Comments on: The Mystery Of The Steaming Turd

By: jiangjiang

jiangjiang — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:21:12 +0000

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By: alif

alif — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:39:51 +0000

Comment no. 30:
> I was sorry to discover that Macquarie University does exist

Yes, it does — its maths department is very highly regarded, and with good reason. Can’t say the same for its philosophy department, though.

Comment no. 9:
> “educated beyond the capacity for analytical thought”

This was said by Peter Medawar, in a Mind review of Teilhard de Chardin’s `The Phenomenon of Man’:

> … the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.

We’ve all met them. Arseholes.

By: mrmuz

mrmuz — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:26:39 +0000

Is there any point adding a comment so late, I wonder?
In any case this is all quite hilarious. Folks might be interested to know that the radio show our free thinking friend appeared on, some of which Ben has added, is the John Safran and Father Bob show. It is/was a bit of an amusing kook fest at times but the two are unlikely to be sympathetic. Safran in particular is a notable media prankster and cynic. His “spiritual journey” series ‘John Safran vs. God’, in which he ‘road tests’ a number of religions, is good for a laugh.

By: Saifedean Ammous

Saifedean Ammous — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 03:41:49 +0000

Has it occured to these geniuses that Agatha Christie sold more books than anyone else because:

1) She was a darn good writer
2) Someone is bound to sell more books than everyone else

Liverpool have won more League titles than everyone else not because they manage to hypnotise referees into calling decisions their way; someone is bound to achieve better than the others in any field…

By: Bill Cook

Bill Cook — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 08:41:29 +0000

After watching The Agatha Christie Code it struck me that all the programme makers had actually said was that “Agatha Christie sold a lot of books because people enjoyed reading them very much”, but dressed it in pseudo-science and New Age psychobabble to stretch it to an hour’s programming.

By: Amy G. Dala » links for 2006-02-01

Amy G. Dala » links for 2006-02-01 — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:20:35 +0000

[...] badscience ï¿½ The Mystery Of The Steaming Turd (tags: science neuroscience writing amusements) [...]

By: Pierre

Pierre — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:36:03 +0000

Is “unputdownable” a commonly used term over there in the UK? Or am I missing another example of irony in a subject that already has its fill of the absurd.

In other news, I have found evidence that the reason I eat a bowl of soup until it’s completely empty, in one sitting, is that contact with the soup spoon causes my brain to release serotonin and endorphins, and these neurological opiates result in the spoon being literally unputdownable.

My next step is to seek to replicate these experiments with other eating utensils to discover whether their surfaces cause similar neurological activity among eaters.

By: Hatter

Hatter — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:19:17 +0000

Mark is economics useful?

Ian, Ben has mentioned this before, but why is it acceptable to use art jargon on the arts pages and economics jargon in the finance pages, but have to ‘translate’ into dumbspeak for science pages.

I think in all areas jargon should only be used where absolutely necessary, and things should be explained as simply as possible without compromising the integrity of the facts.

In particular I’d like to smack people using business/economics jargon when there are actually real English words that say exactly what they’re saying with their jargon. Why the need to invent new and often ridiculous words? To make economics sound clever?

By: Hatter

Hatter — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:08:58 +0000

I could never read her books, the movies didn’t do much for me, but I really enjoyed the Poirot series. I suspect that David Suchet was a deciding factor.

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:32:52 +0000

Amelia Earhart showed up in 1995 on [Star Trek Voyager] when it was revealed that she and a male friend were abducted by aliens.

By: Terry Hamblin

Terry Hamblin — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:35:44 +0000

Don’t you think it a little cruel allowing social scientists to betray themselves out of their own mouths? I used to sit on a scientific ethical committee with a social scientist as chairman. Baiting the chairman was all too easy; like hitting sixes off English slow bowlers.

By: DarwinDocument

DarwinDocument — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:06:13 +0000

A small personal lament,

Both my parents are NLP practicioners and today I found my mum using a homeopathic remedy as a pain killer.

My tounge is scarred, badly.

By: Ken May

Ken May — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:46:32 +0000

“Could we have a name-and-shame page, maybe called â€œExpertsâ€ (including the quote marks), with a simple table listing these people? ”

That will open up a whole can of worms, especially in Economics.

How about the LSE IT Department for their work on ID card costing? Not a single member of the working party has had a job in commercial computing! And it shows.

By: ACH

ACH — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:39:03 +0000

Ray, it sounds like essential viewing! when are you pitching it to the programme commissioners?

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:09:29 +0000

“But I donâ€™t think the Agatha Code was so wildy inaccurate as would a programme telling us that the Norman Invasion took place in 1952″.

True. A closer analogy might be:

I put out a press release about a forthcoming documentary, saying that a team of experts have used the latest scientific wreck-location techniques to finally solve the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. Newspapers and the BBC report accordingly.

When the documentary screens, the first half involves a team of aeronautical engineers analysing in detail the specifications and aerodynamic characteristics of her Lockheed 10E Electra. The second half reports the views of clairvoyants who read the engineers’ report, then purport to pinpoint the precise location of her lost aircraft by channelling her spirit and dowsing over a map of the Pacific.

“Finally,” says the Joanna Lumley voiceover, “The mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance is solved”.

Would you be happy with that scenario?

By: P.L.Hayes

P.L.Hayes — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:42:31 +0000

“We scientists need to communicate what we mean in a langauge that the laity can understand.”

Impossible. Science is irreducibly complex.

By: Ian Brooks

Ian Brooks — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 01:34:37 +0000

I wonder, perchance, if Gerry’s issue stems from one of the very facts that has been debated here. Poorly represented “science”, including eveything from this TV show, to talking heads claiming that “Scientists found that…” or “Scientists discover the gene for X” (a pet peeve), often leads to great confusion in the minds of the public about what is being debated in the first place. To many who read this page there are obvious connections (and obvious lack of connections) between such things as fMRI and a change in neurotransmitter release. However, the public don’t understand this, and in fact likely don’t even know what on earth is being said. Science-speak is a language that can take years to learn. We scientists need to communicate what we mean in a langauge that the laity can understand. As Nature and Science have been pushing recently, we really need to increase our outreach (via the media) to educate the public about what is really being done in the world of science. A career goal of mine actually….

anyway…sorry if this is long winded, but as yer man Dr. Wanker said, us scientists are lazy, bigoted wasters, so I’m not really utterly exhausted and enjoying another lost evening spent in a lab slaving over a hot PCR machine….

By: Mark C.

Mark C. — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:42:44 +0000

I wish these reply posts wouldn’t be so hard on the social sciences, I would say economics is pretty useful…

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:33:04 +0000

geryy: i’m not quite clear why you’re so hung up on whether it was a good program. do you think that the many stories about brain chemistry and agatha christie were in any way justified from the content of the research? it’s pretty simple, and in fact, my very point is, it had nothing to do with the program. the program is a completely different matter. we’re talking about the press release, the media interviews, and the press coverage, and the fact that this bore little or no relationship to the research and the program.

By: Gerry Hart

Gerry Hart — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:12:02 +0000

Superburger, you make a very good point. And I agree with you. But I don’t think
the Agatha Code was so wildy inaccurate as would a programme telling us that the Norman Invasion took place in 1952.

I watched the programme again just now (as it is causing quite a debate) as I have it on TiVo. The voice over from Joanna Lumley clearly makes the point that everything the academic team is presenting is
no more than their thesis. They are not claiming it as fact; just what their analysis has
discovered… Can’t this blog be a little more generous? Just a little?!…..