I’ve compiled those that I caught yesterday (although there are many others under the #boffinsongs tag that came in after we started the meme on Sunday). If you had a great one that I didn’t list, please let me know. There were only one or two duplicates, some truly stupendous shoehorning of a scientist’s name into a lyric and some people (not listed here) who repeatedly didn’t get the meme at all and simply gave us some lyrics with a scientific theme (that’s a meme for next time, I reckon).

It looks like @LouiseJJohnson was the tweeter with the most time on her hands, having posted at least 17. @choklitfiend wasn’t far behind with 9. @rpg7twit had 8 (but special thanks to Richard for mentioning the meme on his Nature blog where several more people took up the challenge). @BioMedCentral and @JonSatriani excelled themselves too Jon’s Robbie Williams: “I just van’t Hoff feel real love, feel the home that I live in” is just a classic, while BMC’s “Who you gonna call? Gauss-busters!” got several well-warranted groans.

@LouiseJJohnson: AND AFTER AAAALL, YOU’RE MY VAN DER VAALS!
@LouiseJJohnson Maybe just the one more…. “Allen Orr Rigby”
@LouiseJJohnson Yalow Submarine
@LouiseJJohnson You Otto Know
@LouiseJJohnson By The Trivers of Babylon
@LouiseJJohnson Pavlov, will travel
@LouiseJJohnson Kandel in the wind
@LouiseJJohnson Haldane and all of the night
@LouiseJJohnson Anything you can do, Eigen do better.
@LouiseJJohnson It’s Raining Mendel
@LouiseJJohnson and the Beatles classic, “Kenny Lane”!
@LouiseJJohnson “I keep the Wolfram the door, but he calls me up” – Radiohead
@LouiseJJohnson Sagan All My Love For You
@LouiseJJohnson Gödel West
@LouiseJJohnson: Darwinner Takes It All
@LouiseJJohnson James Clerk Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
@LouiseJJohnson Sewall Wright Now

@bobmaccallum Sacks-ual healing
@bobmaccallum “The Boy with the Thornton His Side”

@skannie Charlie is my darwin, my darwin, my darwin.

Matt Brown “Planck You For The Days” (The Kinks)

@huwmjames Everybody Hz (REM)

@garwboy Gene Pitney: “24 hours from Tesla”
@garwboy Aerosmith: Love in a Space Elevator (off-topic, but good)

@choklitfiend Perutz-ing on the Ritz
@choklitfiend Paint it Black or Black in the Heart of Texas
@choklitfiend Watt’s the Story, Morning Glory?
@choklitfiend Florey D’Luna by Santana
@choklitfiend (Rosalind) ‘Franklin ‘ by Paramore
@choklitfiend King Faraday by Green Day
@choklitfiend I walk the Linus (Pauling)
@choklitfiend: Just another Crick in the Wall
@choklitfiend Anything from the His-Stone Roses?

@DrMobs “Way out Western” by James Reyne.

@enniscath Prusiner Whole Year: Third Eye Blind
@enniscath Pretty Fleming-o: Manfred Mann
@enniscath (Craig) Mello Yellow: Donovan

@ClaireAinsworth “Mad about the Boyle”, “Everybody Hertz” or “Eternal Flem(ing)”
@ClaireAinsworth @sciencebase “Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me (Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo” Oh hang on…

@ericmjohnson: “Bohr on the Bayou”

@JoergR A lazy one: Motörhead – [Nicholas] Metropolis
@JoergR The Scorpions – Dirac you like a hurricane

@BiomedCentral: Who you gonna call? Gauss-busters!
@BioMedCentral last ones, we promise! ‘Gimme gimme Bohr, Gimme Bohr, Gimme Gimme Bohr’ (Britney Spears) / Bohr than a feeling (Boston)
@BioMedCentral Watts love got to do with it? (Tina Turner) / Watts it all about? Run D.M.C)
@BioMedCentral Hooke you, I won’t do what you tell me (Rage Against the Machine)
@BioMedCentral I’m Hawking in the air.. Hawking in the moonlit sky (from The Snowman)

