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A new development in scientific integrity

Posted on 1 April 2025 by Frank Norman

Recent changes in US scientific research are very worrying. The ‘anti-science movement’ is being spearheaded by Robert F Kennedy – a leading figure of the modern anti-vaccine movement for many years. On their own his views are nothing new – the Skeptics in the Pub movement was spawned in 1999 to act as a corrective to science denialism. I remember that homeopathy attracted much criticism from the science community at that time, such as this 2002 systematic review by Edzard Ernst. The difference now is that Kennedy is in charge of the USA’s leading biomedical agencies – NIH, FDA, CDC – so is likely to do real damage.

There is great concern too about political interference in NIH funding.  Trump appointees will screen new funding proposals “to ensure the research that will be funded aligns with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration”. A recent article in the EHN Newsletter says:

Political interference in federal research funding compromises scientific integrity. It could skew national health priorities, delay urgent studies, and have a chilling effect on research related to topics like racial health disparities and vaccine confidence.

In another very worrying move the NIH’s Scientific Integrity Policy has been rescinded.

Will these worrying developments lead to an increase in the quantity of unreliable research results in the published literature? How can we detect research that has been compropmised?

A new information tool is launching today to help sort genuine science from fake science. CrapMed is an index of dodgy science. It contains 1) articles published in journals with suspect peer review, and 2) articles reporting research that has been compromised by political interference.

There are plans to rapidly scale-up the service as there is expected to be a huge growth in this sector (mis-research) over the next four years.

A team of scientific integrity experts has been assembled and many contributors in the broader community have volunteered to help to monitor the literature to identify candidate articles. Developers are also building links to Xitter, another rich source of mis-information.

Commenters have suggested that CrapMed could serve a useful purpose by identifying research that no-one should take seriously. By subtracting the results of a CrapMed search from the results of a PubMed search genuine investigators can derive a set of results that is free from compromised or fake research results.

CrapMed leaders are also negotiating with CrossRef to ingest the Retraction Watch database of retracted articles.

Noted researcher Lunchtime O’Gilson said that ’CrapMed is the highest quality database of utter dross that I have ever seen’.

Initially the focus is on biomedical crap, but observers suggest that it will soon be necessary to expand to cover all branches of research. The Web of Crap is likely to be needed before the end of 2025.

Plans are also under way for a new bibliometric indicator based on CrapMed. The working name for this indicator is the ‘Crap-Index’ but there are worries that this name is not sufficiently descriptive – there are so many other bibliometric indicators that people think are crap.

Stop Press

Rumours emerging from the Department of Ghastly Egregiousness suggests that the NLM will be renamed as the National Library of Misinformation and will divert resources from PubMed to maintaining CrapMed.

Posted in Research tools, Searching | Leave a comment

My lovely sister, 1946-2025

Posted on 27 March 2025 by Frank Norman

This week my much-loved eldest sister, M, died. I want to share with you some memories of her through my life.

In a few weeks it will be 30 years since my mother died from cancer. It was a difficult time – the uncertainty of waiting for test results, the assaults of chemo and surgeries, the time for recuperation. M had trained and practiced as a nurse so she made it her job to see that my mother received the best care. M navigated through all the healthcare decisions, keeping the rest of the family in the loop and explaining every stage. When my mother needed to recuperate for a bit before returning home, M made space in her own home and looked after her.

I was reminded of that time this week. M’s caring and dedication, her clear idea of what had to be done and her willingness to step in. Giving of herself. Now she was the one who needed all our love and care.

Growing up, we were a family of six children. I was the youngest. One sister died in a plane crash 40 years ago, leaving M as the oldest. We were a close family, though as we scattered across the UK we saw each other less frequently. The bonds remained strong.

When M left home to train as a nurse I was still a small child, so I don’t have strong memories of her until later. When she married I was 12 years old. I had my first taste of champagne at the wedding. (I don’t remember but apparently I enjoyed it!). That was the start of a long and happy marriage. A few years later she accompanied her husband when he moved to work in (pre-Ayatollah) Iran for six months and later they lived in Jamaica for a spell. I remember feeling very sad when she went away the first time, as it seemed such a far-off place.

Back in London they lived in a flat in Notting Hill and I remember as a teenager making trips to visit her in school holidays. M was beautiful and stylish as well as loving. She took me to visit smart department stores like Biba’s, Whiteleys, Barkers and other swell places. I remember on one of those trips watching her cooking in the flat – she was making a curry by mixing different spices rather than by spooning out ready-made curry powder. I was amazed to discover all the individual spices that went into it – their smells and colours. I think that set off my own love of cooking with spices. She was a great cook and her meals were always great treats.

I had many happy times visiting M, on my own or as part of family occasions. She and her husband moved house several times – Newmarket, Stansted, Chelsea, Putney, Rye. She was a great home-maker and relished the challenge of creating a new home – reshaping the house, decorating and choosing furnishings. Her sense of style was impeccable and her homes always had her imprint. She was also skilled in many crafts, things I know little about. She took up beading, making beautiful things with tiny beads. At one point she acquired a knitting machine and used it to create amazing clothes. She made me a jumper with a musical staff on the front; on it were the notes of the first phrase of Colonel Bogey. That was my favourite jumper for many years.

In the mid-1990s I started to have more impact in my library career, and received invitations to speak at professional events. I needed to smarten up my image. M took me shopping and helped me to select a new outfit. I still have the lovely double-breasted jacket that we chose. She also suggested a colour scheme that would suit me. I often veer towards that colour palette when I buy clothes even today.

