Something to write to.

You might have picked up that I'm currently trying (with trying being the operative word) to write my PhD thesis. Writing up what you've done and trying to justify it can be agony. I'm currently looking back at some of the work I'm putting in my thesis and thinking "Why, oh, why did I do that?!" I'm also enjoying writing an introduction full of 'common knowledge' which is so common it's really hard to reference properly. Yeah, I'm having all the fun.

Due to my general lack of fondness for this writing thing, I really need motivation to keep going I manage to start typing. One of my favourite things to help me get into a writing groove is music. I find it really hard to think and write without some noise going around me and the kind of noise that helps me tune into writing the most is music. So, here's a sample of what you can find on my writing playlist,

Anything from the Doctor Who Soundtracks

My collection of Doctor Who soundtracks is one of the first things I turn to when wanting to focus in and get something done. I don't know what it is about those soundtracks in particular which really help me get into a productive groove, but they do. Maybe it's because it helps me trick my brain into thinking that I'm doing something I really enjoy rather than writing. Or maybe it's because it makes doing science feel that little bit more epic.

Something in Japanese.

J-pop is one of my really not guilty-about-it guilty pleasures. How can you not love it when almost every pop song has a shredding guitar solo in it! What makes it a top pick of mine to write to is that I don't understand the lyrics so instead of singing along in my head I can just let it wash over me and keep writing. My favourite Japanese song at the moment is "Gurren No Yumia" by Linked Horizon, made famous as the main theme from the titanic (haha!) Attack on Titan. Where else would you get a crazy awesome fusion of rock and classical music with an organ solo thrown in for good measure? For something a little bit more conventional I might turn to Magia by Kalifina or Hacking to the Gate by Itou Kanoko.

 

Something From a Musical

There are times when working I need something I can sing along to in my head and, as I'm a musical junkie, something from a musical will always perk me up and make me a happy writing camper. My favourite tracks at the moment are "Nobody's Side" and "Where I Want to Be" from Chess. Actually, just all of Chess with Benny and Bjorn's amazing music and Tim Rice's beautiful lyrics.

Florence and the Machine

Florence and the Machine are amazing. At times when I need something to metaphorically grove to while I work they are one of my most popular choices. At the moment I can't get enough of "What Kind of Man" and I'm counting down to 1st June so I can get my hands on the new album.

An Awesome Parody Song

I often need a motivational boost when writing and for some strange reason one of the best things I can do to get myself back in the zone is to listen to a parody song. Honestly, I have no idea why, but it works for me! My current go to track is "Diggy Diggy Hole" by Yogscast. But Not Literally's Game of Thrones parody Some Character I Used to Know and cover of I Don't Care are also high up on my list.

This is for girls, that's for boys and never the twain shall meet.

This week I'm getting narked off about the whole for girls and for boys messages we seem to insist upon. It's everywhere, from the toys we buy children, to the activities we get kids involved in to the subjects we encourage them to do in later life. When will we stop? From such an early age we bombard children with messages that girls and boys like separate things and do separate things, it's improving but with books like "The Big Brilliant Colouring Book for Boys" and the "The Big Beautiful Colouring Book for Girls" out there and the march of gendered Lego kits, things haven't changed enough. 

So what's got this particular bee lodged in my bonnet this week? Firstly, its that Marvel have excluded Black Widow from sets in the Avengers: Age of Ultron toy line and from many other items of merchandise. Clearly, Marvel have dropped the ball here. You can't really say you're selling a set of the Avengers toys if one of the Avenger's isn't in it. It makes me wonder how they're going to merchandise Captain Marvel if they have so much trouble putting together items which have 1 woman and 6 men on it. As it stands Marvel and Disney haven't made a statement on their design choices, but why might they be so quick to exclude Black Widow from merchandise? The main answer that comes to mind is gendering of products. Girls don't like superheros, boys don't want 'girl things' therefore, lets not include Black Widow. There have been various anonymous tips suggesting that Disney think they got the female market covered with the princess line and that buying Marvel was specifically to get them a similar dominance in the male market. Erm, hello Disney, girls don't want, and shouldn't just have, princesses marketed to them. I'd say even more so given what the vast majority of their princesses say about what women should be. There are now direct appeals coming from Mark Ruffalo and Clark Gregg (the actors behind Bruce Banner and Agent Coulson) that Marvel and Disney really need to fix this problem. Will this help? Who knows, Disney are still defiantly quiet on the matter and it's likely they will continue to be, as this problem was also present in Guardians of the Galaxy merchandise where Gamora was excluded from a lot of items. Why didn't they learn from this? Especially when it's well known that women and girls are consuming Marvel media? 44% of people seeing Guardians in it's first week were female, so surely that's something you want to tap into.

