No bad science – just a small bit of family history.

Dr Aust, like many folk of a slightly pessimistic disposition, has to remind himself periodically that he is actually pretty lucky.

One of Dr Aust’s pieces of luck has been to live in an era where major wars have been absent, and compulsory military service ditto.

Dr Aust’s forebears were not so lucky. Or perhaps they were lucky in different ways, since both Dr Aust’s grandparents survived military service and war, one in the Great War and the other in World War Two.

Dr Aust never met his paternal grandfather, who died a few years before Dr Aust was born, and who many years earlier in 1917 had fought at Passchendaele (the Third Battle of Ypres).  All that Dr Aust knows of his paternal grandad comes from Dr Aust’s father – himself later a national service conscript officer, though spared war service by the luck of being in a branch of the army (the engineers) who were not much in demand for the Korean War.

According to Dr Aust’s dad, the old man attributed his surviving WW1 to two things: first, being a decent shot with a Lewis gun (which meant that as a gunner he was always a fair few yards back from the advancing front line of his infantry platoon); and second, Bartonella quintana, (better known as trench fever), which got him “invalided out” of the line.

When I read the obituaries this Summer for Harry Patch, the last surviving British infantry soldier of WW1, I found that Patch had been a Lewis gunner at Passchendaele too, losing all the other members of his gun crew on one single day in September 1917. Dr Aust’s paternal grandfather, like so many others, lost his best friend, but at least he had the good fortune to make it home to his family.

Dr Aust’s maternal grandfather, the man I used to call Grandad when I was a kid, was the only professional soldier in the family, joining the army in the late 1930s and eventually rising to the rank of RSM (regimental sergeant major). He served through the WW2 North African campaign, and then in Burma, and after the war in the closing days of British India.

I was reminded of my maternal Grandad  a few months ago by a nice post of Dr Grumble’s which you can read here.

According to my mother, Grandad never spoke a word about the war to anyone in the family. Not a word in thirty years. I didn’t know until very recently that on the day before he died he made an exception, though probably an involuntary one. Having been hospitalised by the first stroke of a series that would quickly kill him, he suddenly wanted to tell his wife (my maternal grandmother) and his daughter (my mother) about the war. The memories had been buried deep for three decades or more, but not gone. I was reminded of something I read earlier this year about Britain’s last surviving veteran of the Western Front, Henry Allingham:

In November [2008], [Henry Allingham] took part in ceremonies to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI.

Speaking before events began, Mr Allingham said he couldn’t forget the war even if he wanted to.

“I saw too many things I would like to forget but I never will forget them, I never can forget them,” he said.

Both Patch and Allingham long refused to talk about the war, but changed their minds late on in their lives, feeling that the memory of their lost friends, and the terrible cost of war, meant their recollections ought to be heard, especially by the young. I wonder sometimes whether Dr Aust’s grandparents would have felt the same if they had lived into their 80s or 90s. Anyway, read Dr Grumble’s post and see if you can work out why it brought back memories of his Grandad for Dr Aust.

Or read the obituaries for Henry Allingham here, and Harry Patch here and here.

And see why Dr Aust will be observing two minutes silence at 11 o’clock on the 11th.

Which brings me to something else. My Grandad, who liked to kick a football around with my brother and me, would put his medal ribbons on for Remembrance Day, but the only military badge he habitually wore was a rather odd one which he had on one of his overcoats, and which looked like this.

Now I was curious, as children are, about Grandad’s badge, so I asked him what it was.  And he told me the name of the unit that wore the badge, and that his comrades had been “very brave men”.  So perhaps “never said a word” isn’t absolutely true.

Of course, these very brave men were not all stereotypical white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Grandad himself was a Catholic Irishman, and many of the men he would have served with would have been Indian army troops, or Gurkhas. The expeditions included Burmese regiments, and West African soldiers too. Nothing new there for the British army, actually. When I was hunting about on Wikipedia and Youtube, I found that Indian Army professional soldiers were serving on the Western Front in 1914 at the first Battle of Ypres.

Which somehow reminded me of a bunch of people who have recently been trying to wrap themselves in the British flag, and the symbolism of Britain’s military history, including the World Wars. You can probably guess who I’m thinking of.

As an antidote to their opportunism and unpleasant message, you could try this, or this. Or possibly even this. And there is plenty more on Youtube for those with a taste for history.

Anyway, tomorrow at 11 I will be stopping to think of my two grandfathers – the one I knew and the one I didn’t. And also to spare a thought for all the others – whatever their race and nationality – who served, and especially those who weren’t as fortunate. And for the people they were connected to.

And I’ll try and remind myself, again, that I’m actually pretty lucky.

In which Dr Aust has a think about risk, and wishes politicians would stop trying to have it both ways.

The big science story in the UK these past couple of week has been the sacking of Professor David Nutt, the Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The blogosphere has been aflame with commentary. My favourite comment so far, which most readers here will probably have read already, is David Colquhoun’s brilliantly pithy summing up over at the BMJ:

“Remember George W Bush? For him it was simple. If a scientist told him an inconvenient truth, the messenger was fired, and someone more compliant got the job. In every area from global warming to the existence of weapons of mass destruction he chose to base policy on fantasy and wishful thinking. It seems that the UK home secretary, Alan Johnson, has something in common with Bush. When the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) said something he didn’t like, its chairman, David Nutt, got fired….”

British Medical Journal online

Alan Johnson and other members of the Government, notably including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have tried to spin the story as Prof Nutt “stepping into the political arena”. Governments, they argue, have to consider things “in the round”, in Gordon Brown’s phrase (i.e. there is more to it than just the evidence the scientists have sifted, assessed, and synthesised).

Alan Johnson put it like this:

“As for [Prof Nutt's] comments about horse riding being more dangerous than ecstasy… it is of course a political rather than a scientific point. There are not many kids in my constituency in danger of falling off a horse – there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction.”

Now, the assertion that this statistical comparison is “a political rather than a scientific point” is a rather politician-ly piece of rhetoric. First off, the comparison he is referring to was published in an article in a scientific journal. It was only when the newspapers got hold of it, and that it then came to the attention of politicians, that it caused such a furore, with both sides of the House of Commons getting on their hind legs to compete to see who could denounce the “nutty Professor”, and the evils of drug use, in more ringing terms.

One of my favourite medical bloggers, the ruminative and understated hospital consultant Dr Grumble, has also been covering the story. He does not agree with Johnson, and points out that analogies for risks are actually an important way of communicating risk.

“[Alan Johnson] claims, it seems, to have sacked Professor Nutt because he compared the risk of drugs with the risk of riding a horse. He says this is ‘of course’ a political point. Dr Grumble doesn’t agree. Even as a scientist you need a yardstick rather than a figure to put risk on a scale which can be understood. This is particularly true if you need to express levels of risk to politicians or the public. But the concept is useful for scientists too. In the assessment of risk this is not unusual. It was not something that was calculated to embarrass Alan Johnson. It was just an aid to understanding.

Professor Nutt chose horse riding because it happens to be very risky. Dr Grumble knew this. He has seen the consequences. Yet many parents – though maybe not in Alan Johnson’s constituency – might encourage their children to take up horse riding. Few would do the same when it came to drugs. Yet the risk for horse riding is much greater. Both are probably done for some sort of excitement. One is a fulfilling activity the other probably is not. It doesn’t matter. It is just a yardstick.

We need such yardsticks. Parents need to grasp how likely it is for their child to be murdered in comparison to being run over on the road. It’s important. Do we need to invest in looking out for child murderers or slowing the traffic? Those are the issues.

The trouble, of course (!) is the Daily Mail. It is more likely to fill its pages with stories of horrific child murders than car accidents. The Mail is unlikely to report many of the deaths related to alcohol and tobacco. There are just too many. The differential reporting of drug-related deaths in the press is something that David Nutt has pointed out. The likelihood of the press reporting a drug-related death depends on the drug. Some drugs, it seems, are more newsworthy than others. But the consequence is that the public’s perception of risk is warped. It is important to point this out. The public needs to grasp the real risk and not the risk they perceive from reading newspapers. So do politicians.”

Does Alan Johnson keep a gun?

Indeed. Back in Mrs Dr Aust’s days in anaesthesia, the number one question she used to get asked by patients when she met them on the morning of their operation was:

“Am I going to wake up from this doc? Is it dangerous, this anaesthetic?”