After our mother died I felt closer still to M. I was no longer her baby brother of years gone by but a middle-aged man, so we related more equally. By then she had started her own family but she always had time to listen and talk. When at a late age I came to understand that I was gay, M was the first family member who I told. She was of course lovely, encouraging and reassuring. Tears were shed on both sides. When I found love with my now-husband, M welcomed him into the family. She was one of the witnesses at our Civil Partnership ceremony.

My sister at my Civil Partnership ceremony

My sister at the Civil Partnership ceremony

M was a very good hostess. She organised family get-togethers and parties for birthdays and anniversaries, always ready to open up their house. Over the years I came to know some of her friends too, through meeting them at her parties.

A few years ago when M and her husband celebrated a major wedding anniversary with a big family lunch, I was moved to stand up and make an impromptu short speech. I’m not good at spontaneous speechifying but the urge to speak overcame any nervousness. I told them that their relationship had been a firm point for me – they were so solid all my adult life – and I thanked them for their generosity to friends and family.

The last few years were hard for M. Four or five years ago she started complaining of a sort of brain fog. Slowly her speech became more restricted. It wasn’t obvious at first but in conversation she would repeat what you said. Later she would repeat just one particular phrase in response to anything you said. Diagnosis was very slow, but eventually we learnt that this was due to Primary Progressive Aphasia, a form of dementia that affects speech especially. This robbed her of the ability to communicate.

Slowly her world shrank as she could not talk or read, then she could not cook or do her craftwork. Later on her condition affected her ability to swallow, making eating a very slow process. Life became very complicated and increasingly fragile. She was cared for at home almost the whole time of her illness, by family and excellent carers, one in particular was so devoted and caring.

I tried to visit M regularly over the last couple of years. It was hard to see her so changed but it was heartening when she recognised me and gave a smile. She was still there inside, responding to loved ones but unable to tell us what she was feeling or thinking.

Last week M caught an infection and over the weekend it became serious. She was taken to hospital. Antibiotics did not help. Her family and close friends came to be with her, and I was able to be with her too on Tuesday. Early in the following morning she passed away.

Grief comes in waves and it’s still hard to accept that M is gone. Writing this has helped me I think. I’m sure everyone who knew M will have their own memories and stories of special times with her, and times when she has helped them. M was important to all of us, inspiring love and loyalty in all who knew her.

I remember that when the Guggenheim Bilbao first opened in 1997 we talked about travelling there together to visit it. Of course M was interested and knowledgeable about art and architecture. Sadly we never did see that plan through. I think I must make that trip soon, in her memory.

Posted in Biographical, family | Leave a comment

Is Ballroom Dancing like Academia?

Posted on 24 March 2025 by Athene Donald

One of my secret loves is watching each series of Strictly Come Dancing. It is a feel-good vibe we all need in these dark geopolitical days, however much I don’t care how many sequins are sewed on by hand.  So, when head judge Shirley Ballas’ memoirs were for sale at 99p on Kindle, I splashed out. What I wasn’t expecting was to find how much her world of ballroom dancing resonated with experiences many women in the sciences would be familiar with. Perhaps most spheres have similar problems.

Sentences like

‘The more successful I became as a female in that [ballroom dancing] world, the more it seemed the men at the top wanted to put me down.’

Sound familiar to mid-career women? It reminds me of the newly minted female FRS who, a number of years ago told me her department wouldn’t celebrate because it ‘wasn’t her turn’. Clearly she had put someone’s nose out of joint, because some male colleague had felt more entitled than her, as a mere woman.  Entitlement is such a pernicious emotion.

When I was writing my book about women in science, I conducted an entirely unscientific survey to find out what mid-career women of my acquaintance, across a range of disciplines, felt about how they were treated now they were successful. I explicitly asked them if things were better or worse, so as not to phrase the question in a leading way. Most had reservations about their experiences (although some noted how much less they were susceptible to sexual harassment, undoubtedly a massive improvement). But answers often indicated similar sentiments to Ballas, such as:

‘My main observation is that my achievements are not as important as those of other researchers. “Excellence” is a perception not an absolute. And I often get the impression that my successes (e.g. high impact publications) are resented, rather than celebrated.’

In a slightly different vein, to take another couple of sentences from the Ballas book:

‘Was it because I didn’t do exactly what I was told? Was it because I didn’t toe the line, because I didn’t always agree with what was said?’

Another feeling I strongly recognized, as did others. For instance, one woman of my acquaintance said

‘If I return conversational fire at even half the intensity I’m receiving it people will back off, frightened and sometimes even complain that I am threatening. This acts to exclude me from robust discussion that others can participate in.‘

Women are, it would seem, too often expected to do what they are told without fighting their corner, a sure-fire way to get trampled on and fail to progress.

It probably is the case that many men feel similarly, that if they don’t metaphorically fight for themselves they will get squashed, and if they do they will be seen as not behaving properly by those who try to control things, but it’s a double whammy for women because we cannot help but be ‘different’. The reality is that, in any, even perhaps in all sectors, there are those (cast your eye across the Atlantic) who want women to remember they are not entitled to anything very much at all except do what they are told – amounting to coercive control in a domestic situation, although I’m not sure there is an equivalent phrase professionally – and bear and bring up children.

When I lived in the USA, back in the years around 1980, I remember seeing flyers in windows around Ithaca saying of Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate back then, ‘This man has what it takes to set the world back twenty years’. By comparison, what followed that election was a relatively benign period compared with what we are seeing right now. But, I come back to that word ‘entitlement’, which many men seem to feel but far fewer women.

