Brian Clegg's Blog, page 87

The New Tyson Fight

Neil deGrasse TysonOne of the interesting aftermaths of the Scottish Referendum debate was that I have seen a number of people saying 'A lesson to learn is don't trust the traditional media, get your information from social media.' I know where they were coming from, but there are two dangers here - one is that (even more than watching, say, Fox News) you won't get information you will get propaganda, and the other is that even when you aren't being told what you want to hear by your friends and political allies, a lot of internet sources are unreliable. The Tyson story I want to tell you illustrates this doubly.

The Tyson in question is not Mike, but science populariser and astronomer, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I was surprised the other day to hear that Tyson was being pilloried for making up quotes to support an argument. The argument in question is that a lot of people (including many in the media and our elected representatives) are extremely ignorant about science and so (I presume) aren't well equipped to make decisions about science teaching and science funding. This is an argument I strongly support - but clearly not by making up data.

There seem to be three quotes that have caused the furore. Tyson claims that:
George Bush made a speech after 9/11 distinguishing 'we from they' by saying 'Our God is the God who named the stars.' Yet lots of named stars have Arabic names - Bush made a silly argument, claimed Tyson.A congressman uttered the sentence 'I've changed my views 360 degrees on that issue.' Which showed basic ignorance of what 360 degrees is.A newspaper headline in New York City: 'Half the schools in the district are below average.' - Tyson claims 'we have to re-think the foundations of mathematics if this were false.'There is video evidence of Tyson's use of these quotes, so that much is pretty definitively true. But the furore is over whether any of these allegations are true, or Tyson just made up the quotes to suit his message.
Tyson's detractors claim the following:The Bush quote was not made after 9/11, but after the Columbia disaster and he actually said 'The same Creator who names the stars also knowns the names of the seven souls we mourn today.' This had nothing to do with Christians versus Muslims and was simple consoling rhetoric.There is no evidence of the 360 degree comment being made as quoted, though Representative Maxine Waters did say 'You have done a 360 degree turn' to someone.The information on schools below average in the headline, which no one can find, could well be false, so Tyson misunderstood statistics by claiming that you would have re-think the foundations of mathematics if it were false.Others have weighed in claiming that this is a anti-intellectual right wing campaign against Tyson, some even suggesting that it is because he is black.
What really applies? As far as the basic facts go, the detractors mostly have it right. The Bush quote was misapplied and misquoted. The 360 degree 'quote' was not word for word. And in principle the headline could be reasonable and can't be found in a New York City newspaper headline (online, at least). This last is the least obvious, but the reason the headline could be reasonable is that it is not true that exactly half a population will be below average, as Tyson seemed to imply. Take for instance a room full of ordinary people and Bill Gates. Look at the average net worth of the people in that room. Chances are everyone except Bill is below the average. The number that is in the middle of the grouping is not the average, it's the median.
So what have we established? Tyson's use of the Bush quote was a real, and unpleasant error in the way he misused it. The 360 degree quote was mis-worded, probably typed from memory - he should really have checked, but frankly it's close enough. And no one can find the 'below average' quote, but if it were true, we needed more information to criticize it, as it isn't stupid in its own right. It's still quite likely the newspaper was misreading the information (apart from anything else, the media often call a median an average because they think the readers don't understand 'median' - see my article on this happening over 'average house prices'.) So Tyson could have been making a worthwhile point, but it would have needed a lot more unpacking than he actually did to be sure.
To be honest, I don't like Tyson's approach to public speaking - it tends to the pompous and bombastic (perhaps this is just a US/UK style thing), belittling those who don't agree, which I don't think is a great way to make an argument, even if they are wrong. He made a clear mistake on the Bush quote and messed up with the the 'below average' business. So he ought to clean his act up, and admit this. But frankly these errors have nothing to do with a serious and important message. So by all means consider Tyson reprimanded - but don't confuse the message and the messenger. What he was saying about the media and the political class being dangerously ignorant of science is still true.