Let’s assume the patient was a physically fit person having a routine and fairly brief anaesthetic for an uncomplicated minor surgical procedure. In such cases, one of her preferred replies was:

“Well, if you came here this morning in a car, then you’ve already got away with doing something more dangerous than the anaesthetic I’m going to be giving you.”

She did not quote a numerical risk figure, because the chance that an anxious patient would have taken in a “one in however many thousand” risk figure, and then processed it cognitively, and actually felt reassured, was basically nil.

The analogy, however, with it’s element of risk comparison, did the job nicely.

So I don’t think Johnson’s points about Nutt’s analogy stand up. As Dr Grumble alludes to, the point Nutt was really making was that people have views of the risks associated with different activities – and especially the use of different drugs – which bear no relation to the real risks, and that this is unhelpful in making sensible policy.

Professors, politicians and the real world – just who is out of touch?

Which in turn suggest another of the implications directed at Nutt by Johnson and others in the political arena is incorrect; the idea that Nutt and other “ivory tower academics” do not understand that real world decisions – like those taken by politicians – have to factor in things other than simply the scientific case.

This idea, that there is more to political decisions than simply the facts, reminds me of a famous story about “risk perception”. The version that I know appears in Michael O’Donnell’s book Medicine’s Strangest Cases, and concerns the Swedes and the Lapland satellite evacuation.

The story was that a satellite in a decaying orbit was predicted to crash-land in an remote area of Lapland that was virtually unpopulated save for a few nomadic reindeer-herders. The Swedish Govt. offered to helicopter airlift the reindeer herders out of the area, at significant cost to the Swedish taxpayer.

Hermann Bondi, a famous British mathematician and – funnily enough – Government science adviser, who heard the story, crunched the numbers and confirmed that the probability of any reindeer herder who stayed put having the satellite land on them was several orders of magnitude less than the chance they would be killed in a helicopter crash on a routine helicopter flight.

So the Swedish Govt’s decision was daft.

Well, that depends.

Purely on the statistics, it was a wholly illogical decision. But Bondi pointed out that the Swedish Govt had undoubtedly factored in that if they didn’t offer to evacuate people, and the satellite then landed on someone and killed them, then the headlines would scream

“Heartless and negligent Govt leaves reindeer herders to die”.

While if the chopper crashed, the headline would be

“Tragic helicopter crash kills herders”

- and the Govt. would be off the hook.

So Governments weigh more than just the basic facts. But is Professor Nutt really out of touch with these realities of decision-making in Government when it comes to drug policy, as the politicians have implied?

Well, some idea of the Prof’s thinking can be gleaned from the published version of his recent lecture. This is, in fact, precisely the lecture, delivered to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, that caused the recent flare-up that led to Nutt’s sacking. The full version of the lecture can be read here.

Here is an extract:

Drug policy

Formulating policy in relation to drugs is obviously
quite a difficult thing to do. I comment on it, as I
always have, from the perspective of a psychiatrist
who is interested in drugs and drugs and the brain.
In many ways, that’s how the Advisory Council on
the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) covers it. We have a
range of expertise on the Council; we’re very strong
in terms of chemistry and pharmacology, and
psychology; and we have a definite knowledge,
interest and responsibility to look at social harms as
well. We provide one arm of the policy formulating
perspective. In addition, there are a number of other
agencies, organisations and individuals who
contribute to policy formation…

There are also international partners – we
have signed up to international treaties – which
determine that, in essence, the UK follows United
Nations policy on drugs. This can be quite a tough
constraining influence on how countries regulate
drugs…

Then, of course, there are other factors feeding into
political decisions about drugs: what the general
public thinks (or is thought to think); and then there’s
the media….

(colour added for emphasis)

The full article is well worth a read. It is one of the more accessible and intelligent explorations of the issues in drug policy that I have read, and certainly far more informative than anything you will read in even the broadsheet newspapers in the UK. The main theme explored is whether drug classification, and the attendant penalties for illegal use, should be linked to the actual harm caused by use of the drug, and the ways this harm can be assessed. What comes across in it is that Nutt is in no way “naive” about the political process that goes into the decisions of drug classification. What he largely argues for is more sophisticated approaches to educating the public about the relative riskiness of different activities, both legal and illegal.

Advisers and “advisers”

What about the final argument – that politicians should have advisers that speak only in private, and who in public never disagree with the Government line?

Are politicians entitled to expect advisers to keep quiet?

The answer, I would say, is that it depends on the type of adviser. There are advisers, and advisers.

Most relevantly, some advisers are civil servants, paid by the public purse, including some “personal” advisers.

Others, like Prof Nutt, are independent experts.

Much of the discussion on the Nutt case in the newspapers and in parliament has failed to make this distinction clear. And as David Colquhoun, among others, has noted, Alan Johnson has led the way in promoting this confusion.

One correspondent at Dr Grumble’s blog defended Alan Johnson in terms rather similar to those Johnson himself used :

“Prof Nutt was asked to leave because he crossed the boundary between advising the government AND making views against goverment policy public”

Compare Alan Johnson, quoted in the Guardian:

“[Professor Nutt] was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy. This principle is well understood and long established.”

I was moved to pen something in response, which I will re-post here from Dr Grumble’s blog:

“Nutt is not a Government adviser in the usual sense that an “adviser” is a paid employee, like the Chief Scientific Adviser and other civil servants. Nutt is an academic, paid nothing, and appointed to a statutory body whose job (clearly set out in their terms of reference) is to tell the Govt what the scientific evidence actually says. Not what the government wants to hear. Read David Colquhoun’s spot-on summary in the BMJ.

Alan Johnson sacked Nutt for what he said in an academic lecture whose content was not overtly critical of Govt. Furthermore, since giving the lecture was part of Nutt’s day job (the one he is actually paid to do), what he says in it is in no way part of the Govt’s purview. It is his considered opinion as an expert.

The anomaly is that Johnson is able to sack Nutt from this post. The body should be wholly independent, with the Chair appointed from within the Committee.

If Johnson were then to want to hire a “private office” drug policy adviser who was an “on message” paid yes man, so be it. At least that would be the politicians being honest about what they really wanted.

However, said hypothetical person, if what they advised was contrary to all the expert opinion, might have rather little credibility out in the world of drug policy – a bit like the way Lord Adonis was regarded by virtually all in education when he ran education policy from his role as Tony Blair’s “Education Special Adviser.”

The problem is that the politicians want to be able to say “We are acting directly in accordance with the evidence and expert opinion” precisely when they aren’t. You can hardly blame the independent experts for pointing out when the politicians engage in this kind of routine (for a politician) but rather blatant dishonesty.”

And, in the final analysis, that is what really disappoints me. I have hitherto had a fair amount of respect for Alan Johnson, one of the sadly rare MPs who have any experience of the world beyond the circumscribed horizons of the British political class. He always struck me as fairly unprententious, and not a hypocrite.

Until now.

Because that is what it is – hypocrisy. Which came from both sides of the House of Commons, with the cant, windbaggery, and general posturing for the cameras and the Daily Mail broken only by the pertinent words of the “MP for Science and Evidence”, Dr Evan Harris:

“With every personal attack on David Nutt, and every piece of cod science [Alan Johnson has] produced, the home secretary deepens the crisis of mistrust between scientists and the government.”

Quite.

Experts, including scientists, can cope with politicians disregarding what they say – partly because it is par for the course.

Disregarding what the experts say, AND telling them they are obligated not to point out that this is what the Government has done – all while the politicians insist smugly that they have “evidence based policies” – is something else.

Or: Homeopathic levels of accuracy

Observant readers may have spotted the new Dr Aust Twitter feed down at the bottom of the sidebar on the  blog.

Yes, that’s right – you can now follow Dr Aust on twitter, though I can’t really think why you would want to.

I had resisted signing up on Twitter until just a few days ago. I might bore you with the detailed reasons some other time, but the main one was that, as an Olympic-class procrastinator, I reckoned the last thing I needed was yet another way to procrastinate.

But – I now retract that statement. And Thank Goodness I signed up to Twitter this week.

Because late on Friday afternoon, at about 5 pm, Twitter gave me the best laugh I have had in a couple of months.

This was when several sceptical Tweets directed me to a truly marvellous example of Alternative, not to say Parallel, not to say Quantum Alternative Parallel Reality (“Quap Reality” for short). At which point, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.

And it takes a lot to do that late on a Friday afternoon.

The cause was this article, from the notorious Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, or JACM, entitled:

CAM, Free Speech, and the British Legal System:
Overstepping the Mark?