The other side of the coin is, of course, the issue that this week’s HEPI report highlighted – how many male teenagers don’t make the grade at GCSE and thereafter. We should indeed worry about these boys, who are brought up in a world which seems to work against them, and which spits them out at a higher rate than young women. And it spits them out into a world which fuels their resentment in dangerous ways, rather than offering them a safety net, a way to get back onto a ladder which will lead to employment and a secure home and life.  There is no doubt that this is a massive problem that we have to find ways to overcome, to ensure that teenage boys don’t feel disaffected from society before they’ve even started on their adult trajectory. But many of them will react at least as badly as Professor X when they see a contemporary female achieving more than they manage and some deeply rooted societal message implies ‘that’s not fair, men should be the top dog’.

I have no solutions to this problem. Maybe it will take many generations for the idea of true equality between the sexes to take firm hold. All I can point out is, if you are a woman – at any stage of your career and probably in any sector – if a man is determined to demean you it does not mean the criticism is legitimate. It is so easy for a woman to feel that somehow she has transgressed if a diatribe (or silent action) is directed at her to suggest she should know her place. The reality, although it may be small consolation, is that a man may be feeling threatened when his own inadequacies are being shown up, or his status implicitly questioned. Unfortunately, it is all too often impossible to avoid such people and work with those – of whom there are many – who are genuinely supportive.

Posted in demeaning, entitlement, equity, Science Culture, Shirley Ballas, Women in science | Leave a comment

Another Year, Another IWD: What’s Changed?

Posted on 8 March 2025 by Athene Donald

Every year International Women’s Day sparks a momentary bout of reflection about the state of women in our society. The  House of Lords has an annual debate, for instance, this year about women in STEM.  Social media will showcase many women’s stories, past and present, highlighting both those known well and those less so. For myself, and I’m sure many like me, multiple invitations turn up on my desk inviting me to give a talk here or there (which typically clash so I cannot accept them all). But does anything fundamentally change?

At one level the answer is obviously yes. There are more women on FTSE Boards and running universities. The Supreme Court is not all male and about half of Cambridge colleges are now led by women, although some colleges are still at the stage of appointing their first female head (most recently Selwyn). Compared with when I was growing up, huge progress has been made. At another level, at the level of inherent attitudes to what men and women can do, there is still too much question about whether women are ‘up’ to any particular challenge. Leaving aside what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, one can still see fainter echoes here.

Take the scrutiny over Rachel Reeves’ qualifications as an economist; no one questioned George Osborne’s or Jeremy Hunt’s experience or degree relevance. It is hard not to see this as a double standard being applied to a woman. Such scrutiny implicitly weakens her authority. Or the current anxiety over boys doing less well at school (of course something that everyone should be worried about), compared with decades of indifference when the gender gap was the other way round. I suspect the recent analysis of EPSRC grant data that shows that women are much more successful at obtaining fellowships than men (by some 80%; I’m not sure if there is a clear explanation of this yet) may provoke concern, despite the fact that university leadership and the professorial ranks remain stubbornly male, particularly in a subject like my own (Physics).

I would like to think progress was well and truly being made, but the reality is, when I go to talk – as I still do – to groups of young researchers about these issues, the same concerns raise their heads. How do I get taken seriously? What do I do when my supervisor isn’t supportive? Why is it always the women (and the minoritised ethnics) who have to do the heavy lifting in making improvements happen? The very fact that student women’s groups feel the need to invite me to talk about my own experiences is testament to the fact they don’t want to feel alone in what may feel like splendid isolation in some groups. In that sense, no, things have not progressed to the point where these are no longer matters of concern.

Then there is of course the small matter of the gender pay gap. In the 55 years since the original Equal Pay Act that Barbara Castle introduced in 1970, there is still – almost universally across sectors – a significant gender pay gap. Again, yes, it has been decreasing, but it still stands at 7%, according to the last ONS data. It has actually increased for managers, directors and senior officials, according to the same data. Some, but not all of this, will be down to grade/role segregation. This is just as true in the supposedly egalitarian Scandinavian countries, as this commentary on Norway demonstrates. But we must all worry whether the backlash against DEI initiatives in the USA spills over to our own shores. It is of course right to worry about the numbers of working-class boys becoming NEETS, but that shouldn’t blind us to the fact that girls who do well at school may well find their subsequent progression up the career ladder stalls and that their pay falls behind their male contemporaries.

The reasons behind these social challenges are many and varied, and initiatives that help one part of our community may not work elsewhere. However, that we live in a society where equal pay for equal work does not automatically fall out from decisions in the workplace – by managers and HR departments – is a disgrace. This is not even a case of trying to work out whether ‘dinner ladies’ and ‘bin men’ are doing equally skilled jobs (as in the Birmingham City Council tribunal some years ago), but whether two people sitting at adjacent desks doing identical roles get paid the same. If one negotiates on hiring and the other doesn’t (stereotypically male and female traits), the difference in salary may perpetuate and even grow throughout a career, without anyone noticing or indeed intending such a discrepancy.

And finally, in this IWD rant, if society continues to assume the woman is the primary carer, even when it has been pointed out – to a school or nursery for instance – that it is the man who should be contacted in case of an emergency, for instance, we will continue to reinforce these stereotypes. As long as such assumptions are made, by the individual and by society, we are not making the best use of all our talents by looking at the reality not some out-of-date vision of what ‘should’ be.