However, those who defend Tyson saying this is a fuss over nothing are also wrong. He is not a gutter press journalist, he's a scientist. And he knows perfectly well that two of the biggest failures for a scientist are to make up data, and to rely on anecdotal evidence. And he has clearly done at least one of these here. It was a serious error of judgement, hence the need to apologise.
The reason I said at the beginning that this is a double error of trusting unverified online sources is that firstly people have been coming out pro and anti Tyson based on reports that take one or the other extreme view on what happened, and secondly because I suspect the reason Tyson got the quotes wrong in the first place was that he too relied on a dubious internet source. We all slip this way occasionally. I certainly have. But it's a good reason for taking a step back from that 'get your information from social media' suggestion.
"Neil deGrasse Tyson August 3, 2014 (cropped)" by Mingle Media TV - https://www.flickr.com/photos/minglem.... Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

What to name your new university town

Once again, the UK has done brilliantly in the worldwide university league tables, with four universities out of the top six. But I was interested in another phenomenon, which I haven't seen reported in the press.

Let's imagine you are an up and coming country, building a new university, and you want to rename the town it is in to give the university instant prestige. What should you call it? Look again at that top six and something fascinating pops out. Look at where the universities are located:
Cambridge (Mass)Cambridge (UK)London (2=)Cambridge (Mass)OxfordLondon (5=)Spot anything? So I look forward to a lot of new towns called Cambridge springing up around the world.
Image from Hollywood Sign Generator

Sticky fun

I get sent a lot of press releases, most of which go in the electronic bin within 2 seconds. (In some ways I really miss the old days when I used to get paper press releases through the mail, some of which were really creative. Though there was a lot of fuss, as I recall, about one computing company that sent out a release with lots of tiny pieces of paper that flew all over the floor when you opened the envelope. But I digress.) Occasionally, however, I get one worthy of note.

This one was about cover stickers for Apple MacBooks (other laptops exist, but apparently they aren't worthy of stickers). Now, I ought to come out straight away in 'Ba, humbug!' mode, because I think stickers look absolutely terrible on laptops. It's fine if you're six, but if you are 16 or older, it's time you grew out of it. It just looks a mess. I don't mind a tasteful shell, but no stickers, okay?

However, if you insist on tarting up your beautiful and expensive hardware with paper or plastic tat, a 'virtual design studio' called DesignCrowd has run a contest to design 'useful stickers' and apparently Apple has officially endorsed them being used on MacBooks. So here are some of the best 'decals' (as our US cousins like to think of them), according to DesignCrowd and/or their PR agency:


Hmm... a multiplication table. Really useful if you lose the calculator app.


Ah yes, reminders of the Photoshop shortcuts. Mind you, even better if they had been printed back to front so you could read them in a mirror while you work because, guys, you can't see the back of the computer when you use it!
Periodically useful. Geddit? One teensy problem - about half the elements are missing.


Somehow, this appeals to me most. Perhaps it's the simplicity. And the thought of flinging a £1000 laptop around to use it as a ruler.


No, totally loses me, this one. Just weird.

Interesting, certainly... but surely there could be something more imaginative? How about, for instance, a sticker that makes it look like you are seeing through the lid. Or... no, stop me. I don't want any stickers, and that's the end of it.

Come on England, have some pride!

As the Scots go to the polls, I'd like to direct attention back home for a moment. The fact is, there have been some pretty unedifying scenes down here. We've seen political leaders and celebrities begging Scotland not to leave the union. I really don't understand why these people are so worked up. Perhaps they should put some effort into having pride in being English.

After all, in the grand scheme of things, England has a lot to be proud of - whether it's in cities and countryside, culture and heritage, literary fields, science or whatever. Take universities. It's interesting that the Guardian reported on Tuesday that 'Four British institutions ranked in top six of world's universities.' This is true - but it's also true that four English institutions ranked in top six of world's universities - because those four were Cambridge, Imperial College London, Oxford and University College London.

The fact is that England has around 90% of the population of the UK. For most of the world, England is the UK. Even if the entire union split up, England has the same population now as the entire UK had in 1961. By losing Scotland we're talking less than 10% change in population. Hardly makes us a tiny nation.

Of course there would be losses if Scotland went independent, but there would be plenty of gains too - including the chance for English people (and Welsh and Northern Irish too - I just happen to be English) to feel like they have more of a proper identity. This is not about nationalism. One thing I've learned from the interviews of Scots during the run up to the vote is how many said something to the effect of 'I'm not a nationalist - but I am proud to be a Scot.' For too long we've been scared that the only people who are proud to be English are right wing thugs. But it shouldn't be like that.

It's too late to change what has happened already - but politicians and celebrities, shame on you. Let's let Scotland make the best decision for itself, and start to think about ourselves with as much pride as they do.

