option. But then the experiment was repeated, with the praline at 14 cents and the mass produced chocolate free. Now just 31 percent went for the praline and 69 percent for the less sophisticated product. Yet the price differential between the two was exactly the same. The majority were prepared to pay 14 cents more for the quality product as long as the cheap one cost just 1 cent, but make the cheapo option free and there was a scramble to lay their hands on it.

The fact is, people are suckers for 'free' and we should never forget this. However it is an approach that has to be tempered with some concerns. If you offer something for free, then start to make a large charge for it, people are less inclined to take it up than if the new charge is relatively small, or if the same large charge follows a fairly sizeable introductory price. We easily get into the mindset of something being free and then resist paying the more sizeable prices. This is probably an argument for not making books free, but rather selling them at a low price (e.g. 99p) for a brief introductory period, even though you miss out on the attraction of free.

Perhaps the best thing, if possible, is to keep the basic item free but have a premium version (the so called freemium model), so you don't get that unfortunate comparison of 'this was free for the first year but now I'm paying through the nose'.

This online shopping surely won't catch on

The BBC has recently put out a nice little video about the birth of online shopping:

I still remember the early days of Amazon, when a lot of people cast doubt on its ability to become profitable. After all, it was argued, we like to get our hands on goods, to look at them and touch them, before we buy. How said people must be feeling silly now.

It's not that we have turned our backs in visiting physical shops. You only have to head down to Swindon's designer outlet centre at the weekend to realize this isn't the case. But for those at work, most shops simply don't operate in the hours when they want to go shopping. If you've a 9 to 5 job, then you can shop before 9 or after 5. So when do shops open? Often 9 to 5.30. Clever thinking, guys. Is it too much of a surprise then that people turn to online retailers, where they can shop where and when they like?

Convenience has to be a major part of the argument. In our last house, where the nearest supermarket was 20 minutes drive away, we almost always had our groceries delivered. Now I've a massive 24 hour superstore 5 minutes walk away we are much more likely to just pop over and get what we need when we need it. Town centres hardly help with this by charging for car parking, so not only have we to take time to get there, we have to pay to park. Is it surprising that customers head for out of town or online shopping?

Online stores have a big disadvantage because you can't see the goods before you buy them - but they make up for this with their convenience of access and by trying to provide superb customer service. If bricks and mortar shops want to keep going they should build on the advantage of presence by seeing how they can improve their access and get much better at how they treat their customers. That way, they could still give the Amazons of this world a run for their money.