Nothing shocks me, I'm a scientist

This blog is retiring

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 21:03:00 +0000

Dear readers, I am so grateful to all of you who follow this blog and have left comments over the years. But as you may have noticed, posts have been thin on the ground in the last few years, so I've decided to stop altogether and retire the blog. I'll be deleting it soon, but I just wanted to say thank you first, and direct you to my new website where you can keep up to date with my comings and goings.

Much love to you all.

Being a science journalist

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 08:57:00 +0000

At the AAAS conference back in February, I was asked for some of my thoughts on science journalism, and they've been kindly transformed into a lovely video by Carla Schaffer and Juan David Romero. Hope you get time to take a look and share your thoughts here.

Good times at the AAAS Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 12:13:00 +0000

I'm in Washington DC for the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference. It reminds me a bit of the Indian Annual Science Congress. It's open to everyone, every topic under the sun is covered, and there's a general party spirit facilitated by merry scientists with their fun science-themed accessories, and those of us who are usually the nerds of the newsrooms briefly finding ourselves amongst fellow nerds. I've been honoured to also pick up the AAAS Kavli Journalism Award for best radio programme, with my producer Rami Tzabar (picture above is of me in the top right with some of the other winners, including my hugely talented friend Amanda Gefter). Many, many thanks to the Kavli Foundation and the judges.

Being here amongst so many hardworking science journalists has also reminded me how important it is that science journalism is valued by society. We get easily distracted by the whizz-bang discoveries of big research teams, as evidenced by the gravitational waves announcement this week. But underneath the landmark research, science is a policy-setting, politically powerful and socially important beast, with the capacity to do harm as well as good. Science journalists are the only real line of defence that society has between itself and this beast. Bad science, bias and badly interpreted research are far more common than you might think, and scientists themselves (in my humble opinion) are often slow to own up to their failings. Some of the most arrogant people I have ever met have been academics, and if you went to university, you'll probably feel the same.

Since I'm knee-deep in research for my new book on women, I've been boring friends and colleagues here about it, and it has stunned me how many have shocking stories to tell about sexism and racism they have seen in science. One veteran radio presenter told me last evening that the basic fact is that lots of men hate women, and the scientific establishment includes some of the most hateful. It's this that keeps me writing. That's not to say that science isn't a wonderful thing, and the best way to understand the universe. Only that it is also human. And so long as it is human, the world will need journalists to help keep it in check.

Why the evidence of your eyes isn't good enough

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 11:52:00 +0000

I'm halfway through finishing my new book about scientific research on women and sex differences, and one issue that comes up again and again when I'm telling people about my work is this: "I know you say that men and women are equally intelligent, but then where are all the female scientists?" Or, "I know you say that girls don't prefer pink, but my daughter loves it, and that's not because of anything I've done." There is nothing more difficult for someone with scientific evidence that challenges people's preconceptions to face down than the Teflon-coated power of the preconceptions themselves. It is perfectly possible for there to be more male than female professors without that also having something to do with biological sex differences in intelligence. It's also perfectly possible your daughter likes pink, without that being an innate preference that all girls are born with. Yet we so often trust the evidence of our own eyes over the statistics or the scientific studies.

Especially when it comes to gender, we far too easily leap to the conclusion that the little we observe around us must be true of everyone, everywhere, and for all time. The technical name for this is confirmation bias, and it's one of the unfortunate human habits that we can't seem to shake. We tend to interpret new information in a way that supports our beliefs or prejudices, and if the new information doesn't, we tend to ignore it. If it doesn't fit into your worldview, you probably won't like it. So while we might find it hard, we need to be just as sceptical of research that confirms what we think as we are of research that doesn't.

Too many bad scientific hypotheses have been built on the statement: "We know men and women are different because we can see it." Everyone loves to find out that women really can't read maps or that men really are rubbish listeners. But just like your dad not being good at listening isn't good evidence in favour, neither is a school hall full of empathic, attentive men proof that men are equally good listeners as women. Science works (or should work) at a far deeper level when it comes to answering these questions. That kind of proof requires hard statistical analysis, psychological studies, behavioural data, cultural and historical context, an understanding of social factors... all things more rigorous than anything you can observe with your own eyes.