When it comes to International Women’s Day, it is a good moment to pause and think both about how far gender equality has progressed, but also how it is stuck. For the specific case of women in STEM, let me do my annual IWD reminder of the list of things anyone, whatever their gender, age or occupation, can do to improve the situation for aspiring and practicing female scientists. I originally entitled this Just1Action4WIS (Just one action for women in science) and, although it’s all but ten years old now, it is still as important now as then.

Posted in Barbara Castle, EPSRC, Equal Pay Act, Equality, gender pay gap, Women in science | Leave a comment

The Importance of Manufacturing

Posted on 2 March 2025 by Athene Donald

How many factories have you visited in your life? Do you have any sense of what goes on there? When I was a postdoc in the Cambridge Materials Science Department, helping out with undergraduate projects, I was offered a chance to visit what was then a major ICI production plant at Welwyn Garden City. Forget the fact that neither the factory nor indeed ICI exist now, this was an opportunity for me to visit a full-scale manufacturing site, where vast expanses of polymer film were produced. I leapt at the chance, naively mentioning during the visit that I had never been to a factory before. The ICI personnel seemed stunned. But why would I have?

Since then, I’ve been to a fair few such places. To Baxters on Speyside for a fun family day out, watching how soup and jam are produced from a safe distance. (At the time I refrained from pointing out my food physics credentials, despite my husband’s urging, to identify myself as a member of the Government Office for Science Food and Drink Foresight Panel, meant to be crystal-gazing at the future of the sector twenty years hence from the early ‘90’s.) To a breakfast cereal factory on the Welsh borders during my days of researching starch granule structure. That was a day memorable not least for being, however respectable, totally unsuitably dressed for climbing up and down ladders to look inside vats, dressed as I was in a skirt and heeled shoes. Back then I felt I needed to look serious if I was to be taken seriously (this would also have been in the ‘90’s). To later ICI factories, in Slough for paint and Teeside for more polymer films produced at phenomenal speeds….And so on.

However, impressive though large machinery is, and interesting though it is to see production lines, have I ever really stopped to think about manufacturing as a ‘thing’? Of course, the answer is no, not really. So much of what surrounds us it is all too easy to take for granted until it goes wrong (think of the glass vial shortage when there was a pressing need for them to store vaccines during the pandemic). Supply chains matter. Where some vital component comes from to complete an everyday product, suddenly becomes important when the Suez Canal gets blocked by a ship making a mess of a tricky manoeuvre. This we discovered the hard way during our house refurbishment, when all the replacement, fire-proof doors needed for our house renovation got stuck on the wrong side of the Canal. Who knew doors came from the other side of the world?

So, if you are in the same position of not having given manufacturing much thought, an easy solution is at hand. My Churchill and Cambridge colleague Tim Minshall, head of the Institute for Manufacturing in Cambridge, has just written an informative but easy-to-read book about the world of manufacturing: Your life is manufactured: How we make things, why it matters and how we can do it better. It is a great read, full of informative nuggets of information dispensed in a light-hearted but also serious way. I thoroughly recommend it.

As a society we constantly demand more: more stuff, more sophisticated stuff, more variety of stuff and so on. As academics we are often charged to be entrepreneurial, to take our discoveries out into the world of impact to make a better widget. But the reality is, there is a huge gulf between the germ of an idea, even if elegantly written up in some top-notch journal, and making something at scale at a cost that will sell and having sorted out all the logistics to make that happen. Few academics have that skillset and certainly not without a lot of trial and error to achieve a satisfactory end result.

Furthermore, these days anyone trying to produce some new product/widget needs to pay attention to the ‘cost’ in the broadest sense: to energy use and air miles, to impact on the planet and pollution. The last chapter in the book is concerned with what changes are ongoing and are needed to be developed so that, as the chapter title says, we ‘survive’ despite our apparently insatiable desire for more stuff. As he points out, manufacturing is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after electricity and heat production. We need seriously to tackle this issue, including by cutting back on our desires – as an example, buying fewer clothes and wearing them for longer is a good place to start. But we can also consider the production of the clothes we do buy so that they generate less (water in particular) pollution and make sure that far less ends up in landfill to rot over decades.

Food is of course essential, but we waste an awful lot of that too. In my time working on food all those years ago, people were already considering how to make better use of ‘waste’ from large-scale food production. I recall a cunning plan to use onion skins to make novel glues, for instance (apparently there is a lot of onion waste in the fast-food market). But all of us, even in our own homes, waste a lot of food. The figures of food wastage that we buy and then toss away because it’s past it’s sell-by date or rotted in the bottom of the refrigerator, is stunning, although admittedly the rotting vegetables probably don’t count as ‘manufactured’. Around 9.5 million tons of food waste is generated in the UK each year, the vast majority in domestic not commercial settings.  Globally around a third of food produced gets chucked. We could do so much better on this and many other fronts. Read the book if you want to know more about what you could do in changing how you live to waste less of the manufactured goods we are surrounded by.

I hope I’ve whetted your appetite. It’s an entertaining and informative book. Having talked to Tim during the writing process, I know he worried if he had got the balance right between being too technical and too ‘popular’. I’d say he’s found a pretty happy medium.