@rpg7twit El Zep: “We come from the land of the ice and snow/From the midnight sun where the hot Sussman Yalow”
@rpg7twit The Beatles Paperback Rita. (Rita Levi Montalcini) (could’ve just added Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, of course
@rpg7twit D’yer Meitner, Led Zeppelin
@rpg7twit The Mighty Quinn
@rpg7twit “Winner takes it (Good)all”
@rpg7twit Anything by Lawrence, or his father, Billy Bragg
@rpg7twit “I see Fred (Hoyle)” by Split Enz
@rpg7twit Roberta Flack: “The (Alan) Fersht time ever I saw your face”

@markfromhouston: Curie Eléison (traditional and Mr Mister)

@Adem Something Kinda Ohm
@Adem Watts Going On
@Adem What’s the frequency Kelvin?
@Adem Everybody Hertz

@suthers Hawking Bout My Baby
@suthers Burbridge (RIP) Over Troubled Water
@suthers Hoyle Lotta Love
@suthers Herschel ma belle sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble

@f1000: The Beatles: “(Elizabeth) Blackburn singing in the dead of night”
@f1000 The Unseelie Court: “My Bonny Light (Benjamin T.) Houseman”, UCSF
@f1000 Moody Blues: Just another (Greg) Winter’s tale
@f1000 “Should have been cloned by now”—Meatloaf

@LisaAMartin1 Off the Hooke
@LisaAMartin1 Nothing Amperes 2 U
@LisaAMartin1 Kelvin me softly?

@eroston: “…Take a sad song, and make Hans Be-e-e-the…”

@RKawabata Oasis: “And after all, you’re my van der Wa-al…”
@RKawabata Sade: “[George F] Smoot Operator”
@RKawabata The Smiths: “There is a light that Neher goes out”

@mattfromlondon: #scientistlyrics “Pasteur dutchie on the left hand side”

@sciencebase Nat King Cole: “Get your Higgs on Route 66″
@sciencebase Edsels: “Raman-ama-ding-dong”
@sciencebase Paul Robeson: “Oppenheimer, that Oppenheimer, he just keeps rollin’ along”
@sciencebase Killers: “Jenner was a friend of mine”
@sciencebase Mary Hopkins: “Bose were the days my friend…”
@sciencebase Glenn Frey: “The Edison, oh it’s on the street”
@sciencebase: The Byrds: “To everything (Turing, Turing Turing)
@sciencebase Paul McCartney: “Mullis Kintyre, oh mist rolling in from the sea…”
@sciencebase Jason Mraz: “Please don’t Teller that I miss her”
@sciencebase ZZ Top: “Gamow all your loving”
@sciencebase: Marilyn Monroe: “I Volta be loved by you…”

@StephaniePride “Oh, oh, oh what a Bohr, what a thundering, thundering Bohr” (Flanders & Swann’s The Bestriary)
@StephaniePride “Well it’s [Heike Kamerlingh] Onnes for the money, two for the show”
@StephaniePride with a Handelian turn “Herschel feed his sheep like a shepherd .. . .”
@StephaniePride “sitting in the back seat, Huygens and a kissing with Fred” (Paul Evans and The Curls 1959)

@SamWong1: Everybody’s Hawking at me
@SamWong1 Is this the way to Avogadro?
@SamWong1 Monty Python: Isn’t it awfully nice to have a Paul
@SamWong1 Wet Wet Wet: Loewi’s All Around

@markfromhouston “Curie” (by Dr Mister)

@trancedevo Hoyle in my Shoe (Traffic – 1967)
@trancedevo Avogadro under my skin
@trancedevo Masters of the Universe by Hawkingwind

@NeilWithers: My sole entry: Johnny B. Goodenough

@JonSatriani Chuck Berry: “Johnny B. Fenn.”
@JonSatriani Goldie Lookin Chain: “Oh son, your missus is a [David] Nutter!”
@JonSatriani Eurythmics: “When you need someone to depend upon, Venter-morrow comes”
@JonSatriani Robbie Williams: “I just van’t Hoff feel real love, feel the home that I live in”
@JonSatriani Van Morrison: “From the Harvard of the street… to the Whitesides of the road”
@JonSatriani: Pink Floyd: All in all, you’re just another brick in Zewail
@JonSatriani Happy Days: “Fara-day! What a day! Rockin all week with you…”

@bmljenny Up on Cripple Crick
@bmljenny Never gonna Gibbs you up, never gonna let you down… – Rickrolled. And rest.