The author of this bravura piece of Unreality (could it be a spoof?) is homeopathic quantum intellectual supreme, Dr Lionel Milgrom.

Or to give him his full title from the paper, which I suspect he would insist on,  since he typically lists all the letters:

Lionel R. Milgrom, Ph.D., M.A.R.H., M.R.Hom., F.R.S.C.

Now, I had occasionally suspected hitherto that Lionel Milgrom had untapped comic talent. But he has outdone himself this time.

Only the first page of the opus is free access, but that is more than enough:

Abstract:

The British Chiropractic Association recently won a libel case against the science writer and CAM ‘skeptic’ Dr Simon Singh

(Italics mine)

As Private Eye like to say – “shurely shome mistake”?

There really can’t be that many people following the BCA v Singh case in even a casual way who don’t know that it is still ongoing.

There is, after all, hardly a lack of coverage, at least online.

While Milgrom’s article clearly went to press before the latest hearing in the case last week – the article has no “accepted on” date, but there is a reference in it that says “accessed Aug 24th 2009″ – surely no-one was under the illusion that Sir David Eady had actually heard the full libel action?

Well, apparently some people were. It gets better:

“The judge agreed with this argument [i.e. that the use of the word "bogus" implied the BCA had knowingly lied about the evidence concerning chiropractic for various childhood ailments] awarding the BCA substantial damages.“

Truly bizarre. It was this sentence that had me speechless with laughter.

The first bit is OK – Eady did, in the main, accept the BCA’s pleaded meaning (this is the ruling that has just been sent back on appeal).

But “substantial damages”? Errr – NOT. Damages get awarded when the case is, like, finished.

(“Substantial Damages” , by the way, is a phrase usually used by successful libel complainants in their victorious press statements to imply that their opponents had been comprehensively slapped with the wet kipper, not to mention taken to the cleaners financially)

How very, VERY odd.

The remainder of Milgrom’s article, which sadly is behind a paywall, is a hoot too, but I will leave that for another time.

What I want to concentrate on now is the Sheer Unreality of it.

Unreality….

Unless….

Unless…

Unless there is some OTHER Quantum Alternative Parallel Reality, to which Milgrom perhaps has privileged access as a “Quantum Homeopath”, where what Milgrom says is actually true.

Of course!

How could I not have known?

Indeed, perhaps this “QUAP Reality” is where all the Alt.Reality folk hang out.

Once you have made that Leap into the Unreal, IT ALL BEGINS TO MAKE SENSE AT LAST.

In this Alternative Reality, of course the BCA won.

Indeed, this new Quantum Alternative Parallel Universe, or QUAP-iverse, seems to be especially favourable for Libel verdicts.

Remember how we saw at the start of this year, in “Keeping It Unreal”, that dropping a libel suit and getting landed with hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal costs was actually a huge VICTORY for noted Alternative Reality Figure Dr Matthias Rath?

Clearly, in the same (Un) Reality Rath seems to inhabit, the BCA have already won large damages, just as Milgrom states.

And then, of course, all the other seemingly daft stuff falls into place too.

- Diluting a substance makes it MORE powerful.
- Mystical laying on of hands beams out healing power.
- Illness is all in the Mind.
- Pushing on your arm can diagnose your allergies.
- Massaging your feet can magically rejuvenate your kidneys.
- Flushing your rear end with a load of warm water can magically “detox” your liver.
- Sticking you in a “Sweat lodge” and cooking you until you are dangerously dehydrated and hallucinating can be a “healing experience”

- and so on.

So - Silly Me.

There I was thinking these folk were all away with the fairies, when really they were simply privileged to be able to access a QUAP-iverse where all this stuff is really true.

——————————————————-

Or: I was right the first time.

They really ARE Away With The Fairies.

Tinfoil Hats And All.

In this rather party-pooping view, which Alt.Reality folk like to call “Scientism” – though I prefer “Reality” – the normal rules of physics and chemistry apply, homeopathic remedies are water, BCA v. Singh is still ongoing, all the daft “therapies”  I mentioned just now are a bunch of **!*, and Dr Milgrom has clearly not been checking his facts carefully enough.

And nor,  it would seem, has anyone else at the JACM.

(Chief Editor, if you didn’t know: Dr Kim “Dr Q-link” Jobst, FRCP).

Of course, Milgrom is on the JACM Editorial Board (you can see the full membership here), so one is curious whether such extended “Opinion Pieces” – the JACM actually calls the section in which the Milgrom piece features “Paradigms”, whatever they mean by that  - even get read by anyone apart from the author, if that author is a journal editor.

As to whether this apparent carelessness with facts is representative of other bits of Dr Milgrom’s oeuvre, or indeed of other content in the JACM -

- you might well wonder about that.

But – on the advice of my lawyers – I couldn’t possibly comment.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 21st) parliament will be debating the Libel Laws, specifically prompted by the Trafigura case.

Now is the time to let your MP know that this is something you take seriously.

Skeptical blogger Simon Perry has penned an example of the kind of letter you could write, though of course your own words are best. You can find Simon’s letter here.

You can email your MP in minutes via

http://www.writetothem.com/

- just enter your postcode and follow the links.

I have just emailed mine – letter below. He is a Lib Dem so I have mentioned Dr Evan Harris MP, one of a sadly small number of scientifically knowledgeable MPs now that Ian Gibson is no longer in the Commons. But please, please, write a letter to yours. Stress the reasons why you are concerned, if possible relating them to your own profession, or experiences.

But do let your elected representative know this is something that you think matters.

As Evan Harris himself noted in a comment on Jack of Kent’s blog:

“The recent publicity of the impact of libel law in science and in writing and in medical journals, has now been fuelled by the impact of libel on Parliament. There is nothing like Parliament itself being impacted to get politicians to take notice.”

I particularly hope those of my academic colleagues who read this blog – and I believe there are a few – will email their representatives. If they do, could they please include their titles? “Dr” is good – “Professor” still better. And “FRS”, if you have one, better still.

My e-mail:

————————————————————-

Dear XXXX

I understand that tomorrow there will be a debate in parliament on the subject of libel reform.

Recent events with the Trafigura case have given emphasis to the appalling effect of English libel laws in stifling the public’s right to know. As a professional scientist and writer about science, I am particularly worried about the way that English libel laws are being used to stifle scientific debate in the UK. This has reached the point where many scientists are not bothering to make their opinions heard. Those that do criticise other individuals – or more often companies or trade bodies – typically on scientific matters of clear public interest, are being heavily punished for doing so.

To give a couple of recent examples, medical doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre was involved in a lengthy libel battle following his criticism of Dr Matthias Rath, the vitamin “entreprenuer” who claimed anti-retroviral drugs were ineffective in treating AIDS and offered his vitamins as an alternative. Despite the fact that Goldacre and the Guardian won, they still ended up £ 150,000 worse off. Had Goldacre not had the full financial and legal backing of the Guardian, he likely would have had to “fold”. The scientist and author Simon Singh is going through a similar, though arguably worse, situation right now with the British Chiropractic Association. They are suing Singh personally for publicly criticising some of their treatments for which scientific evidence is slim to non-existent.

“Reputation management” by large companies in England has become a tool to suppress criticism. This has many dangers.
At the start of the 1960s, doctors in Germany and Australia publicly criticised the drug Thalidomide and implicated it in birth defects. By the time German paediatrician Widukind Lenz produced the proof of thalidomide’s actions in 1961, at least 10,000 children had been born with birth defects. Imagine if he, and all other scientists since, were unable to make their criticisms of drugs known for fear of legal action. It is all to easy to imagine, in an equivalent case in contemporary Britain, a manufacturer seeking to use the force of confidentiality or defamation law to suppress publication of such an opinion.

If we put a stop to criticism, we not only put an end to our ability to know which of our current treatments are effective and safe, but we also make it impossible to evaluate properly the treatments of the future.

I urge you to do all you can to help reform our uniquely repressive English libel system. The Liberal Democrats have a proud tradition of campaigning for freedom of speech, and your parliamantary colleague Dr Evan Harris has spoken out with distinction in support of Simon Singh in his legal struggle with the chiropractors. Please support him in his work.

The Trafigura case, by focussing parliament’s attention on the perils of English Libel Law, offers a chance to create a consensus to push through reform of the Libel Laws. This chance must not be missed. There are many ways the laws could be improved; to name but a few, it is high time we had restrictions on the costs of libel actions; a clear and unambiguous statutory public interest defence; and proper limits on the power of multi-billion pound corporations to sue individuals.