What's in a cereal?

The other morning I was staring at the back of a cereal packet on the breakfast table, as you do, and read the contents list. Nothing extraordinary, until I started to look at the numbers involved and discovered the Nestlé seems to have something in common with the X-Factor. They believe that it's possible to give 110%.

In fact there are two significant oddities in that ingredients list. One is the matter of nuts. Because it says that the product (Honey Nut Shredded Wheat, if you must know) contains 10.5% nuts when in fact its only 0.3% - that's quite an error bar. This is because neither peanuts nor coconut are actually nuts. But we'll let them off, because there is probably some sort of convention that allows them to come under this heading. (It can't just because they have 'nut' in their name, as 'Honey Nut Shredded Wheat' has 'nut' in its name. So if that were the rule, the contents should read '100% nuts'.)

But the more interesting oddity is the maths. You might wonder what the problem is. With 84.1% wheat, 10.5% nuts and 2.8% honey, that still allows 2.6% for the other bits and pieces. But ingredients lists don't work like that. They have to be specified in order of weight - so there is more sugar than there is nuts, the list just doesn't mention how much sugar. With a minimum of 10.6% sugar, that makes a minimum contents of 108%.

We can get some idea of the quantity of sugar from the nutritional information. We are told that 100g of the product contains 15.9g of sugar - but we can't just take this number as the missing figure, as it will also include the sugar in the honey and molasses. So reasonably we can guess that the 'sugar' percentage is in the 10.6-12% range.

So what is going on? Thankfully, Nestlé has been helpful on the subject and told me this:

The basic maths does not add up and unfortunately this situation is replicated across many foods as they try to comply with QUID (Quantitative Ingredient Declaration) legislation. The complication comes from the requirement to list the amount of ingredients as they are added to the formula at each step. It is called the ‘mixing bowl’ rules. 

In a simple process, this works well and the ingredients add up to 100%. In a process with many steps, and where moisture is lost in intermediate drying and toasting stages, the maths becomes more complex and illogical, and 100% is hard to achieve.   Each product must be viewed in isolation, and its manufacturing method affects the final result as well as the ingredients used. 

We have to comply with 'The Food Labelling Regulations 1996' and its amendments.  There are two amendments which detail how we should declare the quantities of ingredients used, and the key requirement is in the second of these Amending Regulations, which states; 'Where the food has lost moisture as a result of treatment, the indication of quantity of the ingredient or category of ingredients used shall be expressed as a percentage which shall be determined by reference to the finished product”. 

 So there you have it. The percentages can't really be taken as sensible detailed information, just a broad brush guide. This doesn't of course, explain why peanuts and coconuts are nuts (no doubt another regulation), or why there is no percentage against sugar - but it does help us understand what is going on to allow Nestlé (and other food manufacturers) to give 110%.

Central heating and the change in watching position for Dr Who

In a Facebook discussion of the most recent episode of Dr Who (yes, that's the kind of exciting social life I have), Matt Brown expressed (mock?) surprise that people didn't push the sofas against walls in the old days - and suddenly one of the greatest mysteries of the universe clicked into place. It's all about hiding behind the sofa. (If you aren't from the UK, you may need assistance from the Wikipedia page on the subject.)

When I was little, I did, genuinely, watch Dr Who from behind the couch (we weren't posh enough to call it a sofa), so that it was possible to hide when it got really scary. And I was not alone. Most of the young nation used to do this. Yet it is a practice that has pretty much entirely died out. Why?

I had assumed it was because the yoof of today is far more cynical and exposed to horrors that make Dr Who look wimpish in the extreme. But there was no doubt that this Saturday's episode, Listen, was suitable behind-the-sofa material, especially the bit with the bedspread right behind them (you have to have been there). If you haven't seen the episode and have access to BBC iPlayer, I recommend it. And then Mr Brown made that simple remark.

Because the fact is, these days, many people do push their sofas against the walls, while back then they tended not to. There could be various reasons for this - fewer squarish living rooms now, and we have much bigger TVs, for instance. But my suspicion is that it could be central heating related. Like much of the UK, we didn't have central heating when Dr Who first aired. In our case not until 1966. Before then, on a winter evening, you didn't want your sofa miles away from the fire. So the seats tended to be more advanced into the room than they now would be.