Supertramp: “Geiger little bit of your love to me”

Bowie: “We Pasteur-long the stair…”

Marilyn Monroe: “I Volta be loved by you…”

Nat King Cole: “The [Gordon] Moore I see you…”

Eddie and the Hotrods: “Darwin-y thing you wanna do…”

Bill Hailey and the Comets: “Well, it’s a Wolpert the money, two for the show…”

Duran Duran: Hungry like the Wolfram

Cribbed from Twitter responses:

@LouiseJJohnson: AND AFTER AAAALL, YOU’RE MY VAN DER VAALS!
@LouiseJJohnson Maybe just the one more…. “Allen Orr Rigby”
@LouiseJJohnson Yalow Submarine
@LouiseJJohnson You Otto Know
@LouiseJJohnson By The Trivers of Babylon
@LouiseJJohnson Pavlov, will travel
@LouiseJJohnson Kandel in the wind
@LouiseJJohnson Haldane and all of the night
@LouiseJJohnson Anything you can do, Eigen do better.
@LouiseJJohnson It’s Raining Mendel
@LouiseJJohnson and the Beatles classic, “Kenny Lane”!
@LouiseJJohnson “I keep the Wolfram the door, but he calls me up” – Radiohead
@LouiseJJohnson Sagan All My Love For You
@LouiseJJohnson Gödel West
@LouiseJJohnson: Darwinner Takes It All
@LouiseJJohnson James Clerk Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
@LouiseJJohnson Sewall Wright Now

@bobmaccallum Sacks-ual healing
@bobmaccallum “The Boy with the Thornton His Side”

@skannie Charlie is my darwin, my darwin, my darwin.

Matt Brown “Planck You For The Days” (The Kinks)

@huwmjames Everybody Hz (REM)

@garwboy Gene Pitney: “24 hours from Tesla”
@garwboy Aerosmith: Love in a Space Elevator (off-topic, but good)

@choklitfiend Perutz-ing on the Ritz
@choklitfiend Paint it Black or Black in the Heart of Texas
@choklitfiend Watt’s the Story, Morning Glory?
@choklitfiend Florey D’Luna by Santana
@choklitfiend (Rosalind) ‘Franklin ‘ by Paramore
@choklitfiend King Faraday by Green Day
@choklitfiend I walk the Linus (Pauling)
@choklitfiend: Just another Crick in the Wall
@choklitfiend Anything from the His-Stone Roses?

@DrMobs “Way out Western” by James Reyne.

@enniscath Prusiner Whole Year: Third Eye Blind
@enniscath Pretty Fleming-o: Manfred Mann
@enniscath (Craig) Mello Yellow: Donovan

@ClaireAinsworth “Mad about the Boyle”, “Everybody Hertz” or “Eternal Flem(ing)”
@ClaireAinsworth @sciencebase “Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me (Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo” Oh hang on…

@ericmjohnson: “Bohr on the Bayou”

@JoergR A lazy one: Motörhead – [Nicholas] Metropolis
@JoergR The Scorpions – Dirac you like a hurricane

@BiomedCentral: Who you gonna call? Gauss-busters!
@BioMedCentral last ones, we promise! ‘Gimme gimme Bohr, Gimme Bohr, Gimme Gimme Bohr’ (Britney Spears) / Bohr than a feeling (Boston)
@BioMedCentral Watts love got to do with it? (Tina Turner) / Watts it all about? Run D.M.C)
@BioMedCentral Hooke you, I won’t do what you tell me (Rage Against the Machine)
@BioMedCentral I’m Hawking in the air.. Hawking in the moonlit sky (from The Snowman)

