Do sceptics rush in where angels fear to tread?

I'm currently reading the new edition of Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things which is an excellent book debunking pseudoscience and superstition, from the man who is probably our best known media sceptic.

However, at one point, Shermer does trip over his own assertions. (I point this out in the same spirit as that of Bill Bryson, using examples of bad English that he found in guides to English usage in his own guide.)

Shermer is careful to first explain the difference between the scientific method and the way most pseudoscience is reported. (He doesn't mention it, but I love Robert Park's encapsulation of this in Voodoo Science as 'data is not the plural of anecdote'.)

Shermer tells us that in science we should be scrupulous about presenting data that goes against our theories, rather than being selective with the observations. But then, only pages later, he indulges in a little selectivity himself. To illustrate the recent growth of science and technology, he tells us that transportation speed has undergone geometric growth. His list goes from stagecoach (1784) 10 miles per hour, through bicycle (1870) 17 mph, steam train (1880) 100 mph, airplane (1934) 400 mph, rocket (1960) 4000 mph, space shuttle (1985) 18000 mph to TAU deep space probe (2000) 225,000 mph. (I've skipped some entries, but this gives a feel for the sequence.)

There's more than one bit of naughtiness with the data here, I fear. The last entry isn't human transport, so really can't be counted as being from the same data set - you might as well put the speed of a bullet in there. If you drop that last entry we have a graph that flatlines 22 years ago.

But, more worryingly, there is also a discontinuity in the data. Up to airplane, they are all modes of transport available to normal people. From rocket onwards, they are specialist devices not available to the rest of us. If you keep the more consistent comparison of generally available transport, the graph is much more interesting. It goes a lot higher than 'airplane', because in the 1970s we got Concorde taking us to Mach 2 (over 1500 mph). But that was the last upward step. And since Concorde was withdrawn, the transport speed graph drops to less than half its previous value. It is currently in the high 500s. So that geometric progression isn't anywhere near so solid as Shermer's figures suggest. Say after me, Michael - 'We should be scrupulous about presenting data that goes against our theories'.

I don't point this out to knock Shermer, or the book, which is very good, just to point out the difficulties that come hand in hand with being a sceptic. (Or should I say skeptic, as the book uses US spelling. I just love reading the word 'skeptic' because to UK eyes it looks so seventeenth century, a bit like spelling optics or physics as opticks and physicks - I'm sure the reverse is true when US readers see some of our spellings.)

This post first appeared on my Nature Network blog - I'm bringing some of the old posts over to my new home, as the NN blog is liable to disappear soon.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Search This Blog