 

Posted in factories, food waste, Research, supply chains, Tim Minshall | Comments Off on The Importance of Manufacturing

What I Read In February

Posted on 2 March 2025 by Henry Gee

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 06.00.10Max Telford: The Tree Of Life Many years ago when the world was young I tried to explain, in popular science form, how scientists organise the natural world, all the better to understand the pattern of creation. The result was Deep Time. In The Tree of Life, Max Telford does the same thing but a lot better, bringing to a popular audience the very cutting edge of how scientists understand the pattern evolution has created. He does this with humour and a great deal of flair, though he is coy about exactly why John Ruskin gasped in horror on seeing his new bride naked for the first time (those who know, know). DISCLAIMER: The author is known to me personally and sent bound proofs so I could write an endorsement. I also feature prominently in the acknowledgements as the ultimate cause of this book,  so if you don’t like it, you can blame me.

 

 

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 05.59.47Bridget Collins: The Silence Factory Last month I read a sparkling collection of weird tales called Winter Spirits, each tale written by an author of whom I had not previously heard. Thus encouraged I found Natasha Pulley and her superb novel The Mars House. Another author was Bridget Collins, and I pulled her novel The Silence Factory down from the cloud for a listen. If you don’t like spoilers spiders spiders, look away now. On a remote Greek Island in the early nineteenth century, spiders weave webs of dream and deception, worshipped by the island’s women. Some of the spiders are captured and brought back to England where a descendant of the original explorer weaves the silk into a marvellous material which, on one side, offers a perfect soundproofing material, but on the other radiates maddening echoes. He does this in a factory that’s so noisy that it drives the workers deaf, mad, or both. That’s the concept, and the story is done well enough, but the theme of the male despoliation of nature in opposition to the female respect for it, though well taken, was perhaps too heavy handed for my taste.

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 05.59.18Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell I had read this long ago but had forgotten most of it until encouraged to revisit it as an audiobook by Offspring#1. Now, this is a masterclass in how to write modern fantasy. The scene is set in the early years of the 19th Century. Napoleon is ravaging Europe, while in York, the Learned Society of York Magicians meets once a month. The gentlemanly mages are all theoretical magicians, for there has been no practical magic done for centuries, ever since the disappearance of the Raven King, the medieval and semi-mythical fairy ruler of Northern England. Until, that is, the York magicians meet the secretive and intensely jealous Gilbert Norrell, a gentleman magician from elsewhere in Yorkshire who can still do practical magic. He comes to London where he makes his name raising a titled lady from the dead. To do this he invokes — in secret — the help of a fairy. who, once summoned creates all kinds of spooky and tragic chaos. While in London, Norrell serves the war effort, conjuring illusions to deceive the French fleet, for example. Norrell has the field to himself until the arrive of Jonathan Strange, a Shropshire landowner unable to apply himself to any particular calling until he discovers that he is a powerful magician. Unlike Norrell, who prefers the comforts of home, Strange is not afraid to  get his hands dirty and serves as Magician-in-Ordinary to Wellington in the Peninsular War, and at Waterloo. Strange gets caught up in Norrell’s fairy deceptions, but after many seemingly digressive adventures the tale ends mostly happily. It’s a vast book, and succeeds through the deft use of pastiche, for it is written in the style of the early 19th century, and has lots of absorbing footnotes, some of which extend to the length of fairy tales themselves. Some people might find this distracting. I found it utterly absorbing.

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 05.58.55Adriana Marais: Out Of This World And Into The Next A summary of where we are in the Universe, how we got here, and how and why we should leave our home planet, by a very eager physicist and would-be astronaut. I can’t really say any more now as I have been asked to review this for another organ. Watch this … er … ‘space’.

 

 

Posted in Writing & Reading | Comments Off on What I Read In February

Response to the Free Speech Union’s article on my letter to the Royal Society

Posted on 18 February 2025 by Stephen

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has published an article about my open letter to the Royal Society regarding the evident contraventions of its code of conduct by one of their Fellows, Elon Musk FRS. Unfortunately, Frederick Attenborough’s piece contains errors, omissions and speculative rhetoric which together contrive to misconstrue the meaning and intent of my letter.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to the FSU for their piece because it gives me an opportunity to address free speech issues head on. They are very important.

But first let’s deal with the errors and omissions. Attenborough writes that my letter “cites Musk’s criticisms of net zero-style policy” but in fact it does not mention this.

He also states that the letter “frames Musk’s actions as inconsistent with the Society’s statement of values.” This is true, but Attenborough omits to mention that this statement is contained within the Society’s Code of Conduct which states:

“Fellowship and Foreign Membership of the Society is a privilege predicated on adherence to particular standards of conduct. Fellows and Foreign Members, by joining the Society, agree to abide by this Code of Conduct.”

To be clear: fellowship of the Royal Society is a privilege which brings with it responsibilities.

The particular breaches of the Code of Conduct are outlined in the letter, which goes on to express my puzzlement and dismay that the Royal Society has decided to take no action. Attenborough could perhaps have attempted to show that the charges laid against Musk do not amount to breaches of the code, but he did not.

Instead, he characterises the letter as a call to expel Musk from the Royal Society on account of “his political associations and opinions.” But it doesn’t call for expulsion and the argument is not about associations or opinions. It is about breaches of the code.

Implicitly, of course, expulsion from the fellowship is one conceivable outcome of the Royal Society’s consideration of the case (and clearly that’s an outcome that some would favour). However, other responses are also possible, for example, a request for Musk to demonstrate his adherence to the code.

However, what we have is no action and no comment. Attenborough rightly lauds the Royal Society for its principles of intellectual independence and open debate, but there has been no open debate on this matter. He also rightly reminds us of the Society’s Latin motto Nullius in verba – “Take nobody’s word for it”. But in this instance, ironically, the Royal Society is asking us to do just that – take their word without any explanation of their decision.

