Since there have been calls for some variety (skulls not good enough for you eh?) and there have even been accusations of the FMO being “too easy” I have decided to unleash a tricky one for you this week.
Scale in cm
Simple questions, what is it and what’s it made of?
No poll this week, just leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I will give you a clue however – it’s supposed to be magical (even Harry Potter’s used one).
More clues to follow if they’re needed!
I must say that I’m impressed with this week’s response. Most of you correctly identified this skull:
It does indeed belong to a Continue reading
Since there was so much interest in last week’s mystery object, I’ve decided to stay with the same theme, but a different specimen.
Scale in cm
The mystery object I showed you on Friday was this:
Height to shoulder 15cm
The correct answer was in fact Continue reading
Cool natural history stuff from the museum – a different angle (an internal one) on something familiar… can you tell what it is?
Height to shoulder 12.5cm
You can put your thoughts in the comments section below Continue reading
More poorly labelled stuff I’ve found at work this week – do you know what this is and where it came from?
Dorsal view (total width ~5cm)
Ventral view (total width ~5cm)
I’ve decided to trial multiple choice answers for this one, so please vote on what you think it is! [N.B. don’t forget to hit the “vote” button after making your selection!] Continue reading
The mystery object I showed you on Friday was this:
Despite a range of inventive and highly plausible(?) proposed identifications, ranging from lunch to Mike Tyson’s ear, Lifelinking earns a plethora of kudos for the correct identification that this is Continue reading
For anyone who has not been in the sceptical blogosphere much, there has been a rising tide of support for science writer Simon Singh, who is currently being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). Their grounds for this action was an article published in the Guardian newspaper that highlighted the lack of evidence supporting some of the claims made by chiropractors. Rather than take the opportunity of a 500 word rebuttal of the article as offered by the Guardian, the BCA chose instead to personally sue Simon Singh.
The British legal system has an unusual take on libel laws that strongly favours the claimant by flipping the onus of proof onto the defendant (no innocence until proven guilty here) and by being prohibitively expensive (usually for the defendant). In the case of Simon Singh the judge in the case has fastened on the word “bogus” as having a very specific legal meaning entailing deliberate deception rather than simply being “not genuine” or “spurious” (for the ruling see the excellent Jack of Kent). This means that Simon has a long and expensive time ahead, first appealing this initial ruling and then (assuming his appeal will fail as most do) he will need to compile evidence to support an assertion that he never intended to make.
Many in the scientific and sceptical community are rallying around Simon to offer support where possible. We see the BCA’s action as being inappropriate because science is founded on rebuttal of claims by the provision of evidence, not on who has the best legal support. Science cannot progress without disagreement and libel laws are unnecessary when evidence should be used to rebut. The BCA’s actions undermine the scientific process and they significantly weaken the claims of chiropractic – after all, if they had evidence for efficacy, why would they go through the hassle of suing? The poor support for some of the claims made by chiropractors has been subsequently dragged into the light of the British Medical Journal by a variety of scientists (see DC’s improbable science), and a “quacklash” by members of the sceptical community (in particular by the efforts of Zeno and Andy at the Quackometer [and of course Simon Perry!]) has innundated the BCA with complaints against chiropractors who advertise poorly supported ‘treatments’ for non-spinal conditions.
Below is an edited version of the original article by Simon Singh, which I am reproducing in support of Simon and the Sense About Science campaign to keep libel laws out of scientific debate.
“Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh. Continue reading
I thought I’d write a piece on humanism because it seems to have a lot of confusion surrounding it. Some view it as a religion or cult, others see it as an organised anti-religious sect of militant atheists. The confusion arises because the term “humanist” can be used to describe a variety of philosophical approaches both contemporary and historical.
I am a Secular Humanist, which effectively means that I am an atheist with beliefs about the ability of people to improve their lives and the lives of others (including other species) by behaving in a rational and socially responsible way. Humanists subscribe to the ‘Golden Rule‘ (don’t do things to others that you wouldn’t like to have done to yourself) as a simple moral guideline and rather than relying on the supernatural as the source of moral principles, humanists rely on rational consideration and those human values that have arisen as part of the evolution of human social behaviour. In short, humanism is explicitly being good without god. Continue reading
The mystery object I showed you on Friday was this:
and I was looking for an identification of what it is and why does it look like that.