Next, there's DC launching a re-branded set of female superheroes aimed at girls which will include a toy line and TV broadcasts. So this is a win, right? Someone is acknowledging that girls like superheroes too and are focusing on a female audience. That's fantastic! However, the thing that bugs me is how all the heroes (and villains) have been Disney Princessed up. When I first saw the production art I though they were just using one of the many fun pieces of Disney Princesses as Superheroes fan art. But they aren't. We get a set girls with of almost identical faces and teeny weeny waists yet again. Um... Why? Superheroes are idealised, I get this, but they can't they at least have different faces? Also, why just one show with an ensemble? We have superman and batman with their own TV lines in the DC world. Can't Wonder Woman and her compatriots stand on their own too? I'm also a bit bothered by the whole gendering of the show. I do asking myself why does it have to be just for girls and not for everyone. However, with the strong gendering of most superhero material to boys, maybe we need this one to start bringing in some balance?

I suppose all that we can do is hope that Marvel and Disney take a long hard look at what they're doing. I really hope Disney learn some lessons fast, otherwise I think we may be having this same problem again when Star Wars comes out. I also have my fingers crossed DC don't make a mess of their idea and that they don't go too far in girly-ing up the series. 

Behind the Curtain Again

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of the not so great behind the scenes goings on in science. I'm revisiting that after news broke yesterday of a paper by Dr Fiona Ingleby and Dr Megan Head being rejected by a journal reviewer with the following comment.

Images of comments from Fiona Ingleby's twitter

The paper in question was on gender issues in the flow of researchers from PhDs to Post Docs and not only does the review suggest that the authors needed 'to find one or two male biologists to work with', it also included this lovely commentary.

Images of comments from Fiona Ingleby's twitter

Or Mr Reviewer, maybe there are issues of where women get published due to people like you. On top of the drivel above the Reviewer also acknowledges looking up the author's websites and notes their genders and post doc status in the review and appears to see them as 'junior' researchers. Ironically both authors  have over 20 years of research under their belts. You know how I said status matters in my original behind the curtain post? Well, I think this is a perfect example of that point. 

On their twitter feeds, Dr Ingleby and Dr Head have pointed out that this kind of review really shows why we need double blind peer review. At the moment, when an author submits a paper they get reviews back from anonymous reviewers. However, the reviewers get full access to the author's details so can easily find out things like their gender and status in the field in question at will. Does this skew their perceptions of the work they are given to read? Well I think the above comments tell you that it does. Double bind peer review would remove the element of reviewer bias as the reviewer can only judge the work, not the person. Another option is to let the authors know who is reviewing them because, as you find with internet trolls, once you take away the mask of anonymity, people think a lot more before they speak. However, a clear argument against this would be that knowing a reviewer's identity could lead to personal vendettas or bribery. Therefore, double blind peer review is probably the way to go to protect integrity in science. 

The publisher (PLOS One for anyone who cares) who allowed these comments to stand as 'legitimate' criticism have since apologised and state that the paper is under being looked at under the appeal Dr Ingleby and Dr Head have submitted. But frankly, that's not good enough. How could any editor allow such complete and utter rubbish be included as a review? What are they going to do to ensure this doesn't happen again? Will they stop sending papers to the reviewer in question? I hope that this incident sparks a wider discussion and maybe change in the peer review process, but I won't hold my breath. If at least it makes reviewers think twice about what they write about papers and what editors accept as legitimate reviews then that's a small positive result from this. However. until peer review changes, I don't think we'll see the back of dodgy reviewers comments.