Free speech is a cornerstone of an open society, but it is a qualified right in law and, effectively, within the code of conduct of the Royal Society. There are political views which amount to hate speech which are unlawful in the UK. Equally, there are standards of behaviour (e.g. statements, actions) which can fall foul of the Royal Society’s code. This is not about policing political views or affiliations among Fellows, however much the FSU might want to cast it in that light. Indeed, it is important for Royal Society to accommodate a wide range of political views, and to the best of my knowledge it already does. What this episode has revealed is the need for greater clarity from the Royal Society on how it will manage breaches of its code that have a political character (e.g. in Musk’s case, his call to prosecute another FRS, Anthony Fauci, or his involvement in a government that is recklessly endangering the conduct of science in the USA).

It’s important to do that well because there will always be instances where rules about speech or behaviour rub up against rights of free expression. Which brings me to Attenborough’s last omission.

For all his concern about the free speech implications of a letter asking the Royal Society to take action in respect of Elon Musk, Attenborough says nothing about Musk’s control of free speech on X or the censorship being imposed on federal agencies and scientists by the Trump administration of which Musk is a core member.

If the FSU really cares freedom of speech, shouldn’t they be calling out censorship wherever it occurs?

Posted in Science & Politics | Comments Off on Response to the Free Speech Union’s article on my letter to the Royal Society

The Origin and Extinction of Humanity FAQ

Posted on 15 February 2025 by Henry Gee

People often ask questions about the lifetime of our own species. Questions such as ‘how long have humans existed?’; ‘When will humans go extinct?’ and ‘Did humans ever nearly go extinct in the past?’ Another one is ‘how will humans go extinct?’ In my book The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire I answer these questions, and many more, such as ‘Will the human population ever stop growing, and why?’ and ‘Will humans colonise space?’ Here I give a quick round-up of some of these frequently asked questions.

HOW LONG HAVE HUMANS EXISTED?
The answer depends on what you mean by ‘human’. Let’s start by concentrating on our own species, Homo sapiens. This is the species to which all people on the planet belong. The earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens come from Morocco and are about 315,000 years old. However, Homo sapiens probably lived in Africa earlier than this, maybe as long as 500,000 years ago. We can expand the definition of ‘human’ to include all those extinct species that are more closely related to us than to our next-closest living relative, the chimpanzee. If we do that, humans have existed for around seven million years. The earliest species on the human lineage that we know about is Sahelanthropus tchadensis. This lived in Chad, in central Africa, about seven million years ago. It walked upright but probably looked and behaved much like a modern chimp. Other early human relatives that would seem more ape-like to us included Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus afarensis (‘Lucy’) and Paranthropus robustus. All these creatures lived in Africa. The earliest of our extinct relatives that looked similar to a modern human was Homo erectus. This evolved in Africa more than two million years ago. It was the first member of the human family to leave Africa and spread throughout Europe and Asia. It evolved into many different forms including Neanderthals; the Denisovan yetis of Tibet; the hobbit Homo floresiensis; Homo antecessor, Homo naledi, the ‘dragon-man’ Homo longi and many others – including us. Homo sapiens is the only member of the human family that still exists. All the others are extinct.

WHEN WILL HUMANS GO EXTINCT?
This is a hard question to answer definitively. Nobody can predict exactly when humans will go extinct. However, humans will go extinct at some time, because extinction is what happens to all species. However, there are signs that humans will go extinct soon, in geological terms. In The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire I predict that humans will go extinct within the next 10,000 years.

HOW WILL HUMANS GO EXTINCT?
There are lots of answers to the question of how humans will go extinct. Some are chance events such as a large asteroid hitting the earth; a worldwide nuclear war; invasion of aliens from outer space; or takeover by some human technological development such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Even with none of these things, humans will go extinct soon because all modern humans are genetically very similar, making us very susceptible to disease; a rapid decline in fertility; over-exploitation of the Earth’s resources; and climate change.

DID HUMANS NEARLY GO EXTINCT IN THE PAST?
Yes, possibly many times. For almost all of human existence, humans have been very rare. Only since the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago have humans existed in large populations. That is when people started to live in villages, towns and cities. Today, about half of all humans live in cities, and this proportion will increase. For 99% of the existence of Homo sapiens, humans were hunter-gatherers and lived in very small family groups. Humans have almost become extinct several times. The most risky time for humans was between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago, when there were never more than around 1,000 breeding humans at any one time. When the number of individuals is as low as this, or lower, extinction becomes a real possibility, whether from genetic disabilities caused by inbreeding, or localised chance events. All modern humans descend from this tiny group. A consequence of such genetic ‘bottlenecks’ is that modern humans are all genetically very similar. This is because they all descend from the very small pool of people that survived the period when the population was very small. Today, there is more variation in one troupe of chimpanzees in West Africa than in the whole human population. This is called the ‘Founder Effect’.

WILL THE HUMAN POPULATION EVER STOP GROWING?
Yes. The human population will stop growing in the 2060s. Ever since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, the human population has been growing exponentially. At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, around 1800, there were a billion people. Back in the 1960s, when over-population started to become a worry to writers such as Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb, there were only around 3.5 billion. Today there are more than 8 billion people. The population is still growing but will reach its peak in the third quarter of this century, around the 2060s. At that time there will be 10-11 billion people. After that the population will shrink very rapidly. By 2100 there could be 8 billion (the same as today) and by 2300, as few as 1 billion.