The picture of the mouse is courtesy of Aleksey Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 17:41:00 +0000

The winners of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Kavli Science Journalism awards were announced today, and I'm delighted that myself and my producer at BBC Radio 4, Rami Tzabar, have won the gold prize in the radio category for the documentary we made this summer about birdsong and human language. I was very proud of this piece of work, partly because it took me years to get it commissioned, but also because we didn't shy away from including some of the more arcane (but hugely interesting) explanations of linguistics. Also, my young son Aneurin features at the start of the programme (his radio debut, which just goes to show that he's already outdoing me).

Many thanks to the folks at AAAS. Look forward to meeting the the other winners at the award ceremony in Washington next year!

A new book is on its way

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 13:37:00 +0000

Quick, straighten out the living room and put the kettle on. A new book is coming! Actually, hold on, it won't be here until 2017.

It's been four years since Geek Nation was published (for those of you who've asked me what I've been up to and why I haven't written another one sooner, I've been raising a baby, presenting some radio shows, and whiling away some time at MIT. No excuse, really). But now I have finally started work on my next book. It's been commissioned by the lovely folk at Harper Collins and tentatively titled The Rediscovered Woman. As this suggests, it's all about women. More specifically, it's about how science has got so much wrong when it comes to women and how that imbalance is now being redressed, giving us a fresh portrait of women. I'm around a third of the way through it now, but it won't be finished until the end of next year, so you can expect to see it in early 2017 (just a year ahead of the centenary of women being granted the vote in the UK).

Like Geek Nation, writing The Rediscovered Woman is turning out to be a personal and illuminating journey for me. I bathed happily in the assumption, for many years, that science was objective. Think again. In fact I've been shocked by the bias I've seen, not just in historic scientific texts, but right up to the present day. Equally enlightening has been the newer work shedding light on women's actual biology and evolutionary history. Researching this book has utterly transformed the way I think about myself and other women (and men), and I hope I can do the topic some justice by getting you to the feel the same way.

I'll occasionally be popping some postcards from my research along the way, here on my blog.

What songbirds can tell us about language

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Tue, 12 May 2015 05:00:00 +0000

When I was doing my Knight fellowship at MIT, I met a fascinating man called Shigeru Miyagawa. I was sitting in on his class on Japanese culture, but I learned later that his day job is actually as a professor of linguistics. MIT has some of the world's leading linguists (most famously, of course, Noam Chomsky) and at the time we met, Miyagawa happened to be working on a new idea that promised to shake up the field: that human language evolved from two different layers that pre-exist in nature. One layer comprises simple, grunt-type utterances, or words, which have meaning (like we see in our fellow primates) and the other layer is more melodic and expressive but not really meaningful in itself (like birdsong). He calls this radical idea the integration hypothesis.

My BBC Radio 4 documentary, produced by Rami Tzabar, about his work and the more general idea that birds might help explain the origins of human language aired this morning (incidentally, the baby babbling at the start of the documentary is my son, Aneurin. I dare you not to be utterly charmed). You can catch it online on BBC iPlayer if you missed it, or you can hear it on the BBC World Service in a couple of weeks. If radio is not your bag (what?) then I've written a BBC Earth feature to accompany the story.

Since I met Miyagawa, he's published a few papers on the topic and produced a very informative MOOC for students, which covers the basics of human language as well as the integration hypothesis in more detail. They're all hugely interesting, as is he.

Zebra finch photo above by Maurice van Bruggen.

Flights of fancy

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 23:05:00 +0000

The Indian Science Congress (if you're not familiar with it) is an annual, general-topic, massive meetup that brings together all sorts of researchers and students across India, often with the Prime Minister or President taking top billing. As I wrote in Geek Nation, this kind of gathering naturally attracts a few crackpots and pseudoscientists, but the Congress very rarely gives them any prominence.

However, a strange thing happened at the Indian Science Congress this year... one of the presentations was about "Ancient Indian Aviation Technology." If you're wondering what this means, it's the mythical belief that ancient Indians flew around in airplanes, perhaps even to other planets (I know, I know...). As amusing as the world press found this, it was a topic I was already uncomfortably close to. In one chapter of my book I went to visit the academy where research into this "aviation technology" takes place. Caravan magazine ran an excerpt for this chapter over the weekend in case you'd like to take a look.