Does Scientific Accuracy Matter in Fiction?

Science can be found all over the place in fiction. From crime drama to the obvious science fiction, it pops up everywhere; but, does it matter if fiction is scientifically accurate? Validity and accuracy are funny things to apply to fiction as, well, it's not real. However, how does scientific accuracy effect story telling and what does it tell an audience?

The most obvious place to look at science in fiction is by looking at science fiction itself. Sci-fi is awash with amazing ideas of what might happen in the future, but it's also home to some things that are just draw droppingly bad too and can make you want to bang your head against a desk when you notice them.

One of the best examples of scientific accuracy in a story I can think of is Doctor Who's Weeping Angels. Why? The quantum lock. The thing that makes the Angels so terrifying (apart from the fact that they could be anywhere) is that they only move when you don't look at them. In the episode Blink the Angels are described as being quantum locked because there are many things in quantum physics that don't do certain things when you observe them. Those two words are a perfect descriptor for the Angels and is filled with science. For a general audience it sounds cool and opens the door for people to maybe explore what quantum is all about, which maybe, just maybe might encourage someone to pursue physics. However, for people who know what quantum theory is, that description is a stroke of genius. For me, it perfectly encapsulates the Angels in real quantum theory. Like electrons, when not being measured or watched they have a probability of being anywhere and everywhere, but once seen they suddenly become fixed in the most probable place. Its beautiful writing, complete with respect for science and I think its just wonderful.

There's unsurprisingly a lot of science jargon thrown around in Star Trek, and sometimes it gets a little bit muddled. In the original series, the writers originally to use lithium as the Enterprise's power source, but their scientific advisor highlighted that as lithium is a known element with known properties (which didn't include powering warp drives), they should switch to using dilithium crystals, which don't exist. However, in a strange twist, Lithium-6 crystals are being tested as a possible fusion fuel source, which might just be used to power space ships in the future! So we move from a real phenomena to a made up one. Using Lithium to power a starship is bad science, and people will notice it. However, when you make up a new molecule, there's no science base for it. Therefore, this helps to encourage the audience to suspend their disbelief and go, "OK if you have dilithium, this is possible." Another great example of a made up science fudge in Star Trek is the transporter and it's most important component the Heisenberg Compensator. From what I can find the Heisenberg compensator is introduced in Next Generation because physics tells us that you can't know both the position and momentum matter with absolute accuracy, which is known as the Heisenberg Principle. Therefore, how could you transport people without seriously messing them up? Well all you need is a Heisenberg Compensator to remove this problem! How does it work? In the words of Trek Scientific advisor Michael Okuda "Very well thank you". So once again you go from certain sections of the audience going "Transporters? Hmm. How do you fix the Heisenberg uncertainty for that to work?", to "Oh, ok, they have a box which does a thing.", once again creating a suspension of disbelief. The key thing as to why these fixes an fudges work is research, particularly with the Heisenberg Compensator. The writers found ways to understand the world and what governs it, then were able to find reasons why the story breaks fundamental rules.

Now when is science portrayed really inaccurately in fiction? The most prominent example is the age old "I'll just increase the resolution for you" which appears all over fiction when the suspect has been caught on CCTV. It's just so stupid! You can't get information from nothing. What even more frustrating is an easy fix. CCTV cameras collect lots of information, so what if the investigators get a low resolution version of the video which can be sent to them really quickly? Then if they see something interesting they can just ask for a high resolution frame to be sent over! Ta daaaa! You get the number plate without conjuring it up from thin air. There's only one time when this kind of reality abuse just might be acceptable that I can think of, and then it's only just acceptable by a hair. The TV show was Alias (and awesome by the way), and it took them THREE DAYS to increase the resolution. Yep. 3 days, not seconds or minuteness, which in my mind is just about acceptable considering they were using CIA supercomputing and databases to reconstruct the image.