Of course, this could be rubbish. But it's a theory. And even better, it's a Dr Who related nostalgic theory. What more could you ask?

The Room - review

Sorry, games again! But this is the last of the series.

After my recent dip into the nostalgia of game playing while reading the book on the makers of Doom, I just had to have a go at a game. There was a temptation to revisit the past and fire up a copy of the Seventh Guest or Doom itself (both available on Mac, though sadly my old favourite, the X-Wing series isn't so I would have make to do with Wing Commander III). And I may still do so, though as I pointed out in the piece on Netflix and games, I'm not sure I could make the time for serious playing time any more.

However, while perusing 'best of' lists to see what's recommended on the Mac at the moment, I noticed some 'best on iPad' games and was tempted to spend the enormous sum of 69p on a game called The Room - and I am so glad I did.

If you ever played something like Seventh Guest, this is a bit like the puzzles without all the wandering around. The Room limits you to a single table - but on that table is the most gorgeous, complex puzzle box you ever saw. And if you complete it and open the box - another, even more wonderful box emerges. One, for instance, turns into a gorgeous planetarium and orrery.

It's a bit murky, but this is a part of the level 2 (or is it 3?) puzzle box. The device on the front is a complex clock that you need to get going. Every flap, button, knob and locked door will eventually contribute something. For me, this is the ideal game for the Netflix generation. You can do it a bit at a time (although it is extremely more-ish, and the temptation is to just do one more clue). And there's no frustrating dying and going back to the start. You can do whatever you like in whatever order it presents itself and it will either not work or take you on a step.

It's hard to describe the puzzles without giving too much away, but they range from simple physical discoveries along the lines of 'if I turn that bit it will open a door in which I will find something', through the need to build a gear chain to get some machinery running to spotting an inscription on the back of a photograph that tells you in an obscure fashion how to position something you will discover later (and only be able to see through a special viewing glass). It is brilliant! And did I mention it was cheap? Even better, it's a couple of years old, so The Room 2 is waiting for when it's completed.

There is a hint system, but most of the time you can make progress without it. I'm so glad I read that book...

The Toffler scorecard part 2 - weathering heavy seas

A little while ago I took a step into Alvin Toffler's bestselling 1970 book Future Shock to see how its vision of the future has held up. Here's the second instalment.

Perhaps the biggest danger was always where science is involved, and in a chapter titled 'the scientific trajectory' we start off with a pair of unlikely projections.

The first concerns the oceans. As has often been observed, there are huge opportunities in the sea, particularly as we use up more and more land-based resources - and there is far more space than on the land - so it was common back then, and Toffler falls for it hook, line and sinker, to assume that we would see far more sea-based industry, and even underwater cities.

Toffler quotes Dr F. N. Spiess, heard of the Marine Physical Laboratory of the Scripps Institute as saying 'Within fifty years man will move onto and into the sea - occupying it and exploiting it as an integral part of his use of the planet for recreation, minerals, food, waste disposal, military and transportation operations, and, as populations grow, for actual living space.'

That 50 years is close - but very few of these predictions are. Yes, we make more use of underwater resources like oil and gas. But living on and in the sea is generally a very expensive and restrictive way of going about things, and there is no sign of it becoming commonplace. Toffler expected 'aqua-culture' to be as frequently used a term as agriculture by now. Maybe not.

I'm not quite sure why, but Toffler links his second dubious prediction to the first when he says 'The conquest of the oceans links up directly with the advance towards accurate weather prediction and, ultimately, climate control.' He quotes Dr Walter Orr Roberts, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as saying 'We foresee bringing the entire globe under continuous weather observation by the mid-1970s - and at reasonable cost. And we envision, from this, vastly improved forecasting of storms, freezes, droughts, smog episodes - with attendant opportunities to avert disaster.' What they didn't realize was that the seeds of the failure of this prediction were already sown.

While it's true that weather forecasting has got a lot better since 1970, so has the understanding that we are never going to be able to predict weather more than a few days into the future. Through the 1970s and 80s an increased understanding of the nature of chaotic systems would make it obvious that it doesn't matter how good Dr Roberts' worldwide weather observation is, the weather system is just too complex and too susceptible to small changes in initial conditions producing huge changes down the line. I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on Toffler as we still regularly see presented as 'fact' forecasts outside the 10 day window, where a guess based on typical weather for the time of year is more accurate that a forecast. But the confidence in the predictions on weather forecasting and climate control vastly misunderstood both the nature and scale of the problem.