What I found at this academy, predictably, was a bit nutty. The motivation behind it, however, is sinister. To me at least, attempts to appropriate science by religious groups (in this case, Hindus) never end well. The latest resurgence of interest in ancient airplanes, along with ancient plastic surgery and goodness knows what other bonkers myths, are driven by a desire to elevate Hinduism by proving that all knowledge belongs to the religion. These people aren't deluded (well, at least some of them aren't), they're manipulative. They're doing nothing less than trying to whip up nationalism using fake history.

Of course unsubstantiated ideas like these have no place at a scientific conference, but I do hope the derision that followed the Indian Science Congress does at least stop people from trying to force them into schools or universities. More urgently, I hope we start to see these seemingly little acts for what they are: subversive attempts to turn Indian away from secularism.

Nature, nurture and the other thing

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:40:00 +0000

It's very often that I will write a story in which one of my interviewees will have a problem with the others. Contrary to what many people believe, scientists disagree with each other a lot. But when I started writing a feature about epigenetics for The Observer newspaper, I rapidly realised that every single researcher I was interviewing had a different theory or perspective on the subject... some of them so fervently opposed each other as to completely dismiss another's work.

Epigenetics is an intriguing new area of science, looking at how our genes get "switched on" and "off" throughout our lives, producing different impacts on our bodies. A controversial sub-phenomenon, known as epigenetic inheritance, suggests that the epigenetic changes we experience (and may also be responsible for, by smoking or by becoming obese, for instance) may even get passed onto our offspring, their offspring, and possibly generations beyond that. In essence, epigenetic inheritance could constitute a Lamarckian third element beyond traditional genetics (what we think of as "nature") and nurture.

It is a field in its very early days, with exciting possibilities but also an incredible amount of hype. Researcher after researcher has told me that this frenzy has been created by the media (a line I hear almost daily), but in this case I really do believe that scientists, journal editors and funding bodies are themselves largely to blame. Epigenetic inheritance, like genetics, nanotechnology and brain scanning, has become fashionable. That's not to say there's no substance there, but when most of your evidence is in lab mice and you don't have a proven mechanism to explain how something is happening, then I think it's fair to say that people may be jumping the gun. Anyway, it will be very interesting to see how it all pans out.

To read the story for yourself and find out what all the fuss is about, you can go back in time and buy yesterday's Observer, or read it online.

The beautiful photo above is by Melissa Fong.

What killers can tell us about animals

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 17:26:00 +0000

As data journalists will tell you, one of the exciting things about statistics is that occasionally they will throw up unusual and unexpected correlations. One of the strangest I've come across is covered in my feature in this week's New Scientist. A biologist at Queen Mary University of London, Steven Le Comber, and others have found that criminal profiling software, of the kind sometimes used to track down where serial killers live based on the locations of their crimes, also provides a surprisingly tight match when trying to find animal roosting sites based on where they forage, and hunting animals based on where they've killed. It's a relationship that works across infectious diseases, invasive plant species (and goodness knows what else) as well. Weird, right? I dare not speculate what this tells us about the criminal mind.

(Photo by Fallows C, Gallagher AJ, Hammerschlag N (2013) [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Events this summer

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 18:14:00 +0000

Last year, my fellowship commitments and impending baby meant that I had to turn down speaking engagements for a while. This was horrible, because I love to talk. Luckily (for me, not you), I am back in action this year. You can catch me first at the wonderful How The Light Gets In Festival in Hay-on-Wye on 30th May, talking about big data with the fabulous Kenneth Cukier and John Horgan. Better still, this event will be moderated by Laurie Taylor, whose Radio 4 Thinking Allowed podcast is one of the nicest things on my iPod. At 5pm the same day I'll be hosting an afternoon tea, for a bargain seven quid (cake and drinks included), where you can continue the debate. Tickets are available on the festival website.

I've also helped organise this year's UK Conference of Science Journalists, which will be on 18th June at the Royal Society in London. The two sessions I'm involved in there are on creative broadcasting (with the fabulous Sue Nelson, Brady Haran, and Mohit Bakaya) and another on successful freelancing. It will be a great networking opportunity as well as a learning experience, so please do register online. There are scholarships available to students.