I hope you will do everything you can to get the laws – which have also, incidentally, made the UK an international laughing stock – changed.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Aust

————————————————————————————————————

Oh dear – verbose as usual.

I’m sure you, dear reader, can do it in less words.

But, in the overused phrase:

“Just do it”

Chances to create a parliamentary consensus for reform, building on a public campaign on something apolitical but of vital importance, do not come all that often.

Lets do our bit to push  our elected representatives in the right direction.

————————————————————————————————————
UPDATE WEDS 21st am:

You can watch the debate live from 2.30 pm – link is here.

Jack of Kent has promised to blog it – not sure if he means “as it happens”.

POST-DEBATE UPDATE – WEDS 21st    5.00 pm:

For anyone who would like a good summary of what was said, the Guardian has a useful “live blog” here (hat-tip to Zeno for tweeting it).

It was gratifying to hear MPs so genuinely offended at restrictions on “the public’s right to know” – though they were mostly talking about “the public’s right to know what goes on in parliament“, a subject one would expect to be close to their hearts. The wider issue of inappropriate use of libel laws got less play – partly because in the Trafigura case it was apparently “commercial confidentiality”  rather than reputation / defamation that was the basis of the gagging injunction – though Evan Harris did mention the wider discontent about the mis-use of defamation law in his speech at the start of the debate (the speech is well worth listening to – the link has a “replay” option.

More than one MP referred to the widely quoted remarks of the Lord Chief Justice about the way that English libel law is being misused:

“We need to look closely at why [London] is called the libel capital of the world and if it is, we have to try to persuade parliament to change the law.”

It is rather piquant that the two judges whose words and rulings have, in the last week, offered some hints that there may be recognition that the English Defamation Laws are not working, are Lord Chief Justice Judge and Lord Justice (of Appeal) Laws. Laws and Judge, indeed.

Let us hope that if we can finally get some sensible defamation LAWS, there will perhaps be less tendency in future for discussion of matters of public interest to end up in front of a JUDGE.

Jack of Kent has now posted his much-awaited report, giving more details of the various parts of Lord Justice Laws’ comments in today’s excellent development in the BCA v Singh case.

One of the points Jack makes is that at the brief hearing this morning Lord Justice Laws mentioned the paragraph of Simon Singh’s original article which directly followed the paragraph that ended with the much-debated (and allegedly libellous) sentence.

This following paragraph reads:

“I can confidently label these assertions [that chiropractic could successfully treat ailments other than musculoskeletal ones] as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.”

(italics and underline mine)

This paragraph has been much discussed by those on Singh’s side of the argument, since it can logically be read as clarifying why Singh regarded the claims made by the BCA as “wholly without foundation” – the sense in which he has always stated he meant the much-debated word “bogus”.

Thus:

- Edzard Ernst, the expert, read the papers critically;

- he found that they did not stand up  - a view bourne out by the analysis of the BCA’s “plethora”, links to which can be found in this summary by Petra Boynton, and by commentary in places like the British Medical Journal;

- so therefore Ernst and Singh regard the claims that chiropractic can treat such things as “utter nonsense”.

—————————————————————————————————-

In the case of Singh’s Guardian article, the inference (“bogus treatments”) is put up front as a rhetorical device, that is, at the end of the previous paragraph (the words complained of).  It is also repeated for emphasis at the start of the subsequent explanatory paragraph (“…utter nonsense…”). However, the common origin of the debated statements (and thus, by implication, the meaning that a reader would likely take from them in this context) is obvious, I would argue, from reading the two paragraphs together.

A major effect of Eady’s ruling on meaning was to throw out – or at least, to make redundant – this kind of argument where the two paragraphs should be read together. “Happily promotes… bogus”, Eady told us, meant Singh was plainly accusing the BCA of deliberate deception. No other meaning could possibly be borne by the phrase, and thus clarifying meaning from the overall context (the rest of the article) was irrevelant.

This part of the Eady ruling, it now seems, has likely been overturned (though we will need the full judgement to be sure).

Strangely, one part of me is actually little sad - for the following rather whimsical reason.

I opined in one of my earlier posts on BCA v Singh that Simon Singh’s mistake was arguably to have put the sentence “happily promote…. bogus” ahead of the explanation. In journalism it is usual to give the things one thinks one knows first – for instance, Ernst examined all the trials, and they didn’t stand up scientifically. Then one moves on to inference: therefore these claims are nonsense, and therefore in turn it is extraordinary that the BCA was promoting them on its website. Arguably, had the offending sentence come at the end of the paragraph just quoted, the meaning of the phrases would have been even more obviously derived from the explanation. I would love to know whether the BCA would still have sued.

Of course, written that way round it would not have been as good a read.

Anyway, there would be something surreally and tragicomically ridiculous about a writer getting sued for putting his sentences the dangerous way round because it made for a better read. One would need Evelyn Waugh, perhaps, to do such an idea justice.

In my mind’s eye-vision of such a scene, Simon Singh stands in the dock before a bench of stony-faced red and black-robed justices. One of them intones:

“Simon Singh, you stand before us accused of the heinous Crime of the Reckless and Dangerous Use of Rhetorical Devices. How do you plead?”

Indeed, what would one plead?

Guilty?

Not guilty?

Literary?

Now, for some reason, this image in turn puts me in mind of a favourite cartoon of mine, drawn by the wonderful John Callahan.

A caveman and his wife are sitting in their living room (cave?) watching TV. The pre-programme admonition about what might be coming appears.

“Warning: The following program contains LANGUAGE.”

Dangerous things, words. Dangerous things.

———————————————————————————-

Hurrah!

According to Jack of Kent’s twitter feed (which you can update periodically like any webpage to get new “tweets”), Simon Singh’s petition for permission to appeal Sir David Eady’s ruling on meaning has been granted in an extremely brief hearing at the High Court this morning.

It is rumoured that the ruling (i.e. the new ruling that the view Eady had taken was sufficiently flawed that Singh would have reasonable grounds to appeal it) is, er, critical of the Learned Justice.

And still more startling – Singh is not just allowed to appeal the narrow point on whether the now (in)famous word “bogus” necessarily implies “something they definitely knew was untrue”.

To quote JoK’s twitter feed:

“And it will be [a] FULL appeal, [with] Simon allowed to re-argue it [i.e. the disputed phrases of the original article] was Fair Comment”

(for Dr Aust’s amateur legal take on fair comment defence see here)

Jack’s feed also suggests the British Chiropractic Association didn’t even turn up (though I don’t know if this means they didn’t turn up, or their lawyers didn’t).

I suspect the latter, actually. This rather makes me wonder if the BCA have decided to ditch the lawsuit – though I suppose they could have simply been so sure Singh was going to lose that they didn’t think it worth paying the extra lawyers’ fees for the appearance.

Anyway, wonderful news for those who have been following the case.

And more, doubtless, across the Interwebs in the next few hours.

————————————–

Quick lunch hour update @ 1.45 pm:

There is a bit more info in an article over at Index on Censorship:

In a scathing rebuttal of Mr Justice Eady’s previous judgement in the case, Lord Justice Laws said Eady had risked swinging the balance of rights too far in favour of the right to reputation and against the right to free expression. Mr Justice Laws described Eady’s judgement, centred on Singh’s use of the word “bogus” in an article published by the Guardian newspaper, as “legally erroneous”.

Laws also pointed out that Eady’s judgement had conflated two issues — the meaning of the phrases complained of, and the issue of whether the article was presented as fact or fair comment.

Laws said there was “no question” of the “good faith” of Singh in writing the article, as the matter was “clearly in the public interest”.

- “legally erroneous” – ouch.

If one can extrapolate from the legal shows – mostly American, so their relevance is arguable – then one tends to think that being a judge whose high-profile judgements get appealed, and perhaps reversed (and criticised in blunt terms) by higher courts, is not a reputation judges like to have.

Of course, some might see it as an inevitable consequence of working at the “cutting edge” of the law – “pushing the envelope”, as it were.

However, being allowed to re-argue the defence of “fair comment” is clearly excellent news for Singh, as this means all the work previously done by his defence team will be relevant in a full appeal hearing.

As, presumably, will be the work by the bloggers and commentators de-constructing the BCA’s “plethora” of evidence.

Index on Censorship also clarify the bit about the BCA not being there:

“The BCA was not represented at this morning’s hearing.”