Sorry Alvin - this one's a 100% fail.

Netflix killed the video (game) star

Thanks to reading Masters of Doom, I've been in a contemplative, and probably rather nostalgic mood about games over the last few days. I've stocked up on a couple of games as a direct result, but my suspicion is that I won't be playing them much. Certainly not as much as I once would have done. Why? There's a simple, one word answer. Netflix.

Here's the thing. There are broadly two types of gamer. The teen gamer who builds his/her life around game playing and the adult gamer who plays games when they've nothing better to do. I've primarily been the latter. Apart from anything else, computer games didn't exist when I was a teen. The first time I ever played one was running Adventure on the George III ICL system at Lancaster, but by then I was already 21.

Although at my gaming peak I could spend a a good few hours at a time playing (X-Wing and its offspring were particularly time-eating), as an adult, life has always had other attractions and games tended to be a way to fill in time when I had an evening to myself - a 'boy's night in', as it were. This was, in part, because the chances of their being anything captivating on the TV that night was pretty small. But these days, if I've an evening to myself, I can just delve into Netflix and consume great dollops of the binge-watch du jour. (For me, this happens to be Battlestar Galactica at the moment.)

Of course all those teens (literal teens or twenty-something plusses who are still channelling their inner teen) will still be obsessively playing. There is still a massive market for the big games, especially among those who appreciate the online multiplayer benefits. But for the less obsessive gamer, I really think that the ready availability of quality binge watches makes for strong competition. My suspicion is that it will make for more use of 'dip in, dip out' games like the excellent iPad game The Room (of which a review follows soon). But we shall see.

Boldly going

It's a nice coincidence that I recently wrote about Battlestar Galactica , because the whole business of being out there in space is the topic of my latest book which I'm pleased to say is now available. In Final Frontier we discover the massive challenges that face explorers, both human and robotic, to uncover the current and future technologies that could take us out into the galaxy and take a voyage of discovery where no one has gone before...but one day someone will. In 2003, General Wesley Clark set the US nation a challenge to produce the technology that would enable new pioneers to explore the galaxy.

That challenge is tough - the greatest humanity has ever faced. But taking on the final frontier does not have to be a fantasy. In a time of recession, escapism is always popular - and what greater escape from the everyday can there be than the chance of leaving Earth's bounds and exploring the universe? With a rich popular culture heritage in science fiction movies, books and TV shows, this is a subject that I just couldn't resist and, like geeks everywhere, find fascinating.

One of the joys of writing a book like this is you find out a lot more about a topic that has always intrigued you. It's not that I've always wanted to be an astronaut - I'm far too fond of home comforts and minimising personal risk for that - but as a real-life story you can get your heart behind, it's hard to resist. I'm old enough to have been allowed to stay up all night by my parents to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing - and it's one of the most powerful memories of my childhood. And at the same time, I've boldly gone in fiction with Dr Who, Star Trek, Star Wars and so many more works of fiction, particularly in book form.

So the emotional connection was there already. But two things have really stood out for me in pulling together Final Frontier. One is the need to go beyond the traditional nationalism at the heart of early space exploration. Future manned exploration of space would benefit hugely from being an international venture, and, as recent developments have demonstrated, a mix of private and public funding.

The second is to detach space travel from science. I have always heartily agreed with those who say that having manned space vessels is a terrible way to do science. It is vastly more expensive than using unmanned probes and unnecessarily puts human life at risk. It would help enormously if we totally separated the two reasons for venturing into space. Science needs great unmanned probes. But humanity needs people out there. I'd suggest that rather than fighting over a relatively small science budget, manned space travel should be lumped in with the defence budget, as it would transfer cash from the dark side to the positive side of the human spirit, and arguably it has the same goal of expanding the cause of human survival, though in a much less nationalistic fashion.

We shouldn't send people out into space to do science (although they are welcome to do some while there). Instead, such an adventure (in the literal sense) should be to fulfil the human spirit that makes us more than just animals that live to breed and die. And that's kind of important.

You can find out more about Final Frontier at its web page, or buy a copy at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Here's what the inestimable John Gribbin said about it:

An enjoyable romp across space and time, from Cyrano de Bergerac to future space-warp driven interstellar craft, via Verne, Wells and the possibility of colonising the solar system.