If you've ever wanted to dip your own toes in the world of popular science writing, like I have (join me, the water's lovely!), then for a mere 99 quid you can learn all about it. The successful and prolific popular science writer Brian Clegg is heading up a science writing masterclass for The Guardian on 20th July. I'll be offering my own two cents, too, along with writer and former publisher Simon Flynn. You can book your place on the Guardian website.

In the meantime, next Saturday I'll be at QED Con in Manchester with a shedload of skeptics. Hope to see you there!

Why do we have the menopause?

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 19:02:00 +0000

When my editor at The Observer suggested I do a story about the menopause, I'll admit, I didn't know what to say. To my shame, it's not something I'd ever thought about. That in itself, I learned, is part of the problem. There is very little menopause research out there because it's a question so few scientists think about. And yet it is one of the most fascinating mysteries in biology. Here we are, the product of millennia of penny-pinching evolution that has ruthlessly left us with little in our bodies that we don't need... and yet women across the globe live forty or fifty years past childbearing age. Why? To learn more about the debate, you can read my story in today's paper, or for free online.

Geek Nation, now out in simplified Chinese

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 20:16:00 +0000

Should you ever find yourself wanting to read my book in Chinese, then you now have two options. A Taiwanese publisher translated it a couple of years ago, and now there is a new second version out, in simplified Chinese. And it has what I think is a strong a contender for most entertaining book cover in the world (who is that guy in the turban in between Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg? He just looks so mysterious…). It's worth it, for that alone. As yet, I have no idea where you would go to get a copy, but I'm sure you can find it in all good Chinese bookshops, Alternatively, send me all your money and I'll post you one of mine.

How smart are babies, really?

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 09:42:00 +0000

The baby scene at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is what it feels like to be a parent.

One thing nobody can explain to you when you're expecting your first child is just how earth-shatteringly miraculous babies are. My son is now five months old and not a day passes when I'm not overwhelmed by the fact that an organism that didn't even exist fourteen months ago has been able to develop into such a complex, animated person. It feels impossible that the meaning to the universe doesn't lie in his little head.

So, it beggars belief that scientists have been so slow to turn to babies when trying to understand humans in general. For my latest feature in The Observer, I've been looking at baby research (inspired by a visit to the wonderful Babylab at University College London, which you should also sign up for if you happen to be a parent of a young one). And what has surprised me the most is just how new the whole field is. Until as late as the 1960s many people assumed that babies were just very stupid adults. We now know that's far from the truth. In fact, some researchers think that they hold the key to understand intelligence.

To find out more, please do pick up this Sunday's Observer. And, as always, please do let me know what you think.

No, you can't approve my copy

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 16:02:00 +0000

Prompted by a comment on the last blogpost, I felt the need to write a quick explanation for scientists of why it is not OK to ask to see articles before they're published.

About a year ago, I was on a train when I received a fairly nasty call from a scientist who I was profiling for a magazine, asking why I wouldn't allow him to check my copy before I sent it off to the editors. "It's my article," he told me on the phone. "No, it's not," I replied, much to his surprise. What he failed to understand was that an article about him, that included his thoughts, didn't actually belong to him. For him to read it and have approval would mean I'd be unable to criticise him or his work (whether I wanted to or not). See, that's journalism.

Yes, I know much science journalism merely explains a piece of research, a discovery or an idea, so I can understand researchers' desperation to make sure their thoughts are accurately expressed... but fact-checking stories can easily slide into censorship. Which is why I personally believe it is unethical to give copy approval, and why it is unfair for interviewees to ask for it. Incidentally, the above scientist later apologised, after he checked with his colleagues and they confirmed that he was in the wrong.

Scientists vs science journalists

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 08:58:00 +0000

The difference between science journalists and communicators? Journalists don't smile.

I had a fun evening last night at a debating festival called the Battle of Ideas, as one segment of a roundtable discussion on science and society, with a distinguished panel of writers, journalists and thinkers. I don't know how the organisers do it, but they always manage to pick the ideal mix of participants to get a heated argument going. And last night, ours revolved around whether the public can trust science. As usual, when this topic rolls around, the media got a good ole bashing (it's not scientists' fault that we're misinformed, it's the media's!). I take great exception to this. Having met and interviewed my fair share of researchers, I can tell you, they can be as manipulative, money-grubbing and dishonest as the rest of us. I'm not sure why we would expect them to be anything else. Those hyped-up press releases that get sent out by universities aren't pulled out of thin air.