WHY WILL THE HUMAN POPULATION STOP GROWING?
The human population will stop growing for many reasons. The most obvious is a massive decline in human fertility. In the 1960s the rate of human population growth reached its peak, at around 2.3% a year. Today it is less than 1%. Human fertility in almost all countries is declining. This is measured by the Total Fertility Rate, or TFR. This is the number of children a woman must have in her lifetime. To keep the population stable, the TFR is 2.0 – two parents, two children. The population neither increases nor decreases. Actually, the TFR for stability is a little more than this, about 2.1, to compensate for various factors, such as the fact that slightly more boys are born than girls. Today, the TFR is nearly all countries is well below 2.1. Fewer people are being born than are dying. Populations are ageing. There may be many reasons for the decline in fertility. One is the ‘demographic transition’. It used to be that people had many children, expecting that most would die in infancy. Now, people have few children, expecting that they will survive. But people are having fewer children now, too few to sustain a population, except by immigration. Another factor is a massive decline in male reproductive health. Men, even if young and otherwise healthy, produce fewer sperm than they used to. Nobody knows why. It could be because of pollution, overcrowding or stress. All this could be related to the environment. Homo sapiens has now outgrown the ability of the Earth to sustain it. The global economy has not grown appreciably for 25 years. Resources are more expensive and harder to obtain; employment is scarcer and less rewarding; young people can no longer to afford to buy or rent a home in which they can raise children. All this is made worse by climate change, which itself leads to scarcity, disruption in the distribution of resources, and conflict.

WILL HUMANS COLONISE SPACE?
Maybe, but they will have to do it in the next 200 years if it is to succeed. In  The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire I argue that the only way that humans can prevent their own extinction in the next 10,000 years is to colonise space, whether on the surfaces of the Moon or Mars, or more likely self-sustaining space stations or habitats inside large asteroids. If each colony has a population large enough to minimise inbreeding (more than about 1,000), and has occasional interactions with other space colonies, this will allow the genetic pool of humans to become more varied. However, if the colonisation is to succeed, it must be done before 2300. By then, the human population on Earth will have shrunk so much that the pool of technologically educated human minds will be too small to engage in such large-scale projects. We have a long way to go. Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon – all healthy, educated men. Although around 400 people have been in space, only a few have gone above the Earth’s magnetosphere that protects people from damaging radiation. No woman has ever gone into deep space. Nobody has become pregnant or given birth in space. We know nothing about how people might raise children in space. Apart from knowing little about space medicine, the technologies we will need to make space colonisation a success, such as creating truly self-sustaining habitats, or creating food entirely artificially, are in their infancy. There are also legal and diplomatic problems that will need to be overcome. The Outer Space Treaty forbids any human from fencing off any region of space and creating a new, independent polity. Infractions of this might lead to lethal conflicts here on Earth. If we are to save the human species from extinction, we must start to think seriously about long-term human space colonisation.

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An open letter to the President of the Royal Society – time to stand up for your values

Posted on 11 February 2025 by Stephen

Earlier today, I sent the letter below to Professor Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society.

The letter expresses my deep concerns at the ongoing failure of the Royal Society to recognise that Elon Musk FRS has acted in contravention of its own code of conduct.

Further, in view of the continuing assault of the Trump administration on the conduct of science in the USA, in which Musk has a leading role as head of the Dept of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Society’s inaction has tarnished its reputation. It calls into question its commitment to its values, not least diversity and inclusion, and its fitness to speak on behalf of the UK scientific community.

It is my sincere hope that the Royal Society will find the resolve to stand up publicly for what it claims to believe in.

Dear President Smith,

I write to express my dismay at the continued silence and apparent inaction from the Royal Society over the Fellowship awarded in 2018 to Elon Musk.

The Society was made aware of Fellows’ concerns over six months ago about how Musk’s behaviour was in contravention of your Code of Conduct. Clear instances of this, such as his promotion of unfounded conspiracy theories and his malicious accusations towards Anthony Fauci were highlighted in Professor Dorothy Bishop’s resignation statement.

To that we can now add his post on X (Twitter) about the Rt Hon Jess Philips MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, falsely accusing her of being a “rape genocide apologist” who should be jailed, an utterance that placed her in physical danger.

I am at a loss to understand how these actions are consistent with a code of conduct that requires Fellows to have “due regard for the statement of values developed from time to time by Society”, (values that ask Fellows to “act in accordance with the highest standards of public life”, to make a “positive impact”, to “strive for excellence.”).

The Royal Society, as our national science academy, holds a unique and leading position within the UK scientific community, a position that in the Society’s own words “rests upon the reputation of the Fellows and Foreign Members of which the Society is composed”. That reputation has been grievously undermined by the public statements of Mr Musk.

The situation is rendered more serious because Mr Musk now occupies a position within a Trump administration in the USA that has over the past several weeks engaged in an assault on scientific research in the US that has fallen foul of federal courts. It has sought to impose huge cuts in funding and a regime of censorship (particularly with regard to EDI and climate issues) that is a direct threat to freedom of expression and academic freedom.

According to your code of conduct, “Fellows and Foreign Members shall not act or fail to act in any way which would undermine the Society’s mission or bring the Society into disrepute.” Yet not one word of protest has been uttered by Mr Musk over actions that contradict the values the Society demands of its Fellows and that have caused widespread fear and concern within the scientific community in the States.