@rpg7twit El Zep: “We come from the land of the ice and snow/From the midnight sun where the hot Sussman Yalow”
@rpg7twit The Beatles Paperback Rita. (Rita Levi Montalcini) (could’ve just added Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, of course
@rpg7twit D’yer Meitner, Led Zeppelin
@rpg7twit The Mighty Quinn
@rpg7twit “Winner takes it (Good)all”
@rpg7twit Anything by Lawrence, or his father, Billy Bragg
@rpg7twit “I see Fred (Hoyle)” by Split Enz
@rpg7twit Roberta Flack: “The (Alan) Fersht time ever I saw your face”

@markfromhouston: Curie Eléison (traditional and Mr Mister)

@Adem Something Kinda Ohm
@Adem Watts Going On
@Adem What’s the frequency Kelvin?
@Adem Everybody Hertz

@suthers Hawking Bout My Baby
@suthers Burbridge (RIP) Over Troubled Water
@suthers Hoyle Lotta Love
@suthers Herschel ma belle sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble

@f1000: The Beatles: “(Elizabeth) Blackburn singing in the dead of night”
@f1000 The Unseelie Court: “My Bonny Light (Benjamin T.) Houseman”, UCSF
@f1000 Moody Blues: Just another (Greg) Winter’s tale
@f1000 “Should have been cloned by now”—Meatloaf

@LisaAMartin1 Off the Hooke
@LisaAMartin1 Nothing Amperes 2 U
@LisaAMartin1 Kelvin me softly?

@eroston: “…Take a sad song, and make Hans Be-e-e-the…”

@RKawabata Oasis: “And after all, you’re my van der Wa-al…”
@RKawabata Sade: “[George F] Smoot Operator”
@RKawabata The Smiths: “There is a light that Neher goes out”

@mattfromlondon: #scientistlyrics “Pasteur dutchie on the left hand side”

@sciencebase Nat King Cole: “Get your Higgs on Route 66″
@sciencebase Edsels: “Raman-ama-ding-dong”
@sciencebase Paul Robeson: “Oppenheimer, that Oppenheimer, he just keeps rollin’ along”
@sciencebase Killers: “Jenner was a friend of mine”
@sciencebase Mary Hopkins: “Bose were the days my friend…”
@sciencebase Glenn Frey: “The Edison, oh it’s on the street”
@sciencebase: The Byrds: “To everything (Turing, Turing Turing)
@sciencebase Paul McCartney: “Mullis Kintyre, oh mist rolling in from the sea…”
@sciencebase Jason Mraz: “Please don’t Teller that I miss her”
@sciencebase ZZ Top: “Gamow all your loving”
@sciencebase: Marilyn Monroe: “I Volta be loved by you…”

@StephaniePride “Oh, oh, oh what a Bohr, what a thundering, thundering Bohr” (Flanders & Swann’s The Bestriary)
@StephaniePride “Well it’s [Heike Kamerlingh] Onnes for the money, two for the show”
@StephaniePride with a Handelian turn “Herschel feed his sheep like a shepherd .. . .”

@SamWong1: Everybody’s Hawking at me
@SamWong1 Is this the way to Avogadro?
@SamWong1 Monty Python: Isn’t it awfully nice to have a Paul
@SamWong1 Wet Wet Wet: Loewi’s All Around

@markfromhouston “Curie” (by Dr Mister)

@trancedevo Hoyle in my Shoe (Traffic – 1967)
@trancedevo Avogadro under my skin
@trancedevo Masters of the Universe by Hawkingwind

@StephaniePride “sitting in the back seat, Huygens and a kissing with Fred” (Paul Evans and The Curls 1959)

@NeilWithers: My sole entry: Johnny B. Goodenough

@JonSatriani Chuck Berry: “Johnny B. Fenn.”
@JonSatriani Goldie Lookin Chain: “Oh son, your missus is a [David] Nutter!”
@JonSatriani Eurythmics: “When you need someone to depend upon, Venter-morrow comes”
@JonSatriani Robbie Williams: “I just van’t Hoff feel real love, feel the home that I live in”
@JonSatriani Van Morrison: “From the Harvard of the street… to the Whitesides of the road”
@JonSatriani: Pink Floyd: All in all, you’re just another brick in Zewail
@JonSatriani Happy Days: “Fara-day! What a day! Rockin all week with you…”

@bmljenny Up on Cripple Crick
@bmljenny Never gonna Gibbs you up, never gonna let you down… – Rickrolled. And rest.