So does scientific correctness matter? Yes and no. When science in fiction is done right, its beautiful. When it's not it's awful. If what you want breaks the rules, make something up! It's simple and effective. There are very few situations when people won't accept it even in contemporary setting. It's really rewarding for a reader when you can can reference and adapt real science to suit something a plot point in a story. When that's not possible, making up a reason why you can break the rules can be just as good. Especially, if you can hint to the real science blocking your way. Either way, if science or technology has a large baring on a story and it doesn't work, it can kill it; especially when all it would have taken was the few moments to read that Wikipedia page in a bit more detail.

Behind the Curtain

One of the things in my PhD which has been the most eye opening is looking behind the curtain  and seeing how science actually works. Let me tell you, it's quite a bit different to how the scientific community like to present it. 

In school you are taught that a textbook tells you the truth and scientists come up with experiments, write conclusions and communicate them to the masses in statements that are irrefutable. When I got my head around that, I though it was great and that science was a pure pursuit of truth, free of prejudice. As time goes on you do A-levels and a degree and you're taught that just because its published doesn't mean its true. People make mistakes, experiments can miss out key factors. You are taught to scrutinise papers and see if the claims they make are valid. That's sensible too, everyone can't be right all the time. Through all this time the messages are consistent. Science is about finding the truth, constantly doing better, all ideas are valid if you can back it up with evidence. If you find something out, it'll be accepted because science has peer review and the community is open to change. Then, you become a PhD student and you realise that although the great scientific method is pretty good, when you look up close it's stained, chipped and not the perfect thing you thought it to be.

People are people. We look out for ourselves, we hold onto our views very tightly and don't like it when others challenge them. We have authority structures where the people at the top have more say than those at the bottom, we need money and some people will not always be moral bastions in their pursuit of it. 

Why am I stating this? Well, however much scientists pretend that scientific truth is all that matters. They're only people. And being only people they bring the flaws of the human race into science, meaning that science isn't always unscrupulously fair. A small number of scientists fabricate results. A small number rig peer review, the very process the scientific community heralds as so rigorous and so just and the cornerstone of research practice. However, the problems aren't just when people try to further themselves. It can be hard to challenge existing thinking, you can get knocked back for challenging the status quo. Sadly, it's very unlikely that Einstein's papers would see the light of day if he'd first written them in today's climate as potentially important ideas can be ignored if they stray too far from generally held opinion. Also, this unwillingness to hear contradictory ideas to the accepted has the potential stop mistakes (unintentional and deliberate) being highlighted, as a new paper may be turned down for obtaining a different result than an already published paper. There's also another reason why Einstein might not have been published if he presented relativity today. Status. Status matters. If you've not published in a field before, sometimes you can be looked on with suspicion. Science can suppress rather than support new voices. 

Beyond this some people actively find ways to make their research go further. Science is competitive, having lots of papers matters and so does the number of times your papers have been used in other work. So, what's an easy way to bump up the number of papers and the number uses of your work? Cut up a project into tiny sections, publish them separately and mention them in the next paper along to give your usage numbers a boost (this even has it's own name in science 'salami slicing'). Basically, this means scientists can make themselves look better, by artificially inflating their performance metrics. Can you blame people for doing this? I don't think so, science is pressurised. You need good paper numbers to get good grants and you need grants to work so, if you can, why not make 3 papers from 1 important result.?

What's the point in saying all this? Well, it's pretty unsettling to find all this out after you've jumped on the science is awesome bandwagon and are bound to a PhD project. A process you've thought was a great system of truth and equality isn't quite as good as it should be and it's better to find that out early. Also, for people outside of science it's important to know that when the media say, "Scientists have discovered..." what they really mean is, "Some people did a bunch of experiments and they claim that...". However much it pretends, science and the fabled scientific method isn't flawless. It's as flawed as the people who conduct it. To claim otherwise is just not true. 

The Eclipse!

It was the eclipse on Friday! Hurrah!