This is a moment in which leaders and leading institutions need to take a stand. So far, the Royal Society has hidden behind the mantra that “Any issues raised in respect of individual fellows are dealt with in strict confidence.” I understand the need for confidentiality in cases of complaint, but the lack of any other statement in this very public instance, or recognition of its wider implications, increasingly looks like a failure of moral courage. What message does it send about the Society’s commitment to upholding its code, its values and its declarations about the importance of diversity and inclusion? What message of support does it send to our friends and colleagues in the USA, especially women, people from ethnic minorities, and disabled and LGBT researchers who are most exposed to the Trump-led offensive that has recruited Elon Musk FRS as its most enthusiastic general?

I urge you, for the sake of decency and to offer hope in what are very troubling times, to demonstrate that the Royal Society has the courage to stand up for the scientific community and for the values that it claims to believe in.

Yours sincerely

Emeritus Professor Stephen Curry

P.S. Given the widespread public interest in this matter, I will be publishing this as an open letter on my blog.

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International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025

Posted on 11 February 2025 by Athene Donald

It is ten years since UNESCO declared today, February 11th, as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Less well-known, I suspect, than International Women’s Day, it has a more specific focus. Sadly, in its ten years of existence, progress against its goals has not been particularly marked, despite the importance of women and girls entering the world of science to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Indeed, one could hazard a guess that in some places (notably Afghanistan) things will have gone backwards, with girls denied education of any sort at secondary level, never mind in the sciences.

The UNESCO call for action focusses on three areas, calling for urgent multistakeholder collaborative actions to: dismantle gender stereotypes and biases in science; open educational pathways for girls in science; and create empowering workplace environments. The UK could look at its own culture and consider how well it is doing across these objectives. Better than Afghanistan obviously, but we’ve a long way to go to eradicate gender differences in terms of pathways and stereotypes. In the run-up to last year’s Day, Teach First carried out a survey of children’s attitudes to science and maths (for children between the ages of 11 and 16). They found that more than half of girls (54.3%) don’t feel confident learning maths, compared to two-fifths (41.2%) of boys, with the gap even wider for science, with more than four in ten girls (43%) not confident, compared with a quarter of boys (26%). What is it in our society and our teaching that leads to this substantial difference, and why are teachers unable to overcome the issues?

Note, this is a problem of confidence not ability. When it comes to GCSEs, girls outperform boys, but the lack of confidence continues to manifest itself in that fewer girls than boys progress to A Levels in the STEM subjects, with particular shortfalls in the ‘hard’ sciences such as Physics and Computing, as well as Further Maths. Of course, these numbers then translate into lower numbers entering university to study those subjects as well as Engineering. And yet, report after report highlights how diversity in a company’s workforce leads to better outcomes, be it in a company’s profits or innovation.

By celebrating both girls and women in science, February 11th specifically highlights the pipeline. If girls get deterred from any interest they may have in science early on, they are unlikely to enter the STEM professions later. Schools and teachers have a key role to play here, in identifying what it is in their school ethos that may be holding girls back. The IOP’s (now quite old) data showing how single sex schools are more likely to see girls progress to A Level than coeducational establishments, must tell us something about the school environment in general.  I’m not convinced that things have improved since that 2012 report.

A small-scale study from the USA highlighted that children (both boys and girls) as young as 6 or 7 already see boys as inherently ‘smarter’ than girls. This is something that our society should be capable of eradicating if it put its mind to it. The belief that you have to be especially clever in order to be able to do Physics (particularly if you are a girl) is, again, borne out by many studies. The ASPIRES2 cohort study, led by Louise Archer, surveyed many children between the ages of 14 and 19. It showed that girls who do physics are regarded as exceptional, possessing high levels of cultural, social and science capital. They are presumed not to be typically ‘girly’. Girls may not identify with this description, indeed they may not want to identify with it. Furthermore, Physics is represented – in textbooks and overall narrative – as a subject for men. A lack of explicit representation of women in physics can lead to the assumption that women are unable to work in physics, or are unsuited to it. Once again it is not necessarily ability that is in question here, so much as a feeling of belonging or wanting to belong to the exclusive sect that appears not to be for them. Similar attitudes can be seen in those whose cultural capital or socioeconomic background leads them to feel unwanted in the subject.

More needs to be done to analyse, not just what deters girls from entering Physics (and, by extension,  Engineering and probably Computing), quite a lot is known about this. Now we also need to know what interventions would make a difference and, crucially, at what age. How is that girls imbibe the notion so early that they are less smart than boys? What would make a difference? Is it in how teachers interact in the classroom? Or is it in the messages they receive through the various media (social and otherwise) and their homes? Could teachers, if innocent of conveying the message themselves, do a better job of actively counteracting society’s messages throughout school years? Would more stories of modern women (and not just Marie Curie and, slightly more recently, Katherine Johnson) have a visible impact on the enthusiasm girls evince for the STEM subjects?

I don’t know the answers to questions like these but I think collectively we need to find them. I do worry, however, that a headteacher who is frequently lauded (at least by the last government) as leading such an outstanding school as Michaela, and yet who is unaware – or at least unconcerned – that her school has a below-average percentage of girls studying Physics at A Level, is the tip of the iceberg in the teaching profession. If diversity is only considered in terms of behaviour in the classroom in their training, how are teachers – particularly non-science-specialist teachers – to recognize and deal with the problem? And do they have the bandwidth to do something about this when their lives are so full and stressed already?

Posted in ASPIRES2, education, Michaela, natural history, People, pipeline, schoolteachers, Women in science | Comments Off on International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025