“I’m Sagan all my love for you” from Ironic Sans

So, I chipped in with:

Millie Jackson: “I know he’s a Feynman…”

Toy Dolls: “I’m feeling [James] Randi”

Diamond and Streisand: “You don’t [Simon] Singh me love songs…”

Jackie Wilson: “[Lord] Rees petite, the finest…”

Stylistics: “Einstein in love with you…”

Roxette: “Newturn me on…”

ZZ Top: “Every girl’s crazy for a [Barry] Sharpless man”

Any more…? Doesn’t really have to be in any way connected to Valentine’s, just see if you can shoehorn a scientist’s name into a song title or lyric…the sillier and cornier the better.

They claim that it is being done to deliberately to stifle the research of competitors. Missing a placement of one’s research paper in prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature, and Science, can mean the difference between getting hundreds of thousands of pounds in public funding for a research project…and not.

Billions of pounds of public money is spent on funding stem cell research, says the BBC report.

Once again, the whole peer-review process is under the spotlight, with disgruntled scientists asserting that the whole system, in which other scientists get to anonymously review one’s work, is broken. Its defenders would disagree and say that it’s the best mechanism we have for validating science.

The BBC reports that Philip Campbell, Editor of Nature, said: “Last year we used about 400 reviewers in stem cell and developmental biology, and we constantly recruit new referees. The idea that there’s some privileged clique is utterly false.”

Of course, there are some problems with the system. After all, the number of scientific frauds that have been exposed over the years seems to be rising. There is an inherent delay to the publication process because of the refereeing step. There is also the issue of the constant clamoring for publication in “prestigious” journals and the disappointment and failed grants that ensue when one fails to make the grade. An open system with crowd-sourced review might avoid such issues.

In such a system, there would be no distinction between the journals, papers would simply be deposited in a vast open database. No one would worry about impact factors, and any Etonian type playing fields that were not leveled would be relaid horizontal.

That said, one can imagine that niches and cliques would ultimately emerge even in such a system. This quickly became apparent on social media sites like Digg and delicious where crowd review is the norm. I cannot see how would science avoid that in an open system.

I’ve studied alcohol issues to some extent as they relate to genetic predisposition and nutritional modulators. It appears that primates share configurations of genetically determined metabolism that affect drinking behavior. Check out this video. Note, it’s not meant to be funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk

Nutritional status also affects drinking behavior.
The following is an excerpt from Nutrition and Your Mind, pages 104-106:

If I were to ask you to name all of the types of fuel the body can utilize, although the reply appears obviously simple, you would probably answer incorrectly. For while carbohydrates, fat, and protein do indeed represent all types of foods we customarily think of, yet biochemically – and socially – something very important must be added: ethyl alcohol.

Although in many ways alcohol does not act as we expect food to act, since it may produce profound pathological reactions, yet from biochemical point of view the utilization of alcohol can be looked at in the very same way that we have examined the breakdown of sugar and fat in the cells of the tissues. And while we lack a full understanding of the effects of alcohol on the system, we do know that there are two related nutritional phases to its metabolism.

First, alcohol increases the blood-sugar level by causing the liver to give up part of its stored sugar (glycogen); hence alcohol stimulates carbohydrate metabolism. Second, alcohol itself is directly broken down – principally in the liver – to produce the energy-rich intermediate acetate (acetyl coenzyme A), which is either oxidized in the citric acid cycle to produce ATP (energy) or converted to other substances such as body fat and cholesterol.