I'd was desperate to get a good look at the action as this was the most complete eclipse I've had the chance to see so far. On the left is a picture I snapped just after the peak of the eclipse in Sheffield. We were quite lucky as during my walk to work in the morning it was really cloudy, so I was thinking I might just have to watch it on TV. However, I wasn't going to give up so I made myself an oh so sophisticated pinhole camera and went outside to see if I could catch anything with it. 

The very hi-tech pinhole camera!

With it being so cloudy, it was really hard to get the pinhole to work, but because of cloud cover and the very handy polarising windows in my building, we were able to snap photos and catch the action inside. Also, once everything started brightening up again I managed to get some very good, but small images of the sun from my pinhole, although I had to stop after a while when my arm went into cramp... Oops! 

I think the main problem that stopped the pinhole working as well as I hoped was the ambient light as when I've used one before we drew the curtains around us to see the projection better, but at least I can make a note of that for next time.

All in all I had a great Friday morning, I got some great pictures and experienced a pretty rare event in person! If you missed the Eclipse action (fingers crossed you that you didn't), or if you want to re-live it, you can catch it all over on BBC iPlayer with Eclipse Live from Dara O Briain, Brian cox and Liz Bonnin. For more about eclipses check out the Stargazing Live Resources page here!

The Tuition Fee Condundrum

Recently, the Labour party have been talking about their plan to decrease tuition fees if they win the next election. Whilst this feels a good thing to do on the surface, the more I read on the subject, the more I come to realise that this isn't really going to help. If you're interested in this topic (like me!), you should definitely have a read of Martin Lewis' response to this potential policy here. He's really great at drilling down into what the financial effect of fees and is an invaluable resource for information on all kinds of financial matters.

So why might lowering tuitions fees not be good news? Well, it looks like only the well off are going to do better out of this. That's the people who get the super high flying jobs with starting salaries in excess of £35000 when they leave university, which is small part of the graduate population. Why do they benefit? Because they are the only ones who'll pay off their loans before they are written off if hey only make the basic repayments. In response to this issue, Labour are saying they'll have a higher interest rate for high earners, but it's only going to be 1% more than the standard rate so whether this will help or not is debatable. However, having said that it's already the case that the amount of student loan repaid on £9000 fees is the most for people on £35000 to £45000 annually. Therefore, people with really high paid jobs get a better deal as it stands anyway! In the past it's been suggested that Labour might move away from fees to a 'graduate tax' system of paying for university tuition. As far as I understand it this will mean that graduates pay a higher rate of tax compared to non-graduates and this might redress the balance of payment with earnings.

Another important thing to think about is that Labour aren't talking about what they'll do to make up this sudden £3000 shortfall per student to the universities. Will it pay an extra £3000 per student? Or will that money go away? If so this could be very detrimental to the long term financial plans universities have, especially if the drop is initiated immediately. Also, will universities be forced to keep their access programmes going? At the moment if universities want to charge top fees they have to provide bursaries for students from less well off families. Will these stay or go?

A more pressing problem is the going suggestion from the current government about when you should start paying your loan back. At the moment you'll only start to repay your loan if you earn over £21,000 and this will go up with inflation each year. However, they're thinking of fixing this figure so that as the years go by people will gradually pay more. That sounds like an ok decision to make in principal if you tell people upfront, but there are rumours that they'll do this to people who have already signed up for university and loans when it was promised that the amount you have to earn to repay the loan will go up each year. Which is not on at all in my opinion.

At the end of the day, I'm a supporter of no tuition fees. I've seen people be put off going to university because of the debt issue. I know my student loan is going up and up while I do my PhD and I don't really mind because either my 9% contributions from when I start work will pay it off, or they won't and it'll be written off eventually, but either way I'll pay what I can afford through the tax system. Would I be in favour of a graduate tax? Possibly, as long as it's fair and means people pay a reasonable amount into the pot it might not be too bad. But we must always weigh the need to pay for universities against the need to ensure that everyone has equal access to education.

If you need more information about how fees and loans work. Have a look at Martin Lewis' student finance pages here.