One problem is that science journalism and science communication are conflated. Communicators (TV and radio stars like Brian Cox, Jim Al-Khaili and Alice Roberts, for instance) are a friendly conduit between scientists and the public, essentially working on behalf of researchers (and often from within the scientific establishment) to help people understand science better. Journalists are supposed to be more adversarial, interrogating scientists' claims and motives, and any policy responses, with the aim of finding truth and clarity. Sometimes, as the Association of British Science Writers' Connie St Louis has pointed out many times, the press and broadcasters are so busy communicating, they lose the point. We science journalists should be no more on the side of scientists than political journalists are on the side of politicians.

The merry band of science communicators, bloggers and skeptics who cheerlead for science don't always understand that scientific truths are provisional, and that they're only alienating the public by bolstering divisions between science and the rest. When researchers turn out to be wrong (Andrew Wakefield, who started the MMR vaccine controversy, for example), they're dismissed in hindsight as "bad scientists". Well then, how is the public to know who the good ones are? It's easy to think of the scientific method as perfect. It is, after all, the best system we have for understanding the universe. But so long as humans are the ones practising it, it never will be. Scientists do deserve our respect, but they also require us to constantly challenge them. That's my job, and I really do wish it was more valued.

Inside the head of a bird

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 11:31:00 +0000

The first horror movie I ever saw was Hitchcock's The Birds, in ghoulish 3D at an amusement park in the US. Ever since, I've found it difficult to be interested in birds as anything other than a scary nuisance. So, I approached the latest London Science Book Club pick with something close to ambivalence. Bird Sense by ornithologist and zoology professor Tim Birkhead explores birds' senses (touch, smell etc) in an effort to help us understand how it feels to be a bird. And to my surprise, it was a joy to read. In fact, our group loved it (with the exception of one member who found it 'disappointing' considering the wealth of bird research out there, another member's chagrin at the constant misspelling of the word 'coloration', and our unanimous view that the book needed more pictures).

There are lots of lovely little tidbits of birdy information, such as why owls have such good hearing, and the copulation habits of parrots. Birkhead also does a wonderful job of showing how science moves along, with each truth being only provisional. But the best thing about Bird Sense is that it is so lucidly written, well-referenced and full of the kind of anecdotes that make you see Birkhead (and other birdwatchers) as Indiana Jones figures, leaping over cliffs and ploughing through jungles to catch glimpses of rare species. One member even mentioned that it made her want to take up birdwatching. I wouldn't go that far, but I would recommend you pick it up.

Latest from the London Science Book Club

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 18:06:00 +0000

The London Science Book Club is already more than two years old and ticking along very happily. For this, I have to thank one of the original members, Peter Wrobel (whose name some of you may recognise from New Scientist or Nature, where he was managing editor). Peter took over management of the club while I was away in Boston, and this blog post comes straight from him. The latest book club pick was Bad Pharma, about the big (and apparently quite bad) world of drug companies, written by the well known science writer and medical doctor Ben Goldacre. Since I missed the meeting, here is the club's verdict, in Peter's words...

We liked this book. It was ambitious, but we felt it delivered what it promised. We liked its cheeky and provocative style (some more than others), and felt it was pitched perfectly for its intended audience. Another plus (for a long book) was that "you could dip in and out", even "start anywhere". That, of course, holds an implied negative, common in a lot of non-fiction: there was no consistent "pull" to take you through from start to finish.

One area of division: half of us thought that it could have been more generous in describing the efforts of others in the field; half disagreed. Given the scrupulous referencing, this is fundamentally a question of the impression received by different readers. So some of us felt that the impression created was "Ben takes on the world", whereas there is a whole corps of researchers out there fighting the good fight.

By general agreement, the final session on marketing was the most gripping (and, for that reason perhaps, the easiest to get through). Other aspects that generated discussion included authorship and the Declaration of Helsinki. Goldacre criticises the international medical editors' committee for its authorship rules on the basis that ghostwriters are de facto eliminated by them. We felt that a) he was missing the point (which is that journals have been fighting to cut down author lists and eliminate people who have played no part in the research); and b) overall we were not sure (and could not agree) that ghost writers should be listed as authors, nor where you draw the line between helpful comment, the rewriting involved in translation (eg for Chinese authors), and medical ghosting – anyway, it was a lively discussion!