I’ve decided to share my world with others – at work I get to see some amazing stuff and often I have to work out what it is, because the label has gone missing. So here is the first of my Friday Mystery Objects!
So, what is it and why does it look like that?
Put you thoughts in the comments section below. Answer will follow on Monday in a seperate post.
Good luck!
In 2008 Melissa and I were living in London and planning to get married. We are both atheist and neither of us wanted a religious ceremony, but we did want to share the experience with our family and friends. We wanted to get married in Ireland (where Melissa is from), but the residency requirements for the marriage license made it impossible for us to do the legal bit there. In the end we decided to get a quick legal marriage in Lewisham registry office, witnessed by just our parents, followed by a celebratory wedding ceremony in Ireland some months later.
Freed from making the legal oaths part of our ceremony and not wanting to use a priest, Continue reading
Mary, my mother-in-law is seriously ill in hospital with a nasty case of pneumonia. There’s a substantial chance that she won’t make it. She just turned 51 and the last time I saw her, just a few weeks ago, she was the life and soul of the party.
My wife has flown back to Ireland and is sitting with her mum, who the medical staff are trying to stabilise enough to transport to the nearest hospital with a dialysis machine, because her kidneys have failed. Everyone is worried, scared, disorientated and utterly powerless. Continue reading
I work as a museum where we are constantly trying to improve our science communication to get scientific principles across in an accessible and concise yet accurate way. It is not easy.
Science is complicated – as is the world that science attempts to describe and interpret. This makes it difficult to package science in a sound-bite-sized chunk that the lay person can quickly grasp. We end up having to trim away much of the reasoning, context and alternative interpretations of what we try to report, leaving a core of information that comes across as authoritarian and dogmatic. This is the antithesis of the scientific method. Continue reading
It has only been in the last year or so that I have paid much attention to the comments sections at the bottom of online science articles. It strikes me that everyone feels the need to comment, regardless of whether they understood the article or not – in fact, those who have not understood it tend to be the ones who comment most vociferously. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this tends to include a substantial proportion of creationists. Every article that touches upon my fields of interest (biology and palaeontology) seems to be followed by an irritating and distracting cloud of creationist comments, akin to the swarms of biting flies that pester large mammals. Here’s an example. Continue reading
Having spent years studying the bones of animals long dead, I have been fortunate enough to see – on a daily basis – evidence of the relationship between humans and other animals. For me, our kinship with the rest of life on Earth is a vivid reality. Evolution is change and that change is the result of an ongoing struggle for life – where those that are best suited for the struggle are rewarded by the continuation of their lineage. This means that we are each an end link in an unbroken chain of life, stretching back over two billion years. For all that time, each one of our ancestors must have been amongst the best of their kind. In the words of Charles Darwin, “There is grandeur in this view of life”. Continue reading
The concept of ethics and morality being equated with a god is not unfamiliar and it actually ties in very well with some thoughts on the origin of gods, rather than the origin of ethics and morality. I consider gods to be just one of a number of cultural constructs used to reinforce behavioural guidelines and rules that are a requirement of any structured society. Continue reading
Science communication is something I consider to be important, because I consider science to be important.
Our understanding of reality may be shaped by many things, but to me there seems to be no justification in basing our understanding on something that is not observably and demonstrably real. Science provides a framework within which we can test ideas of reality against one another and, more importantly against real evidence, to find which ideas are the most robust.
I work at the Horniman Museum in South East London, where we are dedicated to providing the public with access to objects that provide evidence to inform their understanding of the world in which they live. Part of my role as a curator is to provide interpretation of what we can be learned from natural history objects.
I never really thought about my role in this light until Alom Shaha asked me to answer the question “Why is science important?”. My answer can be seen below (apologies for the low volume).
I should probably make it explicitly clear that this blog is personal and in no way represents the views and opinions of the Horniman Museum.
Zygoma 