Alcohol is a rich source of acetate, ounce for ounce producing more than sugar or protein, but not quite as much as fat. In addition, however – and this point has an important bearing on its use and abuse – alcohol may be thought of as almost “instant acetate.”

Let us suppose that you’re physically and mentally exhausted – cold, tired, dispirited. Biochemically your cellular acetate is minimal, your blood sugar is low, and you’ve just about run out of ready nutritional reserves. Then someone puts a stiff drink of two ounces of 100-proof whiskey in your hand. As you sip it slowly for a few minutes, life, strength, and hope seem to push out the ache, the cold, and the despair.

If alcohol is new to you, in this moment you have had an almost unforgettable learning experience. You’ve been rewarded at a time and in a way that will be long remembered – consciously or unconsciously. And the next time your energy reserves are gone, and you’re mentally and physically spent, you’ll probably think “whiskey!” You will also have gained personal insight into the experience behind the word, which comes from the Gaelic USQUEBAUGH meaning “water of life.”

Water of life it would indeed be if the whole story of alcohol were to end with its nutritional biochemistry, and it was simply another easily utilizable and wholesome source of energy. But it is not. Every drop of alcohol burned in the tissues creates an nutritional demand for carbohydrates and for many biochemicals that it does not by itself supply, the vitamins and minerals necessary to process it. Consequently, continued, constant, or frequent use of alcohol can lead to depletion of cellular nutritional reserves needed for normal metabolism.

The paradox of alcohol is that while producing acetate and stimulating the breakdown of glucose, which in special circumstances results in apparent immediate physical and mental relief from stress, at the very same time this substance is a dangerous drug, both physically and psychologically.

One might think that since alcohol is metabolized in the normal nutritional pathways of the citric acid cycle, alcoholism is a nutritional disease, one that can be successfully treated by good nutrition. And indeed we have witnessed some dramatic successes using this approach. When psychological dependency has resulted from using alcohol as a substitute for food, then optimum nutrition can help erase the conditions of mental and physical fatigue which provide a stimulus to “think whiskey.”

For literally speaking, if you think you “need a drink” you don’t NEED A DRINK; you need ATP (energy) derived from acetate, through the breakdown of blood sugar, fat , and protein. If one is really well nourished his energy reserves are as high as they can be. This is why truly healthy individuals cannot tolerate alcohol. Their cellular acetate breakdown is near maximum, and any rapid increase such as will result from a drink of whiskey may lead to headache, sweating, nausea, and possibly vomiting. In short, one’s tolerance to alcohol reflects the state of one’s biochemical health. The more one can drink without adverse effect the worse off he is. It is just plain utter biochemical nonsense for people to pride themselves on being able to hold their liquor, for only those in very bad shape can do so.

Unfortunately, the use of alcohol as a nutritional crutch is far from the whole story, however, for there are many reasons why people drink other than nutritional ones. For example, I had a young man tell me he was stopping his optimum diet and vitamin-mineral formula because he was “losing his taste for Scotch.” He preferred the “pleasures of drinking” to the alternative I was offering of increased mental and physical functioning.

However, for those who don’t want to drink, who find alcohol a problem rather than a continuing source of pleasure, their first goal should be to adopt an intensive nutritional program which will build them up to the point where they not only do not feel they “need a drink” – they couldn’t tolerate one without feeling ill if they drank it, amazing as that sounds.

Nutrition alone may not be able to accomplish this for individuals who have vastly overcommitted themselves to a wild and unrealistic round of daily activities. If you are one of these, take a hard look at your current life-style, and reshape it so that energy output is fully compensated for by rest, sleep , and intensive nutrition.

George Watson, PhD, 1972.

Also of interest is the work of Roger J. Williams, PhD, one of the world’s most brilliant biochemists and nutrition experts. Famous for his work with B vitamins, he was the first to identify, isolate, and synthesize pantothenic acid. He also did pioneer work on folic acid and gave it its name. But more importantly, he wrote several (very much ignored) books about alcoholism. They include Nutrition and Alcoholism and Alcoholism: The Nutritional Approach. Also, Chapter 11 of Nutrition against Disease is titled “The Battle Against Alcoholism.” Here are some comments from that chapter:

The fact that some individuals become alcoholics and others – under similar circumstances – do not is inescapable and is of the utmost importance in understanding the disease. When alcoholism strikes, …it only strikes certain individuals, while others remain untouched. Furthermore, it strikes with essentially the same result; the victim becomes a compulsive drinker (pages 166-167).