Goldacre also makes much of the "difference" between the Declaration of Helskinki and the ICH GCP rules, which he says remove several ethical principles. On this point, one of us had been in correspondence with Frank Wells (glowingly referenced by Goldacre with respect to uncovering fraud), who had co-written the ethical bits of ICH GCP and who confirmed that ICH GCP explicitly set out to incorporate the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (and indeed wrote them in – see ICH GCP 2.1).

Overall, we enjoyed this book, and noted the great and positive influence it has had, particularly in the UK. One of us, who had read a library copy, said she would buy her own copy: praise indeed!

Can a flood barrier save New York?

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:52:00 +0000

As though I wasn't geeky enough for you already, among the day trips I remember most fondly from my childhood is one to the Thames Barrier in London. If you've never seen it in person, it is a mammoth piece of engineering. Its genesis lies in a huge flood that hit the North Sea in 1953, killing hundreds of people. At the time, flood barriers weren't particularly common, and the Thames Barrier was so big that it took around thirty years to be built. But we're all entering an age now in which climate change and associated sea level rises have become more of a concern, and the idea of flood protection is soaring up the agenda.

I didn't know this until recently, but New York is amongst the most at-risk cities in the world. And of course nothing highlighted this fact more than last year's devastating Hurricane Sandy. Now, unsurprisingly, scientists and politicians there are concerned that if they don't build a barrier or some other kind of protection around the city soon, parts of it may not survive the next century. About a month ago, I travelled to New York to meet the people working to solve this problem.... and my journalistic gatherings from there have now been turned into a documentary for the BBC World Service, which you can hear this week on radio, or online.

Why does human childbirth hurt?

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:32:00 +0000

I'm eight months into my pregnancy, so naturally my thoughts are drifting towards my baby's big, painful birthday. I'd like to think that it's no big deal (after all, if horses and cows can do it without complaining, then why can't I?). But the truth is, human childbirth is particularly painful when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. I learned this fascinating fact at this year's AAAS meeting in Boston, from paleoanthropologist Karen Rosenberg, who works at the University of Delaware.

The reason is that human brains have evolved to be large in relation to body size, while women's pelvises haven't really kept up in the size stakes. The average human baby is about six per cent the mass of its mother, which is unusually heavy. This means that it's much tougher to get a human baby's head out of a human female's body. The big question for scientists is why. It doesn't make sense that we women wouldn't have evolved pelvises that could match up to the task of childbirth, as other mammals seem to have done.

Rosenberg's explanation is that we haven't needed to evolve these features because we give birth socially. Every country shares the same tradition of never expecting a woman to give birth alone... there are always people to help, which lowers the risks to both the mother and the child. This social adaptation has effectively counteracted the need for us to evolve larger pelvises. If her hypothesis is right, it's a beautiful example of culture changing the outcome of the evolutionary process. And it's a reminder that it doesn't just take a village to raise a child, but also to bring one into the world.

Molecular gastronomy

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:32:00 +0000

I'm no great foodie, but over the years I've been captivated by 'scientific' chefs like Heston Blumenthal and, more recently, Nathan Myrhvold (a former Microsoft bigwig turned modernist chef). I'm sure that many millions of other people have been similarly fascinated at seeing the process of cooking broken down and explained. But I've always had the niggling feeling at the back of my mind that this all seems a little too new. Why is the world of cheffery only now learning the very basic chemistry and physics behind food? What on earth took them so long?

It was at an MIT talk a few weeks ago by a chef from the famous show America's Test Kitchen and the programme's science editor (and Harvard associate professor) Guy Crosby, that it finally dawned on me that they haven't learned anything new at all (the moment actually came when they were explaining why certain combinations of liquids form good emulsions and others don't)... because the processed food industry did it all first. The millions of scientific calculations that needed to be carried out when figuring out how to make a perfectly creamy emulsion, the tenderest chunk of meat and the crispiest snacks were all done decades ago by lab-coated food scientists working for such companies as Nestle, Kraft and Walkers. Without them, we wouldn't have margarine or squeezy cheese. We certainly wouldn't have Pot Noodles. These foods, while cheap, are the height of tastiness. And their tastiness was painstakingly perfected over years in a laboratory. In fact, Guy Crosby confirmed this. He himself worked in food processing before going upmarket.

