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Science doesn’t meet business

Innovation. It’s a buzzword for our current thinking on the relationship between science and business. Put crudely, it’s the idea that science is doing all this great research and that somehow we ought to be able to translate that into dollars through the business community. And by this model, the ... Continue Reading »

400ppm

Last week the world’s atmosphere took a giant leap backward. For the first time in more than 3 million years, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 400 parts per million. This was recorded at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory located on Mauna ... Continue Reading »

A brush without peer-review

You've probably heard about peer-review and the peer-review process. This is a cornerstone of the scientific process and an extremely important concept to both understand and adhere to. But it’s coming under threat and needs the protection of vigilance and understanding. If you don’t know what your peers think of ... Continue Reading »

For the love of graphs

Although I’m pretty much allergic to finance and business news in the evening bulletins, I do look forward to Alan Kohler’s segment on the ABC News because no one deals with graphs on telly better than him. Graphs can be difficult to interpret and are often misleading but they are ... Continue Reading »

One web to divide us all

I recently had the unpleasant experience of having to ‘unfriend’ someone from my Facebook page. I say it was unpleasant, even if I haven’t seen him for decades, because it is confronting to have to deliberately block someone who was once a real-life, flesh-and-blood friend in the days long before ... Continue Reading »

A Bone to Share with You

This week something a bit different; a photo essay on a fossilised bone I found in Richmond, Queensland last year. On the picture on the right I am with the bone as I found it in the field just minutes after the original find. I was on tour through western Queensland ... Continue Reading »

The Politics of Science

This year we have the extraordinary occurrence of having a Federal election date set eight months in advance and, despite promises to the contrary, it appears that the campaigning has already begun. This gives us an unusually long period to reflect on the policies and performance of all the political ... Continue Reading »

I Am a Fish

Recently I was taken to task by some of my Twitter followers for the seemingly outrageous claim that, because birds descended from dinosaurs, we ought to think of birds as still being dinosaurs. While this might be hard to take from a lay taxonomy where groups of animals and plants ... Continue Reading »

Teaching Only Science

I’m quietly bemused by the fact that I went to school, not just in the last century but also in a previous millennium! But when I reflect on what I had hoped would have changed over the last three decades and compare that to what’s actually happened, I’m left deeply ... Continue Reading »

A Look Inside a Crocodile’s Smile

I’m feeling particularly self-indulgent this week because I want to write about my own area of research and discuss some of the ‘in-house’ knowledge that I share with my fellow dead crocodile aficionados. But I don’t want to be exclusive here. Hopefully there will be something for everyone in this ... Continue Reading »

The 2013 Climate Wake-up Call

The hot weather that has besieged the nation since the beginning of the year and the associated bushfire threat has, I hope, been something of a cathartic experience for Australia. Finally an event that can be linked to climate change has been of such magnitude and impact that many people ... Continue Reading »

2012

The festive season is almost upon us. Many cultures around the world have major celebrations around the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and a congruent theme of many of these celebrations is the expression of good will and happiness for others. It’s also a time for reflection on the achievements ... Continue Reading »

On Telly

As many of you will know, I made something of a dramatic career shift when I took up the job as Director here at RiAus. I’d spent the previous 14 years at the ABC as a science reporter, mostly on TV, on the Catalyst program. But I’m surprised how often ... Continue Reading »

Paul Is Dead; Miss Him, Miss Him

According to some translations of a Mayan calendar, we’ve all got less than two months to live. This will not be the first apocalyptic prediction that I’ve lived through although it is nice to have a change from the monotonous regularity of our impending demise at the hands of a ... Continue Reading »

Out and About Hunting Dinosaurs

Last month I ventured into regional Victoria with our Free Range Science crew: Deb Shaw and Kiran Shettigara, to explore and explain the dinosaur delights around Inverloch. So this week I thought I’d compile a photo blog post of what we got ... Continue Reading »

In defence of pseudo-science

Last week I was watching an old MythBusters with my son. It was the one where they investigated the Hindenburg Myth, that what caught fire was not the hydrogen but a thermite mixture in the paints used to dope the fabric covering of the behemoth airship. (They concluded ... Continue Reading »

Women in Science

I do love the way that modern computing has created a whole new genre of graphics that allow us to present and explore lots of information quickly and easily. Last week I came across this graphic that sets out the different ways that men and women describe colours. ... Continue Reading »

Breaking the Golden Rule

Last time I wrote that I intended to look at the Golden Ratio but my attention turned to other matters. So now it’s time to return to the confusion of exquisite maths and absolute codswallop that is The Golden Ratio. The concept of the golden ratio goes back to the ancient ... Continue Reading »

Growing an Audience in the New Media Landscape

Simply by starting to read this article, you are aware that there is a new media landscape. You’re a part of it. It’s a landscape that is changing rapidly, tearing down the old paradigms of who can be involved and what can be said. And, on the horizon, I think ... Continue Reading »

Population Questions

There’s a growing school of thought that, central to so many of the problems we are facing as a species on Planet Earth today is one simple equation: there are too many people and not enough resources. The principal resource is food and the question is: How many people are ... Continue Reading »

Misunderstood Dinosaurs

Last month I travelled to Brisbane at the invitation of BrisScience to present a lecture. The subject was to be anything I wanted to talk about, so I naturally gravitated back to my home turf in science: vertebrate palaeontology. Dinosaurs to be more precise. It has always bugged me ... Continue Reading »