In traditional medical education, alcoholism is thought of as a primarily mental disease involving a personality disorder or weakness from which an “escape” is sought. While medicine fully recognizes that alcoholics who follow their usual bent are malnourished, this is commonly regarded as a result of their alcoholism. Many physicians have been led to accept as axiomatic the idea that nutrition is of concern only in “deficiency diseases.” That alcoholism might be caused by malnutrition of the brain cells has never been thought worthy of consideration (emphasis mine). It is quite possible, of course, that malnutrition develops as a forerunner of alcoholism, and that it is only when malnutrition of the brain cells becomes severe that true alcoholism appears Page 168).

The item appeared in the Telegraph and shows you how to get from the Galactic Center to Centaurus, for instance. Space travel could be as simple as catching the tube if a new map released by Harvard’s Samuel Arbesman created the map to show the vast and complex interconnections of the Milky Way in a familiar way.

Of course, clever as it is, the map totally ignores the sub-space hyperdimensional wormholes that let you get from Omicron Centauri to Green Park without having to change at Leicester Square and avoiding the dodgy escalator at Charing Cross Road.

Each issue of Bioscience Technology covers new technologies and applications in life science research. It is available to all US-based scientists working in biology-based research in pharmaceutical, academic, biotech, government and commercial labs.

Your qualified subscription to the magazine will, in conjunction with our free trade magazines partner, help support this website through a referral fee. The site offers dozens of other free publications, magazines, white papers, and webcast downloads in biotechnology, pharmaceutical science, healthcare, energy and utility, internet, telecommunications and much more besides.

The odds of finding a single particle of sulfur in homeopathic “sulfur” are a staggering 6 x 10²³ to 1. That’s “6-with-23-zeroes-after-it” to 1 against:

600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 against.

Even the national lottery with 6 numbers 1-49 doesn’t represent odds as long as that at a mere 14 million to one against.

Some people argue that it works through the almighty placebo effect. Yes, well…maybe there is a touch of that, but, and I quote the 10:23 campaign, here: “Homeopathy has abused its placebo privileges”.

From time to time, it’s understandable that a simple-to-administer placebo treatment might carry some benefit for doctors, where no medical intervention has a particular, proven effectiveness. In these scenarios, it could be argued that homeopathy might have had a role to play, providing a harm-free, effect-free placebo to help manage the otherwise unmanageable. However, due to the abuse of the legitimacy leant to homeopathy by real medicine, this treatment has stopped being harm-free – it wastes money and time, and can discourage people from getting genuine medical help when they most need it. It’s time to stop giving support to the ineffective and illogical quackery that is homeopathy, and time to give people the facts to evaluate its use before they choose to rely on Hahnemann’s 200-year-old theories over the up-to-date, constantly-improving medical practices of today’s world.

Did you know that part of the preparation process for homeopathic remedies, dating back to Hahnemann’s original bullshine recipe is supposed to involve bashing the glass vial against a Bible. What does that tell you, eh? To paraphrase a question asked by comedians Tim Minchin and Dara O’Briain, who both have a well-tuned scientific sensibility: Do you know what they call alternative medicine that is proven to work? Medicine! And, of course, if someone does genuinely demonstrate irrefutable efficacy for homeopathy it will be quickly added to the standard medical textbooks in the same way that remedies with a natural or herbal origin, such as aspirin and artemisinin, are. (Incidentally, homeopathy and herbal are not synonymous).

So is there a chance for homeopathy? Yeah, it’s
W00-W000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in a million, million, million, million.