Which means “their lawyers were not present”.

I shall be interested to see what Jack of Kent has to say about that last fact, and whether he thinks it has any implications for how, and indeed whether, the case will continue.

EDIT: Ah – a prosaic explanation. According to Tessa, who attended the Court representing the National Secular Society and has blogged about it over at The Lay Scientist, the BCA and its lawyers were informed about the decision in advance. So that’s it for that bit of tea-leaf reading.

————————————————

Update 2 – More at 4:

Jack also tells us via a tweet that Lord Justice Laws – as Jack says, rather a splendid name for a judge – held that Sir David Eady’s ruling  (or at least some part thereof) was contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This is, of course, the article that guarantees freedom of expression:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

And Update 2a: wholly amateur legal musing:

I find this last point about Article 10 particularly interesting. If we look, Article 10 part 2 says:

“The exercise of these freedoms [i.e. freedom of speech], since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, …for the protection of the reputation or rights of others”…

- i.e. it is clear that Article 10 accepts that there have to be some limits to what you can say about somebody, and that laws are how those limits are made enforceable.

What I am curious about is how Sir David Eady’s ruling has now been held to be contrary to Article 10. I presume the Rt Hon Lord Justice L means that Sir David’s interpretation of the law in his ruling in BCA v Singh is incorrect, and that, if interpreted in this incorrect way, the law would run contrary to Article 10.

The alternative, which seems less likely, would be that English defamation law as we now have it, and as shaped by judicial ruling and precedent, is contrary to Article 10.

Err… he surely can’t be saying that… can he?

———————————————————–

PS A discussion of the possible implications for Simon Singh is already under way over at the Bad Science Forums – UPDATE: It now seems to have migrated to its own thread here.

And the Nature “Great Beyond” blog has also briefly covered the story.

As has the New Statesman.

And now the Times, in an article penned by one of the most reliably rational of the newspaper science writers, Anjana Ahuja.

A slice of Dr Aust’s working life rather than any bad science.

Today Dr Aust has been down in London for a meeting.

On returning to Aust Acres late this afternoon, I logged on to my email via the web to check what had shown up in the nine hours since I had last logged on early this morning (and sent a few urgent messages) prior to toddling off to catch the train.

(I opted not to pay Virgin Trains ten quid for the privilege of wireless internet access on the train so that I could actually get some reading done).

I found a delightful twenty-one (21) emails awaiting my perusal.

To be precise:

Three (3) pieces of junk e-mail from suppliers and biochemical and molecular biology reagents

One (1) junk e-mail offering to put me in a directory of important people

One (1) junk email from the Univ, sorry, one “In-house University communications circular”

One (1) depressed / depressing bulletin from the UCU staff union.

Two (2) inconsequential Faculty announcements

One (1) notice about a staff meeting (2 hrs minimum duration, judging from experience) that I will avoid if at all possible

One (1) email correcting incorrect date of said staff meeting

Two (2) emails about research seminars I probably won’t have time to go to.

One (1) email about a journal editorial meeting next year that I probably won’t go to as I will be teaching that day.

One (1) email telling me about Faculty quota PhD studentships that I won’t be able to recruit any students for – even if I were high enough up the priority ranking – as I don’t have enough research grant income to “cross-subsidise” a 3-yr project.

One (1) notice about a colleague’s retirement do – lucky b*stard. Unfortunately I am teaching when it starts and I suspect they will have drunk all the free booze by the time I get there.

One (1) email from the Senior Secretary explaining that we (a research group of about 20 academics and associated staff) will now have secretarial support from a single secretary for two hrs/wk (that’s for all of us – and before you tell me that is a bit thin, it was previously no hrs/wk, so things are looking up)

One (1) email from the Faculty Disability Support Officer telling me: (i) I have no students with severe disabilities that would mandate special educational provision; and (ii) I have one student in a tutorial group this year who has a disability, but not a disability that will require me to do anything beyond “normal academic practice”. So that looks like an email telling me at some length that I don’t have to do anything different from what I always do. On the whole that is a plus, though I’m not sure why it meant I needed to be sent the email.

One (1) email from a colleague reminding me to upload my lecture next month to the relevant E-Learning website (or is it a portal?) “assuming the Faculty who we do this teaching for have granted you all access to their site – we’re not sure yet”.

One (1) email with actual useful information from a colleague about an ex-student I am writing a reference for.

And last but not least:

Two (2) automated emails from the Faculty email server telling me I have too much stored email.

*sigh*

Sometimes you really have to wonder what Universities did in the days before email. How did anything ever get done…?

Dr Aust has been on the road for a few days, including a trip to Science Online 2009. Call it a sort of slightly working holiday. I started writing the following as an update for the embarrassingly neglected Diary page, but it has now grown to such length that I thought I would give it a post of its own.

So a bit of boring diary travelogue follows, finishing with some ponderings about the conference. If you are just interested in the last bit, skip down to “Anyway – that’s enough diary“.

Thursday 20th.

Slightly frantic morning trying to tie up a few things at work, then off to the station after lunch to catch a train to Oxford to see Dr Aust’s mother. Arrive at 5 pm off hot and crowded train. The walk from Oxford station up to the Aust parents’ part of North Oxford can be done by various routes, but my favourite one, especially for late afternoons and early evenings in Summer, has always been the Oxford canal towpath. When Dr Aust was a teenager in Oxford, an awful lot of years ago, the family garden actually had the canal at the bottom of it. Here the next door neighbour would fish and escape his family, the Aust family dog would occasionally fall in and have to be rescued, and one of our more eccentric neighbours would swim in the Summer, braving assorted waterborne diseases (Mrs Dr Aust would probably have mentioned Leptospirosis).

Anyway, two canal towpath sights never fail to make Dr Aust feel that he is really home – because in some odd way Oxford does still feels like home, even though Dr Aust has not been a permanent resident for nearly 30 years now.

One is this kind of view:

The other is sort of summed up by the middle-aged gentleman who overtook Dr Aust, riding a sturdy upright bicycle that looked at least 50 yrs old and had a battered briefcase strapped on the back. The gent in question was wearing a serviceable but far from new dark linen suit, and a blue bicycle helmet, and looked about as much like an Oxford academic as is possible to look without becoming a total caricature – and whilst pressing a mobile phone to one’s ear and wobbling slightly along the towpath.

The point, perhaps, is that Oxford is rather a special enclave.

Now, when Dr Aust was 18 he was in a tearing hurry to leave Oxford. Oxford, he and his friends would regularly agree, was not the real world. We were mostly dreaming of London – Islington, Notting Hill and the King’s Road. Or perhaps of places even further afield.

Anyway:

“Oxford is not the real world”

Quite true.

The difference is that nowadays Dr Aust tends to think that is precisely what is good, and worth preserving, about the place. The Real World can be a bit overrated.

Friday 21st

Another late afternoon train, this time to London, to check into the hotel and thence to the “pre-conference unconference” (whatever that means) on a roof terrace in Farringdon (which belongs to these guys). The setting is rather good, although the random city noise means you have to shout a bit. Luckily (or not, depending on your POV) Dr Aust is an experienced shouter and annoying interrupter. This comes of years of on-the-job training in lectures, tutorials, or large and protracted University committee meetings.

The best things about the conference “Fringe Prequel” are the smallish number of people and the informality, which make for lively discussions. Oh, and the free booze. Get to catch up a bit with BadScience sensei David Colquhoun, and to meet several bloggers who were hitherto only names and emails, such as scourge of misadvertising chiropractors Zeno of the Think Humanism forum, Nature Network science blogger and crystallographer Stephen Curry (“Reciprocal Space”), and shockingly young bad science ubersleuth Gimpy.

Saturday 22nd

Despite my well-documented loathing of early mornings (or mornings at all, come to that), haul myself out of bed at 7.45, only slightly hoarse from last night’s extended talking session, to get to the 9.30 start of Science Online. As an economy measure I have brought my own breakfast, half an almond croissant from my favourite French patisserie.

Deciding to turn up to the first session turns out to be a piece of good fortune – a last-minute change of  timetable has put the “Legal and ethical aspects of blogging” bit, with blog notables Jack of Kent and Dr Petra, first up. Jack’s request not to be podcasted causes a slight stir. About a third of the audience seem to be hiding behind portable or laptop computers, among which MacBooks are particularly well represented. There is definitely a study of some kind to be done about how rates of Mac use vary across different scientific user groups. Jack gives a nice (if slightly scary) introduction to the possible legal consequences of blogging. Am gratified to find that my strictures a while back about not getting on the wrong side of courts in open cases and risking committing Contempt of Court were probably a sensible note of caution.