Diversity in Science

With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I’ll proceed with this blog post where I intend to invert the pyramid of the sciences, establish the supremacy of palaeontology over all other sciences before removing my tongue to make a really important point: relativity applies to the disciplines of science ... Continue Reading »

A Wrap of the Higgs Boson

Where to start on the Higgs Boson? After almost half a century of searching, they’ve finally found it. It was next to the car keys all the time. A lot of virtual ink has already been spilt on this revolutionary discovery announced on 4 July. But popular coverage of the discovery ... Continue Reading »

Science Image and Geekdom

When it comes to attracting young people into a life in science, we have to think very carefully about the images we put forward. This could not have been more boldly illustrated than by the recent disastrous campaign by the European Union to attract young girls into science courses and ... Continue Reading »

A piece of heritage

Who has the right to own a piece of heritage? Should the common heritage of all of us be held in some form of public trust or do we as individuals have the right to privately own heritage items? And if we do have rights of ownership, should there be ... Continue Reading »

A successful week in science

Firstly, I’ve been absent from this blog for the last couple of weeks so an apology is in order to regular readers. One week I was crook with one of those nasty little lurgies that are going around at the moment and the next week I was up to my ... Continue Reading »

Evolution: It’s the law(s)!

An interesting read in The Conversation last week about the language of science philosophy. What is a theory, what is a law and what is an hypothesis? These ought to be elementary definitions for anyone who studies science but I certainly learnt something during my read and on ... Continue Reading »

Science denial

In a column earlier this year I was taken to task about using the phrase “climate change denial”. The commentator opined that this had a pejorative tone but I pointed out that it seemed a suitable term for those who reject the science. I don’t like the term “climate ... Continue Reading »

Personal experience

Last week I had the magical experience of driving across the Hay Plain, reputed to be both the flattest place on Earth (which begs the question “how do you calculate that?”) and the most boring drive in the country. But the magic happened for me as I left Balranald heading ... Continue Reading »

Two dinosaur tales

Two fantastic stories from the world of dinosaurs this week. And by ‘fantastic’ I do mean in the more traditional sense of bizarre to the point of being difficult to believe. In one case, the story is ‘fantastic’ because it’s bunk. In the other case it is a sound piece ... Continue Reading »

Invisible risks

Sometime ago I blogged about how science is about making invisible worlds visible and more recently I discussed risk and uncertainty. Last week it occurred to me just how intimately related these two themes are, when I was being interviewed about the future of nuclear power in ... Continue Reading »

Medical uncertainties

Let’s put my bias up front; I’m a signatory to the letters of the Friends of Science In Medicine (FSM), a group of concerned citizens who speak out against the practice of some universities teaching non-scientific modalities as part of their courses in medicine. On the surface, that ... Continue Reading »

Red Deer Cave People

I don’t know how your day starts but mine begins with a foggy period of confusion between getting out of bed and the effects of the caffeine from my first coffee taking hold. During this period I usually have Radio National playing in the background, rudely yanking at me with ... Continue Reading »

The biggest fact in biology

Did you know this? The biggest fact I know from biology, and perhaps the biggest fact in all of science, is also perhaps the least known. It was taught to me as a post grad student by my supervisor Mike Archer. It’s a simple observation with profound implications but hardly anyone ... Continue Reading »

Communicating risk and certainty in science

While in Sydney recently as part of the Australian Science Communicators conference I hosted a discussion on communicating risk and certainty in science. These are potentially the biggest stumbling blocks in getting the messages of science out into the public arena. There is no certainty in science and there is ... Continue Reading »

Scientists behaving badly

Some follow-up on last week’s blog on how to pick sides in a scientific debate. This week, let’s dig a little deeper. Last week was a stand-back and assess the bunfight approach. Now I want to move in closer to the action and think about evaluating the science ... Continue Reading »

Picking sides

At the core of so many issues confronting us today is a foundation of science and, all too often, there is a debate about the nature of that science. For the general population this presents a puzzling dilemma; how do you pick the right side in a science debate? This ... Continue Reading »

Mixed messages about science education

I’m intrigued by the mixed messages that we’re getting within the areas of science support and science education in Australia. Some indicators offer hope, others despair and the overall impression is one of lack of leadership and direction. It was revealed late last year that high school participation in science ... Continue Reading »

World science

Australia has a long history of collaborating in science globally. Frank Fenner headed up the international team that eradicated small pox from the planet and Brian Schmidt, our most recent Nobel Laureate shared his award with international collaborators who together discovered the mysterious dark energy and the acceleration of the expansion ... Continue Reading »

A ride to work

I’ve always thought that cycling to work is a good idea if the roads are set up for it and the conditions are not too arduous. I used to regularly cycle 5km to work and back when living in Sydney and that was hard and often dangerous. In the back of ... Continue Reading »

Dig a little deeper

A couple of weeks ago came news of the definitive evidence that overturns the pivotal dogma of North American archaeology; incontrovertible evidence that there were people in that continent before 13,000 years ago. Let’s start with the dogma. It has long been recognised that the first people in North America were ... Continue Reading »

Funding woes for Australian research

Last week the biggest set of Federal Government grants for scientific research was announced. This ought to have been a moment of celebration in laboratories and lecture halls across the nation and, in a few lucky cases, it was. But a closer analysis of the amount of cash dished out, ... Continue Reading »

Bright ideas

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Sydney – more than a little under the clouds from a delayed flight that ruined my evening plans and other technological calamities that have all decided to visit me on the same day. Disenfranchised from my cyber-society (I can’t access the internet from ... Continue Reading »
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