Ernst, E. (2010). Homeopathy, a “helpful placebo” or an unethical intervention? Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 31 (1), 1-1 DOI: 10.1016/j.tips.2009.10.005

Of course, with all the hacks trapped at home, they’ve little way of getting to press conferences and jollies to report on any “real” news, so it’s no surprise. Needless to say weather crews everywhere are being haranged about their failure to predict this doom-laden situation, their failure to explain how we can have global warming and yet be frozen solid, and how come the Gulf Stream isn’t keeping us warm.

Well, that Gulf Stream idea, is apparently a myth. Richard Seager of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University claimed several years ago to prove that Western Europe and Britain in particular would not be plunged into an ice age even if the Gulf Stream ground to a halt. But, that hasn’t stopped Boing Boing waxing lyrical about how the current #uksnow is all about how the Gulf Stream has taken a detour across Greenland and left the UK grasping for extra blankets and worrying about its gas supplies (if only we’d hung on to North Sea oil and gas, eh?).

The weather guy did show how the cold snap is more widespread across the Norther hemisphere than the Brits imagine and the Gulf Stream certainly has no immediate effect on China, so maybe Seager is right.

As to the idea that a widespread cold snap is evidence that the climate change debate is dead in the water after Copenhagen is tempered by the fact that temperatures elsewhere are, right now, higher than they ought to be for the time of year. And, despite claims that meteorologists are commonly climate skeptics, one does have to remind oneself that weather does not equal climate.

A need for extra blankets and gritters on the road in the British mid-winter does not mean that the ice age is coming and that we can forget about cutting carbon emissions. When the summer issues of the tabloids of screaming, “Phew….what a scorcher!!!” come the July heatwave, those currently chilly British hacks will no doubt be complaining about the lack of air conditioning.

Brooks looked at 1500 sites and found that some of them follow geometric patterns and he concluded that they must have been part of a sophisticated navigational system. This was reported in the UK national press on 5 January 2010, with the [renowned scientific journal] the Daily Mail reporting that the patterns were so ’sophisticated and accurate’ that Brooks ‘does not rule out extraterrestrial help.’

Parker applied the same technique to another ancient and mysterious civilization: that of the Woolworths hunter-gatherer tribe.

“We know so little about the ancient Woolworth stores, but we do still know their locations,” explains Parker, “so I thought that if we analyzed the sites we could learn more about what life was like in 2008 and how these people went about buying cheap kitchen accessories and discount CDs.”

The results revealed an exact and precise geometric placement of the Woolworths locations. Three stores around Birmingham formed an exact equilateral triangle (Wolverhampton, Lichfield and Birmingham stores) and if the base of the triangle is extended, it forms a 173.8 mile line linking the Conwy and Luton stores. Despite the 173.8 mile distance involved, the Conway Woolworths store is only 40 feet off the exact line and the Luton site is within 30 feet. All four stores align with an accuracy of 0.05%.

The bisector of this same triangle then passes through the Monmouth, West Bromwich and Alfreton store locations with an accuracy of 0.5%. There are also grids of isosceles triangles – those with two sides of equal length – on each side of the Birmingham Woolworths Triangle. One such isosceles triangle made with Stafford only has an error of 3% and it points directly at the Northwich Woolworths store that is itself only 0.6% off being exactly isosceles.

Parker concludes that “these incredibly precise geometric patterns mean that the people who founded the Woolworths Empire must have used these store locations as a form of ‘landmark satnav’ to help hunters find their nearest source of cheap sweets that can be purchased in whatever mix they chose to pick. Well, that or the fact that in any sufficiently large set of random data it is possible to find meaningless patterns of any required accuracy.”

Parker’s patterns were found among the 800 random ex-Woolworth locations by simply skipping over the vast majority of the sites and only choosing the few that happen to line-up. Parker confesses an envy of Brooks who with 1500 locations, had almost twice as much data from which to pull meaningless patterns. In the Daily Mail write-up, Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, essentially concurs with Parker’s conclusion: “The landscape of southern Britain was intensively settled and there are many earth works and archaeological finds. It is very easy to find patterns in the landscape, but it doesn’t mean that they are real.”