It is a hot day, and the after-coffee session on “Online Communication by Institutions and Organisations” is a bit airless. However, it is interesting to find out how different organisations – though none of those discussed is a University – handle online science, and particularly blogging. My personal view is that blogging is not an easy fit with “offficial” sites run by large institutions. The bedrock reason is that institutions have a pathological fear of saying something that offends people – and therefore often of saying anything much at all -  and they find the natural anarchism of scientific bloggers to be distinctly indigestion-causing. For more on this theme, you can read my comment here.

Lunch with Jack of Kent, Dr Petra, Gimpy and Frank the Science Punk, who like Gimpy is preposterously young. Actually, compared to me almost everyone at the meeting looks young, especially since David (Colquhoun) sneaked off before the lunch break, pointing out that it was too nice a day to be stuck indoors. One of the conference speakers is Times science editor Mark Henderson, who looks about 25, though I guess he is probably in his early 30s.

A lot of the afternoon is devoted to the question of linking online identities, online platforms for science data exchange, and various other techie stuff. Some bits are interesting, but the XML-speak and repeated use of the word “syntactical” is a bit hard core for an Technophobic Old Fart like Dr Aust.  Retreat to the nearest pub seems a good option, (I shall rather presumptiously cite Crick and Watson as my authority, if you are arguing) where I discover that several of my fellow-bloggers in the Bad Science posse now have book deals. Quite pleasing to think there is that much demand for sceptical thinking – but then, you can never have enough, certainly these days.

A highlight of the pub, apart from Jack of Kent buying me a couple of drinks, was Andy from the Quackometer’s description of his investigations of some of the Quacktronic “black boxes” that people have sold to try and cure people of “electrosensitivity”.

This particular branch of Quackorama always reminds me of late 19th and early 20th century quack Albert Abrams and his ERA machine (nice old picture and more info here). Abrams was revealed as a flagrant charlatan more than eighty years ago, but his quackery lives on today as “Radionics” (and here). It is, you will be surprised to hear (err…not) popular with some of the homeopaths.

So a successful meeting – as ever, mainly for the informal chat with people who you previously had either heard of, or read a comment by, or possibly corresponded with. Apart from those I have already mentioned, I got to say Hi to Euan Lawson of the excellent Northern Doctor blog. And I also met, as one does, some people completely new to me, like postdoc and science blogger “Dr Jim”, and TV presenter Greg Foot. another of the disturbingly youthful brigade. While Greg is not the first person I have met who has his/hers own Wikipedia entry, I’m pretty sure he is the first I’ve met who has his own “Showreel” on Youtube. Greg and Frank the Sciencepunk have just been given the job of “re-booting” the government “Engage Kids with Science” site Science? So what? (or SSW for short), as you can discover (and offer your own suggestions about how they should do it) here.

In order to save my liver from further damage I finally do a runner at about 6 pm, heading for Paddington station and a packed train back to Oxford. And England look to have a lock on the Final Test, failing improbably Australian comebacks.

All in all, a most excellent and useful day.

Sunday 23rd

A recuperative day of doing nothing in Oxford. Stroll across Port Meadow for a pre-lunchtime beer in the garden of the Perch at Binsey. This used to be one of my favourite weekend lunchtime pubs, but has now morphed into a sit-down restaurant. Thankfully you can still sip a beverage in the garden, and then amble back across the meadow, past the grazing horses and cows, hordes of stroppy geese, and small boat sailors. My mother tells me she took up sailing for a couple of years at University in the late 50s “because when I told the ladies’ moral tutor that I got my keep-fit exercise by jiving, she clearly thought that was most unsuitable”. I knew my mother had been into trad jazz and jiving, but not that she had been a sailor. It just shows how you can still be finding out new things about people after knowing them all your life.

Spend the later afternoon wrestling with my mother’s ancient computer. A decade or so back I taught myself how to build and fix computers, mainly because when the lab was “between grants” there was no money to buy new ones. Unfortunately, just as I got reasonably proficient at it, the price of new machines fell to the point where there was no saving in building from bits. This is fairly typical of Dr Aust’s money-saving or money-making brain-waves.  Sadly, the computer resists most of my attempts at spring cleaning; the antivirus programme won’t update because they’ve released a new version but that won’t install because the Operating System is too old a version, and it won’t update properly because Microsoft’s website says it’s a pirate copy and the shop we bought the machine from has gone out of business years ago…. *sigh*.

On the bright side, I can listen to Australian wickets falling while I fight my losing battle with the dratted computer. And finally….England have won The Ashes! Rapidly compile mental list of all my Australian friends who I can email to have a good gloat. They would, after all, do the same for me.

Monday 24th.

Amused to see in The Times (my mother reads the Times – Dr Aust prefers the Guardian) a “heat map” of the London Underground. Several of the lines were shut this weekend for repairs, so that instead of taking the previous year’s route from Green Park (and the Royal Institution) to Paddington Station, Dr Aust had to foot it down to Picadilly and take a sweltering Bakerloo line train. This is revealed by the map as the second hottest line on the system, reaching 30-32 deg C on hot days. It certainly felt every bit of that at 6 pm on Saturday. Perhaps I should blame Global Warming.

Leave Oxford mid-morning, overcast but warm, and head North on the train. It starts raining just before Birmingham, and then gets progressively colder and progressively wetter as we get further North. Arrive home late afternoon in thin drizzle to find puddle stretching halfway across our road. Jr Aust calls this “the lake”. Feel so cold I have to fire up the central heating. Mrs Dr Aust tells me that in her native part of central Europe the temperature has been 25-30 C all of the last week, with no rain, and that house prices there are such that we could sell up here and build an architect-designed mansion there two-and-a-half times the size. Ponder once again why I live in a place whose climate I have grown accustomed to describing to my American friends as “like Seattle, if Seattle didn’t have any Summer”.

Oh well. Only four weeks until the start of the University teaching year. Joy.

Tuesday 25th – Weds 26th.

More rain.   *sigh*

———————————————————————————————————————–

Anyway – that’s enough diary.

So what about the Science Online 2009 conference (hence “SciOnLon”)?

Well, like most conference, I enjoyed bits of it a lot. It is a very rare conference, actually, where you enjoy ALL of it. Even in specialist meetings there are usually bits that match exactly to your own interests and enthusiasms, and other bits that you find plain dull. As I already said, the techie stuff about “science online” left me a bit cold. And the implementations of things on Second Life that were attempted here and there were rather laboured, which leaves me tempted to conclude, as one other blogger did, that “Second Life is Pants”.

However, as a scientist one grows used to the idea that one does not really “get” a lot of the science other scientists do, even in vaguely related areas. But of course, the people doing it do get it. Indeed, one of the attractive features of science, as I think I said in one of the Friday night “Unconference” sessions, is that no matter how weird, unpromising, downright bizarre, or seemingly parochial the topic, there will be at least one somewhat obsessive scientist type out there  who thinks it is the most fascinating thing s/he has ever come across.

Every geek shall find his/her place, if you prefer.

The  example of this that Dr Aust used to use as an example in tutorials is fossilized dinosaur poo - although this probably isn’t the best example, as the subject actually has a long history.  But really, who on earth would think fossilized dinosaur poo would be fascinating?  Of course, apart from telling you about what the dinosaurs ate, it also gives information about the vegetation around at the time the dinosaur lived.  And there are other folk who specialize in fossilized human, er, deposits, and what they can tell you about human diet and health in pre-modern and even pre-historical times. And there are still other folk who specialize in fossilized animal poo, and so on, and so on.

Bill Bryson’s best-selling A Short History of Nearly Everything has a bit of this sense about it, that is, of some the fascination of science being related to its rather esoteric corners, and slightly loopy practitioners.

Anyway, the point of this diversion is to say that there is a point in these geeky talks, and sessions. You may not get it, but someone else will. And if you don’t have clunky Second Life / online conference participation now, then you clearly won’t have more broadly usable systems a few years down the line. So I appreciate that there will be people who want to sit in sessions logging into web portals and muttering about “syntactical hierarchies”.  Even if I don’t.

But I think I would rather that stuff were in a parallel session or a breakout group, rather than as a big chunk of the main lecture strand.