So, what molecular chefs have basically done is to take science lessons from the dirty underbelly of the food industry, and apply them in such a way that they all seem fresher, glossier and posher. With their seemingly innovative brand of 'scientific cooking' they are pretty much selling us Dairylea Lunchables dressed up as gastronomic cuisine. Now, go watch a Heston cookery show, and tell me, isn't sous vide really just boil in the bag?

Goodbye, Boston

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:35:00 +0000

My wonderful fellowship year at MIT concluded this week, and in fairly dramatic style. I was in Boston when the bombings happened at the marathon and I managed to get back home to London just before the suspects were caught. It has been incredibly sad to see a city as beautiful and generally peaceful as Boston become the scene of so much violence, especially since my experience there has been nothing but lovely (save the odd taxi driver!). In fact, it's where my first baby was conceived last summer. I'm due to give birth in about a month, and amidst the terrible events of this week, I'd like to thank my wonderful friends in Cambridge and MIT for wrapping me up in happiness over the past year. If a city is a product of its people, then Boston should count itself one of the best in the world.

Why aren't science films like other films?

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:26:00 +0000

I'm at my first AAAS Annual Meeting this week, and it's been great so far. One of the highlights was on Wednesday night, when the recent winners of the Jackson Hole Science Media Awards were showcased at the Harvard Natural History Museum. In the UK, almost all science films are made by the BBC, so it was fascinating to see what American ones are like.

My verdict? I was impressed, especially with Hidden Beauty, a film by former time-lapse photographer Louie Schwartzberg (in the photo above). But what did strike me was that nearly every documentary shown was narrated by a disembodied voice (to be fair to Schwartzberg, at least his voice was supplied by Meryl Streep), or threw loads of CGI onto the screen to compensate for the fact that certain sciences are difficult to communicate without big-budget trickery (especially true of Fabric of the Cosmos, which looked like it was entirely green-screened). In an age in which documentaries have come such a long way, with some amazing, character-driven and narrative storytelling, like in Spellbound and Touching the Void, I couldn't help wondering why science filmmaking seems to be stuck in a rut.

Where are the fly-on-the-wall science documentaries, or the simple character-led films? Why aren't maverick young filmmakers turning to science for inspiration? It's not as though great stories aren't there. It feels sometimes as though the public's fear of science has infected television and film. Surely the stories of scientists and engineers can be just as compelling as those of explorers and adventurers?

That said, I'm sure there are are examples of simple, powerful science films out there that I don't know about. Drop a comment if you can point me in their direction!

New website is online!

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:56:00 +0000

For all you Angela Saini fans (surely there's one out there somewhere?), you may be pleased to know that my new website has gone online. I've stripped down a lot from the old site, which was getting a bit cluttered, to make navigation simpler. And I've based the design around these beautiful blue tiles I photographed in Lisbon a few years ago. Hope you like it.

The great American car crash

noreply@blogger.com (Angela Saini) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:11:00 +0000

Er, exactly how much street does that house need?

If you thought that oil shortages and climate change were the only nasty side effects of America's automobile-led infrastructure, you'd be wrong. Cars are wreaking havoc with the US economy in more ways than you may realise. I went to a talk at MIT last year by Charles Marohn, a planner who works for a non-profit called Strong Towns in Brainerd, Minnesota, and it was so enlightening that I wanted to share some of the nuggets with you. As well as collecting data that explains the problems with American towns, he also prescribes some solutions.

But first, the problems: Building low-density housing (the "American Dream") might have been great when the cost of maintaining huge car-friendly roads and spread-out utilities was low, but that's not the case anymore. As Strong Towns points out, the country needs to spend more than $2 trillion in repairs alone. When you look at how much people in many low-density communities produce in taxes, it's clear that the sums just don't add up. The financial wizardry that allowed urban areas to grow seems to have rested on one giant Ponzi scheme.

The solution (perhaps predictably) is for town planners to start thinking far longer term when building new housing and infrastructure, to make sure that subsequent generations don't end up in debt. To me at least, this seems to spell the death knell for the American Dream. The future may have to be more European: smaller, narrower streets with concentrated housing and plenty of public transportation. The question is: is it too late to shrink the American town?