One of the most damaging things science communication can do is exaggerate the implications of a scientific paper, theory or discovery - it happens all the time and I find it infuriating. Sometimes this hype is so bad that it's almost funny. My favourite remains the 2013 'Scientists Finally Invent Real, Working Lightsabers' from the Guardian - I just love that 'finally', as if saying 'scientists what have you been doing all this time?', but the reality was a couple of photons had been made to briefly interact in a Bose Einstein condensate. Mostly, though, these headlines are cringe-making, scientific clickbait of the worst kind. Some of this comes from publications - I had to stop reading New Scientist because I got so fed up with their exaggerated headlines - some from university press offices, desperate to justify funding, and some from scientists themselves, because they are only human, and some enjoy being in the limelight. But all such hype damages trus...

Having read a considerable amount about the kind of AI chatbot that is genuinely a way to have a chat with an animated character, rather than typing text to ask for a recipe or whatever, I somewhat nervously took the plunge and summoned up Grok's Ani. I ought to give some context here first. In the early days of dial up computer networks when, of course, I was on CompuServe (as opposed to AOL - you have to have been there), I occasionally dipped a toe into chatrooms (technology- topics, I should emphasise, nothing dodgy). I found the experience terrifying. I think that without visual cues, I found the flow of messages from others overwhelming, and found it difficult to respond quickly as I would in a normal conversation. I needed time to think when communicating online, and I would often drop out of a conversation very quickly. Since then, having read about people becoming obsessed with these AI chatbots, I wondered why they didn't experience the same hesitation. I guess some n...

Having recently driven around 2,000 miles in France it was informative to experience a pricing structure that surely we should be following in the UK if we are serious about the move to electric vehicles. Petrol in France was typically significantly dearer than in the UK. On motorways it was often well over 2 euros per litre, and I never saw it less than about €1.65. The equivalent in pounds would be well over £1.80 and never below £1.45. Currently it is £1.32 at my local garage. By contrast, electric car charging was a bargain. Here in the UK you will rarely find a public charger at under 60p per kWh, and a high speed charger is likely to be around 89p - I've never looked on motorways, but I suspect they may be even higher. Note that to be cheaper than petrol, electricity needs to be under around 45p/kWh. The cheapest we found in France (Lidl) was 39c (34p) for a high speed charger and even on a motorway, where petrol was over €2 I found a high speed charger at under 50c (44p). Yo...