A somewhat related point is that science bloggers clearly do fall into subsets. One subset, obviously,  is the people who are interested in how the online technology works, or who are working on developing it. People who actually blog about their own research are another subset. People who explain research in their general field, but more for the public that for the Geek-o-sphere, are still another subset. And the Bad Science gang (who talk about science, or pseudoscience, but largely not about the science they do professionally) are still a different subset.

Of course, since most (non-group) blogs are above all personal to their writers, one blogger may span several of the above categories. When I started this blog nearly two years ago I actually anticipated writing rather more than I actually have done about “physiological” subjects, since physiology is my professional speciality. But I think some of the water posts are almost the only example of writing on physiology. And there have certainly been a lot more facetious musical ditties than I had ever anticipated.

Anyway, is there a demand for a conference to get all the factions of “science online” together?  I think there still is. Conferences, at best, offer a mix – detailed stuff you are really into the minutiae of, plus some more general stuff where you get a general “catch-up” on what is going on, plus some things you wander along to on a whim. I’m all for variety. And long coffee and lunch breaks.

The conference has, unsurprisingly, spawned a vast array of blogposts and discussions (some links here) – so far the one I am following with most interest is on Stephen Curry’s blog here.

Of course, above all, conferences remain “a gathering of the tribe”, and this was as true of SciOnLon as any other, see above. Stephen Curry writes on his blog:

“It is agreeably ironic that the richest experience for me was meeting… online folk in the flesh.

Meeting [some of the Bad Science] guys and all the other people I chatted to during the conference, and in the pub afterwards, brought home just how much joining in online has enriched my life with new connections. But it still strange to realise that these connections are best savoured in the real world.”

Which echoes precisely my own feelings.

The commenter who captured this best for me, though, was Canadian genome scientist Richard Wintle, in this response to Stephen Curry’s post:

“I love the delicious irony of your observation that it’s better to meet all these online acquaintances in person, at an event about online interaction.

Somewhere in there, there is a moral for the 21st century. Darned if I know what it is though.”

In which we ponder whether extinct prehistoric reptiles can sue for libel in the English courts. After all, everybody else can.

Via Frank the Science Punk’s mini-blog, I have just read this shocking story about the well-known dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex:

T. rex “mostly ate babies”

(see also the original story in the Independent by noted science journalist Steve “lofty medics” Connor)

Frank suggests that T. rex is clearly in urgent need of a PR agency.

I have a slightly different suggestion.

Since the allegation that T. rex ate babies is clearly injurious to the dinosaur’s reputation, T. rex should engage a good reputation management law firm – a couple of options are  here and here, the latter lot being Matthias Rath’s libel lawyers of choice, though there are plenty of other options too – and file a libel suit in the English courts with all haste.

With any luck, the case will be heard by an eminent legal mind, and this shameful slander upon the reputation of one of our best loved prehistoric carnivores can be shown for the premeditated attempt at (Cretaceous) mud-slinging that it is.

A spokesman for the popular dinosaur and family favourite assured Dr Aust that “sales of T. rex soft toys and other branded merchandise have not been damaged” and that “movie tie-ins are not in danger”, but also said that the dinosaur was “looking into” the question of defending its reputation, if necessary through legal action. Reading a prepared statement, the spokesman added:

“With rights come responsibility and scientists must realise that they cannot simply publish with impunity what they know to be untrue and libellous”

T. rex itself was unavailable for comment.

——————————————————————————————————————-

PS  The paper from which the Independent story derives is in a paleontology journal called Lethaia. The abstract of the paper is here, and here is some background on the debate about what T. rex might have eaten.  I shall look forward to seeing  in due course if blogger and Nature “fossils editor” Henry Gee has anything to say about the “T. rex was a babykiller” story.

In which Dr Aust mutters darkly about “real world experience” (are Universities the real world?  I always rather hoped not) and laments the loss of one of the few MPs who actually knew anything about science and Universities. Plus some “University Finance 101″.

Before Conservative Party Leader “Call me Dave” Cameron got into a bit of rather inconsequential bother over his use of a naughty word on the radio this week, he and his chums had presumably spent last weekend celebrating. This was, of course, because on Friday 24^th July a 27-year-old Management Consultant and Tory Bright Young Thing named Chloe Smith was elected as the new MP for Norwich North, overturning a decent-sized Labour majority.

There are several ironies about this victory. One that amused me was Ms Smith being quoted as saying that she considers it important for MPs to have “experience of the real world”.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment as quoted, it is slightly undercut for me by her bio, as printed in various newspapers. Judging from this her short-ish employment history consists of several stints as researcher or assistant to various Tory MPs – and, of course, of being a Management Consultant. She has been working, we were told, for Deloitte, though it emerged during the by-election campaign that she was on secondment to a Tory “Implementation Unit”. This is apparently the set-up which is trying to work out how Call Me Dave and his chaps and chap-ettes will run Britain after the next general election.

The whole idea of which fills me with deep foreboding.

Chloe Smith’s bio reminds me somewhat of that earlier Conservative meteor, former teenage Party Conference speaker and later Tory Leader William Hague. Though William had clearly been training to be a politician since he was barely out of short trousers, he did fit in a few years of management consultancy before he became a youthful MP at the age of 28.

Now, from the tone of the above you may have gathered, if you didn’t already know, that Dr Aust is an ageing leftie. But politics is not really the point of this post. And it is a truism of modern life in the UK that the baffling enthusiasm for Management Consultants transcends political affiliation, at least if one is talking about the major parties. The Consultants are all over the Health Service too, to the profound dislike of pretty much every doctor I know. Even Universities have a worrying tendency to call in the Consultants, though in academia the slight saving grace is that Universities are too hard-up – or at least penny-pinching – to splash out the kind of vast amounts that the NHS burns on the suits from McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & co.

The brightest and the best – errrm….

Of course, one is frequently told that Management Consultants, a bit like lawyers, are the brightest and the best, ultra-high-flyers and intellectual stars etc. etc. All of which may indeed be true. I actually know several Consultants, but not enough to tempt me to a nice glib generalization.

However, I do struggle to think of several years of political wonk-ery, and a brief-ish stretch serving the Consultancy cult, as being “experience of the real world”.  No matter how bright the person getting the experience is.

“Experience of the real world”, in my Grumpy Old Man’s view, comes of having done a job long enough to have some idea of what it is really like to do it – preferably as both an inexperienced and an experienced person, and at several levels of the hierarchy. In my view, you need to have put in some meaningful time in a business, or sector – earned your experience from the inside – to speak about it with any real authority or knowledge.

Which brings me to the main subject of this post, or at least the first part of it – the now ex-MP for Norwich North, scientist and trade unionist Ian Gibson.

Ian Gibson was that rarity in modern British politics – someone who became an MP comparatively late in life, having actually worked his way through a full career in something first. In Gibson’s case, the career was biological science; he did a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in genetics in Edinburgh, and post-doc work in the US, before going to work at the then new University of East Anglia in 1965. Gibson rose through the ranks at UEA to eventually become Dean of Biological Sciences from 1991 until 1997, when he was elected as an MP at the age of 59.

Gibson stayed a back bencher during his twelve years in parliament, generally characterized as an “Old Labour” type figure, becoming a notable scientific voice in the Commons. He was a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee for many years, and its influential Chairman from 2001 to 2005. The Committee contained most of the (few) MPs who had any first-hand knowledge of science, plus some others who were at least interested. The Committee was abolished in 2005, something which conspiracy theorists – possibly including Gibson himself – have been known to attribute to Government annoyance at the Committee’s tendency, under Gibson’s leadership, to point out when the Government was doing something that the committee did not believe was the best thing for science.

Gibson’s downfall was the MPs’ expenses scandal. Rather curiously, however, he is the only MP so far to actually resign over expenses. His misdeed was not all that untypical, but arguably less egregious than some. No moats, tennis courts, mortgage claims for already-sold flats, or claims for 3^rd homes in the country. Gibson had claimed on expenses the mortgage costs of a London flat where he admitted he only lived for three days a week, a flat that he later sold to his daughter at well below the market rate.

Gibson was deselected (barred from standing again as an MP) by a national Labour Party “Star Chamber” disciplinary committee. Four other Labour MPs “convicted” by the Star Chamber mechanism had already stated they would not stand again; they thus remain in office until the next General Election. Gibson, in contrast, had stated his intention to stand again, unless the local Labour party in Norwich North did not want him to. However, they did not get a chance to say yea or nay, as the national Labour party barred Gibson from being a candidate.

The decision was, according to most observers, highly unpopular with Gibson’s constituents in Norwich North, where he was well-liked as an “activist” MP. During the by-election campaign the Financial Times quoted some of them, noting:

“All six mothers [who spoke to the FT] said they would have voted for Ian Gibson, the outgoing Labour MP, had he run as an independent – even though the by-election was triggered by Labour disciplining Mr Gibson over his expenses.”

Similarly, the politics.co.uk website, in a story entitled

“Gibson’s ghost haunts Norwich North”

- quoted another of Gibson’s constituents as follows:

“He’s been tremendous in this area for us, for our community, all the way, Everybody’s been doing it [i.e. over-claiming on their expenses]. So why aren’t the guys at the top being hung out the same as Ian Gibson? It’s a tragedy, what’s happened to him.”

Now, the remark about “the guys at the top” is interesting, since it re-iterates an earlier point about Gibson. Despite his scientific background, both as scientist and “science manager”, and a knowledge of both science and higher education probably unsurpassed among Members of the Commons, Gibson never made it to even the lowest rung of Junior Ministerial Office. If you wonder why, Gibson’s own webpage bio offers a clue:

“During my time in Parliament, I have acquired the reputation of a rebel.”

Gibson was not really a part of New Labour, and indeed not really a part of the modern British  “political class”, which seems to be characterized, in the major parties, by people who have been training to be professional politicians since their early teens. Indeed, most political commentators – see e.g. the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee here – interpreted Gibson’s fate as his being thrown to the wolves  largely because he was not part of the clique.

And this returns us to the reason why Gibson was very popular among rank and file scientists, especially in the Universities.

He was one of us.

As in – a bit of a grumpy bugger, but someone who was passionate about his beliefs, whether in science or in politics. A bloke who was prepared to distinguish between what was important, and what the Government of the day was telling various biddable journalists was important. A paid-up member of the awkward squad, not an on-message apparatchik.

Thus, when the Blair or Brown Government could be heard telling you how very much they valued research, or how much new money they had put into the Research Councils, Gibson could generally be relied on to deconvolute the bullshit and give a more realistic verdict.

He was also an old trade unionist at heart, interested in hearing from people who wanted to tell him what was really going on at the grass roots in the science base and the Universities – notably about the ways in which career progression had become problematic for many 20- and 30-somethings stuck in the postdoc ghetto, and (not entirely unrelated) the many ways that the Research Assessment Exercise had distorted the system. I personally know two people who had significant exchanges with Gibson on these kind of topics.

Gibson did not always articulate the views of “the academy”, of course – he was and is his own man, with his own views. Notably, he continued to campaign against students having to pay “top up fees”, something most academics had reluctantly concluded was unavoidable if British Universities were to be put on some kind of sustainable financial footing.

But even when you disagreed with Gibson’s views, at least you knew they stemmed from a belief in, and a lifetime’s experience of, the University system, and science, and the opportunities that both offered people.

But anyway, now Gibson is gone from the House of Commons, and science has lost a real friend and champion in the House. He will be missed. Though I would not be altogether surprised to see him re-emerge as the head of some scientific Think-tank or perhaps even as a  University Vice Chancellor.

Meanwhile, at a University near you… cuts are coming

In an odd coincidence, the Norwich North by-election results appeared the very same day as this story on the BBC Education site:

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University teaching cut by £65m

Funding for teaching at England’s universities is being cut by 1.36% next year to save £65m.

Every university is affected by the revised grant allocations from the funding council (Hefce).

But the biggest cuts are at those with the most students: £2.5m at the OU (Open University), £1.4m at Manchester, £1.2m at Leeds.

Unions reacted angrily but the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) said the sector had to tighten its belt like everyone else.

The University and College Union (UCU) said the £65m would equate to the loss of a further 1,500 full time lecturing and support staff, days after it had complained at nearly 6,000 cuts affecting 100,000 students.

‘Disgraceful’

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said this was just the first wave of likely new cuts.

“What kind of message does this send out to future generations of educators?

“It seems absurd that in a week when the government has done so much soul searching over widening participation that it is putting up new barriers for people wishing to study.”

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Now, you might thing that the £ 65 M saved is a drop in the bucket compared with the billions and billionsthat have gone into bailing out the banks. Especially given that the banks caused the crisis.

You might think.

Meanwhile, of course, the Government was busy elsewhere congratulating itself for this:

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The government says there will be 10,000 more university places in England this autumn, mainly in maths, science, technology and engineering.

The extra places will be allocated by the higher education funding council in consultation with universities.

They will be part-funded: universities will get students’ tuition fees but not grants for teaching and other support.

Funding is from existing budgets and in part by cutting student loan repayment holidays from five years to two.

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The BBC story, unlikely most of the feeble newspaper stories that covered the extra places when the announcement was made, correctly noted that the Govt was basically inviting Universities to take these students on while receiving only 30-40% of the normal funding level “per student”.

University Finance 101

For those not familiar with the numbers, let me spell it out.

For each UK student my (biological science) faculty taught we received, last year:

£ 3,145 a year from the student (the so-called “top-up fee”).

£ 6,710 a year from the Government (the standard subsidy for lab–based sciences).

Thus a total of nearly £ 10 K per student per year (the Govt figure, often referred to as HEFCE teaching income, is explained clearly here).

If we take on extra students under the Government’s grandiosely titled “10, 000 extra places” scheme, we will be taking those students at an (effective} fee of £ 3,145 each – less than a third of the standard rate.

Given the cuts in teaching funding, I would suggest that Universities will not be taking the extra students unless they are expecting major difficulties  in balancing the budget otherwise.

Now, if you are as cynical as me about politicians, you might think that is just the point. The Government cuts the teaching funding allocation – the cuts were trailed a couple of months ago – and waits for the message to filter through that the Universities are going to be up against it financially.

Then it says “But you CAN take extra students, of course – for a third of the rate you normally get, and at a net saving to us of several thousand pounds a student”.

All Universities are equal – but some are more equal than others

Not all Universities are equal in this, although the % cut in funding for teaching students is the same across the sector.

Although the headline “reductions in teaching funding” are mostly biggest for the research-intensive Universities, which typically also have a lot of students, they are not the institutions likeliest to be facing melt-down. After all, even though they are losing the most income, these are also the institutions with the biggest budgets, the largest reserves, with their choice of students (that is, courses are far more likely to be full than “lower down” the sector), and with the most money from NON-teaching sources.

Meanwhile, it is in the less research intensive and “post-92” Universities that I expect the cut to be felt the hardest. These are often smaller institutions, and ones where teaching accounts for most of income. In addition, filling courses is sometimes problematic.

Of course, the Govt has cynically given them a partial solution to the budget problems produced by the cut; if you are facing a loss of £ 0.6 M from the cut, as many of the post-92 Universities are, you can rebalance your budget by taking 200 extra students with NO Govt funding – because each student will be ponying up three grand plus. Well, you can take these students if you can find them, that is.

Note that you will not be able to hire any extra staff to teach them – not without spending money you haven’t got – but at least the £ 3 K per student will mean you don’t necessarily have to sack anyone. Unless you want to. But all your staff will be working harder, and teaching more students, quite possibly in larger classes. And necessarily having less time to do research and other stuff.

What a tremendous bargain.

It will also not have escaped the notice of most people that a further effect of all these cuts will be to push the post-92 and other less research-intensive Universities a bit further towards being teaching-only institutions for science degree subjects. Which many science academics think is what all UK Govts have wanted, at least since the Thatcher years.

Now, I like to think that, if Ian Gibson were still in the Commons, and sitting on the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee (as it is now called), he would call all this the hypocritical piece of Realpolitik wrapped in spin that it really is.

I shall be interested to see if any of the current crop have the guts.

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Instant Update:

Since I originally wrote most of the above some time last weekend, we have actually heard which Universities are going to take the extra 10,000 students. Surprise surprise – or rather, “no surprise at all” – Oxford and Cambridge, and most of the Russell Group, said they would not be taking any extra students, thank you.

Various noises were made about “quality of the education experience being sacrosanct”. Which is good to hear, don’t get me wrong.

Though another way to put this is that these Universities simply don’t need the money enough to be prepared to take extra students for 30% of the usual “rate per head”. The list of who is taking the students shows, entirely predictably, a heavy slant towards the post-92 institutions (the full list is linked from this article).